Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 095.djvu/186

Rh characters in every profession, of all parties, and many religious denominations—the author states his rule to have been, to make each speak for himself in his own words, or by his own actions, as to political or religious matters of opinion; taking care, as far as possible, to represent the opinions that men or sects have actually held, in the light in which they have been held by their professors—not in the distorted perspective of their adversaries. Not that he engages to withhold his own sentiments; but ho declines to judge, much less condemn, the sentiments of others. And to this wise rule, on the whole, he wisely and consistently adheres.

For that Romanist must be hyper-papistically disposed who cannot relish the memoir of Bishop Fisher, herein honoured as a martyr, if not to the truth that is recorded in the authentic "Book of Heaven," yet to that copy of it which he thought authentic, which was written on his her't in the antique characters of authoritative age. And that Manchester schoolman must have suffered a desperate warp in the woof of his mind, who cannot enjoy the history of Richard Arkwright, the penny barber, who came to be a knight-bachelor, and died worth double the revenue of a German principality—a man prominent among those who have, in Wordsworth’s language,And that littérateur must have narrowed sympathies, who cannot extract profit and pleasure from the life of William Roscoe—celebrated as biographer and historian, but yet more estimable as "a grey-headed friend of freedom"—and one who, after the disappointment of a hundred hopes, after a hundred vicissitudes of good and ill, never despaired of human nature; or that of Congreve, or Mason, or Bentley, especially the last. And that patriot must come of a windy, empty sort, who cannot exult in the portraiture of Andrew Marvell, "a patriot of the old Roman build, and a poet of no vulgar strain," whose mind, like the street and the wall of Jerusalem, was built in troublous times, yet pronounced by Burnet the liveliest droll of the age," and whose writings made the Merry Monarch forgive the Patriot for the sake of tho Humorist. And that Quaker must be straitened in his own bowels, who can read without edification and creature-comfort tho sketch of Dr. John Fothergill. Of the Society of Friends, indeed, Hartley Coleridge writes with an interest and tenderness akin to that of Elia himself, who loved to sit among the Silent Ones in deepest peace, which some outwelling tears would rather confirm than disturb.

We do not propose to give extracts from a work which has been before tho public so many years past, and which long since secured the first-fruits of a sure though slow renown, and of which Wordsworth thought so highly, that he recommended Mr. Moxon to omit no opportunity of obtaining an interest in tho copyright, saying, "it was full of matter," and that he "doubted not it would live." But there is one feature in the present edition to which we must call attention—the marginal notes, namely, by the venerable "Head of the Family." These are comparatively few and far between, but they are highly characteristic, and