biographer could dwell. Surrounded by a large and happy family, of such variety in age that the eldest was forty while the youngest was scarcely one year old, and by tenants and neighbours who loved and respected him, the decline of his life was as enviable as the course of it had been useful and honourable. With unabated cheerfulness, he bore severe suffering, and his greatest anxiety was to prevent his family from sinking under their unceasing exertions. He often observed, "the smallest service merits thanks," and his thanks were not words of course merely. Five days before his death, he dictated a letter to Lady Romilly, which might have been praised as the production of a man in the prime of life and health. He preserved his faculties to the period of dissolution, and in his concluding hours his bodily sufferings subsided. In the most serene state, before he breathed his last, he said, "I die with the soft feeling of gratitude to my friends, and submission to the God who made me." He expired on the 13th of June, 1817. It remains with his children,' says his excellent biographer, to do honour to his memory.' In forming a correct estimate of the character of Mr. Edgeworth, we shall find much to respect and admire. In talents, however, he was perhaps not a first-rate man, and his abilities seem to have been exerted in the sphere for which they were best fitted. He did not possess genius, unless his taste for mechanical pursuits (in which, however, he never made any important discoveries) can be called by that name. His mind was rather acute than profound; and his acquirements were neither very laborious nor very learned. In his writings, he is ingenious and lively. His various works, and those in which he engaged in common with his daughter, are too well known to the public to need recapitulation in this place. In the qualities of his heart, he appears to have been sincere and affectionate; and the grateful veneration with which his daughter treats his memory is highly honourable to them both.-Yet, notwithstanding the great kindness which he displayed to all around him, it may perhaps be questioned whether he possessed very deep feelings: kindness and affection appear to have been a principle with him rather than a feeling; and, while he never suffered any one about him to be unhappy, if he could prevent it, he was equally sedulous in driving sorrow from his own breast. His anguish was of short date, and soon subsided into the placidity of regret. As a politician, he merits great praise. At a time when corruption had become so common as scarcely to be a disgrace, and in a country where many and lofty examples were were not wanting to extenuate the offence, he preserved his integrity unimpeached, in spite of the power of temptation. Wealth, title, and splendor might have accompanied the sacrifice, but he "refused to palter with the fiend ambition." His sentiments on the most important political questions were liberal and judicious; and his time, his fortune, and his labour, were freely given to the exigencies of the state. One of his best claims, however, to the gratitude of posterity, is the formation of that daughter's mind whose works are "familiar in our mouths as household words;" and whose labours have given, and we hope will long continue to give, delight and instruction to all who peruse them. The very affectionate and grateful manner, in which Miss Edgeworth mentions her father, will do more towards convincing the public of his real excellence of heart and understanding, than a thousand cold and laboured panegyrics from the pen of a stranger-biographer. If it be thought by those who strictly examine the extent of Mr. Edgeworth's powers, that his daughter in some points over-rates them, it was perhaps impossible that she could totally divest herself of the partiality of affection, however sincere was the spirit in which the work was composed: but, in the estimate of her father's virtues and heart, who could be a more competent judge than the person on whom his kindness and attention had been so profitably bestowed? The mode in which he encouraged his daughter to proceed in her literary exertions, and the assistance which he afforded to her, form a curious and very pleasant part of these memoirs; and, at the same time, it is interesting to trace in many of the incidents of Mr. Edgeworth's life the foundation or the illustration of his daughter's valuable and attractive tales. Of the variety of anecdote, and the mass of instruction with which these volumes abound, it is impossible in the limits of a critique to give any adequate idea: but that part of the narrative which is written by Mr. Edgeworth is much more in the light style of memoirs, than the portion that we owe to the pen of his daughter. From the preceding account, it will be seen that in his early life Mr. E. was acquainted with many men of science and literary celebrity, and of his intimacy with them the Memoirs contain various pleasing anecdotes. His daughter also gives some agreeable specimens of his epistolary style, which is light, elegant, and piquant; forming a great contrast to the classical and rhetorical periods of his friend Day's letters. We give one epistle. • FROM FROM MR. EDGEWORTH TO MR. DAY: In answer to his complaining of the Ingratitude of some inferior Person to whom he had shewn kindness. * * * "You have certainly seen repeatedly that per sons of low habits are never thankful for improvement, comfort, or convenience; but are caught and chained to you by finery, and an introduction into higher life, and greater airs and graces than they have been used to. "Young people cannot whilst they are young, and fools cannot, even when old, estimate life with any tolerable accuracy. Their common error is, to attend more to what they hear than what they feel. And, as they hear almost every body talk with rapture of rank, public diversions, dress, and equipage, they place their hopes of happiness on these objects; and become, at length, so accustomed to pursue them, that, long after they are undeceived as to their real value, they continue the chase, without the slightest appetite for its object. "We have had, my dear friend, very different fortunes in life. You began with more sanguine hopes of friendship. Not having lived with any person older than yourself, whose abilities you relied upon, you did not hear with the same ears the continual admonitions that the old dispense, upon the frailty of friendship. I have had very few friends; and those I chose amongst my equals in fortune. I remember well, in a lane near Hare-Hatch, my foretelling that our attachment was likely to continue, because it was probable, that we should never be in very different stations of life, and, therefore, that we should not be separated by interest or fashion. All this family send their best wishes to you and to Mrs. Day. "I am your sincere Friend, "RICHARD Lovell EdgewORTH." Judging from a prefixed portrait, we should say that Mr. Edgeworth's countenance was handsome and intelligent; and we learn that in figure he was below the middle size, but extremely well made and active. In his early youth, dancing was quite a mania with him, and his success in this art may be judged by the following anecdote. He had been a pupil of the famous Aldridge; and in 1793, nearly thirty years afterward, he happened to be in a coffee-house in London, when he saw a gentleman eyeing him, who at last exclaimed, "It is he! Certainly, Sir, you are Mr. Edgeworth ?" Mr. E. replied in the affirmative. "Gentlemen," said the stranger, with much importance, addressing himself to several people who were near him, "here is the best dancer in England, and a man to whom I am under infinite obligations, for I owe to him the foundation of my fortune. Mr. Edgeworth and I were scholars of the famous Aldridge, and once when we practised together, Mr. E. excelled me so much, REV. AUG. 1820. Dd that that I sat upon the ground, and burst out a crying: he could actually complete an entrechat of ten distinct beats, which I could not accomplish! However, I was well consoled by him, for he invented, for Aldridge's benefit, The Tambourine dance,' which had uncommon success. The dresses were Chinese. Twelve assistants held small drums, furnished with bells; these were struck in the air by the dancer's feet, when held as high as their arms could reach. This Aldridge performed, and improved upon it, by stretching his legs asunder so as to strike two drums at the same time. Those not being the days of elegant dancing, I afterwards," continued the stranger," exhibited, at Paris, the Tambourine dance to so much advantage that I made fifteen hundred pounds by it."" ART. V. Lyrical Dramas: with Domestic Hours. A Miscellany of Odes and Songs. By Cornelius Neale, late Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. 12mo. pp. 368. 95. Boards. Holdsworth. A LTHOUGH We had not been guided by the title-page, we should have concluded immediately that this work was the production of an author who had shared in the advantages of an University; since considerable scholarship, and much meritorious imitation of the classical poets, are to be discovered in the volume. At the same time, we are far from thinking that Mr. Neale is the most successful when he treads the closest in the steps of the antients; or, rather, when he intends to translate. Our readers will see that this intention is not always happily fulfilled: but, before we attend the author on his excursion into classical Italy, in company with Horace, we must first follow his wilder and more natural flight into the romantic regions of fairy-land; or into the scenes of modern Italian wonders. The first of the dramas' is entitled Rinaldo and Armida, and takes the names and the principal incidents from Tasso, but has little else in it that can be said to resemble that great original. Still it presents some fortunate passages, especially among the lighter and more truly lyrical parts: but we must reserve the space which we can allot to quotation for the second of the dramas, called Love's Trial;' which, on the whole, we think, is the most creditable specimen of Mr. Neale's poetical powers. The story of Love's Trial' is very simple. A village youth and village maid (Edward and Ellen) are mutually enamoured, and about to be married. At this crisis, an unlucky wager takes place between Oberon the king and Titania the queen of the fairies; the latter of whom engages to make any any lover false to his mistress, and, as a trial of Edward's fidelity, deprives poor Ellen of all her beauty. Edward, how ever, continues true to his attachment; and the same elfin agent, Mabiel, who was previously commissioned to destroy, is now ordered to restore the charms of the earthly maiden. The marriage is then celebrated with redoubled happiness; and Mabiel, the fairy messenger, is restored to his human. kindred, from whom he had been stolen when an infant, and for whom he always retained a hankering tenderness, even in the ætherial delights of fairy-land. "Midsummer Night's Dream" aukwardly occurs to us, during the whole process: but, not to prolong invidious comparisons, we shall now enable our readers to judge for themselves of the degree of merit which belongs to Mr. Neale's dramatic efforts. Ellen (during the continuance of her affliction), Shall I come forth into the evening air? 'Edward. Come forth, my love: the air is balmy as • Ellen. Enter ELLEN. How sweet! I'ad almost said, how beautiful ! No one receiving pleasure, but the rest To the dear one I've lost. Is it not lovely? Edward. Beautiful, as the good man's quiet end, When all of earthy now is past away, And heaven is in his face. When music sounds the sweetest. Oh, how oft eye I've |