he probably would have been the first poet of his age."-Coleridge. Among his lighter works are: Consolations in Travel, or the Last Days of a Philosopher; and Salmonia, or Fly Fishing,-the last named being written when the author was unable through sickness to engage in his customary scientific pursuits.

JAMES WATT, 1736-1819, strictly speaking, cannot be classed among the prominent British authors. His printed works are few, and not very important. His name will rather be handed down to all future generations by reason of his works as an inventor.

By his construction of the first practical steam-engine, and his many subsequent improvements, Watt did more to develop the industrial resources of his country than any one other man. He found England a comparatively weak and poor country, and he died leaving it the richest and most influential in the world. It is more than probable that England, but for Watt's steam-engine, would not have been able to contend successfully single-handed against Napoleon.

Watt was a man not merely of great ingenuity in the construction of machinery, but of sound understanding and extensive reading. By his industry he repaired the defects of his early education, and imbued himself thoroughly with the spirit of philosophic inquiry. The only publication by him that is of general interest is his paper on the Constituent Parts of Water, published in the Philosophical Transactions, 1784. In this paper he took the first step beyond Dr. Priestley in determining the composition of water.

The life of Watt by Muirhead contains extracts from his correspondence which throw full light upon the growth of the invention of the steam-engine and the history of Watt's successive patents. This life presents the interesting record of a clearheaded, persevering man who wrought silently and slowly but surely the greatest revolution in modern industrial life.

"Those who consider James Watt only as a great practical mechanic, form a very erroneous idea of his character. He was equally distinguished as a natural philosopher and a chemist, and his inventions demonstrate his profound knowledge of these sciences, and that peculiar characteristic, the union of them for practical application."-Sir Humphry Davy.

SIR CHARLES WILKINS, 1740-1836, is associated in fame with Sir William Jones, mentioned in a preceding chapter. These two eminent Englishmen were the main founders of the Oriental Society at Calcutta, and the first to introduce the claims of Sanscrit to the notice of European scholars.

Wilkins was a native of Somersetshire. In 1770 he emigrated to India, and was appointed Writer in the Bengal establishment. In 1786 he returned to England, became Librarian of the East India Company, and Examiner for the Oriental Department at Haileybury and Addiscombe.

Wilkins's works are numerous and valuable. The most important are his transla tion of the Bhagarat Gita (the dialogues between Krishna and Arjuna), of the Hitopadesa (Sanscrit Fables), the episode of Dushvanti and Sankuntala (from the Mahâbharata), a Grammar of Sanscrit, and the Radicals of the Sanscrit language. He was also a liberal contributor to the famous Asiatic Researches, and had begun a transla

tion of the Institutes of Menu, but abandoned it on hearing that Sir William Jones had already undertaken the same.

Since the days of Wilkins and Jones, Sanscrit studies have made great progress, thanks to the labors of Bopp, Lassen, Weber, Benfey, Roth, Whitney, and others; but all these and their successors will continue to regard Jones and Wilkins as the parents not only of Sanscrit, but of comparative philology.

WILLIAM MARSDEN, D. C. L., 1754-1836, the eminent oriental scholar, was a native of Dublin. He entered the service of the East India Company in 1771, and spent the eight following years in Sumatra. While there he applied himself with great diligence to the study of the Malay. On his return to England, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and was for some years Chief Secretary to the Board of Admiralty. He published several important works, the fruits of his oriental studies: The History of the Island of Sumatra; Dictionary of the Malay Language; Grammar of the Malay Language; Marco Polo's Travels in the Thirteenth Century, etc.

ROBERT MORRISON, 1782-1834, the first Protestant missionary to China, did signal service to letters as well as to Christianity, by his life-long devotion to the missionary cause. Besides his translation of the Bible into Chinese, and his Dictionary and Grammar of the Chinese Language, he published Hora Sinicæ, or Translations from the Popular Literature of the Chinese; Dialogues translated from the Chinese into English; and A View of China for Philological Purposes.

V. RELIGIOUS AND THEOLOGICAL WRITERS.

Scott the Commentator.

Thomas Scott, D. D., 1747-1821, was the author of a Commentary on the Bible which has been more read than any other like work in the English language.

Dr. Scott, according to his own statements, entered the ministry with mere worldly views, and without having experienced a change of heart. After he had been preaching for some time, he was converted, and he became ever after an earnest advocate of what are known as evangelical views.

His first work was The Force of Truth, in which he describes his own religious experience. During the course of his long ministry, he wrote many other books and pamphlets on religious and theological subjects. But the main work of his life was the preparation of his Commentary on the Bible, which first appeared in 1792. It was usually printed in 6 vols., 4to.

This great work was entirely his own composition, and was characterized by a sound sense and a general sobriety of judgment and clearness of statement which made it an almost universal favorite. No Commentary on the Scriptures probably has ever been read half so much as Scott's. It is wanting in critical scholarship, and it skips the hard places, but it gives a clear, bold outline of the general scope of each passage.

character.

It is now practically superseded by works of a more critical

Robert Hall.

Robert Hall, 1764-1831, was, by unanimous consent, the greatest pulpit orator of his day, excepting possibly Dr. Chalmers.

Robert Hall was one of the few who have shown great precocity of talent and yet have risen to eminence in after life. "Before he was nine years of age he had perused and reperused, with intense interest, Edwards on the Affections and on the Will, and about the same time had read, with a like interest, Butler's Analogy."- Olinthus Gregory. He was born in Arnsby, Leicestershire, the son of a Baptist minister, and was educated, first at the Academy at Northampton under John Ryland, and afterwards at the Baptist College at Bristol. He was set apart as a preacher at the age of sixteen, and began actually to preach at that early age.

He went afterwards to King's College, Aberdeen, to continue his studies for three years more, and while there he had the companionship of Mr., afterwards Sir James, Mackintosh. The two formed an intimate friendship, which continued through life. "They read together; they sat together, if possible, at lecture; they walked together. In their joint studies they read much of Xenophot and Herodotus, and more of Plato; and so well was all this known, exciting admiration in some, in others envy, that it was not unusual, as they went along, for their class-fellows to point at them and say, 'There go Plato and Herodotus.' There was scarcely an important position in Berkeley's Minute Philosopher, in Butler's Analogy, or in Edwards on the Will, over which they had not debated with the utmost intensity."

Mr. Hall was settled as assistant pastor in the church at Broadmead, Bristol, when nineteen years old, and remained there eight years. In 1791, at the age of twenty-seven, he took charge of the Baptist congregation at Cambridge, where he remained for fifteen years. In consequence of excessive mental application, he suffered an attack of insanity, which lasted from 1804 to 1806. On recovery, he was obliged to abstain from pulpit labor for two years. In 1808 he resumed pastoral labor, in a comparatively retired church in Leicester, where he remained about eighteen years. In 1826 he returned to the scene of his first labors, at Bristol, and continued at that post until his death.

The accounts given of the effects of his preaching partake of the marvellous.

"From the commencement of his discourse an almost breathless silence prevailed, deeply impressive and solemnizing from its singular intenseness. Not a sound was heard but that of the preacher's voice-scarcely an eye but was fixed upon himnot a countenance that he did not watch and read, and interpret as he surveyed them again and again with his rapid, ever-excursive glance. As he advanced and

increased in animation, five or six of his auditors would be seen to rise and lean for ward over the front of their pews, still keeping their eyes upon him. Some new or striking sentiment or expression would, in a few minutes, cause others to rise in like manner: shortly afterwards still more, and so on, until, long before the close of the sermon, it often happened that a considerable portion of the congregation were seen standing,-every eye directed to the preacher, yet now and then for a moment glancing from one to the other, thus transmitting and reciprocating thought and feeling: Mr. Hall himself, though manifestly absorbed in his subject, conscious of the whole, received new animation from what he thus witnessed, reflecting it back upon those who were already alive to the inspiration, until all who were susceptible of thought and emotion seemed wound up to the utmost limit of elevation on earth,— when he would close, and they reluctantly resumed their seats."— Olinthus Gregory.

Dr. Hall was strongly moved by public affairs, and on several occasions he wrote and preached on the exciting topics of the day. The course of the French Revolution called forth several controversial essays from his pen, and his sermon on the death of the Princess Charlotte attracted universal attention by its commanding eloquence.

His published works have been printed in 6 vols., 8vo. The principal subjects are the following: Apology for the Freedom of the Press; Modern Infidelity Considered; Reflections on War; The Sentiments proper to the Present Crisis (1803); The Renewal of the Charter of the East India Company; Difference between Christian Baptism and the Baptism of John; A Vindication of Free Communion; Sermons, Charges, etc.

Hall belonged to that part of the Baptists who are in favor of free communion with other churches, and wrote much on the subject.

"The bold diction, the majestic gait of the sentence, the vivid illustration, the rebuke which could scathe the offender, the burst of honest indignation at triumphant vice, the biting sarcasm, the fervid appeal to the heart, the sagacious development of principle, the broad field of moral vision,-all these distinguish the compositions of Robert Hall; and we bear our most willing testimony to their worth."-London Quarterly Review.

Edward Irving.

EDWARD IRVING, 1792-1834, was a preacher of great power, and for a time he exerted a commanding influence; but, in his later years, he suffered from mental aberration, believing himself divinely inspired, and endowed with the "gift of tongues."

Irving was a native of Annan, Dumfries-shire, and a graduate of Edinburgh University. He was at one time assistant to Dr. Chalmers. Afterwards, he removed to London, where he was settled over the congregation in Regent's Square. Becoming erratic and visionary in his opinions, he was obliged to quit the church, but by the lib erality of friends he opened a place of worship of his own, and there continued to preach to all that came to hear him. Before these mental aberrations, which threw a cloud over his closing days, he was greatly admired for his eloquence, and wherever ne preached drew crowds of admiring hearers.

He published the following works: For the Oracles of God, Four Orations; For Judgment to Come, an Argument in Nine Parts; Babylon and Infidelity Foredoomed; The Last Days; Homilies on the Sacraments; Expositions of the Book of Revelation, etc.

ANDREW THOMSON, D. D., 1779-1831, was a Scotch divine, born in Dumfries-shire, and educated at the University of Edinburgh. He was one of the ministers in Edinburgh the last twenty-one years of his life. He was a man of commanding eloquence, and very resolute in attacking whatever he considered a public wrong. Among the subjects of his denunciation were the circulation of the Apocrypha by the British and Foreign Bible Society, lay patronage in the Church of Scotland, and British Colonial slavery. He was equally outspoken and persistent in advocating whatever he thought right. Among the objects of his advocacy were education, morality, and evangelical religion. "His was no ordinary championship; although the weapons of our spiritual warfare are the same in every land, we all know that there was none who wielded them more vigorously than he did, or who, with such an arm of might and voice of resistless energy, carried, as if by storm, the convictions of his people."— Chalmers.

Dr. Thomson's publications were: Lectures on Select Portions of Scripture; Sermons on Infidelity; Sermons on Hearing the Word; The Doctrine of Universal Pardon; The Scripture History; Sermons and Sacramental Exhortations.

Bishop Middleton.

THOMAS FANSHAWE MIDDLETON, D. D., 1769–1822, Bishop of Calcutta, was a man of most exact scholarship, and a great ornament to the Established Church.

Bishop Middleton's Sermons are considered models of style for masculine thought and energy of expression. His great work, however, was his Essay on the Greek Article. His discussion of this subject was exhaustive, and his positions in regard to it have never been seriously assailed. The discussion was important as determining certain critical passages in the New Testament which bear upon the question of the divinity of Christ.

"This is a book of profound learning and most masterly criticism. The first part of it is occupied with an inquiry into the nature and uses of the Greek article, and the second contains the application of the views previously established to the interpretation of many passages in the New Testament. The extensive philological attainments of the learned writer are made most happily to bear in a number of difficult texts. and especially on some in which the doctrine of the divinity of Christ is contained."- Orme.

SIR GEORGE PRETYMAN TOMLINE, 1750-1827, an eminent Bishop of the English Church, was born at Bury St. Edmund's, and educated at Cambridge. He was private tutor to William Pitt. When Pitt became First Lord of the Treasury, Tomline was his secretary, and remained with him until by the influence of the latter he became Bishop of Lincoln. Bishop Tomline published many works, but that by which he is chiefly known is Elements of Christian Theology, 2 vols., consisting of an introduction to the study of the Bible, and an exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles.