d'Ercilla, and in the same place is a translation of the three first cantos of Dante, which, if far beneath the majestic simplicity of the original, is at least for spirit as well as closeness much above the mouthing nonentities which have been palmed upon us of late years for that wonderful poet."

In 1782 he published his Essay on Epic Poetry,' addressed to Mason; and in the same year he laid the foundation of his best fame in the commencement of his intimacy with Cowper: the origin of his connexion with the gifted and amiable poet is thus narrated by himself: "To Milton I am in a great measure indebted for what I must ever regard as a signal blessing,-the friendship of Cowper! The reader will par don me for dwelling a little on the circumstances which often led me to repeat those sweet verses of my friend on the casual origin of our most valuable attachments:

These charming verses strike with particular force on my heart when I recollect, that it was an idle endeavour to make us enemies which gave rise to our intimacy, and that I was providentially conducted to Weston, at a season when my presence there afforded peculiar comfort to my affectionate friend under the pressure of a domestic affliction, which threatened to overwhelm his very tender spirits. The entreaty of many persons whom I wished to oblige, had engaged me to write a life of Milton, before I had the slightest suspicion that my work could interfere with the projects of any man; but I was soon surprised and concerned to hear that I was represented in a newspaper as the antagonist of Cowper. I immediately wrote to him on the subject, and our correspondence soon endeared us to each other in no common degree. The series of his letters to me I value not only as memorials of a most dear and honourable friendship, but as exquisite examples of epistolary excellence." Of his intercourse with Hayley, Cowper himself thus speaks in one of his letters to Lady Hesketh: "My correspondence with Hayley proceeds briskly, and is very affectionate on both sides. I expect him here in about a fortnight, and wish heartily, with Mrs Unwin, that you would give him a meeting. I have promised him, indeed, that he shall find us alone, but you are one of the family."

His next publication was a volume of plays written for a private theatre. These were successively followed by The Triumph of Music;" a prose Essay on Old Maids,' in three volumes; and his Life and Correspondence of Cowper.' The death of a natural son having induced him to remove to Felpham, in Sussex, he died there on the 12th of November, 1820.

"It was his wish," says Mr Southey, in the interesting article already quoted, "that, as he himself had endeavoured to render all the justice in his power to some of his most eminent contemporaries, so he might in his turn find an honest chronicler to sum up his merits and defects,

and deduce from them useful literary and moral lessons. That wish has been faithfully performed by the editor of these memoirs; and the judgment of that reader must be strangely warped by a censorious disposition who does not agree with him in admiring Hayley as a truly generous and gentle-hearted man. His poetry has had its day and is forgotten; yet during that day it was so generally applauded, that a collection of the English poets would be incomplete without it. Some of his pieces may still be read with pleasure, not a few with advantage; and the tendency as well as the purport of all is such as left him nothing to repent of in this respect. In those later productions, indeed, some of which have been adduced-the outpourings of an afflicted heartthere is a strain of thought and feeling, which will find sympathy and may afford consolation, and which entitles him to respect, both as a poet and a man."

Arthur Young.

BORN A. D. 1741.-DIED A.D. 1820.

ARTHUR YOUNG was born in the year 1741. His father, Dr Young, was a beneficed clergyman of the church of England, prebendary of Canterbury, and chaplain to Arthur Onslow, Esq. speaker of the house of commons, from whom the subject of this memoir took his Christian name.

His attention was early drawn towards natural science; but after attaining manhood he chiefly devoted himself to the study of political economy, and theoretical and practical agriculture. At this period agriculture had scarcely engaged the attention of philosophers in this country; the field was, in a great measure, new; and, from the immense importance of the subject, and its intimate connection with political economy, promised to reward the attention and talents that might be bestowed upon it. Mr Young, with an ardour which no disappointments could damp, within six years after his marriage, had pursued this study with so much success, and collected such a mass of important information, (although, as we understand, thus far, with very little or no pecuniary advantage to himself,) that he was enabled to publish several considerable works, proposing various improvements, and exhibiting the results of very extensive observations.

The chief of these works consisted of his northern, southern, and eastern tours through England. The first consisted of five octavo volumes, and the others were in proportion. The valuable and important contents of these productions arrested the attention of his country. men, and excited a considerable degree of interest in the minds of many extensive landholders and farmers. The fame of his writings passed to the continent of Europe, and the author had the honour of seeing, we believe, all these works translated into the Russian language, by the order of Queen Catherine. Soon after, Mr Young took several young Russians under his care, to receive practical instruction in the best system of English farming. The success which had attended his tours through England, and the valuable stock of information thereby gained, induced him to turn his attention to Ireland-a country remarkable for

its fertility, and from the low and neglected state of agriculture, promising amply to repay the attention of the philanthropist and philosopher. He therefore undertook a tour through Ireland, and in 1778, published two volumes, in octavo, consisting of facts and suggestions, relating to the internal economy of that injured country. We design no reflection upon subsequent tourists, nor do we intend to deny that much useful information has since been communicated by several eminent agriculturists and philosophers, who have visited Ireland; but, we believe, we state the opinion of the best judges, when we say, that for useful information, and well-selected facts, Mr Young's work will be found at least equal to any that has subsequently appeared. It is no slight praise to say of it, that the lapse of above forty years since its publication, has not produced any thing which can be said to supersede it, or even to equal it, as a repository of practical information.

Mr Young was now become well-known both in England and America, and on the continent of Europe, though not yet forty years old, as one of the first practical and scientific agriculturists of the age. His reputation had risen gradually, and was now universally confessed. In the year 1784 he commenced his Annals of Agriculture,'-a monthly publication, containing essays, communications, and facts on agriculture and political economy; comprising a most valuable mass of information. This work continued under his superintendence till his death, and consists of forty-five octavo volumes. But Mr Young did not limit his pursuits to the economy of his native land. His ardent thirst for knowledge and science led him to the continent, where he expected to reap a rich harvest of improvement, among the philosophers and economists of France. He also traversed, in pursuit of his favourite subjects, both Spain and Italy; and in 1791 published his travels in these countries, comprised in two volumes, quarto.

At this period his attention, with that of most political speculators and economists, was powerfully arrested by the events which convulsed all Europe, and the influence of which seemed likely to produce very extensive and momentous changes in all the established governments of Christendom. The French revolution was the topic of general conversation, and of a warm public controversy. It was viewed by all parties not as a mere war of power; but of principle. In this controversy, Mr Young appeared as the author of a bold and vigorous pamphlet, entitled, The Example of France-a Warning to Great Britain.' This pamphlet was published in 1792, and in the year following, Mr Young was appointed secretary to the Board of Agriculture-then recently established. From this period he was much engaged in public business, and frequently came forward with small publications on the politics of the day, and on questions of national interest. All his productions, as they flowed from a vigorous mind, and strong feelings, arrested a large share of public attention, and were extensively read out of his own country. Besides his occasional pieces, which were numerous, he continued his Annals of Agriculture' monthly, and published at intervals surveys and reports of the counties of Suffolk, Norfolk, Lincoln, Hertford, Essex, and Oxford. The French Directory, at the suggestion, it is said, of Carnot, ordered all his works, then published, to be translated into French, and published at Paris: and a copy of the translation, consisting of 20 volumes, octavo, was presented to the author.

The death of a beloved daughter, in 1797, made a deep and happy impression upon Mr Young's mind: it gave a religious impulse to his feelings, and he thenceforward maintained a high character in the Christian world. In 1811 he lost the sight of both eyes by cataract. He prepared, after this distressing calamity, several useful publications, both on his favourite study of agriculture, and on practical and experimental religion. Two of the most celebrated of the non-conformist divines were among his chosen authors; and from their writings he made interesting selections of the most choice and favourable passages, and published them, in two duodecimo volumes, entitled, Oweniana,' and 'Baxteriana.' Up to the very period of his last illness, he was employed in useful studies, and was preparing a new work on agriculture, containing the chief results of his observations and experience, through the space of sixty years.

The closing scenes of his valuable and useful life were worthy of so great a man, and truly honourable to that grace of which he enjoyed no common share. The disease with which he was afflicted was of the most painful nature. Under its progress to the fatal issue, he manifested the strongest confidence in the reality of religion, and the all-sufficient grace of the Redeemer. He was never heard to repine against the will of his heavenly Father, but frequently admonished himself, by pious and solemn reflections, which he would utter aloud. His last hours were chiefly occupied in prayer, and in ejaculations of the most spiritual character. Towards the last, he expressed strong confidence in the hopes and promises of the gospel, and earnestly sought deliverance from the body of sin and death, under which he groaned. He expired on 12th of April, 1820, in the house of the Board of Agriculture, in Sackville-street, in the 79th year of his age.'

Thomas Brown.

BORN A. D. 1778.-DIED A. D. 1820.

THIS eminent metaphysician was the youngest son of the Rev. Samuel Brown, minister of Kirkmabreck. His father survived his birth only a year and a half, and his early education was conducted solely by his mother. When seven years of age he was sent to England, and placed successively at different private schools in the neighbourhood of London; but on the death of the relative to whose care he had been consigned in England, he returned to Edinburgh in his fourteenth year. "Of the particular progress," says his biographer Dr Welsh, "that he made at the different schools he attended, I have not learned any thing with accuracy. He certainly distinguished himself in them all, and his proficiency in classical literature was very great, Upon his return to Scotland, he used to read aloud to his sisters in English from a Latin or Greek author, and no person could have suspected that he was translating. Hitherto his reading had been extensive but desultory. Works of imagination were what he most delighted in. His appetite for books was altogether insatiable. At one school he read

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1 Abridged from memoir in 'Congregational Magazine' for 1820.

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through the village circulating library. The librarian was prevailed upon by him to put the books under the door of the play ground. His uncle's library was not very extensive; fortunately, however, there was a copy of Shakspeare in it, which he regularly read through every time he paid him the accustomed visit during the holidays."

In the winter of 1794 he attended Professor Dugald Stewart's course of lectures on the Philosophy of the Mind, and gained the notice and friendship of that eminent man by modestly offering some objections to one of his metaphysical theories which evinced great acuteness and force of mind, especially in one so young. In 1798 our young metaphysician first appeared as an author in a dissertation on Dr Darwin's Zoonomia, which was very favourably received by the public, and exhibited astonishing prematurity of talents and attainments. In 1796 he commenced the study of law, with a view to the bar; but he soon relinquished the legal profession, and devoted himself to the study of medicine, in which he took a doctor's diploma in 1803. A few months after receiving his degree, he gave to the world the first edition of his poems in two volumes. His next publication was occasioned by the famous controversy relative to the election of Mr Leslie to the mathematical chair in the university of Edinburgh. The tractate which on this occasion fell from his pen was afterwards matured and perfected into his celebrated essay, entitled, 'An Enquiry into the relation of Cause and Effect.'

In 1806 he entered into partnership with the celebrated Dr Gregory, a circumstance which sufficiently marks the high sense entertained of his professional abilities by that eminent man; but still, says his biographer, "philosophy was his passion, from which he felt it as a misfortune that his duty should so much estrange him." In the winter of 1808-9, Professor Stewart, feeling himself severely indisposed, engaged Dr Brown to read lectures for him in the Moral Philosophy class. In the following winter, Mr Stewart had again recourse to his assistance. "At this period," says Dr Welsh, "the course of my studies had brought me to Mr Stewart's class, and I trust I may be excused for mentioning, that this was the first time that I had the pleasure of seeing Dr Brown. I shall never forget his appearance, or the reception he met with. The eloquent panegyric he pronounced upon Mr Stewart, and the unaffected modesty with which he announced his intention of coming forward with three lectures in the week, had already secured the attention of his hearers, and prepared them for all the ingenuity and eloquence of his introductory discourse. The expectations that were excited by his first appearance were more than equalled by the marvellous display of profound and original thought, of copious reading, of matchless ingenuity, and of great powers of eloquence which were displayed in his succeeding lectures. His elocution also attracted much notice. It was already observed that nature had led him to delight in recitation; and in the English academies, by frequent recitations of select passages in prose and verse, he was trained up to that command of voice and correctness of pronunciation which now obtained for him so decided a superiority in our Scottish University. The classical finish to which he was able in so brief a period to bring his lectures, must no doubt have added greatly to the enthusiastic admiration that day after day was exhibited, and which was beyond any thing of the kind that I can recollect