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portion of our criticisms ever to present. We are forbidden to say much concerning the want of order, and frequency of apparent repetitions (for we readily grant that real ones are far less numerous), by the apology which is made for such things in the author's advertisement already referred to.

These observations have related only to the style, and to some circumstances connected with the arrangement of the work; but there are a few instances in which we feel ourselves compelled to differ from the writer with respect to his sentiments, and particularly his explanations of some of the mental phenomena; at one or two only of which our limits allow us to hint in the most casual and hasty manner. He accounts for our insensibility to the misery and ruin of our fellow-creatures from an instinctive policy, such as, though almost unobserved by ourselves, in its growth and origin, is yet voluntarily exercised for the preservation of our own tranquillity; p. 4. Now, though we admit this as an ingenious and impressive statement, yet we cannot quite assent to its truth. The fact appears to us to be, in the far greater number of cases, wholly involuntary, the effect merely of custom, and having no more dependence upon an intentional act of the mind than many other of our habitual feelings; for the production of which no such efforts of direct volition are deemed necessary, or even assignable. Mr. Foster explains also the fact, that grossly ignorant persons are very apt to take a ludicrous impression from high and solemn subjects, when introduced in any other time and way than the ceremonial of public religious service, from the semblance of falsehood which such subjects must present to minds so situated, and from the permission which they may very naturally conceive to be afforded them, to deride religion and its professors, both by the consent and the example of many of their superiors; p. 211. There is yet another explanation, that would strike us as more satisfactory. It is the extreme incongruity, the absolute contrast between these subjects and their accustomed modes of thinking, and all the things with which they are familiar. They are so totally foreign to their minds, and have so little association with the affairs and objects around them, that it may easily be supposed, that when religious persons direct their thoughts to topics such as these, in the midst of their ordinary pursuits, they have in their apprehension of them all that air of incongeniality, and excite that sudden sense of curious and unexpected connexion, which in so many other cases constitutes the source of laughter; to discover and pursue which unlooked

fór and strange relations between the objects of our thoughts, forms the province of wit; and which are ever found to command the powers of ridicule, both among the intelligent and the vulgar.

We forbear to enlarge at any greater length upon these little inaccuracies of so eminent an author. The task is one of a delicate and unpleasant nature, one which we should certainly not have forced ourselves to discharge, but for the sake of fidelity to our engagements, and in order to caution such of our readers as might be inclined, from his exalted name and well-earned reputation, to adopt implicitly all his opinions, or to imitate his peculiarities of language, against the fallacy which they might thus inadvertently impose upon themselves. Nothing is easier than to repeat after any celebrated writer his favourite phrases and most conspicuous singularities of method; but it is a work of a more arduous kind, to think, and judge, and discriminate like him; and like him to pour forth, from the stores of a fertile and affluent mind, the varieties of invention, of imagery, and of illustration, in which his superiority really consists. It would be a labour of no insurmountable difficulty, even to one of very ordinary capacity, to copy the inversions, the abruptness, the lengthened parentheses, and the mysterious obscurity of Mr. Foster: and there is nothing more certain, than that when this was done, the dwarfish imitator of his manner might easily persuade himself, all comparison aloof, that he had possessed himself equally of the vividness of his conceptions; the resistless fervour of his feelings; the strength and energy of his reasonings; and the whole nerve and vigour of his style. But it is one thing to adopt the same unsanctioned modes of phraseology, and another to exert the same astonishing force of understanding, as the writer before us; just as, in the common forms of exterior deportment, it is one thing to assume the eccentricities of a distinguished individual, and another-quite another, to inherit his genius.

The Life of Wesley, and the Rise and Progress of Methodism. By Robert Southey, Esq. Poet Laureate, &c. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. 545, 622. London, 1820. Longman.

A poet laureate and the " primitive great sire" of Methodism! Who would have imagined that, even amongst the changes and anomalies, national and personal; religious,

political, and poetic, that have marked the commencement of the nineteenth century, we should at last have had to rank the appearance of two such highly contrasted personages as author and hero of the same tale? On opening this work, we could not refrain from thinking how suitably the portrait of Mr. Southey, in his coronation robes, might have faced the beautiful figure of Wesley, prefixed to the first volume; and in how significant a situation the admonitory hand of the latter would then have appeared. "Child and champion of Jacobinism; poet of liberty; freest among free thinkers in the course of thy time," it would have sweetly seemed to say, "May thy last change be a good one!"

Young as we may be thought at our trade, our readers will see we are old fashioned enough to begin at the beginning of this long expected work, (which, thanks both to the writer and his subject, we have also, we can assure them, read to the end;) and now we proceed to the title-page. And here, why should Robert Southey, Esquire, Poet Laureate, Member of the Royal Spanish Academy of History, &c. &c. strip his venerable hero of the usual designation of his profession, and of the well-earned honours of his youth? We remember the story of Wolfe and his officers: but the general strain of Mr. Southey's work forbids us to suppose that he would so far sacrifice his taste, in this instance, to compliment Mr. Wesley. Yet we would admonish him, that unless this disrespectful designation be "improved" in a new edition of his work, some of the sensible and loyal followers of Mr. Wesley may think that it savours of the author's old levelling sins. As a matter of literature, it is a bald and foolish mode of speaking of a clergyman, of whom the poet laureate has thought proper to write at such length.

The Rev. John Wesley, A. M. was the chief founder of Arminian Methodism in Great Britain and its dependencies. According to the calculations made during the last conference, (for its minutes have not yet been published), one hundred and ninety thousand of our fellow-subjects in Great Britain and Ireland designate themselves as "in the late Reverend Mr. Wesley's connexion." A similar phrase describes their sentiments in the deeds by which the vast property of their chapels is settled in the conference, and which provide that this body is never to consist of less than forty members, who are the legal successors of the original hundred "preachers and expounders of God's holy word, under the care of and in connexion with the said John

Wesley." Between six and seven hundred of their brethren in the ministry, distributed throughout the empire, are annually removed and appointed by "Conference;" by whom also the funds of the whole connexion are administered. The name and character of Mr. Wesley must, therefore, ever occupy a large space in the religious history of the last century: but METHODISM, which Mr. Southey has indefinitely associated with them, is often a very distinct subject. It will include the biography of Mr. Wesley, as the founder of its more organized branch; but his history is by no means that of the singular revival of religion in England, which has generally been designated by this name. He was but one of its great leaders and agents, who finally gave a distinct and permanent form to his work. The fruits of Mr. Whitfield's preaching in England, though it was of much shorter continuance than that of the Arminian leader, are to the present day, perhaps, at least equally extensive. In this country the Calvinistic Methodists are said nearly to equal the Wesleyans in number, and in Wales very considerably to exceed them. A succession, moreover, of regular clergymen, whose numbers have largely increased since his death, has been found to advocate the sentiments, and emulate the efforts of this extraordinary man in the establishment. Like Toplady and Romaine, they are more scrupulous of trespassing upon order, and more cautious of their associates, than was Mr. Whitfield; but however they may have been improved, in modern times, by experience or by opposition, the evangelical clergy were called into being by the example of this great founder of Calvinistic Methodism, a circumstance that adds considerably to its pretensions as a subject of history.

We are now speaking merely to a few general facts of this theme. The rise of Methodism was a revival of religion in England, whatever have been its irregularities and extravagancies. Since the Reformation there had been no efforts for religion equally extensive; no preaching so little sectarian; no preachers with equal claims to being the μagluges of the faith. Churchmen and Dissenters were aroused from a common religious slumber by Methodism: it " came up on the breadth of the land," with a sound and a power to awake the dead. Could no other proof of this be adduced, our author himself seems inclined to tell the world (vol. ii. p. 532) how much of the entire momentum of its modern zeal the Established Church, in particular, owes to Methodism. He observes, "It may perhaps be said to be most useful"

[as a stimulant, we suppose] " where it is least successful" [as a sect]. Be it so. Never, we believe, was there a high church party in an establishment so truly anxious to sustain itself by argument, as modern times have seen in England ;by spiritual, rather than by temporal means. Never, for instance, so nobly zealous for the education of the poor, which will of itself outgrow any thing of a sectarian spirit that now mingles with it; and we hail, for our country, the more cheering aspect of beholding her dignified churchmen thus engaged, rather than in the low intrigues for the interests of tyranny and intolerance, in which some of them could associate even with infidels in the latter days of Queen Anne. Methodists, however, led the way into this noble field of exertion; for Methodism awoke the Established Church to the value of public opinion, and Dissenters to the importance of bold and united efforts of Christian zeal.

The history of Methodism is distinguishable into four great parts or periods. Its rise at Oxford, and its progress during the joint labours of Mr. Whitfield and the Messrs. Wesley; the progress of Calvinistic Methodism during Mr. Whitfield's life;-the progress of Arminian Methodism under the direction of Messrs. John and Charles Wesley;-and the progressive changes of each system since the death of its founder. Mr. Southey's work embraces the first three of these periods.

If it has sometimes been the patron, as it has unquestionably been the friend of ignorance, Methodism, like Protestantism, was of University extraction. John Wesley, Charles Wesley, and a Mr. Morgan, of Christ Church, Mr. Kirkham, of Merton College, and Mr. Ingham, of Queen's, were "five praying young gentlemen of Ŏxford," to whom this appellation was first given some time in the year 1728. Some of his biographers say it was during a short absence of Mr. John Wesley from college, this year, that a student of Christ Church observed, "Here is a new sect of Methodists sprung up." But, however this may be, it was not until after his return that this little band attracted general notice, by the regular division of their time, their prayer meetings, and their numerous visits of piety and humanity in the town and neighbourhood. John Wesley, as having at this time taken his master's degree (a circumstance wholly unnoticed by his present biographer), and become a fellow of Lincoln College, was naturally considered as the chief of this memorable association. He was also Greek lecturer, and moderator of the classes; the latter office requiring him to preside at six