the stimulants of wine and spirits. To this pernicious habit I can allude without irreverence towards that character which it perhaps temporarily injured in the estimation of some, because I am enabled to record at the same time his perfect conquest over it. Not long after the period of which I am speaking, he entirely abandoned these indulgences. By a strong exercise of the will he obtained such a mastery over habit, that from the day on which he made the resolution to the day of his death, a period of sixteen years, he never tasted a single drop either of spirits or wine. My father's chief connexion with the press, which continued at intervals until very shortly before his death, was, as I need hardly state, as a contributor of political and theatrical criticisms. These he wrote successively for the Champion,' the 'Morning Chronicle,' the 'Examiner,' and the 'Times.' "How I came," he says, in the preface to the English Stage,' "to be regularly transferred from one of these papers to the other, sometimes formally and sometimes without notice, till I was forced to quit the lastmentioned by want of health and leisure, would make rather an amusing history, but that I do not choose to tell the secrets of the prisonhouse."

The whole of my father's political essays were afterwards collected into one volume and

published, in 1819, by Mr Hone. The preface to this collection is in my mind the very finest and most manly exposition of high political principle that was ever put forth, and the whole of the volume breathes the noblest spirit of liberty and virtue. Of the theatrical criticisms, which were also collected into a volume and published in 1818 (by Mr Stodart), under the title of A View of the English Stage,' the finest are those in which their author illustrated the acting of Kean, whose wonderful powers he at once recognised on the first evening of his appearance, and whose reputation he was greatly instrumental in establishing, in spite of actors, managers, and critics. Previous to these publications, appeared the delightful collection of Essays, in two volumes, called the Round Table.' These Essays, of which there are forty (exclusive of twelve by Mr Leigh Hunt), possess all the ease and unstudied variety of conversation.

His success as a lecturer on a former occasion induced him, in the year 1818, to undertake a series of lectures on the Comic Writers, and the Poets of England, and on the Dramatic Literature of the age of Elizabeth. These he delivered at the Surrey Insti

tution, and they were all subsequently published in single volumes under their respective titles. Upon these delightful topics the lecturer is acknowledged by many, who were not influenced (as I undoubtedly may be) by feelings of partiality and affection, to have descanted in a spirit worthy of association with those glorious themes; bringing forward many features of interest in our poetry and dramatic literature, and opening up original views and novel speculations on subjects that appeared exhausted. His delivery of the selected passages is pronounced to have been eminently calculated to communicate to his hearers the enthusiasm by which, upon such subjects, he was invariably animated.

My father's next published work was the 'Characters of Shakspeare's Plays,' a series of criticisms, which are admitted to be characterised equally by felicity of conception and eloquence of expression. To say that upon this great subject no critic ever displayed a finer or more philosophical taste, is only to echo the general verdict of the readers and illustrators of Shakspeare.

It was in 1823 that a circumstance occurred, the influence of which on my father's public as well as private life, obliges me to advert to it, although other reference than a bare record

of the fact is as unnecessary to the reader as it would be painful to me. About this period, then,

my father and mother were divorced under the law of Scotland. Their union had for some years past failed to produce that mutual happiness which was its object, owing in great measure to an imagined and most unfounded idea, on my father's part, of a want of sympathy on that of my mother. For some time previous to this my father had fallen into an infatuation which he has himself illustrated in glowing and eloquent language, in a regretted publication called Liber Amoris.' The subject is a painful one, and admits of but one cheerful consolation—that my father's name and character was but momentarily dimmed by what, indeed, was but a momentary delusion.

A favourite little volume with the lovers of art, and the more intellectual class of artists, the Critical Account of the Principal Picture Galleries in England,' was published in the same year. Its authors has found means to convey, in a few sentences sparkling with imagery, all the minute distinctions which made the excellence of the works under his consideration.

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In the same year also was published by Mr

Colburn, the first series of Table-Talk,' in two volumes, consisting of a number of Essays on subjects of various interest, of which a few had previously appeared in the 'London Magazine;' a second series also, in two volumes, was published two years after under the title of the 'Plain Speaker.' The subjects touched upon in these Essays comprehend almost the whole wide range of literature and art. Not a few of them are upon questions of the most abstruse character; yet the author's views are conveyed in such smooth and easy language, and are elucidated with such profuse and apt illustration, that the reader becomes by degrees himself no mean metaphysician.

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In 1824 my father married Isabella, widow of Lieut.-Colonel Bridgwater, a lady of some property, with whom myself and he proceeded on a tour through France and Italy. The vivid 'Notes' of this journey appeared first in the columns of the Morning Chronicle,' and were afterwards published in one volume by Messrs Hunt and Clarke. In 1825 Mr Colburn brought out my father's Spirit of the Age,' a series of criticisms upon the more prominent literary men then living. The characters are drawn with great power, but not in all cases with equal justice.