upon a certain course of study and thought, improved each lecture from time to time by the addition of various hints, with a view to their publication. This plan of publishing his Moral Philosophy was certainly pressed upon him by his friend Mr. Law, who knew well enough his prevailing taste for rubbing off the stiffness of school learning, and forming a reading-made-easy of an abstruse science, and for offering it in the most imposing shape. On his leaving college, he was still observant of his plan in the performance of his clerical duties; and it has already been observed, that many of his most popular and most striking sermons were but an enlargement of this one train of thought. In the pulpit of his parish he became habituated to the mode of familiarizing subjects of morality. He adapted his thoughts to country congregations, and by such means began to feel his way to more ordinary capacities; so that when he was called upon for the publication of his works, he had little else to do than to arrange materials already collected, and partly descanted upon. Such facts as these (for they are not difficult to be ascertained) may seem to some to be the secrets of authors, which are better not divulged; by others they may be considered as detracting materially from the merit of the author's originality. But he pretends to none in the general subjects of his greater works: and in the particular treatment of these general subjects, the very plan he adopted according to his own words, " of first putting down his own thoughts, purposely in order to keep clear of the train of other writers," was the way to ensure originality in some degree; and still it rather adds to than diminishes our admiration, to know that such works were the constant subject of thought, some for twenty, others for thirty years, and are the sources from which all his other public writings flowed. Indeed the want of originality, which has been often noticed in this writer, applies more to his choice of subject than the manner of treating it; and this is likely to be almost the least consideration, or the least of all objections, when we know that it was not so much the design of the author to strike out any thing for himself to enlarge upon,-which is often no less easy than useless,-but to apply the whole force of his powers to improve the grand subjects in which men's interests are chiefly involved, in a new and striking manner;

* It is related by Wilson, in his History and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches, that Lardner's "Credibility" probably owed its rise to three discourses, delivered by that eminent man in a Tuesday evening lecture at the Old Jewry in 1723.

and thus, much of the author's design necessarily depends for its execution upon the proportion of thought and consideration which he has been able to bring to his assistance. It may be further stated, that these objects of his contemplation were almost daily enlarging themselves, as fresh hints were received, or new subjects of observation arose, or additional penetration was used to take hold of men's motives on common occasions. In short, if any quality is prominent in his chief works, it may be the mass of mind which they seem to contain. They were certainly no hasty production, nor can any other writing of the same author's be called immature in sentiment and opinion.

Another matter which may, like this last, be considered a sort of literary secret, inasmuch as it may open the very workshop of an author to public inspection, seems less obnoxious to the charge of improper exposure,-because there can be now scarcely any indelicacy in giving it or withholding it. This is no other than a view of his manuscript books, or rough copies; which may perhaps be curious, even beyond the blots and blurs of other authors, and interesting, as displaying the most intimate view of the rise, progress, and final settlement of his works.

As a matter of curiosity, it may deserve mention, that they are contained in eight or nine thick quarto paper books, with a sufficient number of smaller scrap books, and some for pocket use. These books are full of scribbling from one end to the other, in one of the worst and most illegible hands that ever adorned genius, mixed up in a confused and unconnected heap with penmanship of a fair and seemly quality. It is quite impossible to make out any connexion in either the pages of his books, the continuations of his sections, or even the scheme of his work. He seems to have filled up in any manner, or in any part of his books, the different divisions of his subject till the very last. The bookseller's copy was probably the only one perfectly arranged. Of the Moral Philosophy, indeed, only one or two books remain besides his lecture-book; nor are these wholly devoted even to one work, but present a jumble of Moral Philosophy and Evidences of Christianity, with many scraps of less importance. To those who write straight forward on any given subject, it might be surprising to those also who were acquainted with his way of seizing upon any idea that was of use to him, or who have seen him busied and intent on his work, it is more than amusing to

survey the strange mixture of material which is to be found in his other books. They form a complete "olla podrida." For instance, in the midst of his Evidences, there is one page containing the authenticity of the historical books of the New Testament, and on the opposite page to it, a memorandum of having added a codicil to his will; then come three or four pages full of family occurrences of all descriptions, interspersed with a few sentences or a passage to be found in some of his works. Any one reading, if he can read, these pages, will find some interesting argument interrupted in the next page, and for two or three following pages, by the hiring of servants, the letting of fields, sending his boys to school, reproving some members of a hospital under his care for bad conduct; epistolary correspondence, both literary and friendly. There are to be found scraps of Latin joined to paragraphs of a sermon, and here a dedication of some of his works mixed up with an exercise of some of his children. So great indeed was the mixture of material, that it is easy for his family to say how much perplexity, as well as amusement, he has been known to reap from this circumstance. He has been heard twenty times to break out into a hearty laugh at his own folly in this respect.

Not the least subject of curiosity which the inspection of his manuscript offers, is his handwriting. If this be, as some suppose, one of the characteristics of every writer, here, as well as in his manuscript sermons, is good gleaning for his character. We are sometimes told that there are three descriptions of handwriting, into some of which most men slide who can write at all; that which every body may read, that which only the writer himself can read, and that which neither the writer nor any body else can read. But his handwriting includes all these descriptions. He had acquired, from a hasty and rapid flow of ideas, a habit of suddenly snatching up his pen and writing down at any moment what happened to occur to him, however differently he might be employed. So much had this habit grown upon him, that he latterly used a sort of shorthand scarcely to be deciphered by himself; so bad and so hurried indeed, that on revising some important sentence, he has been often heard to exclaim almost involuntarily, "What could I have been thinking or speaking about!" But this was only his rough writing; and it appears by the copy of a letter to one of his sons, which stands in one of these books, that he generally adopted this plan of transcribing even on the most

trifling occasion. He says, after giving him some very positive, and for him characteristically minute directions, by which he might take care of his handwriting, "if you are so liable to mistakes, you will write, as I do, whatever you write, twice over;" and it so happened, unfortunately for his example, that amongst the usual charges to his family in which we shall afterwards find he excelled, one was, to be very particular in keeping up their handwriting. So like one undistinguished scribble was his own book, that on finding a page half written, one of his children, much under the writing age, very gravely filled it up with writing no less seemly, but with much less meaning, than the former half. In his earlier life he had written a very legible hand; and his college lectures, as well as other papers written about that period, show that it was from the mere temporary hurry of committing his thoughts to paper, that he became so eccentric both in the manner and loose arrangement of his writing. It cannot indeed be any thing but a matter of wonder how an author, so conspicuous for his clearness and method, could draw any thing like order from such a confused incoherent and blotted mass as his manuscripts everywhere show; nor is it possible to devise how he went to the work of connecting what he had written with what was still to write.

He had his books constantly open on his table before him; and his sons, who were unconsciously, and often unwillingly, the almost constant companions of his literary labours in his study, well remember to have observed him attending to two or three of them at one and the same time, and at any pause, or any demand for the lexicon or grammar, seizing his pen, and inserting a sentence or two into his works; and if this be not an uncommon or a commendable mode of composition, it speaks for another eminent quality of his mind, constant activity and exertion. It may serve indeed to show how the most active life may allow time, and the most uninteresting life food enough, to turn a man's powers to some use, if we state in what way he was never idle. He was by no means studious, in the sense of close application-of the actual reading and writing, and the sedentary part of a student's life. Though from his childhood to his life's end, he seems to have been more especially addicted to mental than bodily activity, he did not possess a due share of literary character amongst his acquaintance, chiefly from his being so much more conversant in active life and the actual business of the world. He was nevertheless most thoroughly industrious, in a more desultory way

than most authors. From his first commencing writer, to the last stage of his life, he was scarcely for a moment without an object, and a literary object, to rest upon. When walking, fishing, riding, gardening, sitting still in his arm-chair, it appears from his papers that he was still constantly occupied. Some of the little books full of notes seem evidently to have been his pocket companions on his short excursions or his daily walks, and these he used on his return to unburden of their cargo.

These several circumstances put together form strong symptoms, first, of his constant gathering of thought; secondly, of his entering, in the book that he first met with, (for many were laid open before him at once,) the sentiments that occurred to him at any chance time; and thirdly, that he used every moment. Even when apparently the most at leisure, he was still employed in labours of thought and intellect.

His lecture-book on moral philosophy, or what is supposed to be his lecture-book, contains only some of the parts into which his Moral Philosophy is divided. It is distributed into short but pithy sentences; under particular heads indeed, though without any general classification into books, chapters, or even sections. It does not form one half in words, though more than one half in substance, of his enlarged plan. For instance, the opening of his theory, which forms so conspicuous a part of his present system, stands only as a small part of his section on Promises, b. 3, c. 5. Almost the whole of b. 2 is new, or brought together from fragments scattered here and there. The relative duties, b. 3, part 2, stand first after his intro

The reasons upon which this may be supposed to have been a lecture-book are, that it is generally written throughout in the same clear hand and faded ink with his loose papers on divinity, which certainly formed part of his lectures, and is bound up in the same way as his lecture-book from which his Evidences of Christianity are taken; and also interlined and mixed up with corrections scribbled in a later hand-writing, which corrections are all adopted in the work as it now stands -clearly indicating their transformation into a regular arrangement. Throughout his manuscripts I scarcely find a stop or point of any kind except hyphens. In revising his sermons for the pulpit, he used to take his pen and make commas with a vengeance. He used to be particularly urgent with his children to mind dots to the i's, strokes to the t's, and commas in writing; so that in this as in most other parts of instruction, he judged from his own experience of what was most wanting in himself. In the correction of the press this was made a main object. He marked sheets with commas, as he used to say, as long as the printer's nose. He never allowed even the smallest handbill to go out of his hands without correction in this particular.-ED.