ways, and all handled by his peculiar force of genius, which, however, seldom dwells upon purely beneficent action apart from the interest of conquering and destructive energy. The Essay on Francia, the Dictator of Paraguay, depicts the author's favourite type of the benevolent despot.

Our prose literature has done fullest justice to the theme of beneficent strength. The narrative biography far surpasses the picturesque eulogy in expressing great qualities, whether of body or of mind. The display of power is most impressive when given with illustrative incidents testifying directly to its amount, by difficulty overcome, by endurance and by fertility of device. Under the same method of detail, the greatness of the results can be brought home. The writer will not neglect to add the subjective accompaniment of expressed admiration, both on his own part, and on the part of concurring admirers.

The noble tribute of Wordsworth to the heroism of Grace Darling is a specimen of the poetry of Strength in the widest compass. The picture of the wreck, the resolve of the Daughter and the Father, the fury of the crossing billows, lead up to the heroic struggle, thus briefly told :—

True to the mark,

They stem the torrent of that perilous gorge,

Their arms still strengthening with the strengthening heart,
Though danger, as the Wreck is neared, becomes

More imminent.

The rescue is a piece of fine pathos. The most characteristic effect is a bold use of the subjective strain, rising to a religious pitch:

Shout, ye waves,

Send forth a song of triumph: waves and winds
Exult in this deliverance wrought through faith
In Him whose Providence your rage hath served!
Ye screaming sea-mews, in the concert join!

Cowper's Chatham' is a noble picture of beneficent strength. Full justice is done both to the strength and to the beneficence. First, as to the strength :

In him Demosthenes was heard again;
Liberty taught him her Athenian strain;
She clothed him with authority and awe,
Spoke from his lips, and in his looks gave law.
His speech, his form, his action full of grace,
And all his country beaming in his face,
He stood as some inimitable hand
Would strive to make a Paul or Tully stand.

EULOGY OF INTELLECTUAL GREATNESS.

Next, as to the work :—

No sycophant or slave that dared oppose

Her sacred cause, but trembled when he rose ;
And every venal stickler for the yoke,

Felt himself crushed at the first word he spoke.

95

An example of lofty eulogy, by poetic comparisons exclusively, is furnished in De Quincey's rebuke of those that would mix up with Shakespeare's greatness the consideration of his birth :

"Both parties violate the majesty of the subject. When we are seeking for the sources of the Euphrates or the St. Lawrence, we look for no proportions to the mighty volume of waters in that particular summit amongst the chain of mountains which embosoms its earliest fountains, nor are we shocked at the obscurity of these fountains. Pursuing the career of Mahommed, or of any man who has memorably impressed his own mind or agency upon the revolutions of mankind, we feel solicitude about the circumstances which might surround his cradle to be altogether unseasonable and impertinent. Whether he were born in a hovel or a palace, whether he passed his infancy in squalid poverty, or hedged around by the glittering spears of body-guards, as mere questions of fact may be interesting, but, in the light of either accessories or counter-agencies to the native majesty of the subject, are trivial and below all philosophic valuation. So with regard to the creator of Lear and Hamlet, of Othello and Macbeth; to him from whose golden urns the nations beyond the far Atlantic, the multitude of the isles, and the generations unborn in Australian climes, even to the realms of the rising sun, must in every age draw perennial streams of intellectual life, we feel that the little accidents of birth and social condition are so unspeakably below the grandeur of the theme, are so irrelevant and disproportioned to the real interest at issue, so incommensurable with any of its relations, that a biographer of Shakespeare at once denounces himself as below his subject if he can entertain such a question as seriously affecting the glory of the poet. In some legends of saints, we find that they were born with a lambent circle or golden aureola about their heads. This angelic coronet shed light alike upon the chambers of a cottage or a palace, upon the gloomy limits of a dungeon or the vast expansion of a cathedral; but the cottage, the palace, the dungeon, the cathedral. were all equally incapable of adding one ray of colour or one pencil of light to the supernatural halo."

The grandeur of Shakespeare's work and influence is finely represented by select touches in the fifth sentence ('So with regard '—).

The intellect of Newton has often been celebrated, but

not with a full combination of the arts of eulogy. The difficulties are great. As an intellectual giant, he cannot be represented in the form suited to a great orator like Chatham. It is the results of his work that best admit of delineation; more especially the bearings of his discovery of gravitation. The gorgeous rhetoric of Chalmers proceeds as follows:

"There are perhaps no two sets of human beings who comprehend less the movements, and enter less into the cares and concerns, of each other, than the wide and busy public on the one hand, and, on the other, those men of close and studious retirement, whom the world never hears of, save when, from their thoughtful solitude, there issues forth some splendid discovery, to set the world on a gaze of admiration. Then will the brilliancy of a superior genius draw every eye towards it-and the homage paid to intellectual superiority will place its idol on a loftier eminence than all wealth or than all titles can bestow-and the name of the successful philosopher will circulate, in his own age, over the whole extent of civilized society, and be borne down to posterity in the characters of ever-during remembrance-and thus it is, that, when we look back on the days of Newton, we annex a kind of mysterious greatness to him, who, by the pure force of his understanding, rose to such a gigantic elevation above the level of ordinary men--and the kings and warriors of other days sink into insignificance around him--and he, at this moment, stands forth to the public eye, in a prouder array of glory than circles the memory of all the men of former generations and, while all the vulgar grandeur of other days is now mouldering in forgetfulness, the achievements of our great astronomer are still fresh in the veneration of his countrymen, and they carry him forward on the stream of time, with a reputation ever gathering, and the triumphs of a distinction that will never die."

This comparison with other modes of greatness, of a more palpable kind, is the best available means of getting over the difficulty of describing a scientific intellect.

It is the beneficent sublime that Goldsmith has caught so well in his picture of the Preacher, in the Deserted Village' :

A man he was to all the country dear,

And passing rich with forty pounds a year;
Remote from towns, he ran his godly race,

Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change his place;
Unskilful he to fawn, or seek for power,

By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour;
Far other aims his heart had learned to prize,
More bent to raise the wretched than to rise.

GOLDSMITH'S PREACHER.

His house was known to all the vagrant train;
He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain.
The long-remembered beggar was his guest,
Whose beard descending swept his aged breast;
The ruined spendthrift, now no longer proud,
Claimed kindred there, and had his claims allowed
The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay,
Sat by his fire, and talked the night away;

Wept o'er his wounds, or tales of sorrow done,

Shouldered his crutch, and shewed how fields were won.
Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow,
And quite forgot their vices in their woe;

Careless their merits or their faults to scan,
His pity gave ere charity began.

Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride,
And e'en his failings leaned to virtue's side;
But, in his duty prompt at every call,

He watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all;
And, as a bird each fond endearment tries
To tempt her new-fledged offspring to the skies,
He tried each art, reproved each dull delay,
Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way.

Beside the bed where parting life was laid,
And sorrow, guilt and pain, by turns dismayed,
The reverend champion stood. At his control
Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul;
Comfort came down the trembling wretch to raise,
And his last faltering accents whispered praise.

At church, with meek and unaffected grace,
His looks adorned the venerable place;
Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway;
And fools, who came to scoff, remained to pray.
The service past, around the pious man,

With ready zeal, each honest rustic ran;
E'en children followed with endearing wile,

And plucked his gown, to share the good man's smile;
His ready smile a parent's warmth expressed,

Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distressed;
To them, his heart, his love, his griefs were given,
But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven.

As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,

Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm;
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head.

97

In this vivid picture nothing is introduced that would mar the beneficence of the situation; while the function of the clergyman naturally lends itself to the portraiture of kindly offices and good-will. The points to be noted are

mainly these: First, the intense regard for duty, which is always of the nature of the sublime, but which, when (as here) it is accompanied with love and zest, has a particularly tender and attractive side. Next, the absence of secular ambition ('Passing rich with forty pounds a year'); which, considering the strong hold that the passion for riches has on men in general, betrays elevation of character in the matter of restraint. There is next the sublimity of high-toned morality; as seen in the preacher's unbending integrity and refusal to court favour by flattery and temporizing: Unskilful he to fawn, or seek for power, By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour'. Next comes deep and broad sympathy with men, extending both to their joys and to their woes, and manifesting itself in practical forms -such as hospitality, relieving suffering, tendering advice. Lastly comes the elevating and winning quality of charity: 'Careless their merits or their faults to scan,' And e'en his failings leaned to virtue's side'. The picture is also brightened by two adventitious circumstances-viz., the preacher's success in his mission, and the high estimation wherein he was held by his people: At his control Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul'; 'A man he was to all the country dear'; 'E'en children followed with endearing wile, And plucked his gown, to share the good man's smile'.

NEUTRAL STRENGTH.

Neutral Strength appeals more exclusively to our sense of what is vast and majestic, aided, it may be, by the mysterious and illimitable.

We now encounter Sublimity in its purest form, detached alike from good and from evil consequences. The objects best suited to exemplify it are the mightiest aspects of Nature, terrestrial and celestial, and the infinities of Space and Time.

From its very essence, this is the kind of strength most difficult to sustain, and most liable to degenerate into Turgidity. Deprived of the assistance of our leading human emotions, it has to rest upon a consummate handling of the strength vocabulary, together with the associations of majesty, dignity and grandeur.

When we name the attributes of Majesty, Dignity, Grandeur, as not immediately connected with the funda