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creation, and every walk of art "; and at the same time, that could be affirmed of Mr. Hall, which could not be affirmed of Mr. Burke, that he never fatigued and oppressed by gaudy and superfluous imagery. Whenever the subject obviously justified it, he would yield the reins to an eloquence more diffusive and magnificent than the ordinary course of pulpit instruction seemed to require; yet, so exquisite was his perception of beauty, and so sound his judgement, that not the coldest taste, provided it were real taste, could ever wish an image omitted which Mr. Hall had introduced. His inexhaustible variety augmented the general effect. The same images, the same illustrations, scarcely ever recurred. So ample were his stores, that repetition of every kind was usually avoided; while in his illustrations he would connect and contrast what was disjointed and opposed, or distinctly unfold what was abstracted or obscure, in such terms as were generally intelligible, not only to the well-informed, but to the meanest capacity. As he advanced to his practical applications, all his mental powers were shewn in the most palpable but finely balanced exercise. His mind would, if I may so speak, collect itself and come forth with a luminous activity, proving, as he advanced, how vast, and, in some important senses, how next to irresistible those powers were. In such seasons, his preaching communicated universal animation: his congregation would seem to partake of his spirit, to think and feel as he did, to be fully influenced by the presence of the objects which he had placed before them, fully actuated by the motives which he had enforced with such energy and pathos.

'All was doubtless heightened by his singular rapidity of utterance, -by the rhythmical structure of his sentences, calculated at once for the transmission of the most momentous truths, for the powers of his voice, and for the convenience of breathing at measured intervals,— and, more than all, by the unequivocal earnestness and sincerity which pervaded the whole, and by the eloquence of his most speaking countenance and penetrating eye. In his sublimer strains, not only was every faculty of the soul enkindled and in entire operation, but his very features seemed fully to sympathise with the spirit, and to give out, nay, to throw out, thought, and sentiment, and feeling.'

Vol. VI. pp. 51-55.

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Such was the man, in the very morning of his fame, whom some worthy persons of the episcopalian persuasion, fondly imagine to have been indebted for his celebrity beyond the circle of his own communion, to the accident of his being stationed at Cambridge!! Had he lived in a country town, the occasional 'discourses which have been rapturously applauded by the highest 'tribunals of criticism, and been eagerly devoured by statesmen, 'divines, and philosophers, might have been heard of only in the neighbouring bookseller's shop, and among the deacons and communicants of a Baptist meeting! But, as our universities ' radiate intelligence to every part of the land, a name which was so well known at Cambridge, would not fail to become well

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'known throughout the country.'* The Class-mate of Mackintosh, the Preacher who at the age of one-and-twenty seduced Bristol clergymen to wander into a Baptist meeting for the purpose of hearing him, the Author of the sermon on Modern Infidelity, would, possibly, never have made his way into open celebrity, but for the irradiation shed upon him by his local connexion with Cambridge! Most philosophical and academical conclusion! That his residence at Cambridge gave many individuals an opportunity of listening to his pulpit eloquence, who would otherwise not have taken the trouble to go after him, is certain. So far did his reputation break down even the pale of collegiate 'order', that, when the heads of houses met to consider the 'expediency of preventing the gownsmen attending his meeting, the proposition was overruled',-prudently, but not very graciously. The fact is, that a grudging and reluctant homage was paid to the great sectarian Preacher, while living, by the members of the Establishment, with a few illustrious exceptions; and even now, the plaudit of admiration is tainted with the breath of detraction. Is it not remarkable, that the first notice which the works of this master of English' ever received in the London Quarterly Review, should appear in the XCVth Number of that journal, and should consist of an elaborate tissue of eulogy and calumny, artfully woven, for the purpose of rendering, if possible, the posthumous fame of the Great Dissenter innocuous? This writer, whose wonderful compositions,-wonderful both for the scale ' and the variety of the powers they display', combine declama'tion so impassioned with wisdom so practical, touches of pathos so tender, with such caustic irony, such bold invective, such spirit-stirring encouragement to heroic deeds;—and all in lan'guage worthy to be the vehicle of such diverse thoughts,more massive than Addison, more easy and unconstrained than 'Johnson, more sober than Burke't;-the subject of this fervent eulogy was scarcely, if ever, named, while living, by the Quarterly Review. No one would have learned from its records of our literature, that such a writer existed. To hear such a man preach, was an offence against the Establishment: to praise his writings, except in a whisper, required an apology from a churchman. So strong is the influence of the sectarian feeling gendered by the pride of ecclesiastical caste!

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Our present business, however, is with Mr. Hall's personal character, rather than his writings; and as we have been led to advert to the article in the Quarterly Review, we cannot refrain

* Christian Observer, Feb. p. 96.
+ Quarterly Rev. No. XCV. p. 120.

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from observing, that the mosaic portrait which, with considerable ingenuity, the Reviewer has framed out of hints and scraps in his letters and writings, is much such a likeness as might be expected to come out from such a process. From an expression in one of his letters it is gathered, that his temperament was by nature indolent; while, from other parts of his writings, it is shrewdly concluded that he was irritable'; and from another letter, that he was unsocial.' But some allowance', it is added, is to be made for a little habitual spleen in a man, who, conscious of high superiority, was depressed by circumstances below his natural level of life. For such a person, so placed, not to kick against the pricks, would indeed have been a spectacle of protracted self-denial of the rarest merit, but was one which required ' a degree of virtue unreasonable to expect'!* The sarcastic candour, the insolent condescension of this allowance', harmonizes with the palpable unfairness of making a good man's confessions or complaints the basis of an estimate of his character. Upon this principle, some of the most useful men that ever lived, might be convicted of unprofitableness; and some of the holiest, of impurity of motive. To impute indolence and irritability, as distinguishing characteristics, to a man suffering under an in*ternal apparatus of torture', to whom exertion was pain, and in whom placidity was fortitude, is unjust and unfeeling. To call an individual unsocial, who was the life of society, who delighted in the company of his friends, and retreated only from display and debate, is not only unjust, but absurd. But, not content with this, the Reviewer must needs devise a fictitious cause for the supposititious infirmity, and ascribe the habitual spleen of the surly, discontented, lazy being he has imagined, to a depression of fortune, or rather, to the conscious degradation of being condemned, as a Dissenter, to a position below his natural level! Of this depression, Mr. Hall was assuredly unconscious. He had a mind infinitely superior to the creeping baseness and littleness which the supposition of this Reviewer betrays. He never coveted wealth; and, in consecrating himself to the Christian ministry among the Dissenters, he could never have dreamed of attaining higher eminence and dignity than he attained. The fame and consideration which he enjoyed, might have gratified an ambitious man; but he esteemed "the reproach of Christ" greater riches than the treasures of a hierarchy, purchased by what he would have deemed apostasy +. What degree of virtue it might be

* Quarterly Rev. p. 131.

+ Dr. Mansel, afterwards Bishop of Bristol, endeavoured to persuade Mr. Hall, through a common friend, to conform to the Established Church, in which he would not long have wanted preferment;

VOL. IX.-N.S.

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unreasonable to expect in such a person, we will not undertake to decide; but the Reviewer ought to have recollected, before he ventured to misapply the language of Scripture, that to "kick against the pricks" is descriptive of the conduct of the persecutor, not the persecuted; of the bigot, armed with sacerdotal power, not of the despised objects of his intolerance.

To return to the narrative. In the beginning of 1799, Mr. Hall had the gratification of renewing personal intercourse with his friend Mackintosh, who, being about to deliver his course of lectures at Lincoln's-Inn Hall, on the Law of Nature and Nations, spent a few months at Cambridge, for the purpose of consulting the university and other public libraries. Dr. Parr came to Cambridge on a visit to his friends at the same time; and Mr. Hall often spent his evenings with these two eminent men and a few members of the university who were invited to their select parties. It is a remarkable coincidence, that the Author of the Vindiciae Gallica, and the Author of the "Apology for the Freedom of the Press ", both embarked, about the same time, upon the stormy sea of political debate. In both, a generous love of liberty, combined with the ardour of genius and the immaturity of youth, gave birth to a brilliant performance, which their riper judgement condemned, without any abandonment of their early principles. To both, political celebrity became a source of inconvenience, and subsequently exposed them to a charge, utterly unfounded, of political apostasy. Both, in their juvenile productions, had assailed the opinions, while they had, in some measure, imitated the style, or caught the spirit of Burke. And now about the same period, time having wrought a similar modification upon the opinions of the two friends, without any concert between them, we find Mackintosh preparing those lectures which were the chief source of his permanent reputation, and Hall preaching his splendid philippic against infidelity. That sermon was no hasty production, but, as Dr. Gregory assures us, the 'deliberate result of a confirmed belief, that the most strenuous 'efforts were required to repel mischief so awfully and insidiously 'diffused. We cannot but think it highly probable, however, that his renewed intercourse with Mackintosh in the preceding year, had some effect, both in exciting him to the effort, and in influencing the tone of his sentiments; not less effect, perhaps, than Mackintosh's visit to Beaconsfield is supposed to have had upon him. After the publication of the sermon upon infidelity, which met with unanticipated and extraordinary applause, Mackintosh thus writes to his friend, Hall.

but Mr. Hall, much to the honour of his integrity, declined the invitation.' Christian Observer.

"He (Windham) had recommended the sermon to Lord Grenville, who seemed sceptical about any thing good coming from the pastor of a Baptist congregation, especially at Cambridge. This, you see, is the unhappy impression which Priestley has made, and which, if you proceed as you have so nobly begun, you will assuredly efface. But you will never do all the good which it is in your power to do, unless you assert your own importance, and call to mind, that, as the Dissenters have no man comparable to you, it is your province to guide them, and not to be guided by their ignorance and bigotry. I am almost sorry you thought any apology due to those senseless bigots who blamed you for compassion towards the clergy of France, as innocent sufferers and as martyrs of the Christian faith, during the most barbarous persecution that has fallen upon Christianity, perhaps since its origin, but certainly since its establishment by Constantine. I own I thought well of Horsley when I found him, in his charge, call these unhappy men our Christian brethren, the bishops and clergy of the persecuted Church of France. This is the language of truth. This is the spirit of Christianity." p. 66.

But Mr. Hall, in his "Apology", had attacked Horsley for this very language, with great acrimony, contrasting the extreme tenderness the Protestant Prelate professed for the fallen Church of France, with his malignity towards Dissenters. In employing similar language in his sermon, seven years afterwards, he must have recollected this, and have felt that he had laid himself open to the charge of inconsistency*. It might be urged, that he had attacked Horsley for his intolerance, rather than for his charity,

* We have elsewhere exposed the injustice of the charge of political inconsistency brought against Mr. Hall by his detractors. (Ecl. Rev. Vol. VII. p. 419.) The change was not in his political principles, but in his manner of holding and advocating them. It was the change, not of vacillation, but of maturity. That between his early productions and his later writings there should nevertheless be a marked difference of tone and spirit, and sometimes an apparent contrariety of sentiment, is no more than might be expected from the circumstances of his life, and his progression in wisdom and sanctity. But what shall we say to the despicable industry which has employed itself in studying his works for the express purpose of malignantly exhibiting all the contradictions' of opinion which they can be made to furnish, under the pretence, that the unworthy and disgusting task was forced upon the Reviewer in self-defence', because Dr. Gregory has presumed to reprint, in a complete edition of Mr. Hall's works, the unripe speculations of his youth'. Such is the conduct which the Quarterly Reviewer has chosen to adopt! We envy neither his head nor his heart. Few persons, we imagine, whose minds are not envenomed by bigotry, will think that any production of Mr. Hall's ought to have been suppressed in a collection of his works, where the errors of his early opinions are at once corrected and neutralized by the more serious and mature productions of his riper years.

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