The sermons of Foster were of a cast quite distinct from what is commonly called oratory, and, indeed, from what many seem to account the highest style of eloquence, namely, a flow of facile thoughts through the smooth channels of uniformly elevated polished diction, graced by the utmost appliances of voice and gesture. But they possessed for me, and for not a few hearers, qualities and attractions much preferable to these. The basis of important thoughts was as much original or underived from other minds, as, perhaps, that of any reading man's reflections in our age of books could be; still more so the mode and aspect in which they were presented. That unambitious and homely sort of loftiness, which displayed neither phrase nor speaker, but things,-while the brief word and simple tone brought out the sublime conception "in its clearness;" that fund of varied associations and images by which he really illustrated, not painted or gilded his truths; the graphic masterstrokes, the frequent hints of profound suggestion for after-meditation, the cogent though calm expostulations and appeals, the shrewd turns of half-latent irony against irreligion and folly, in which, without any descent from seriousness and even solemnity, the speaker moved a smile by his unconscious approaches to the edge of wit, yet effectually quelled it by the unbroken gravity of his tone and purpose, all these characteristics had for me an attractive power and value, both by novelty and instructiveness, far above the qualities of an oratory, or eloquence more fashioned on received rules and models.-SHEPPARD, JOHN, 1844, The Life and Correspondence of John Foster, ed. Ryland, vol. II, p. 306. At the latest glimpse that we can get of the distinguished author

we

find him an infirm, retired octogenarian, long, gaunt, and ghastly, careless and slovenly in dress, with a countenance deeply furrowed by a life of intense thought, and indicating great mental vigor and rigid inflexibility of character. He was revered and cherished as the last of a constellation of luminaries, that had for half a century or more shed lustre on the previously obscure and overshadowed denomination of Particular or Calvinistic Baptists. PEABODY, ANDREW P., 1846, John Foster's Essays, North American Review, vol. 62, p. 141.

GENERAL

We take our leave of this work with sincere reluctance. For the length to which we have extended our review, the subject must be our apology. It has fared with us as with a traveller who passes through an enchanting country, where he meets with so many beautiful views and so many striking objects which he is loath to quit, that he loiters till the shades of evening insensibly fall upon him. We are far, however, from recommending these volumes as faultless. Mr. F's work is rather an example of the power of genius. than a specimen of finished composition: it lies open in many points to the censure of those minor critics, who, by the observation of a few technical rules, may easily avoid its faults, without reaching one of its beauties. The author has paid too little attention to the construction of his sentences. They are for the most part too long, sometimes involved in perplexity, and often loaded with redundances. They have too much of the looseness of an harangue, and too little of the compact elegance of regular composition. An occasional obscurity pervades some parts of the work. The mind of the writer seems at times to struggle with conceptions too mighty for his grasp, and to present confused masses, rather than distinct delineations of thought. This, however, is to be imputed to the originality, not the weakness, of his powers. The scale on which he thinks is so vast, and the excursions of his imagination are so extended, that they frequently carry him into the most unbeaten track, and among objects where a ray of light glances in an angle only, without diffusing itself over the whole.-HALL, ROBERT, 1805, Review of Foster's Essays, Miscellaneous Works and Remains, p. 446.

Mr. Foster's "Essays" are full of ingenuity and original remark. The style of them is at once terse and elegant.DIBDEN, THOMAS FROGNALL, 1824, Library Companion.

He has been prevented from preaching by a complaint affecting the throat; but, judging from the quality of his celebrated "Essays," he could never have figured as a truly splendid rhetorician; for the imagery and ornamental parts of his "Essays" have evidently not grown up in the loom, and concurrently with the texture of the

Of course,

the moral tone of all his writings is pure and lofty. His ethics are eminently Christian as to their positive side; but they lack the breadth and catholicity of the Christian standard. They omit all the æsthetic aspects of virtue. They give but narrow scope and reluctant tolerance to those innocent amenities of domestic and social life, of literature and art, which grow in the most luxuriant beauty under true Christian culture. His morality would be represented by a rigid code, formed of precise precepts, stated and defined with logical accuracy, and bristling all over with stern penalties, rather than by a pervading, plastic spirit of devotion and humanity, multiform in its manifestations, and blending with all that is graceful and beautiful in nature and in life. -PEABODY, A. P., 1846, Foster's Essays, North American Review, vol. 62, p. 143.

We have in his works the collected thoughts of a powerful mind that has lived "collaterally or aside" to the worldthat never flattered a popular prejudicethat never bent to a popular idol-that never deserted in the darkest hour the cause of liberty-that never swore to the Shibboleth of a party-or, at least, never kept its vow, and conspicuous, a mighty and mysterious fragment, the Stonehenge of modern moralists. Shall we inscribe immortality upon the shapeless yet sublime structure? He who reared it seems, from the elevation he has now reached, to answer No. What is the thing you call immortality to me, who have cleft that deep shadow and entered on this greater and brighter state of being? -GILFILLAN, GEORGE, 1847, Life and Correspondence of John Foster, Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 14, p. 10.

Perhaps the most successful essayist of his time was the Rev. John Foster, last of Bristol. His "Essays" passed through eighteen editions during his life; and they are still spreading. There is no great precision in the thoughts; but the tone of morality is pure, and the views are original and broad, while the style is eminently interesting. The volume was one which met the wants of the time; and if some of the matter is vague, and the views narrow, they were a welcome escape from the shallow prosings which they superseded. -MARTINEAU, HARRIET, 1849, A History of the Thirty Years' Peace, A. D. 1815-46, vol. IV, p. 426.

The miscellaneous production of his pen hold high rank among the most brilliant English classics. All his writings are noted for remarkable comprehensiveness, the interest, strength, and great originialty and majesty of conception. His eloquence consisted, not in pompous phrases or brilliant explosions, but the pure force of sense, adorned with the sweetest imagery, and an admirable neatness and compactness of style.-FISH, HENRY C., 1856, History and Repository of Pulpit Eloquence, vol. I, p. 411.

He cultivated originality both in thought and in expression. His command of language and illustration is copious, but his style has a want of flow, an air of labour. He repeats an idea again and again, but the successive repetitions do not, like the varied expression of Chalmers, make the meaning more and more luminous; they often burden rather than illuminate the general reader, and they strike the critic as a laboured exercise in the accumulation of synonyms and similitudes.-MINTO, WILLIAM, 1872-80, Manual of English Prose Literature, p. 510.

Mr. Foster's essays are excellent models of vigorous thought and expression, uniting metaphysical nicety and acuteness with practical sagacity and common-sense.CHAMBERS, ROBERT, 1876, Cyclopædia of English Literature, ed. Carruthers.

Foster is a distinct variety among the professors of literature. He is the impersonation of a somewhat gloomy Dissenter, shut up by circumstances in a small circle, sitting among his little group of intellectual persons with a heartfelt sense of aggrieved superiority, and contemplating most things in heaven and earth as

on the margin of Johnson's "Dictionary," but I did not set myself to the work till I wore spectacles. When I finished my copy I was sitting at my table in Cambridge, England, January, 1825. When I arrived at the last word, I was seized with a tremor that made it difficult to proceed. I, however, summoned up strength to finish the work, and then walking about the room. I soon recovered.-WEBSTER, NOAH, 1836, Letter to Dr. Thomas Miner, Nov. 21.

To men of the present generation, Dr. Webster is known chiefly as a learned philologist; and the natural inference would be, that he spent his whole life among his books, and chiefly in devotion to a single class of studies. The fact, however, was far otherwise. Though he was always a close student-reading, thinking, and, writing at every period of his life, he never withdrew himself from the active employments of society. After his first removal to New Haven, he was for a number of years one of the aldermen of the city, and judge of one of the state courts. He also frequently represented that town in the legislature of the state. During his residence at Amherst, he was called, in repeated instances, to discharge similar duties, and spent a part of several winters. at Boston as a member of the General Court. In the discharge of his duties, Dr. Webster was watchful, consistent, and firm. Though immersed in study, he kept in his hands the entire control of his family arrangements, down to the minutest particulars. Everything was reduced to exact system; all moved on with perfect regularity and order, for method was the presiding principle of his life. In the government of his children there was but one rule, and that was instantaneous and entire obedience. This was insisted upon as right,-as, in the nature of things, due by a child to a parent. He did not rest his claim on any explanations, or on showing that the thing required was reasonable or beneficial. In his religious feelings, Dr. Webster was remarkably equable and cheerful. He had a very strong sense of the providence of God, as extending to the minutest concerns of life. In this he found a source of continual support and consolation, under the severe labors and numerous trials which he had to endure. To the same divine hand he habitually referred all his

enjoyments; and it was konwn to his family that he rarely, if ever, took the slightest refreshment, of any kind, even between meals, without a momentary pause, and a silent tribute to God as the giver. He made the Scriptures his daily study. GOODRICH, CHAUNCEY A., 1847, Memoir of Noah Webster.

It is not vanity which upholds a man working silently year after year at a task ridiculed by his neighbors and denounced by his enemies. Webster had something better to sustain him than an idle self-conceit. He had the reserve of a high purpose, and an aim which had been growing more clearly understood by himself, so that he could afford to disregard the judgments of others. There was in the outward circumstance of his life something which testifies to the sincerity and worth of his purpose. He had withdrawn himself into the wilderness that he might free. himself from the encumbrances in his work, and with his love of society this was no light thing to do. His family went with him reluctantly; but when did not an enthusiast drag with him to his own light sacrifice the unwilling attendants of his life!-SCUDDER, HORACE E., 1881, Noah Webster (American Men of Letters), p. 233.

SPELLING BOOK

first

Noah Webster, who wrote the earliest American spelling-book, was the author whose writings I ever read; and what a work it was to my young imagination! In its externals, as well as its internals, it is before me now precisely as it was nearly half a century ago. The narrow yellow-white leathern back, with not quite all the hairs tanned out of it in some copies; the palish-blue cover; the thick, whitish paper, whose smell I inhale as freshly at this moment as when it first pervaded my young nostrils-all are "present with me." And its contents! How palpable are their first impressions upon the mind! from the pregnant moral inculcations in one syllable, onward to the reading-lessons in wider and taller words, which, in certain parts, sometimes bothered "us boys" not a little; yet not much, either, after encountering the spelling-lessons that preceded them, which enabled me generally to conquer the most formidable of them; especially after I had "gone up to the head" in spelling them in the longest class in the old log school-house. The moral and