218 



Monthly Review of Literature, 



[FEB. 



annoyance, however, he was kept on 

 parole till the exchange was completed, 

 though allowed to proceed to the British 

 head quarters. His opportunities ena- 

 bled him to give Lord Wellington proofs 

 of the enemy's intention to make a 

 stand at Vittoria, and put him upon his 

 guard. Though precluded from fight- 

 ing, he was not, it seems, from being 

 present at the battle, and accordingly he 

 was with the commander-in-chief during 

 the whole of it expressly, because there 

 might be points upon which Lord Wel- 

 lington might wish to question him. To 

 our notions this scarcely falls within the 

 chivalrous limits of a soldier's honour. 

 In the action, while the aides-de-camp 

 were all dispatched on different errands, 

 the commander turned to Major Hay, 

 but recollecting his situation, he observ- 

 ed " No, you cannot." This is remarked 

 not merely as creditable to the com- 

 mander, but as an instance of self-pos- 

 session at so tumultuous a moment; and 

 truly it is an eminent one, and the cir- 

 cumstance is worthy of being recorded 

 on both accounts. 



Basil Harrington and his Friends, 3 vols. 

 12mo. The author of this production 

 has thrown his offspring upon the world, 

 like a bear's cub unlicked, without sym- 

 metry or shape. Its limbs hang together 

 like those of a paper harlequin, with no 

 proportions or proprieties in their move- 

 ments. Yet there is nerve and vigour 

 in them. Some of the sketches, in plain 

 terms, are excellent well worked up 

 attesting the possession of strong and 

 original conception, with a capacity for 

 entering with depth and discrimination 

 into painful feelings and harassing posi- 

 tions. But a want of skill to link the 

 results, and give force and effect to his 

 combinations is deplorably manifest. 



Barnngton is a gentleman who suffers 

 his affairs to run to ruin while he 

 is in pursuit of his own enjoyments 

 the knick-knackeries of a virtuoso. 

 He gets of course into difficulties, and 

 with a wife and children,those difficulties 

 involve him in the most excruciating 

 distresses. In his extremity he tries 

 as men in such situation will, in spite of 

 all experience and all warning to solicit 

 loans ; and every body, he finds of 

 course, has excuses ready cut and dried 

 at command to baffle his purpose. He 

 has a brother, a man of immense wealth, 

 but with a heart naturally there are 

 such things as hard as a stone, and made 

 still harder, if possible, by a perversion 

 of religious principle or formality. His 

 unfortunate brother has run himself 

 wilfully into difficulties he has done 

 wrong and must bide the penalty ; to 

 relieve him is flying in the face of Pro- 

 vidence an attempt to obstruct the 

 natural consequences of the laws of na- 

 ture, &c. 



To him, of course, all appeals are 

 made in vain, till finally a lady, a com- 

 mon acquaintance, of manners, by the 

 way, that set common rules at defiance 

 a person, such as nobody, in our well. 

 drilled state of society, can now-a-days, 

 by possibility meet with undertakes 

 apparently the cure of this religious and 

 hypocritical professor. Through the 

 agency and connivance of friends she 

 contrives to seduce him into hazardous 

 speculations in mines and share bubbles, 

 till he believes himself at last the dupe 

 of knavery ; and in that belief curses 

 his fate, and recals his cruelty to his 

 brother. The scheme, if scheme it can 

 be called, is so unskilfully conducted, 

 that by a mere accident, a circumstance 

 not to be calculated upon, the unhappy 

 Barrington is only at last rescued from 

 irremediable misery by the act of an 

 actual madman, whose story, told at the 

 length of nearly a volume, finally proves 

 to be the suggestions of his own phren- 

 sied fancy, and wholly unconnected with 

 the texture of the tale. 



The Literary Correspondence of John 

 Pinker ton, Esq., 2 vols. 8vo This cor- 

 respondence consists almost wholly of 

 letters addressed to Pinkerton. Very 

 few of his own letters have been pre- 

 served. The letters now printed were 

 arranged by himself for publication. 

 Mr. Dawson Turner has here and there 

 added a note by way of explanation, and 

 cut away what appeared to him we sup- 

 pose less insignificant than the rest. The 

 whole would have doubled the mass now 

 printed, and now there is too much by 

 half. Pinkerton himself was devoted, 

 body and soul, to the manufacture of 

 books, but possessed neither of temper, 

 judgment, or taste to serve the cause 

 of literature. His prejudices were quite 

 ludicrous, and his violence intolerable. 

 He was born at Edinburgh in 1 758 ; the 

 son of a merchant ; and articled at the 

 usual age to an attorney of the same 

 town. Just at the expiration of his 

 articles his father died, and with the 

 property which then fell into his pos- 

 session, not considerable, but enough for 

 a man of moderate habits and wants, he 

 hastened to London, and surrendered 

 himself to the vexations, perhaps to the 

 pleasures, of literature. His first effort 

 was spent on the ancient poetry of Scot- 

 land; and very early he distinguished 

 himself by a volume of letters upon 

 literature," which brought him into fa- 

 vourable notice among the would-be 

 patrons of letters of that day. Succes- 

 sively he appeared as a writer on medals, 

 on Scotch history, on geography, geo- 

 logy, &c. He gained but little by his 

 productions, compared with the labour 

 of many of them, and in his latter days 

 fell into poverty, and died at Paris in 

 1826. The correspondence, though 



