LITERATURE AND SCIENCE OF ENGLAND. ' 53 



Of a gentler spirit than this Goliah of theologians 

 was Melmoth, whose elegant and beautiful trans- 

 lations would gain him the character of one of the 

 finest wi'iters of his time, did they not place him in 

 the higher rank of those who raise the moral character 

 and the intellectual purity of the age in which they 

 live. In the same rank may be placed some of the 

 literate family of Bowdler, who belong peculiarly to 

 us, and in whom something of the spirit of their 

 illustrious ancestor, the founder of the Cottonian 

 Library, might reasonably be expected to survive. 

 But above all in this class for the soundest moral 

 instruction and the most sagacious remarks on man 

 — his frame, his duty, and his future expectations — 

 may be placed the honoured name of Hartley, a 

 considerable portion of whose life was spent in this 

 city, as was also much of the life of his son, who is 

 known in politics, in science, and in literature. [25] 



Here lived that somewhat irregular, but highly- 

 gifted person, the real writer of some of the most 

 celebrated, perhaps, of all the sermons which form 

 the Bampton Course. [26] And the mention of those 

 lectures suggests other names connected with Bath, 

 but especially one which we may be proud to have 

 associated with our city ; a name of which it is diffi- 

 cult to say whether it is more eminent in science, in 

 theology, in classical or in early English literature ; 



