LORD WOODHOUSELEE. 555 



public business, and the sufferings of infirm health, he has been 

 able to execute it ; yet I know not if the friends of Lord Wood- 

 houselee's literary fame have not some reason to lament his 

 choice of a subject ; and there are circumstances in the extent 

 and variety of Lord Kames's powers, which seem to me to 

 place him almost beyond the reach of the biographer. 



The fortunate subjects of biography are those, where some 

 powerful and uniform interest is maintained, — where great 

 minds are seen advancing to some lofty and determinate ob- 

 ject, — and where, amid the toils or the difficulties they have to 

 encounter, the mind of the reader feels somewhat of the same 

 anxious and unbroken interest, with which we follow the pro- 

 gress of the drama, or the narrative of the epic poet. The lives 

 of conquerors, and of legislators, — of discoverers in science, 

 or of inventors in the arts, — of the founders of schools in phi- 

 losophy, or of sects in religion, it is impossible even for the 

 rudest hand to trace, without awakening an interest which all 

 men can understand, and in which all can participate ; and 

 even the history of inferior men can yet always be made inte- 

 resting, when one object of ambition is seen to be steadily pur- 

 sued, and one correspondent sympathy is awakened. Of this 

 unity of pursuit, and of interest, the Life of Lord Kames was 

 singularly destitute. There was a vigour in his powers, and 

 an elevation in his ambition, that were incapable of being re- 

 strained within the limits of any one pursuit ; and he seems to 

 have felt it to be his peculiar destiny, to take the lead in 

 every science by which the reputation of his country could be 

 exalted, and in every art by which its prosperity could be in- 

 creased. To delineate the progress of such a mind ; to follow 

 his steps in all the various fields of inquiry through which he 

 travelled, — to mark with precision the accessions that science 

 derived from his labours, or the arts from his suggestions, was 



Vol. VIII. P. II. 4 A a 



