mpunity. His death
probably deprived us of a most exemplary statesman and first-rate
Chancellor of the Exchequer, but it can hardly have been a great loss to
literature. Passages from Horner's journals, given in his 'Memoirs,' are
quaint illustrations of the frame of mind generally inculcated in
manuals for the use of virtuous young men. At the age of twenty-eight,
he resolves one day to meditate upon various topics, distributed under
nine heads, including the society to be frequented in the metropolis;
the characters to be studied; the scale of intimacies; the style of
conversation; the use of other men's minds in self-education; the
regulation of ambition, of political sentiments, connections, and
conduct; the importance of 'steadily systematising all plans and aims
of life, and so providing against contingencies as to put happiness at
least out of the reach of accident,' and the cultivation of moral
feelings by 'dignified sentiments and pleasing associations' derived
from poets, moralists, or actual life. Sydney Smith, in a very lively
portrait, says that Horner was the best, kindest, simplest, and most
incorruptible of mankind; but intimates sufficiently that his
impenetrability to the facetious was something almost unexampled. A jest
upon an important subject was, it seems, the only affliction which his
strength of principle would not enable him to bear with patience. His
contributions gave some solid economical speculation to the 'Review,'
but were neither numerous nor lively. Brougham's amazing vitality wasted
itself in a different way. His multifarious energy, from early boyhood
to the borders of old age, would be almost incredible, if we had not the
good fortune to be contemporaries of Mr. Gladstone. His share in the
opening numbers of the 'Review' is another of the points upon which
there is an odd conflict of testimony.[23] But from a very early period
he was the most voluminous and, at times, the most valuable of
contributors. It has been said that he once wrote a whole number,
including articles upon lithotomy and Chinese music. It is more
authentic that he contributed six articles to one number at the very
crisis of his political career, and at the same period he boasts of
having written a fifth of the whole 'Review' to that time. He would sit
down in a morning and write off twenty pages at a single effort. Jeffrey
compares his own editorial authority to that of a feudal monarch over
some independent barons