d a thrill of grandeur in a human bosom. His reviews are not
preserved by the salt of original genius, nor are they pregnant with
profound and comprehensive principle; they have no resemblance to the
sibylline leaves which Burke tore out from the vast volume of his mind,
and scattered with imperial indifference among the nations; they are not
the illuminated indices of universal history, like the papers of Macaulay;
they are not specimens of pure and perfect English, set with modest but
magnificent ornaments, like the criticism of Jeffrey or of Hall; nor are
they the excerpts, rugged and rent away by violence, from the dark and
iron tablet of an obscure and original mind, like the reviews of Foster;
but they are exquisite _jeux d'esprit_, admirable occasional pamphlets,
which, though now they look to us like spent arrows, yet assuredly have
done execution, and have not been spent in vain. And as, after the lapse
of a century and more, we can still read with pleasure Addison's "Old Whig
and Freeholder," for the sake of the exquisite humor and inimitable style
in which forgotten feuds and dead logomachies are embalmed, so may it be,
a century still, with the articles on Bentham's Fallacies and on the Game
Laws, and with the letters of the witty and ingenious Peter Plymley. There
is much at least in those singular productions--in their clear and manly
sense--in their broad native fun--in their rapid, careless, energetic
style--and in their bold, honest, liberal, and thoroughly English spirit--to
interest several succeeding generations, if not to secure the "rare and
regal" palm of immortality.

Sidney Smith was a writer of sermons as well as of political squibs. Is
not their memory eternized in one of John Foster's most ponderous pieces
of sarcasm? In an evil hour the dexterous and witty critic came forth from
behind the fastnesses of the Edinburgh Review, whence, in perfect security
he had shot his quick glancing shafts at Methodists and Missions, at
Christian Observers and Eclectic Reviews, at Owens and Styles, and (what
the more wary Jeffrey, in the day of his power, always avoided) became
himself an author, and, _mirabile dictu_, an author of sermons. It was as
if he wished to give his opponents their revenge, and no sooner did his
head peep forth from beneath the protection of its shell than the
elephantine foot of Foster was prepared to crush it in the dust. It was
the precise position of Saladin with the Knight of the