Half-Hours with the Best Authors, Including Biographical and Critical Notices by Charles Knight
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Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924076008386 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 924 076 008 386 HALF-HOURS THE BEST AUTHORS. THE "CHANDOS CLASSICS." HALF-HOURS WITH THE BEST AUTHORS. INCLUDING BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL NOTICES, By CHARLES KNIGHT. WITH FIFTY-TIVO ILLUSTRATIONS BY WILLIAM HARVEY. g i^efa lEtJitfon, REMODELLED AND REVISED BY THE ORIGINAL EDITOR. LONDON AND NEW YORK : FREDERICK WARNE AND CO. 1890. CONTENTS. Subject. Author. Paob Tlic laimortaiity of the Suul . » ^ « . Sherlock I Hope at the Close of Life ..,.,.. Campbell 6 Let Winter Come •...•,. Va rious 7 Reflections upon Exile . , , bolingbroicb The Death of Agnppina, the Mother of Nero . George Long Field Sports, Agriculture, and Trade of the Middle Ages Hallam The Astrologer Butler 33 The Value of Time S. Johnson 37 On the Goodness of the Deity , .... Paley . 40 God the Author of Nature COWPER 47 Thomas Chatterton Campbell 48 Some Account of the Great Law-Suit between the 1 Macaulay Parishes of St Dennis ami St George in the Water j TheHallofEblis Beckford Tha Gouds Sheij^y . 71 Advice to his Son , Lord Burleigh 72 Dr Johnson's Dinner Talk • , . BOSWELL . 77 Special Means of CoDtentment . , . Bishop Sanderson 81 Mortality at Sea . A.NSON ... 90 ImitatioD . m Art ..>..... Reynolds . 98 The Betrothed Crabbe . 103 Of Security , ..,.•.. Jeremy Bentham 106 Sancho Panza in his Island Cervantes . "3 Coningsby and the Mysterious Stranger . E.OF Eeaconsfield 120 Good Works . Thomas Erskine 131 Fame . ...'..•.. Southey . 135 The Married Life of Albert Durer Leopold Schefer 141 Love . • • . Elliott . , 148 Scottish Music Beattih , , 156 ScottlEh Songs Tannahill , , 161 CONTENTS. SUBTECT- CONTENTS. vii Surjncr Authoa. Page The Sabbath Wtlus . .371 Ancieot London Fitz Stephen 375 The Christmas , . Tree .... , Coleridge 379 The Canadian Indians Sir F. B. Hbad . 381 Newstead Abbey Byron , . 390 The Death of Lord Hastbgs ...... Hall . 394 The Doctor's Family Feeling Southey . 400 Of Fraud Bishop Wilson . 405 Christmas , . Various . 414 Knowledge Lord Bacon . 418 Sympathetic Imitation . Dugald Stewart 42/ Queen Chriitina of Sweden Ranke . 431 Lyrics of the Heart Alaric A. Watts 43? in The War La Vendue . Jeffrey . 444 of the Nativity Hymn ..... Milton . 451 for Hymn Christnkas Day Keble . 457 Krrors of Learning . Lord Bacon . 459 Another Year Various . , 464 Prince Consort's Speech at BirminghaBi .... Prince Albert . 469 Marian Erie . .... Mrs Browning . 473 Wit and Humour Sydney Smith . 479 Forging The of the Anchor .... Samuel Ferguson 482 the On Wisdom of this World . Swift . 485 The Dramatic T Modem Poets—V. A «gend of Florence i Leigh Hunt . 493 The F,arl of Cowrie . (James White . 498 The Independent Minister ... Mrs Gaskell . 502 Rural Rides . , . , Cobbett . 511 • Resolution and Independence . • vVordsworth . 515 The Chapel . > C. Knight . 520 Ck^at Floods in the Province of Mociv , . • I-auder . 52^ December . , j , , • ^ • Clark , , . 50 HALF-HOURS THE BEST AUTHORS. fmmorfalit^ 0f i'^t Banl. Sherlock. [Dr Thomas Sherlock, one of the most eminent divines of the last cen- tury, was bom in 1678 ; died in 1761. Ilis father, Dr William Sherlock, was Master of the Temple, his writings were very numerous, and amongst them that entitled " A Practical Discourse concerning Death" was long a popular work. During this long life he was an indefatigable preacher and defender of Christianity. He was successively Master of the Temple, Bishop of Bangor, of Salisbury, and of London.] Had it not been for philosophy, there had remained perhaps no footsteps of any unbelievers in this great article ; for the sense of nature would have directed all right ; but philosophy misguided many. For those who denied immortality, did not deny the common sense of nature, which they felt as well as others ; but they rejected the notice and thought it false, because they could not find physical causes to support the belief, or thought that they found physical causes effectually to overthrow it. This account we owe to Cicero, one of the best judges of antiquity, who tells us plainly that the reason why many rejected the A 3 HALF-HOURS WITH THE BEST AUTHORS. [SirERioctr. belief of the immortality of the soul was because they could not form a conception of an unbodied soul. So that infidelity is ot no older a date than philosophy; and a future state was not doubted of till men had puzzled and confounded themselves in their search after the physical reason of the soul's immortality. And now consider how the case stands, and how far the evidence of nature is weakened by the authority of such unbelievers. All mankind receive the belief of a future life, urged to it every day by what they feel transacted in their own breasts : I:)ut some philosophers reject this opinion, because they have no conception of a soul distinct from the body ; as if the immortality of the soul depended merely upon the strength of human imagination. Were the natural evidence of immortality built upon any particular notion of a human soul, the evidence of nature might be over- thiown by showing the impossibility or improbability of such notion : but the evidence of nature is not concerned in any notion ; and all the common notions may be false, and yet the evidence of nature stand good, which only supposes man to be rational, and consequently accountable : and if any philosophei can prove the contrary, he may then, if his v/ord will afterwards pass for anything, reject this and all other evidence whatever. The natural evidence, I say, supposes only that a man is a rational accountable creature ; and, this being the true founda- tion in nature for the belief of the immortality, the true notion of nature must needs be this, that man, as such, shall live to account for his doings. The question, then, upon the fool of nature, is this: What constitutes the man? And whoever observes witli any care will find that this is the point upon which the learned of antiquity divided. The vulgar spoke of men after death just in the same manner as they did of men on earth : and Cicero observes, that the common error, as he calls it, so far prevailed, that they supposed such things to be transacted apud inferos, qua sine corporibus nee fie7i posscnt nee inteUigi ; which could neither be done, nor conceived to be done, without bodies. The gene- rality of men could not arrive to abstracted notions of unbodied spirits ; and though thev could not but think that the body, ; Sherlock.] THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 5 which was burnt before their eyes, was dissipated and destroyed yet so great was the force of nature, whicli was ever suggesting to them that men should live again, that they continued to imagine men with bodies in another life, having no other jiotion or con- ception of men. But, with the learned, nothing was held to be more absurd than to think of having bodies again in another state ; and yet they knew that the true foundation of immortality was laid in this point, that the same individuals should continue. The natural consequence then was, from these principles, to exclude the body from being any part of the man ; and all, I believe, who asserted any immortality, agreed in this notion. The Platonists un- doubtedly did ; and Cicero has everywhere declared it to be his opinion : Tu habito, (says he,) te noti esse mortalem, sed corpus; Nee cnitn is es quern for77ia ista declarat ; sedmetu cujusque is estquisque. It is not you, but your body, which is mortal ; for you are not what you appear to be ; but it is the mind which is the man. This being the case, the controversy was necessarily brought to turn upon the nature of the soul; and the belief of immortality either prevailed or sunk, according as men conceived of the natural dignity and power of the soul. For this reason the cor- porealists rejected the opinion; for, since it was universally agreed among the learned that all that was corporeal of man died, they who had no notion of anything else necessarily concluded that the whole man died. From this view you may judge how the cause of immortality stood, and what difficulties attended it, upon the foot of natural religion. All men had a natural sense and expectation of a future life. The difficulty was to account how the same individuals, which hved and died in this world, and one part of which evidently ^ent to decay, should live again in another world. The vulgar, (vho had no other notion of a man but what came in by their eyes, supposed that just such men as lived in this world should live in the next ; overlooking the difficulties which lay in their way, whilst th?y ran hastily, to embrace the sentiments of nature, AUTHORS. [Sheelock. 4 HALF-HOURS WITH THE BEST This advantage they had, however, that their opinion preserved the identity of individuals, and they conceived themselves to be the very same with respect to the life to come as they found themselves to be in regard to the life present. But then, had they been pressed, they could not have stood the difficultief arising from the dissolution of the body, the loss of which, in their way of thinking, was the loss of the individual. The learned, who could not but see and feel this difficulty, to avoid it, shut out the body from being any part of the man, and made the soul alone to be the perfect individuum.