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CRITICAL NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Critical Notices Of New Publications.
CRITICAL NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS .
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Art . I . —Essays and Sketches on Life and Character . 12 mo . pp . 254 , 2 nd ed . Longman and Co . 1821 . TTTis generally known that the author 1 of this little volume is Lord John
Russell . In the first edition , the work bore the fictitious appearance of " Papers by a Gentleman that had left his Lodgings , " but the fiction answering no end whatever , is now properly dropped .
The Essays are worthy of the reputed author ; sensible , good-natured , unaffectedly written , and containing some shrewd observations on manners . They betoken a lively regard to pure morals ; and the disquisition entitled " State of the English Constitution , " breathes the spirit of pure patriotism .
The author speaks , no doubt , from mortifying observation on character in the higher circles , when he says , ( p . 200 , ) " We are apt to despise the South-sea islanders for exchanging their pigs and yams for beads and red
cloth ; but you see that , for stars and ribands , red , green and blue , the Europeans will truck their fortune , their character , and even their liberty . " He bears a little hard upon converts in the following passage , pp . 41 , 42 : " At first none appear to be more
unjustly persecuted than those who change their opinions , either in politics or religion . Reason would teach us that such a change was rather a favourable proof of candour , but experience
has shewn that it is so generally the effect of a irant of integrity and principle , as to justify the saying of a lady of great talents , that she never could help confounding a convert and a convict . " Whatever be the fair censor ' s
talents , we demur to her wisdom . If all conversion or change of opinion is to be stigmatized , what is the possible use of debates in Parliament and books of argument ? Chillingworth changed his opinions to and fro , but he would , in our judgment , betray something worse than the weakness which this conversion and re-conversion may be
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thought to prove , who should charge that admirable man with " want of integrity . " But the convert and the convict are a pretty alliteration for a female tongue , and Lord John Russell has quoted the jeu d 9 esprit somewhat too gravely .
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Art . II . —Supplementary Memoirs of English Catholics , addressed to C . Butler , Esq ., Author of the Historical Memoirs of the English Catholics . By the Rev- J- M .., D . D . F . S . A . 8 vo . pp . 338 . Keating and Brown . 1820 .
" npHE Rev . J . M ., " is Dr . Mil-JL ner , the Roman Catholic Vicar Apostolic . From his well-known learning and talents , we expected under the above title a very different and far more valuable work . The " Supplementary Memoirs" are in fact
occupied almost entirely witK the squabbles of the Catholic body , uninterestin g and nearly unintelligible to the Protestant reader ; and the Vicar Apostolic seems in compiling them to have had no higher object in view than to run down the literary and even moral character of Mr . Butler , whose instructive and liberal work received our
commendation [ XV . 48—51 j . Some of his charges against this gentleman are of a very grave character , but Dr . Milner furnishes us with a decisive proof of the value of his assertions h > the following passage , which we shall quote without any other comment than the expression of a wish that the reader would refer to the letters alluded
to , inserted in our XlVth Volume , pp . 7 O 7 _ 712 : " A certain advocate of impiety , by name Aspland , defending his friend Carlile in The Times newspaper of last
November , appeals with high praises to Mr . C . B—' s theological works , and particularly to his new Apostles' Creed of eleven articles , published in his Confessions of Faith and his Life of Fenelon "Note , p . 194 .
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1821, page 119, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2497/page/55/
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