office of president, which he also declined, being the most important of the transactions.

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Up to this period, the end of February 1823, nearly two years and a half were consumed before the constitution of the society could be framed, its objects distinctly defined, or any of its details forwarded into execution. The story of its vicissitudes is almost ludicrous, notwithstanding the continued and earnest exertions of the six or eight persons who might be considered the nucleus of its operations. To trace the thousand and one propositions made and discussed-occupying the time, and vexing the labours of this little conclave-might afford a lesson and a warning to all future labourers in the formation of any public establishment. The Royal Society of London objected to the title, and its president, Sir Humphrey Davy, must be met, argued with, and propitiated. Had that of the Royal Academy of Literature' been assumed, as was advised, the same sort of negotiation would have been necessary with Sir Thomas Lawrence! Separate plans of a constitution and regulations were propounded by Messrs Hoare, Baber, Nares, Croly, &c., and each demanded its due share of attention: fortunately, the better parts of each were selected and condensed into one paper by Mr Impey; but then that paper had as much of revision bestowed upon it, to fit it for its desired and final purpose, as any other of the endless schemes which every new week produced. Much of the evils experienced were attributable to the irregular attendance of members of the committee and council; some being thus only partially informed of what had been agreed to in their absence. Thus, what was done at one meeting was frequently undone at the next. Now appeared a person of authority, and suggested some new feature, which, being adopted and incorporated with the results. of preceding deliberations, was found, on leisurely consideration, to be at issue with a previous rule, or in direct contradiction to the spirit of the whole. Then came a report that such and such a minister had expressed his disapprobation of the project—that such and such an author was hostile to it— that the mind of the King (as we have already noticed) had been turned against it;-in short, there was a good deal of intrigue and timidity, a good deal of vacillation and want of straightforwardness, which hung up the proceedings from November 1820 till June 1823, when a general meeting was held. At this meeting a provisional council was elected, including most of those parties who had taken an active share in the preliminary measures. The Society thus obtained a public status; having narrowly escaped being altogether swamped in more than half a dozen instances, when opposition was strong, and rumours of royal in

disposition rife. Means having been taken to obtain directly from his Majesty the cordial repetition of his sentiments in favour of his original design, the Bishop of St David's went to work in earnest: the Constitution and Regulations were completed, and submitted to the King on the 29th of May, and, on the 2d of June 1823, were finally approved of under the sign-manual. On the 17th the first general meeting ensued; and the following Council and Officers were elected to conduct the proceedings of the now fully constituted Royal Society, with laws and objects organized, and published to the world :-Council, Lords Lansdowne, Grenville, and Morpeth; Sirs A. Johnston and T. D. Acland; Messrs F. Chantrey, Taylor Combe, G. Croly, James Cumming, William Empson, Prince Hoare, W. Jerdan, and the Rev. Dr Gray; Archdeacon Prosser, Dr Richards, and C. K. Sumner-President, the Bishop of St David's-Vice-Presidents, the Bishop of Chester, Lord Chief-Justice Abbott, Right Hon. J. C. Villiers, Hon. G. Agar Ellis, (afterwards Lord Dover,) Sir Gore Ouseley, Sir James Mackintosh, Archdeacon Nares, and Colonel Leake-Treasurer, A. J. Impey-Librarian, Rev. H. H. Baber-Secretary, in which office he has continued to act most efficiently for twenty years, the Rev. Richard Cattermole.

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Thus terminated three years of doubt, wavering, and uncertainty; and the good work was consummated by a Royal Charter, granted in the sixth year of George IV., in these terms: To our right trusty and well-beloved Thomas, by 'divine permission Lord Bishop of Salisbury,' (to which see he had recently been translated from St David's,) and others of our 'loving subjects, who have, under our royal patronage, formed 'themselves into a society for the advancement of literature-by 'the publication of inedited remains of ancient literature, and of 'such works as may be of great intrinsic value, but not of that popular character which usually claims the attention of pub'lishers; by the promotion of discoveries in literature; by en'deavouring to fix the standard, as far as practicable, and to preserve the purity of the English language, by the critical improvement of English lexicography; by the reading_at 'public meetings of interesting papers on history, philosophy, poetry, philology, and the arts, and the publication of such of 'those papers as shall be approved of; by the assigning of hono'rary rewards to works of great literary merit, and to important discoveries in literature; and by establishing a correspon'dence with learned men in foreign countries, for the purpose of literary enquiry and information.'

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It will be seen that the charter embraces desirable and com

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prehensive objects; and we believe that most of them have been attempted, with greater or less degrees of success, as means and opportunities have permitted. The Society adopted, in 1828, the publications of the Egyptian Society' when in articulo mortis; and has since contributed some important researches into the antiquities of Egypt, that interesting cradle of civilization. Towards the reward of eminent literary men, the royal founder enabled it to act with princely liberality, by placing at its disposal no less a sum than eleven hundred guineas a-year; to be bestowed on ten associates for life, to be elected by the Officers and Council, each to receive one hundred guineas per annum; and the remaining hundred guineas to be expended on two golden medals, to be bestowed annually upon individuals whose literary deserts entitled them to the honour. The medals were very handsome, having the head of his Majesty on the obverse, and a whole length figure of Mercury, engraved from a beautiful gem in the Florentine Museum, on the reverse. During the donor's lifetime and reign they were adjudged, we believe, with impartiality and discrimination-in 1824, to Mitford, the historian of Greece, and Angelo Mai, the well-known archeologist; in 1825, to Dr J. Rennell and Charles Wilkins, both eminent authors; in 1826, to the learned Professor John Schweighæuser of Strasburg, and to Dugald Stewart, the celebrated Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh; in 1827, Southey and Scott were their recipients; in 1828, Crabbe and Archdeacon Coxe; in 1829, Roscoe and Baron Sylvester de Sacy; and in 1830, Hallam and Washington Irving were presented with the last of the fourteen; for, in 1831, George IV. died, and with him fell to the ground this gratifying bequest. King William, on his accession, had too many and urgent claims upon his privy purse to continue the grant; and during the present reign, so friendly to literature and the arts, it has not been recommended, nor has it occurred to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert to follow, in this way, the illustrious example of the founder, whose earnest' endeavour to patronize the literature of England, and conciliate foreign sympathy for pursuits confined to no country, thus, as far as the throne was concerned, concluded with him.

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The election of the ten royal and pensioned associates was a task of still greater responsibility; and how it was discharged the public must judge from the list of names. The following were the ten chosen :-Coleridge, the poet; the Rev. J. Davies, author of Celtic antiquities; Dr Jameson, the Scottish lexicographer; T. J. Mathias, author of the Pursuits of Literature ;' the Rev. J. R. Malthus, author of the celebrated work on ' Population;' Mr Millingen, of classic fame; Sir William Ouseley,

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the Persian traveller; Mr Roscoe, the biographer of Leo X.; the Rev. H. J. Todd, editor and enlarger of Johnson's Dictionary;' and Sharon Turner, the Saxon and English historian. Of these, Mr Davies died before the royal bounty lapsed; and Coleridge, Jameson, Mathias, Malthus, Ouseley, and Roscoe, have since trodden the silent path. Three only, Millingen, Todd, and Turner, remain, in honoured age, the relics of the learning and personal distinction so honourably recognized by the Royal Society of Literature.

Lord Melbourne, during his administration, made some enquiries respecting those associates who were deprived of a resource on which they had naturally relied for life; and it is to the honour of his government to state, that nearly all, if not all, were placed upon the usual pension list, to the extent of their annual loss ; and thus the only difference was the failure of a few years, and the amount not being paid through the medium of the Royal Society of Literature. There was, and is, a second class of associates an honorary' class-which consists of eminent Continental and British scholars. Before concluding this sketch, we may mention that the King, in 1826, made a grant to the Society of the crown land opposite St Martin's Church; and that the leading and official members among themselves voluntarily subscribed L.4300 as a building fund, with which they erected their present place of meeting. It would be a departure from our purpose to continue this historical sketch to the present day; suffice it to say, that, on the death of the Bishop of Salisbury, the Earl of Ripon was chosen, and continues to be, President; that a valuable library has been formed, and greatly enriched by the lexicographical and antiquarian publications presented by Mr Todd; that of Papers read at meetings, and furnished by many of the most eminent writers of the age, three quarto volumes have been issued; and that the expense of the biographical works named at the head of this article, as well as a second volume on the Anglo-Norman period, by the same author, now in preparation, has been supplied by the 'generous subscription of noblemen and gentlemen in ministerial situations, and other long-tried friends of the Society.

It was in his address in 1838, that Lord Ripon, as President, recommended the biographical undertaking just mentioned :

I would recommend the publication in parts by, or rather under the superintendence of, the Council of the Royal Society of Literature, of a biographical series, not in the ordinary inartificial and imperfect plan of alphabetical arrangement, but in chronological order-thus obviating the inconvenience of the anachronism which occurs between the early and late volumes of a long set, as is the case in Chalmers's Dictionary, which occupied upwards of five years in publication; in consequence of which,

notices were given in the latter volumes of persons who had long survived others of whom no mention whatever is made in the earlier sections of the work, while a still greater anachronism occurs from the juxtaposition of men who flourished at the most remote periods from one another; by which means Alfred and Akenside, Wickliff and Wilmot, Chaucer and Chatterton, are jumbled together in very absurd discrepancy.

Another defect of biographical dictionaries is the attempt to render them universal as to all nations, and as to every description of notoriety of character.

'I would endeavour to obviate both these sources of imperfection, by making the proposed biography purely national, and arranging it chronologically by centuries, on which plan each volume might be considered a separate work. The volumes might even be published simultaneously, or, beginning with recent centuries, work upwards to the source; and, in either case, the work would admit of indefinite continuance with the lapse of time, while the earlier portions would never become obsolete, or lose their relative value, as has invariably been the fate of all alphabetical biographies.

The only attempt on any adequate scale at a national biography, was by the publication, between the years 1747 and 1766, of a "Biographia Britannica," of which an enlarged edition was in 1777 undertaken by Dr Kippis and others, and slowly continued until the year 1793, when it ceased to appear, having proceeded no further than the letter E. Independent of its vicious alphabetical arrangement, and its bulk and uncertain periods of its publication, enough of cause for its non-acceptance by the public, and consequent abrupt termination, would be found in its injudicious plan of giving the entire text of the former edition, and appending an immense quantity of elaborate and controversial notes, after the manner, but destitute of the critical acumen, of Bayle. A Dictionary of General Biography was soon afterwards compiled and edited by Drs Aikin and Enfield, without, however, establishing any claim to distinction in the literary world.* Another mode of improving on the crude and desultory character of all existing large works in general biography, would be by a classification of the lives according to the different branches of literature and science to which they were devoted; but this would be attended with great difficulty, in consequence of the versatile pursuits of many distinguished geniuses, who, like Julius Cæsar or our own Alfred, have earned laurels in every field of fame.

On the whole, therefore, I would repeat the expression of my predilection in favour of the scheme I have proposed; namely, a purely national literary biography, deduced chronologically from the first dawnings of British genius in the seventh century, to the mature, but I

* The great work of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge,' described in a previous Number, had not, at the period of this discourse, been undertaken.

VOL. LXXVIII. NO. CLVIII.

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