But "John Wesley," says the great Scotch reviewer, "was a subject that required all the qualities of a philosophical historian. In Mr. Southey's work on this subject, he has, on the whole, failed. Yet there are charming specimens of the art of narration in it. The Life of Wesley will probably live. Defective as it is, it contains the only popular account of a most remarkable moral revolution, and of a man whose eloquence and logical acuteness might have rendered him eminent in literature; whose genius for government was not inferior to that of Richelieu; and who, whatever his errors may have been, devoted all his powers, in defiance of obloquy and derision, to what he sincerely considered as the highest good of his species."

From the commencement of his extraordinary career, Mr. Wesley had never swerved from the right. In his course there was no vacillation. Unlike in this respect, as, indeed, in almost all others, was his biographer. "He that changes his party," says Johnson, "by his interest, loves himself rather than truth." And Southey, having changed from light to darkness, and sacrificed truth and conscience at the shrine of pounds, shillings, and pence; having courted the favor of the great, and received the reward of so doing; was not the man to write a correct life of one of the greatest reformers in the Christian church; and who, fearless of consequences to his reputation or fortune, followed truth wherever she led the way.

But Southey was not only an ultra tory in politics; in religion, what he had, he was high church. "Nothing," he says, in his Colloquies on Society, "is more certain than that religion is the basis upon which civil government rests; that from religion power derives its authority, laws their efficacy, and both their zeal and sanction; and it is necessary that this religion be established for the security of the state, and for the welfare of the people, who would otherwise be moved to and fro with every wind of doctrine. . . . The state that neglects this, prepares its own destruction; and they who train them up in any other way are undermining it. All of which are, nevertheless, denied by our professors of the arts babblative and scribblative, some in the audacity of evil designs, and others in the glorious assurance of impenetrable ignorance."

Hence, all dissenters are "undermining the state "-are its enemies-especially "those who train up the people in this way." Those who deny the above unfounded positions, and exploded notions, do it, in the estimation of our quondam republican, in the “audacity of evil designs," or in the "glorious assurance of imVOL. VIII.-27

penetrable ignorance." Mr. Wesley, therefore, in pursuing his course, had evil designs toward the church and state, or was grossly ignorant. The latter, no one will pretend; and the former is not true: the error is in Mr. Southey's philosophy of government; and this has led him into a still greater error respecting the result of Mr. Wesley's labors. "In proportion as Methodism obtained ground among the educated classes, its direct effects," he says, were evil. It narrowed their views and feelings; burdened them with forms; restricted them from recreations, which keep the mind in health; discouraged, if it did not absolutely prohibit, accomplishments that give a grace to life; separated them from general society; substituted a sectarian in place of a catholic spirit; and, by alienating them from the national church, weakened the strongest cement of social order, and loosened the ties whereby men are bound to their native land."-Vol. ii, p. 304. The above is a specimen of Southey's facts and philosophy. The history of Methodism demonstrates the falsity of every assertion in the

extract.

Rightly understood, the enthusiasm and fanatical zeal, which Mr. Southey thinks he discovers in Mr. Wesley, will, in the estimation of the evangelical portion of his readers, reflect honor upon him rather than reproach. He more fully than the great body, even of professing Christians, believed and practiced as the gospel requires. He was a realization of what the poet Young wished to describe,

"A man on earth devoted to the skies."

No doubt many of Southey's statements have produced on the public mind a different impression from what he expected. "In many cases," says his American editor, "where it was the evident purpose of the biographer to exhibit his subject in an unfavorable light, his statements of the facts upon which his judgment was based are equivalent to the highest praise. A changed state of public opinion, unanticipated by Mr. Southey-changed, probably, in no small degree, by causes which he saw dimly, but did not understand has transformed his sarcasms and satires into substantial panegyrics."-Preface, p. 6.

The inuendoes, the baseless and wicked insinuations, which abound in Southey, are altogether unworthy the man. At times he writes in a spirit of independence, when his judgment, unwarped by party influence and sectarian prejudice, seems to have full play; but he soon falls back again into his former mode, and writes with a hollow heart, and a disregard for truth, of the things which he

knows not. "Zeal," he says, "was the only qualification" which Mr. Wesley required in his preachers.-Vol. i, p. 397. And yet, on the next page, he says Mr. Wesley strongly impressed upon their minds the necessity of reading to improve themselves: and that he repelled the charge of ignorance.

But it were altogether useless to follow Southey in his contradictory statements, in his strange inconsistencies, in his philosophical notions of Christianity, in his comments and predictions: it would be only traveling in a circle. So far as Mr. Wesley is concerned, notwithstanding the acknowledgment of his greatness, goodness, and usefulness, you start with Southey at enthusiasm, and come round to ambition; starting at ambition, you come out at enthusiasm. It is with him, as with the traveling lady, who, apprehensive that she might forget some of her baggage, ever and anon, through the whole of her journey, to the amusement and annoyance of her fellow-travelers, repeated, "Great trunk, little trunk, bundle, and band-box!"

With Mr. Southey, as Macauley pertinently remarks, "what he calls his opinions, are, in fact, merely his tastes." And though, in the style of its composition, his Life of Wesley is the best and most popular that has ever been written, the influence of his "tastes," on a certain class of readers, must make it the worst. His sneers at the " disease," the "fits," the "zeal," the "enthusiasm," of Methodism, are directly aimed at vital Christianity, under whatever name it may exist. In the hands of many, these volumes will only foster that irreverence for Christianity, which, alas too frequently lurks in the depraved human heart. "O, dear and honored Southey!" exclaims his brother-in-law, Coleridge, "this book is unsafe for all of unsettled minds. How many admirable young men do I know, or have seen, whose minds would be a shuttlecock between the battledores, which the bi-partite author keeps in motion! The same facts and incidents as those recorded in Scripture, and told in the same words-and the workers, alas in the next page, these are enthusiasts, fanatics; but could this have been avoided, salva veritate? Answer. The manner, the way, might have been avoided."

It is contended, in vindication of Southey, that the errors and misstatements in his Life of Wesley were undesigned. This may be; though from their character, and the "manner," and the "way," as Coleridge says, in which he expresses himself, we should hardly conceive it, in all cases, to be possible. But admit it-the admission may be of service to the author's heart, but it is a sorry conclusion for his head. He had, says a writer previously

quoted, "two faculties which were never, we believe, vouchsafed in measure so copious to any human being; the faculty of believing without a reason, and the faculty of hating without a provocation."

This "Life" was thoroughly reviewed by the late Richard Watson. His "Observations," formerly published at the Book Room, New-York, are a valuable addition to Methodist literature, and fully vindicate Mr. Wesley and Methodism from the charges. brought against them by Mr. Southey. The logical and acute mind of the reviewer, well versed, too, in the history and peculiarities of Methodism, enabled him to correct the errors of his author; and at times he puts on the lash so well and deservedly, that even Southey, though "he might not apprehend an argument," could not help feeling the string.

Mr. Southey saw and acknowledged the errors, some of them at least, of his Life of Wesley; and, before he was disabled by paralysis, was preparing a third edition, in which he designed to correct all that had been pointed out by others, or discovered by himself. This he did not do, however; and after his death, the work came out under the auspices of his son, C. C. Southey, curate of Cockermouth. That Mr. Southey's views respecting Mr. Wesley were greatly modified, is evident from his own acknowledgment. In 1835 he addressed a letter to James Nicholls, Esq., of London, as follows:

"KENRICK, Aug. 17, 1835.

"DEAR SIR,-I am much obliged to you for your kind offer to lend me such books as may render my Life of Wesley less incomplete.

"The edition of his Works, (1809-13,) in seventeen volumes, I have. I will, therefore, only trouble you for those volumes that contain Mr. Benson's Life, and the additional letters; and also for Beal's Early History of the Wesleys, which I had never before heard of.

"Adam Clarke's Memoirs of the Family, I have, and mean to make use of it. Indeed, if you tell me, when you have inspected his additional matter, that his second volume will, in your opinion, be worth waiting for, I shall much rather wait for it, than lose the opportunity of making my new edition as correct as I can.

"My intention is to incorporate in it whatever new information has been brought forward by subsequent biographers, and, of course, to correct every error that has been pointed out, or that I myself can discover. Mr. Alexander Knox has convinced me that I was mistaken in supposing that ambition entered largely into

Mr. Wesley's actuating impulses. Upon this subject, he wrote me a long and most admirable paper, and gave me permission to affix it to my own work, whenever it might be reprinted. This I shall do, and make such alterations in the book as are required in consequence. The Wesleyan leaders never committed a greater mistake than when they treated me as an enemy."

The next year after this letter was written, Mr. Southey was at Penzance, when he was introduced to Joseph Carne, Esq., F.R.S., who accompanied him to some interesting objects in that place and vicinity.

"In walking through Chapel-street," says Mr. C., "we passed a large place of worship, and on my informing him, in answer to his inquiry, that it was the Wesleyan chapel, (I believe he knew I was a Wesleyan,) he observed, "The Wesleyans, I believe, are numerous in Cornwall.' I merely answered in the affirmative; and he continued, 'I am about to publish a new edition of my Life of Wesley. Some time after the first edition was published, I met with two copies in which the persons to whom they belonged had written remarks. One of these persons was Coleridge, the other was Henry Moore; two very dissimilar characters,' he said, smiling, and I have made some use of the remarks of both. I had also,' he added, 'a long correspondence with Alexander Knox, who labored to convince me that I had formed a wrong estimate of Mr. Wesley's character, in supposing him to have been actuated by ambitious motives; and I now believe that he was right, and in my new edition I shall acknowledge it."

Now after this frank acknowledgment on the part of Mr. Southey, how is it that C. C. Southey, in the edition which his father was making preparation to publish, says nothing respecting it? Was Mr. Southey, the younger, apprehensive that the reputation of his father would be injuriously affected by these concessions? Had his church prejudices anything to do with the suppression of what justice to the injured dead, and a large Christian communion, demanded should be made known?

But this is not all. Mr. C. C. Southey, in his Preface, speaks of a few alterations and insertions made by his father, as was his custom in his own copy of his works, of the new features he had added to it, and then leaves the reader to infer that no change in the opinion of his father respecting Mr. Wesley had taken place! This is not the most reputable in the editor; and, to say nothing of the subjects of the work, it is an act of injustice to the author himself.

The recent edition of Southey's Life of Wesley, published by