OF MEN OF LETTERS AND SCIENCE, WHO FLOURISHED IN THE TIME OF GEORGE III. BY Peter Brougham HENRY, LORD BROUGHAM, F.R.S., MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF PPANCE, AND OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF NAPLES. WITH PORTRAITS, ENGRAVED ON STEEL. LONDON: CHARLES KNIGHT AND CO., 22, LUDGATE STREET. 1845. ONE OF THE JUDGES OF THE COURT OF KING'S BENCH, THIS WORK IS INSCRIBED, AS A SMALL MEMORIAL OF ANCIENT FRIENDSHIP. PREFACE. THE reign of George III. may in some important respects be justly regarded as the Augustan age of modern history. The greatest statesmen, the most consummate captains, the most finished orators, the first historians, all flourished during this period. For excellence in these departments it was unsurpassed in former times, nor had it even any rivals, if we except the warriors of Louis XIV.'s day, one or two statesmen, and Bolingbroke and Massillon as orators. But its glories were not confined to those great departments of human genius. Though it could show no poet like Dante, Milton, Tasso, or Dryden; no dramatist like Shakspeare or Corneille; no philosopher to equal Bacon, Newton, or Locke,-it nevertheless in some branches, and these not the least important of natural science, very far surpassed the achievements of former days, while of political science, the most important of all, it first laid the foundations, and then reared the superstructure. The science of chemistry almost entirely, of political economy entirely, were the growth |