The Quarterly Biographical Magazine has been commenced : we cannot
but approve the design, and we shall be glad to find the execution put us on a level with the French in similar publica- tions. In contemporary memoir, our neighbours show an industry, a taste, and an impartiality, which we shall in vain hope to rival by our obituaries and necrologies. The advantage which the "Ma- gazine" possesses over the Annual Obituary, a work dedicated to a similar object, is the smaller interval between the periods of publication, which brings the subject of the memoir before the world before it can be supposed to have lost its interest in their memories. The fault of the Obituary is the paucity of "lives," and the disproportion of the length to the importance of the indi- viduals. This has an eleemosynary look ; and we take the truth to be, that the long pieces are contributed by friends and eulo- gists, where the advantage of intimate knowledge scarcely com- pensates the grossness of the partiality, and the undue estimation of unimportant matters. The short pieces are probably the com- position of some one who is judiciously brief since he has nothing to say. Let the Quarterly Biography improve upon the model of its predecessor. The part before us requires the indulgence which is usually and justly bestowed upon a first number. Its origi- nality is not great, its industry is small, and its variety certainly of a corresponding degree. It is true that people will not die exactly in the order which best suits the wants of a necrologist ; still it would have been on all accounts desirable to keep out such a pre- ponderance of nonconformity : 1827 must have been a fatal year with the Dissenters, for their great men deceased occupy an equal space with all the other dead great men of all other faiths. Dr. .Tohn Joneso. Dr. Evans, and Antony Robinson, find a place in this number ; to say nothing of Dr. Mason Good, who was a layman, but scarcely orthodox. This is evidently but an accident, for the Editor is impartial enough ; and we ought to overlook it for the sake of the Memoir of Antony Robinson, which is conveyed from the pages of the Monthly Repository. If friends and rela- tives always wrote such memoirs as this, then would our excep- tion against their efforts be withdrawn with shame. The writer is evidently an admirer of his subject, but he has a far more ardent love of truth, and the distinctions he draws in describing the moral and intellectual peculiarities of his friend show a metaphy- sical perspicacity which in some men is equal to a scrupulous conscience. It is not easy for one who has a clear vision to conceal from himself the differences of things.
Added to the biographies, is a collection of facts and insulated
* Hunt and Clarke. Sm.
t We may remark, that the writer of the Doctor's life is grossly misinformed when he calls his answer to the IVestminster Beam, on the subject of his Lexicon, a triunzphant reply. pieces of information, which are clubbed together under the bar- barous title of Litterariana. We were not prepared for the obli- quity of taste and defiance of analogy which are required to coin such a word as this. At the end of a magazine devoted to biogra- phy, these miscellaneous facts are as much out of place as the title they bear is absurd. A more appropriate appendix would be, a brief record of all the individuals of note who had died in the course of the quarter either here or abroad, accompanied with letters, notes, and items of information concerning their lives or works. We see no connexion between a necrology and lists of books, intelligence of literary designs, and inventions and discoveries, all of which are contained in the appendix. It might be appropriate enough to add some account of all the biographical works that had appeared during the quarter ; and if any miscellany were added, it should be one of biographical facts that may have turned up relative to deceased individuals of eminence.
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