upon them, in the hotter scenes of the discursive conflict. With the exception, perhaps, of two brief sallies, it would be difficult to point out any passage which the bishop that was to be might not have written in his future lawn sleeves, with the mitre on his head, and the crosier at his elbow. In the "Letters on Infidelity," the author literally exemplified those features in the character of the Christian gentleman, scholar, and divine, which are described in the first seven couplets of the last clause of the quotation from Cowper in a former page.

Mr. Horne's greatest and best work was commenced in 1758, and continued through twenty succeeding years, as he found time, strength, and encouragement to pursue it, amidst his numerous and anxious occupations. The idea of composing an evangelical Commentary on the Psalms was avowedly suggested to him by an expository Sermon on the Nineteenth Psalm, which his friend, the Rev. George Watson, had formerly preached before the university, and published soon afterwards. That he caught the mantle of his precursor, with a double portion of his spirit, the writer of this essay has personal experience to believe. When perusing, in regular series, our author's diversified work, after travelling and toiling with him through the difficulties of the Eighteenth Psalm, (one of the most elaborate and splendid of

the whole,) in which the commentator had to fight his way, by means of all his learning, ingenuity, and fervour of devotion, to make the refractory materials yield to his peculiar purpose of interpretation, no sooner had the reader entered upon the nineteenth Psalm, than he seemed to have come under a benigner influence, to breathe a freer air, and see in a clearer element of light than before. The writer himself was at home in every verse; and though his expositions were as bold and imaginative as in his most exalted flights of prophetic anticipation of gospel-facts, gospel-doctrines, and gospel-blessings, he manifestly made better way, and more persuasively impressed his sentiments upon the understanding and the conscience, till neither the one nor the other could help yielding implicit consent to the whole argument, aided as it was by the conviction, that the writer himself believed he was speaking nothing but the words of truth and soberness,' though with the tongue of men and of angels.' But, till he arrived at the end, and was directed to the foot-note, the reader was little aware under what peculiar inspiration the notes on that fine Psalm had been composed. Here, as if conscious that he had gone beyond himself in felicity of execution, the author most gracefully, gratefully, and cordially states, in extenuation of his own surpassing merit, that, "if the reader shall have received any pleasure from pe

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rusing the comment on the foregoing Psalm, est cially the first part of it, he is to be informed, th.. he stands indebted, on that account, to a discourse entitled, "Christ the Light of the World," by the late Rev. George Watson, for many years the dear companion and kind director of the author's studies; in attending to whose agreeable and instructive conversation, he has often passed whole days together, and shall always have reason to number them among the best spent days of his life; whose death he can never think of without lamenting it afresh; and to whose memory he embraces with pleasure this opportunity to pay the tribute of a grateful heart." This is one of the most beautiful memorials in existence of an earthly friendship, long ere now (we humbly hope) consummated in heaven, and leaving a blessing behind it for the generation to come, wherever the words of the Commentary to which it is appended, like those of the Psalm itself, shall go forth to the ends of the world, and their line throughout all the earth.'

Though this may have been the quickening impulse to a mind prepared, and (if we may borrow a phrase from husbandry) tilled and cropped to receive it, the author himself might have found it impossible to trace the origin of his plan to the first hour, the first circumstance, and the first form, in which it commenced actual being in his own thought. The happy conception, and the gradual

-evelopement within himself till the hour of travail Jh the actual production of any work of genius especially of consecrated genius, which, adding to the intellectual riches of the author's own language, adds to the means of happiness to the whole human race is as if a man should cast seed into the ground; and should sleep and rise, night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how.' Mark, iv. 26, 27.

Considering the amenity of his temper, the copiousness of his imagination, the elegance of his style, and the fervour of his piety, it may appear remarkable that Mr. Horne did not devote himself more to poetry, (which had been the delight, not less than music, of his youth,) in which all those amiable qualities and shining accomplishments might have been advantageously exhibited, and have left imperishable memorials of what he was, in that form of literature, which, after all the disparagement cast upon it by "the economists and calculators" of our phlegmatic age, is the most enduring. But it may be questioned, whether he would ever have attained, in the divinest of human arts, a pre-eminence proportionate to that which he reached in prose. Certainly, it may be affirmed, that no versification of the Psalms-of all schemes the most likely to have tempted him to forego his Commentary for the purpose of accomplishing, would have so made its way, and maintained its

ground as that work, which it might thus have superseded, has done; containing, as the latter does, all the beauties of imagery and graces of diction which he could have interwoven in a metrical vehicle of the Songs of Zion, but has more freely and felicitously blended with prose, which, from its familiar construction, is necessarily more perspicuous and intelligible to general readers.

There has not been a decidedly successful versification of the Psalms in our tongue, though in every age since the Reformation, by poets too of every order, from Sternhold to Milton, attempts have been made to turn portions of them into popular metre. The difficulty and the desirableness of the work are thus so plainly manifested, that, were not the latter a continual and irrepressible excitement to renew the trial, the former would be a perpetual and insurmountable discouragement. It may be presumed, therefore, that none of our countrymen have yet caught the right key in following these strains of inspiration, since there must be within the compass of the English language a style so powerful, harmonious, and flexible, as to accompany, with corresponding expression, every tone of the Hebrew lyre through all its hitherto inimitable modulations. Milton, Young, and Cowper have respectively shown, that the mightiest, the most eccentric, and the most sensitive minds can each, in diction of its own, and diction worthy