justice to the living; and it is with this view that we transcribe the following very pertinent and memorable observations on some very intemperate expressions attributed (but we hope without foundation) to the late Professor Carlyle, and on the use which the Edinburgh Reviewers so artfully make of them. "I know not whether you will be surprised" says his lordship, addressing the latter, "if the first additional proof of this fact, which I give from the volume, is that very statement of Mr. Carlyle, which you are under the necessity of suppressing;' a necessity which I cannot deny, if your determination was at all events to fix this detestable imputation on my character. Let me premise, that Mr. Carlyle appears to be a prejudiced witness. I was aware that the object of his eastern journey had not been attained; and that, however unreasonably and unjustly, he visited his disappointment on me, But, till I read Mr. Losh's letters, I certainly had no idea of the extent of his animosity; indeed, I am possessed of letters from himself, expressive of sentiments so opposite, that I am almost tempted to suspect some inaccuracy in Mr. Losh's recollection of his conversations with him. In the direct proportion, however, of Mr. Carlyle's hostility, he is to be believed, when he expresses any opinion, or states any fact, favourable to my vindication. What then are Mr. Carlyle's words? Mr. Losh describes him as saying, that he thought his lordship would not take the property in question, because he did not see how he could convert it into money.' All that is material in this statement is, that he thought I would not take the property in question. This is the deliberate opinion of an enemy. The ground of that opinion gives me no uneasiness. Those who know my character, and especially those who know that I have seriously impaired my fortune in pursuits, which, from their very nature, could have no object of private advantage, will reject, as I do, with utter scorn, the insinuation put into the mouth of Mr. Carlyle. It is only necessary to add, that Mr. Carlyle expressly states, that he had scen packed such of Mr. Tweddell's papers as Lord Elgin thought proper;' a statement which corroborates his opinion, that I did not take the property in question,' especially when it is considered that, as the friend of Mr. Tweddell's family, the particular charge of these effects was entrusted to himself." We have already expressed our firm persuasion, that the Reverend Gentleman who made this most important written declaration on the spot, knew more of the property in question than he thought proper, on his return to England, to avowmore, at least, than Mr. Tweddell's friends have found it convenient to remember. The recollections of Mr. Losh cannot, it is evident, be quite correct; or if they are, the statements of the Professor must have been incorrect; for, as we have already observed, he certainly did know something of the transmission of one part of the property (the costumes); and knowing this, it will be difficult to believe that he could not, and did not, assign to some of the friends or relations of the deceased, reasons why the other part was not sent with it; if indeed (as is far from improbable) it had not been sent before. The history of those costumes which Lord Elgin gives is the same in substance as that which we extracted from one of the newspapers; but his lordship adds this remarkable information with respect to the gentleman, in whose possession Mr. Robert Tweddell states them to be. "Aware that there was but one gentleman to whom his statement could possibly apply, I addressed myself to him for explanation, and I have his authority for declaring, that, upon Mr. R. Taeddell's applicalion to him, wishing to know if he knew any thing of his brother's papers, &c. he transmitted the copies of these costumes, which are at this moment in Mr. R. Tweddell's possession.” With the respectable person thus alluded to, Lord Elgin, in another part of his Postscript, observes, that "it is material to "notice that circumstances, in which the public is not interest"ed, have interrupted the intercourse between them since "1806." That gentleman, it should be recollected, once stood in the relation of father-in-law to his lordship; but the circumstances that dissolved this connexion have amply accounted for a silence, at which on our first view of the subject we could not but express some little surprize. We wish that Mr. Tweddell may be able to offer an equally satisfactory explanation of the gross misrepresentation of which he appears to have been guilty, on a point on which he himself was fully informed, and of which he ought therefore as fully to have informed, not only the public, when he appealed to them, but Lord Elgin himself, before he made such an appeal. It would have been well, too, had he taken a little more pains to ascertain the truth of the report, "that a certain learned traveller deceased, and his "reverend friend and companion, on a journey to Mount "Athos, took with them a part of Mr. Tweddell's Grecian "Journal:" for we are now informed, and have smiled at the information, that the reverend friend, of whom Mr. R. Tweddell speaks, is no other than one of the Under Secretaries of State; who, far from taking such a journal with him from Lord Elgin's palace at Constantinople, merely saw, while at Athens, in the year 1802, a book, "which purported to be "either a copy or original of one of Mr. J. Tweddell's manu"scripts," though he "cannot recollect from whom he had "this book, nor any other circumstance connected with it." (p. 28.) Coupling this fact with that of "the topographical "sketch of Attica given in Mr. Tweddell's book, having been "obtained by Dr. Clarke from Mr. Tweddell's Greek servant," (p. 207.) we are inclined to attach much more importance to the confused recollection" of some depredations having been committed on the property, previously to its being sent from Athens, than we formerly did, from the manner in which it was stated to Mr. R. Tweddell by Dr. Hunt, who now speaks for himself, and to whose Narrative we shall pay suitable attention in our next number, Before we quit the subject, there is one part of this Postscript to which we must direct the reader's particular attention, as we conceive it to contain a complete solution of every difficulty that has hitherto perplexed a subject, rendered intricate by the lapse of time, and the chagrin, or the death of those who could have thrown sufficient light upon it. The passage to which we allude, is that where Lord Elgin, in reference to the instructions sent out to him by Mr. Tweddell, sen., says, "What, then, were these instructions? Mir. Tweddell senior, after taking the best advice, dire. ts the property to be sent by a ship of war, rather than by a merchant-ship. Upon reading these instructions, it immediately struck me that I must have been mistaken when I supposed that the papers had been sent by the "Duncan," which was a merchantship. And upon tasking my memory to the uttermost, I have now a strong conviction and belief, that the packages for Mr. Tweddell were put on board the New Adventure, an armed transport, which was sent home in 1800 by General Kohler; in which also I shipped some very valuable effects of my own. The transport, I understand, was wrecked; and my effects, and, I believe, every thing else on board, were lost. "This impression was greatly strengthened in my mind, by the perusal of Dr. Hunt's two letters in Mr. Tweddell's Appendix. In the first, he says, positively, that he saw" the papers, &c. “put on board,” an English vessel at Constantinople; which he describes as a transport bound to London its name, he thinks, was the Lord Duncan. And again, in his second letter, he calls the vessel an English transport Now, the Lord Duncan was a merchant-ship. It appears, therefore, that Dr. Hunt was mistaken only with regard to the name of the vessel; not with regard to its description. His account, therefore, tallies exactly with the instructions of Mr. Tweddell senior, and the impression of my own mind. "This accounts, also, for the want of documentary evidence upon which 30 much stress is laid in your pleading against me; as well as for Messrs. Thornton and Smith's ignorance of the mode in which the effects were transmitted.” His lordship further informs us in a note, that he has "directed some inquiries to be made abroad with regard to the "fate of this vessel, which will probably lead to further in"formation." And should that information be such, as there is every reason to expect it will be, what an infinity of trouble might not Mr. Robert Tweddell have saved himself, had he laid all the evidence he has so carefully collected, in a proper manner, before Lord Elgin, instead of submitting it for the legal advice of Mr. Abraham Moore, and (we should hope without his advice,) to the ultimate decision of the public. What, too, must we think of the new theory of evidence attempted to be laid down by our learned brethren in the North, if, after all, it should turn out that "the alteration in Dr. Hunt's testimony, "which must be quite fatal to it," is nothing more than that at a distance of 14 years, he calls an armed merchantman a transport, and (oh, most culpable prevarication !) names it the Duncan instead of the New Adventure! We understand, however, that these gentlemen are again working upon the subject with all their might. Their learned lucubrations will in due time make their appearance, and we promise that when they do, the truth of their assertions, and the correctness of their conclusions, shall be examined, fact by fact, and point by point. In the mean time we would hint to them that Mr. Francis Tweddell, the eldest of the brothers, has, since the appearance of the Earl of Elgin's Letter, frankly and repeatedly declared in conversation, and distinctly disclaimed, in writing, having had any share whatever in the calumnies uttered against his lordship; and given an express assurance that both himself, and his father to the last hour of his life, were fully convinced that his brother's property had all been carefully put on board the ship Duncan: he acknowledges too the gratitude of most of his family for the Ambassador's uniform kindness to his deceased brother. As for Mr. R. Tweddell, we no longer censure him; through his imperfect knowledge of the world, he has suffered himself to be greatly misled, and appears at length, only as an object of compassion. "Whatever he hath said May reasonably die, and never rise ART. XI.-1. The Feast of the Poets, with Notes, and other Pieces in Verse. By LEIGH HUNT. London. Gale and Co. 1815. Pr. 6s. 2. The Descent of Liberty, a Masque. By LEIGH HUNT. London. Gale and Co. 1815. Pr. 6s. FROM ROM the fame of Mr. Hunt, acquired through the joint operation of genius and misfortune, and the interesting circumstances under which his works have been written, they have possesse earlier claims to notice, than we have hitherto had it in our power to grant. They are not of equal merit; but a considerable degree of talent, and an intimate acquaint: tee with the stores of English and Italian poetry, are obvious in each. And although our notions of criticism do not coincide with those of Mr. Hunt in every instance; although we should have returned a very different verdict in the cause of Warton versus Spenser, and are not absolutely staggered by the shock that he gives to our long-established opinions of Pope, Thomson, Collins, Gray, &c. yet we readily admit that he possesses not only a lively and powerful fancy, but a quick perception of metrical excellence. The Feast of the Poets," which we shall notice first, relates the celebration of a Gala given by the God of Song to some chosen guests. Crouds of his votaries present themselves and state their claims for admission; but are dismissed fasting, with so little ceremony, that we began at last to apprehend that his fastidious godship had determined to sup alone. He seems to have had pretty nearly as much difficulty in finding a poet upon British ground, even with the aid of his "bundle of rays," as Diogenes had in finding an honest man at Athens with the help of his lantern. Heaven forbid, however, that this land should ever exhibit, by any means, so many poets as it does honest men. How would the ordinary concerns of life be carried on by a population of visionary, sensitive beings, willing to obey no voice but that of inspiration ;-to own no laws but those of Criticism;-and to admit no supremacy but that of taste! Our prosaic notions shudder at the mere apprehension of a population of geniuses; and patriotically rejoice that poets, justly so called, are not so numerous as they think themselves. The bards on whom Apollo deigned to smile, were only four-Scott, Campbell, Moore, and Southey. Lord Byron is not mentioned by Mr. Hunt, probably because he did not like his Lordship's rank in society. The god points out, judiciously, as every body will suppose, both the beauties and the defects of the favoured few; and gives a decided preference to quality before quantity. It is on this ground that he retains Campbell and Moore for the evening. Scott's voluminous labours had not it seems rendered him quite unpropitious-a circumstance which induces us to think that he reads, as other kings generally do, by proxy. As for Southey, not one of his friends and imitators was permitted to stay, and he himself is warned against any thing like an imitation of the conduct of Wordsworth, to whom the following lines refer: "Apollo half laughed betwixt anger and mirth, |