life the pursuit of studies insuring content and reputation, and the society of friends, many of them the most distinguished men of the age.
His correspondence with Lord Charlemont commenced about this busy political period. Yet amid great national excitement (in Ireland) their subjects were almost exclusively literary. Politics gave way to books, war to criticism, heroes to writers. While volunteer armies, American reverses, and threatened French invasions, had nearly withdrawn the native country of these philosophers from her allegiance to England, they—one of them soon afterward a conspicuous actor in the scene—scarcely permitted the heats of the time to be distinguished in their letters. At length the Commoner found courage to disclose to the Peer that his criticisms, disquisitions, and letters were likely to become books;—their subject, Shakspeare.
Little connected as the subjects may seem, frequent explorations of black-letter law—fond as he was of going to the basis of all things—led him onward to the taste for its poetry and dramatic literature. “The love of things ancient,” says Bacon, “doth argue stayedness;” and between a staid lawyer and staid critic, both being devoted to the balance of evidence, there is perhaps less difference than at first view may appear. On previous visits to London, Johnson and Steevens’ Shakspeare was full in the current of popular favour. No subject was more likely to attract a young man of literary predilections; while occasional personal glances obtained at the master-critic himself tended to confirm his reverence. The topic was open
