time of Junius and Wilkes—­and even if his understanding had gone along with more modern and unqualified principles, his cautious temper would have prevented his risking them in practice.  Horne Tooke (though not of the same side in politics) had much of the tone of mind and more of the spirit of moral feeling of the celebrated philosopher of Malmesbury.  The narrow scale and fine-drawn distinctions of his political creed made his conversation on such subjects infinitely amusing, particularly when contrasted with that of persons who dealt in the sounding common-places and sweeping clauses of abstract politics.  He knew all the cabals and jealousies and heart-burnings in the beginning of the late reign, the changes of administration and the springs of secret influence, the characters of the leading men, Wilkes, Barre, Dunning, Chatham, Burke, the Marquis of Rockingham, North, Shelburne, Fox, Pitt, and all the vacillating events of the American war:—­these formed a curious back-ground to the more prominent figures that occupied the present time, and Mr. Tooke worked out the minute details and touched in the evanescent traits with the pencil of a master.  His conversation resembled a political camera obscura—­as quaint as it was magical.  To some pompous pretenders he might seem to narrate fabellas aniles (old wives’ fables)—­but not to those who study human nature, and wish to know the materials of which it is composed.  Mr. Tooke’s faculties might appear to have ripened and acquired a finer flavour with age.  In a former period of his life he was hardly the man he was latterly; or else he had greater abilities to contend against.  He no where makes so poor a figure as in his controversy with Junius.  He has evidently the best of the argument, yet he makes nothing out of it.  He tells a long story about himself, without wit or point in it; and whines and whimpers like a school-boy under the rod of his master.  Junius, after bringing a hasty charge against him, has not a single fact to adduce in support of it; but keeps his ground and fairly beats his adversary out of the field by the mere force of style.  One would think that “Parson Horne” knew who Junius was, and was afraid of him.  “Under him his genius is” quite “rebuked.”  With the best cause to defend, he comes off more shabbily from the contest than any other person in the LETTERS, except Sir William Draper, who is the very hero of defeat.

The great thing which Mr. Horne Tooke has done, and which he has left behind him to posterity, is his work on Grammar, oddly enough entitled THE DIVERSIONS OF PURLEY.  Many people have taken it up as a description of a game—­others supposing it to be a novel.  It is, in truth, one of the few philosophical works on Grammar that were ever written.  The essence of it (and, indeed, almost all that is really valuable in it) is contained in his Letter to Dunning, published about the year 1775.  Mr. Tooke’s work is truly elementary.  Dr. Lowth described