and Index for Richardson's Arabic Grammar, in which the words are explained according to the parts of speech, and the Derivatives are traced to their Originals in the Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac Languages. With Tables of Oriental Alphabets, Points and Affixes. By James Noble, Teacher of Languages in Edinburgh.

N. P. By means of an Alphabetical Hebrew List given at the end, and which contains almost every Hebrew Root that Occurs in the Old Testament Scriptures; this work will be found useful, in serving at the same time as a Vocabulary of the Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac Languages.

An Inquiry respecting the language, the Books, and the Divine Origin of the New Testament. By the Rev. Dr. John Cook, Professor of Divinity in St. Mary's College, St. Andrew's.

The Theological Lectures of the late Principal Hill of St. Andrew's, are in considerable forwardness.

EDINBURGH

MONTHLY REVIEW.

SEPTEMBER, 1820.

ART. I.-Memoirs of Granville Sharp, Esq. composed from his own Manuscripts, and other Authentic Documents in the pos session of his Family and of the African Institution. By PRINCE HOARE. With Observations on Mr. Sharp's Biblical Criticisms. By the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of St. David's. London, Colburn & Co. 1820. Pp. 589. 4to.

But

Ir nothing more were requisite in order to produce a good book, than kindly and honourable feeling, the volume before us would claim a distinguished place in our literary records. But alas! it is possible to be very good and very dull-nor can the most dogged conviction, that an author is entitled to our respect, prevent at all times a portentous yawn. Mr. Hoare is very zealous for the reputation of his departed friend, and exerts himself most honestly and most laboriously in the cause. he has fallen upon some unhappy means of banishing interest from his work, rather more completely than we had supposed that the subject would permit. One branch of this unlucky secret lies in the very sparing use which he has made of Mr. Sharp's own Memoranda, and of the anecdotes with which his long and intimate acquaintance with the family might surely have furnished him. We see very little indeed of Mr. Sharp's do mestic habits. Hints are given, from which we may collect that there, as elsewhere, he was disinterested, active, and kind. But they are mere hints. In the whole of this ponderous quarto, there are not fifty pages which might not have been grounded on the information to be found in the newspapers and regis ters of the day. One cause of this meagreness, though by no means an excuse for it, if Mr. Hoare was (as we suppose he must have been) the adviser of the arrangement, probably is, that after the unwieldy bulk of the present volume, we are threatened with a "Separate Publication," grounded on Mr. Sharp's "Cor

respondence." We can hardly conjecture any thing from which Mr. Sharp himself would have shrunk more sensitively than the obtruding of two such volumes on those to whom his name is deservedly dear. Another and still more effectual antidote to interest, is found in the very principle on which Mr. Hoare has framed the narrative of that part of Mr. Sharp's life which he chuses to describe. Granting that he were right in his choice-granting that the materials were too scanty for delineating the private life of Mr. Sharp more fully-and that, in the case of a man so much known and valued for his public acts, it was right to confine our attention to these almost exclusively, there were, we think, two different lines, in one or other of which the biographer might have been expected to move. Either he might have given a historical detail of those great events in which the subject of his work bore a prominent part, interrupting the narrative from time to time, in order to mark distinctly what that part had been-or else, assuming that his readers were already acquainted with the historical detail, he might have given sketches only of what was peculiar to the subject of his work. He might either have drawn the full historical picture, where, though the principal lights are gathered around the hero, each part is finished in just gradation-or he might have contented himself with the mere study, where the principal figure alone is coloured, and all the rest remains in shadowy outline. Mr. Hoare has thought proper to do both. In regard to the Abolition of the Slave Trade, for example, of which every one is already familiar with the history-of which the details have already been given with a copiousness which might have contented the most zealous, in Mr. Clarkson's very amiable but very ponderous volumes, Mr. Hoare still adheres to his favourite arrangement. First, he gives us three chapters of general narrative; and then, after curiosity has been even cloyed with facts, and all interest as to the mere history utterly quenched, he introduces two chapters more on the part which Mr. Sharp had taken in the same transactions. Of these it is of course needful, in a great measure, to resume the detail, which becomes abundantly vapid in the course of the process. The same arrangement is followed in regard to the Sierra Leone establishment. In this instance, it is still more conspicuously useless; because Mr. Sharp was the very life and soul of the whole bu siness; and it is impossible to relate the particular part which he took in it, without telling the whole history over again. His difficulties and dangers-his hopes and his fears, have all exceedingly little interest for a reader who has been already, in

the preceding chapters, set at ease in regard to the result of them all.

Granville Sharp had hereditary motives to exertion in the cause of benevolence and piety. His family were, for several generations, distinguished by their worth. His grandfather, the Archbishop of York, had, both by precept and example, trained his children to usefulness. "Thomas, his youngest son, and father of the subject of the present memoirs, was made Archdeacon of Northumberland in 1722. No less distinguished than the Archbishop had been, for integrity, piety, and a conscientious discharge of his duty, he was indefatigable in making himself acquainted with every clergyman in his province, and with the circumstances of their respective cures; so that not a curate nor a schoolmaster was appointed without his sanction. All petitions, all cases of difficulty, every particular relative to church duties, or parochial affairs, were referred to him, and never failed to receive an immediate and most scrupulous attention. As a mediator and peace-maker, he was consulted alike by the rich and poor. His charities were extensive and useful. My father,' says Granville (in a letter to a friend in 1793,) was rector of an extensive parish, Rothbury, in the county of Northumberland, and retained, at his own expense, five, if not more, different schools in the villages, at convenient distances, for the instruction of poor children whose parents could not afford to send them to school. The children in all these schools were taught writing and arithmetic, as well as reading; so that, in a long course of years, there were few to be found in the parish who could not write, if not retain also some knowledge of figures: and no people could be more remarkable for industrious exertion in the most humble labour, and at the same time for modesty and good behaviour, than the parishioners of Rothbury in general. The children of Roman Catholics, and of all other sects, were equally admitted to the benefit of the schools; and very strict care was taken not to give any offence to them, or their parents, about the difference of religious opinions." He left five sons and three daughters, all of whom, from the glimpses which Mr. Hoare allows us to get of them, appear to have been very

amiable.

Granville, the youngest of the sons, was born at Durham, 10th November, 1785. "It was his father's intention to place him in trade. With a view to this destination, he was, at a very early age, withdrawn from the public grammar-school at Durham, before he had gained more than the first rudiments of the learned languages, and was sent to a smaller school, to be instructed more particularly in writing and arithmetic. In the spring of the year 1750, he left Durham, and in May was bound an apprentice, in London, to a linen-draper of the name of Halsey, a Quaker, on Great Tower Hill."-" After I had served,' says he, in a letter to Dr. Fothergill, about three years of my apprenticeship, my master the Quaker died, and I was turned over to a Presbyterian, or rather, as he was more properly called, an Independent. I afterwards lived some time with an Irish Papist, and also with another person, who, I believe, had no religion at all.' This short history of himself, he adds, may serve to remove any suspicion of his being influenced by prejudice of education against any particular sect;' and he grounds on it a rule of conduct which cannot be too warmly recommended to our notice. This extraor

dinary experience,' he says, has taught me to make a proper distinction between the OPINIONS of men and their PERSONS. The former I can freely condemn, without presuming to judge the individuals themselves. Thus freedom of argument is preserved, as well as Christian charity, leaving personal judgment to Him to whom alone it belongs."

"In this period, he made his first advances in learning. A series of controversies with an inmate of his master's house, who happened to be a Socinian, first excited him to the study of the Greek tongue. They disputed concerning the Trinity, and the Atonement of Christ; and on those topics the Socinian declared, that Granville was mistaken in the opinions which he uttered, and that his misconception arose from his want of acquaintance with the Greek language," in which," he asserted, "the subjects of their dispute did not suffer the interpretation which he put on them; and he therefore referred him to the New Testament in its original text.'

"He learned Hebrew nearly at the same time, and from a cause exactly similar. A Jew, who appears to have resided also in his master's house, frequently contested with him the truths of the Christian religion; and, when hard pressed by his earnest reasonings, constantly declared that he misinterpreted the prophecies, from ignorance of the language in which they were written; referring him to the Hebrew Bible, in the same manner as the Socinian had done to the Greek Testament. To be ignorant of the truth, was, to his ardent mind, a source of inexpressible pain; to neglect the means of acquiring a knowledge of it, insupportable disgrace. The diligence of his inquiries kept pace with the acuteness of his feelings.”

"The reasons that induced him to abandon the track of business in which he had been twice engaged, are now unknown. The death of his father, however, left his choice at liberty; and, in June 1758, he obtained a subordinate appointment in the Ordnance Office. From that date to the year 1764, there are few notices concerning the employment of his time his office necessarily engaged the greatest portion of it;-but it is certain that in this interval he completed those acquisitions in the sacred languages, which enabled him afterwards to maintain the extraordinary part that he assumed in society. His hours of study were snatched from sleep; and some hints of the eagerness with which he pursued his researches are found in his letters."

About this time, an incident first directed his notice to a subject which almost engrossed his future life-African Slavery. "The professional arrangements of Mr. William Sharp, (his brother, an eminent surgeon) whose house was open every morning for the gratuitous relief of the poor, were the first means of bringing Strong to the knowledge of either brother. Pain and disease, the consequence of severe blows and hardships, led the miserable sufferer to seek the aid of medical attendance; and it was on one of his morning visits to the surgery in Mincing Lane, that he was met by Granville, as he approached the door of the house, ready to faint through extreme weakness. On inquiry, it was found that he had been a slave of Mr. David Lisle, a lawyer of Barbadoes, whose barbarous treatment had by degrees reduced him to a state of uselessness, and whose brutal heart had then turned him adrift in the streets. This happened in 1765. By the united care of the two brothers, into whose hands Strong had providentially fallen, he was restored to health, and placed in the service of a respectable apothecary (Mr. Brown) in Fenchurch Street. In that comfortable situation he remained for two years, when, as he was one day attending his mistress behind a hackney coach, he was seen, and quickly recognized by the lawyer to whom he had been a slave; and who, conceiving, from his appearance and active employment, that he must have re