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STUDIES OF A BIOGRAPHER

question with the great Dugald Stewart; and by twenty publishing a confutation of Darwin (Erasmus, not Charles). Such a youth was made to be an Edinburgh Reviewer. Brown was an exceedingly able man, and might have made a greater mark but for an unfortunate impression that he could eclipse Pope's poetry as well as Kant's philosophy. The second number of the Review contains his judgment of Kant. I dare say that it may be as good as some more ponderous lucubrations on the same theme. Anyhow, it shows that happy audacity which makes a modern critic's mouth water. Nobody is now allowed to touch upon Kant without swallowing a preliminary library. In those happier days the critic did not even profess to have read the original. An amiable and excellent Frenchman, Charles Villers, had been driven to Göttingen by the French Revolution. There he had fallen in love with the country and its philosophy, and had published a 'luminous analysis' of Kant in 1801 for the benefit of Frenchmen. This account was quite enough for Brown, who was thus enabled to put Kant in his proper place with the infallible judgment of a reviewer of those pleasant days. A contemporary account of