A miscellaneous writer, was born 30th November, 1762. He studied at Queen’s College, Cambridge, and adopted the profession of law. In 1790 he persuaded his elder brother that their family were the heirs to the barony of Chandos, being descended from a younger branch of the Brydges who first held the title. The case was tried and lost, but Brydges never gave up his claim, and used to sign himself Perlegem terræ B. C. of S. (i. e., Baron Chandos of Sudeley). It has been said that he underwent the labor of re-editing Collins’s Peerage, for the sole purpose of inserting a statement about his supposed right. In 1814 he was made a baronet and in 1818 he left England. He died at Geneva in 1837. Sir Egerton was a most prolific author; he is said to have written 2,000 sonnets in one year. His first volume of poems was published in 1785; of his other numerous works including novels, political pamphlets, and bibliographies, perhaps the most important are “Censura Literaria,” 10 vols. 1805–9, and “Autobiography, Times, Opinions, and Contemporaries of Sir S. E. Brydges,” 1834.

Personal

  I aim to strengthen the hopes of younger minds against the fear of the approaches of old age, by assuring them, with the utmost sincerity, that in the midst of privations, neglects, calumnies, and tremendous injuries, I have the conviction that life is altogether joyous to me,—perhaps more satisfactory and even delightful than in the effervescence of youth and strength of mature manhood. My eye is as delighted with the grandeur and variety of inanimate nature, and my heart is as open to all the virtues and friendships of human society. I boast that I am not deficient in the magnanimity of moral courage. I have calmly stood tremendous shocks, from which they who have faced without trembling the onset of the most furious battle would have shrunk; and I have passed, by the aid of an unswerving spirit, over pits and mines which would have subdued the hearts of the stoutest warriors. Of the little passions which tormented me in my junior days, in common with the multitude, I have overcome the greater part. I believe that I am mild, well-wishing, still warm and energetic, with a glowing imagination and a trembling heart; not unenlarged in my views of society and human nature; ready to be pleased; melting to kindness; visionary as a child, yet not unskilled in life; more ductile than becomes my years; more solitary than is consistent with worldly wisdom.

General

  We have read this work [“Autobiography”] with feelings of considerable pain. It presents to us an elaborate picture of a species of literary character, that may be expected to appear, at times, in that heated and high-wrought civilisation, to which the world has attained;—a character that has all the acute sensibilities of poetical genius, without its energy and its power—its irritable temper—its wayward self-engrossment—its early relinquishment of the common pleasures of life, for one feverish and jealous object. This is often a painful picture, even when, as in the case of Byron or Rousseau, it is gilded with all the glory of success, placed in the long gallery of fame, and destined to become immortal. But how much deeper is the pain with which we gaze on these melancholy colours, when we feel them fading as we gaze; or when we know that in a little while the picture will be thrown aside, amidst the lumber of the age, to perish and be forgotten.

  Do you know anything of poor Sir Egerton Brydges?—this, in talking of sonnets—poor fellow, he wrote them for seventy years, fully convinced of their goodness, and only lamenting that the public were unjust and stupid enough not to admire them also. He lived in haughty seclusion, and at the end of life wrote a doting Autobiography. He writes good prose however, and shews himself as he is very candidly: indeed he is proud of the display.

  To no author of the present century is English Literature more deeply indebted than to Sir Egerton Brydges, and in no one can be found finer passages of just thought, genial and tasteful criticism, pure and ennobling sentiment, and beautiful and eloquent writing…. Indeed, I know of no one who has written so much himself, and who, at the same time, has done so much to bring forward the writings of others—to bring out the hidden, to revive the forgotten—and to honor the neglected, but true genius. We are most deeply indebted to him, too, for his labors of love upon our great Epic; for no critic, not excepting Addison himself, has had a more just appreciation of the genius of Milton, or has criticised him with truer taste or sounder judgment.

  The name of this literary veteran is especially sweet to the ear of the bibliophile, not from the number of books he has written, but the small number he has printed,—not from the productions of his own intellect, but rather the “restitution” he has afforded to those of others, by his critical notices or his elegant reprints. Many of these were fifty years ago, black swans of the book-hunter…. He was always ready to swim with the stream of popular taste. During the rage for poetry, from the time of Cowper to Byron, he courted the Muses with toil and ardour; when Minerva-press novels were the rage, Sir Egerton was ready with a whole shelf-ful of sentimental fictions; when Charlotte Smith and W. L. Bowles had made the “sonnet” fashionable, our poet cultivated this form of poetic composition; and when Lord Byron died, our aspirant was soon ready with a bulky volume of “Letters on the Character and Poetical Genius” of the lamented bard, of which Moore says that “they contain many just and striking views.” Among other causes of failure were haste and want of concentration…. Like Rousseau, he seems to have believed that all the world was in a conspiracy against him, and that just as the Lords had debarred his access to the House of Peers, the critics were striving to exclude him from the Temple of the Muses.

  This sonnet [“On Echo and Silence”] like those of Bowles, owes much of its reputation to the warm praise it received from certain eminent contemporaries of its author, including Wordsworth and Coleridge. It has, of course, genuine merit, though this is not one of those instances where we are likely to be induced to consider the Alexandrine at the close an unexpected charm (an Alexandrine also ends the octavo). The somewhat pompous author never, however, wrote anything better, though that he had some faculty for his art will be evident to anyone who glances through his “Poems” (1807).