Immediately on the death of Howard, there appeared, amongst the obituaries of the _Gentleman's Magazine_, a memoir of the deceased, in which the miserable fate of the son is directly charged upon the severity of the father. The whole memoir is full of errors. For this, the extreme haste in which it was necessarily written forms an excuse. But no excuse can be given for the perverse and malignant spirit it betrays. The very next number of the magazine opens with four or five letters addressed to Mr Urban, all remonstrating against, and refuting this baseless calumny; and every biographer has felt himself compelled to notice and repel the slander. The fact is, that the writer or writers of the memoir--for several were engaged in concocting this very hasty and wretched performance--were quite ignorant, both of the education the son had received, and of the profligate course, and the consequent derangement of his health into which he had fallen. They knew only that the son was in a lunatic asylum, and that the father was a severe disciplinarian; and they most unwarrantably combined the two together, in the relation of cause and effect. "All prospects," they say, speaking of the youth, "were blasted by paternal severity, which reduced the young man to such an unhappy situation as to require his being placed where he now is, or lately was." The vindication of Howard from this slander is complete; the origin of the son's malady is clearly traced; his affection for his child is amply demonstrated, and his unceasing anxiety to train him to virtue and piety is made equally manifest. But his most intimate friends entertained the opinion that his conduct towards his son was not _judicious_, and that his method of training up the youth was by no means so wisely, as it was conscientiously adopted. This is the sole charge, if such it can be called, to which the father is obnoxious; nor, from this, do we pretend to acquit him.