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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Spirit of the Age, by William Hazlitt
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Spirit of the Age
+       Contemporary Portraits
+
+Author: William Hazlitt
+
+Release Date: February 12, 2004 [EBook #11068]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Riikka Talonpoika, Frank van Drogen and PG Distributed
+Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+SPIRIT OF THE AGE:
+
+
+OR
+
+
+CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.
+
+
+
+
+"To know another well were to know one's self."
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+JEREMY BENTHAM
+
+WILLIAM GODWIN
+
+MR. COLERIDGE
+
+REV. MR. IRVING
+
+THE LATE MR. HORNE TOOKE
+
+SIR WALTER SCOTT
+
+LORD BYRON
+
+MR. CAMPBELL--MR. CRABBE
+
+SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH
+
+MR. WORDSWORTH
+
+MR. MALTHUS
+
+MR. GIFFORD
+
+MR. JEFFREY
+
+MR. BROUGHAM--SIR F. BURDETT
+
+LORD ELDON--MR. WILBERFORCE
+
+MR. SOUTHEY
+
+MR. T. MOORE--MR. LEIGH HUNT
+
+ELIA--GEOFFREY CRAYON
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+SPIRIT OF THE AGE.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+JEREMY BENTHAM.
+
+
+
+Mr. Bentham is one of those persons who verify the old adage, that "A
+prophet has no honour, except out of his own country." His reputation
+lies at the circumference; and the lights of his understanding are
+reflected, with increasing lustre, on the other side of the globe. His
+name is little known in England, better in Europe, best of all in the
+plains of Chili and the mines of Mexico. He has offered constitutions
+for the New World, and legislated for future times. The people of
+Westminster, where he lives, hardly know of such a person; but the
+Siberian savage has received cold comfort from his lunar aspect, and may
+say to him with Caliban--"I know thee, and thy dog and thy bush!" The
+tawny Indian may hold out the hand of fellowship to him across the GREAT
+PACIFIC. We believe that the Empress Catherine corresponded with him;
+and we know that the Emperor Alexander called upon him, and presented
+him with his miniature in a gold snuff-box, which the philosopher, to
+his eternal honour, returned. Mr. Hobhouse is a greater man at the
+hustings, Lord Rolle at Plymouth Dock; but Mr. Bentham would carry it
+hollow, on the score of popularity, at Paris or Pegu. The reason is,
+that our author's influence is purely intellectual. He has devoted
+his life to the pursuit of abstract and general truths, and to those
+studies--
+
+  "That waft a _thought_ from Indus to the Pole"--
+
+and has never mixed himself up with personal intrigues or party
+politics. He once, indeed, stuck up a hand-bill to say that he (Jeremy
+Bentham) being of sound mind, was of opinion that Sir Samuel Romilly was
+the most proper person to represent Westminster; but this was the whim
+of the moment. Otherwise, his reasonings, if true at all, are true
+everywhere alike: his speculations concern humanity at large, and are
+not confined to the hundred or the bills of mortality. It is in moral as
+in physical magnitude. The little is seen best near: the great appears
+in its proper dimensions, only from a more commanding point of view, and
+gains strength with time, and elevation from distance!
+
+Mr. Bentham is very much among philosophers what La Fontaine was among
+poets:--in general habits and in all but his professional pursuits, he
+is a mere child. He has lived for the last forty years in a house
+in Westminster, overlooking the Park, like an anchoret in his cell,
+reducing law to a system, and the mind of man to a machine. He scarcely
+ever goes out, and sees very little company. The favoured few, who have
+the privilege of the _entrée_, are always admitted one by one. He does
+not like to have witnesses to his conversation. He talks a great deal,
+and listens to nothing but facts. When any one calls upon him, he
+invites them to take a turn round his garden with him (Mr. Bentham is
+an economist of his time, and sets apart this portion of it to air and
+exercise)--and there you may see the lively old man, his mind still
+buoyant with thought and with the prospect of futurity, in eager
+conversation with some Opposition Member, some expatriated Patriot, or
+Transatlantic Adventurer, urging the extinction of Close Boroughs, or
+planning a code of laws for some "lone island in the watery waste,"
+his walk almost amounting to a run, his tongue keeping pace with it in
+shrill, cluttering accents, negligent of his person, his dress, and his
+manner, intent only on his grand theme of UTILITY--or pausing, perhaps,
+for want of breath and with lack-lustre eye to point out to the stranger
+a stone in the wall at the end of his garden (overarched by two
+beautiful cotton-trees) _Inscribed to the Prince of Poets_, which
+marks the house where Milton formerly lived. To shew how little the
+refinements of taste or fancy enter into our author's system, he
+proposed at one time to cut down these beautiful trees, to convert the
+garden where he had breathed the air of Truth and Heaven for near half
+a century into a paltry _Chreistomathic School_, and to make Milton's
+house (the cradle of Paradise Lost) a thoroughfare, like a three-stalled
+stable, for the idle rabble of Westminster to pass backwards and
+forwards to it with their cloven hoofs. Let us not, however, be getting
+on too fast--Milton himself taught school! There is something not
+altogether dissimilar between Mr. Bentham's appearance, and the
+portraits of Milton, the same silvery tone, a few dishevelled hairs, a
+peevish, yet puritanical expression, an irritable temperament corrected
+by habit and discipline. Or in modern times, he is something between
+Franklin and Charles Fox, with the comfortable double-chin and sleek
+thriving look of the one, and the quivering lip, the restless eye, and
+animated acuteness of the other. His eye is quick and lively; but it
+glances not from object to object, but from thought to thought. He is
+evidently a man occupied with some train of fine and inward association.
+He regards the people about him no more than the flies of a summer. He
+meditates the coming age. He hears and sees only what suits his purpose,
+or some "foregone conclusion;" and looks out for facts and passing
+occurrences in order to put them into his logical machinery and grind
+them into the dust and powder of some subtle theory, as the miller looks
+out for grist to his mill! Add to this physiognomical sketch the minor
+points of costume, the open shirt-collar, the single-breasted coat, the
+old-fashioned half-boots and ribbed stockings; and you will find in Mr.
+Bentham's general appearance a singular mixture of boyish simplicity and
+of the venerableness of age. In a word, our celebrated jurist presents a
+striking illustration of the difference between the _philosophical_ and
+the _regal_ look; that is, between the merely abstracted and the merely
+personal. There is a lackadaisical _bonhommie_ about his whole aspect,
+none of the fierceness of pride or power; an unconscious neglect of
+his own person, instead of a stately assumption of superiority; a
+good-humoured, placid intelligence, instead of a lynx-eyed watchfulness,
+as if it wished to make others its prey, or was afraid they might turn
+and rend him; he is a beneficent spirit, prying into the universe, not
+lording it over it; a thoughtful spectator of the scenes of life, or
+ruminator on the fate of mankind, not a painted pageant, a stupid idol
+set up on its pedestal of pride for men to fall down and worship with
+idiot fear and wonder at the thing themselves have made, and which,
+without that fear and wonder, would in itself be nothing!
+
+Mr. Bentham, perhaps, over-rates the importance of his own theories. He
+has been heard to say (without any appearance of pride or affectation)
+that "he should like to live the remaining years of his life, a year at
+a time at the end of the next six or eight centuries, to see the effect
+which his writings would by that time have had upon the world." Alas!
+his name will hardly live so long! Nor do we think, in point of fact,
+that Mr. Bentham has given any new or decided impulse to the human mind.
+He cannot be looked upon in the light of a discoverer in legislation
+or morals. He has not struck out any great leading principle or
+parent-truth, from which a number of others might be deduced; nor has he
+enriched the common and established stock of intelligence with original
+observations, like pearls thrown into wine. One truth discovered is
+immortal, and entitles its author to be so: for, like a new substance
+in nature, it cannot be destroyed. But Mr. Bentham's _forte_ is
+arrangement; and the form of truth, though not its essence, varies with
+time and circumstance. He has methodised, collated, and condensed all
+the materials prepared to his hand on the subjects of which he treats,
+in a masterly and scientific manner; but we should find a difficulty
+in adducing from his different works (however elaborate or closely
+reasoned) any new element of thought, or even a new fact or
+illustration. His writings are, therefore, chiefly valuable as _books of
+reference_, as bringing down the account of intellectual inquiry to the
+present period, and disposing the results in a compendious, connected,
+and tangible shape; but books of reference are chiefly serviceable for
+facilitating the acquisition of knowledge, and are constantly liable
+to be superseded and to grow out of fashion with its progress, as the
+scaffolding is thrown down as soon as the building is completed. Mr.
+Bentham is not the first writer (by a great many) who has assumed the
+principle of UTILITY as the foundation of just laws, and of all moral
+and political reasoning:--his merit is, that he has applied this
+principle more closely and literally; that he has brought all the
+objections and arguments, more distinctly labelled and ticketted, under
+this one head, and made a more constant and explicit reference to it at
+every step of his progress, than any other writer. Perhaps the weak side
+of his conclusions also is, that he has carried this single view of his
+subject too far, and not made sufficient allowance for the varieties of
+human nature, and the caprices and irregularities of the human will. "He
+has not allowed for the _wind_." It is not that you can be said to see
+his favourite doctrine of Utility glittering everywhere through his
+system, like a vein of rich, shining ore (that is not the nature of the
+material)--but it might be plausibly objected that he had struck the
+whole mass of fancy, prejudice, passion, sense, whim, with his petrific,
+leaden mace, that he had "bound volatile Hermes," and reduced the theory
+and practice of human life to a _caput mortuum_ of reason, and dull,
+plodding, technical calculation. The gentleman is himself a capital
+logician; and he has been led by this circumstance to consider man as a
+logical animal. We fear this view of the matter will hardly hold water.
+If we attend to the _moral_ man, the constitution of his mind will
+scarcely be found to be built up of pure reason and a regard to
+consequences: if we consider the _criminal_ man (with whom the
+legislator has chiefly to do) it will be found to be still less so.
+
+Every pleasure, says Mr. Bentham, is equally a good, and is to be taken
+into the account as such in a moral estimate, whether it be the pleasure
+of sense or of conscience, whether it arise from the exercise of virtue
+or the perpetration of crime. We are afraid the human mind does not
+readily come into this doctrine, this _ultima ratio philosophorum_,
+interpreted according to the letter. Our moral sentiments are made up of
+sympathies and antipathies, of sense and imagination, of understanding
+and prejudice. The soul, by reason of its weakness, is an aggregating
+and an exclusive principle; it clings obstinately to some things, and
+violently rejects others. And it must do so, in a great measure, or it
+would act contrary to its own nature. It needs helps and stages in its
+progress, and "all appliances and means to boot," which can raise it to
+a partial conformity to truth and good (the utmost it is capable of) and
+bring it into a tolerable harmony with the universe. By aiming at too
+much, by dismissing collateral aids, by extending itself to the farthest
+verge of the conceivable and possible, it loses its elasticity and
+vigour, its impulse and its direction. The moralist can no more do
+without the intermediate use of rules and principles, without the
+'vantage ground of habit, without the levers of the understanding, than
+the mechanist can discard the use of wheels and pulleys, and perform
+every thing by simple motion. If the mind of man were competent to
+comprehend the whole of truth and good, and act upon it at once, and
+independently of all other considerations, Mr. Bentham's plan would be
+a feasible one, and _the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
+truth_ would be the best possible ground to place morality upon. But
+it is not so. In ascertaining the rules of moral conduct, we must have
+regard not merely to the nature of the object, but to the capacity of
+the agent, and to his fitness for apprehending or attaining it. Pleasure
+is that which is so in itself: good is that which approves itself as
+such on reflection, or the idea of which is a source of satisfaction.
+All pleasure is not, therefore (morally speaking) equally a good; for
+all pleasure does not equally bear reflecting on. There are some tastes
+that are sweet in the mouth and bitter in the belly; and there is a
+similar contradiction and anomaly in the mind and heart of man. Again,
+what would become of the _Posthaec meminisse juvabit_ of the poet, if
+a principle of fluctuation and reaction is not inherent in the very
+constitution of our nature, or if all moral truth is a mere literal
+truism? We are not, then, so much to inquire what certain things are
+abstractedly or in themselves, as how they affect the mind, and to
+approve or condemn them accordingly. The same object seen near strikes
+us more powerfully than at a distance: things thrown into masses give
+a greater blow to the imagination than when scattered and divided into
+their component parts. A number of mole-hills do not make a mountain,
+though a mountain is actually made up of atoms: so moral truth must
+present itself under a certain aspect and from a certain point of view,
+in order to produce its full and proper effect upon the mind. The laws
+of the affections are as necessary as those of optics. A calculation of
+consequences is no more equivalent to a sentiment, than a _seriatim_
+enumeration of square yards or feet touches the fancy like the sight of
+the Alps or Andes!
+
+To give an instance or two of what we mean. Those who on pure
+cosmopolite principles, or on the ground of abstract humanity affect an
+extraordinary regard for the Turks and Tartars, have been accused of
+neglecting their duties to their friends and next-door neighbours. Well,
+then, what is the state of the question here? One human being is, no
+doubt, as much worth in himself, independently of the circumstances of
+time or place, as another; but he is not of so much value to us and
+our affections. Could our imagination take wing (with our speculative
+faculties) to the other side of the globe or to the ends of the
+universe, could our eyes behold whatever our reason teaches us to be
+possible, could our hands reach as far as our thoughts or wishes, we
+might then busy ourselves to advantage with the Hottentots, or hold
+intimate converse with the inhabitants of the Moon; but being as we are,
+our feelings evaporate in so large a space--we must draw the circle of
+our affections and duties somewhat closer--the heart hovers and fixes
+nearer home. It is true, the bands of private, or of local and natural
+affection are often, nay in general, too tightly strained, so as
+frequently to do harm instead of good: but the present question is
+whether we can, with safety and effect, be wholly emancipated from them?
+Whether we should shake them off at pleasure and without mercy, as the
+only bar to the triumph of truth and justice? Or whether benevolence,
+constructed upon a logical scale, would not be merely _nominal_, whether
+duty, raised to too lofty a pitch of refinement, might not sink into
+callous indifference or hollow selfishness? Again, is it not to exact
+too high a strain from humanity, to ask us to qualify the degree
+of abhorrence we feel against a murderer by taking into our cool
+consideration the pleasure he may have in committing the deed, and in
+the prospect of gratifying his avarice or his revenge? We are hardly so
+formed as to sympathise at the same moment with the assassin and
+his victim. The degree of pleasure the former may feel, instead of
+extenuating, aggravates his guilt, and shews the depth of his malignity.
+Now the mind revolts against this by mere natural antipathy, if it is
+itself well-disposed; or the slow process of reason would afford but a
+feeble resistance to violence and wrong. The will, which is necessary to
+give consistency and promptness to our good intentions, cannot extend so
+much candour and courtesy to the antagonist principle of evil: virtue,
+to be sincere and practical, cannot be divested entirely of the
+blindness and impetuosity of passion! It has been made a plea (half
+jest, half earnest) for the horrors of war, that they promote trade
+and manufactures. It has been said, as a set-off for the atrocities
+practised upon the negro slaves in the West Indies, that without their
+blood and sweat, so many millions of people could not have sugar to
+sweeten their tea. Fires and murders have been argued to be beneficial,
+as they serve to fill the newspapers, and for a subject to talk of--
+this is a sort of sophistry that it might be difficult to disprove on
+the bare scheme of contingent utility; but on the ground that we have
+stated, it must pass for a mere irony. What the proportion between the
+good and the evil will really be found in any of the supposed cases,
+may be a question to the understanding; but to the imagination and the
+heart, that is, to the natural feelings of mankind, it admits of none!
+
+Mr. Bentham, in adjusting the provisions of a penal code, lays too
+little stress on the cooperation of the natural prejudices of mankind,
+and the habitual feelings of that class of persons for whom they are
+more particularly designed. Legislators (we mean writers on legislation)
+are philosophers, and governed by their reason: criminals, for whose
+controul laws are made, are a set of desperadoes, governed only by their
+passions. What wonder that so little progress has been made towards a
+mutual understanding between the two parties! They are quite a different
+species, and speak a different language, and are sadly at a loss for a
+common interpreter between them. Perhaps the Ordinary of Newgate bids
+as fair for this office as any one. What should Mr. Bentham, sitting at
+ease in his arm-chair, composing his mind before he begins to write by a
+prelude on the organ, and looking out at a beautiful prospect when he
+is at a loss for an idea, know of the principles of action of rogues,
+outlaws, and vagabonds? No more than Montaigne of the motions of his
+cat! If sanguine and tender-hearted philanthropists have set on foot an
+inquiry into the barbarity and the defects of penal laws, the practical
+improvements have been mostly suggested by reformed cut-throats,
+turnkeys, and thief-takers. What even can the Honourable House, who when
+the Speaker has pronounced the well-known, wished-for sounds "That this
+house do now adjourn," retire, after voting a royal crusade or a loan of
+millions, to lie on down, and feed on plate in spacious palaces, know
+of what passes in the hearts of wretches in garrets and night-cellars,
+petty pilferers and marauders, who cut throats and pick pockets with
+their own hands? The thing is impossible. The laws of the country are,
+therefore, ineffectual and abortive, because they are made by the rich
+for the poor, by the wise for the ignorant, by the respectable and
+exalted in station for the very scum and refuse of the community. If
+Newgate would resolve itself into a committee of the whole Press-yard,
+with Jack Ketch at its head, aided by confidential persons from the
+county prisons or the Hulks, and would make a clear breast, some _data_
+might be found out to proceed upon; but as it is, the _criminal mind_ of
+the country is a book sealed, no one has been able to penetrate to the
+inside! Mr. Bentham, in his attempts to revise and amend our criminal
+jurisprudence, proceeds entirely on his favourite principle of Utility.
+Convince highwaymen and house-breakers that it will be for their
+interest to reform, and they will reform and lead honest lives;
+according to Mr. Bentham. He says, "All men act from calculation, even
+madmen reason." And, in our opinion, he might as well carry this maxim
+to Bedlam or St. Luke's, and apply it to the inhabitants, as think to
+coerce or overawe the inmates of a gaol, or those whose practices
+make them candidates for that distinction, by the mere dry, detailed
+convictions of the understanding. Criminals are not to be influenced by
+reason; for it is of the very essence of crime to disregard consequences
+both to ourselves and others. You may as well preach philosophy to a
+drunken man, or to the dead, as to those who are under the instigation
+of any mischievous passion. A man is a drunkard, and you tell him he
+ought to be sober; he is debauched, and you ask him to reform; he
+is idle, and you recommend industry to him as his wisest course; he
+gambles, and you remind him that he may be ruined by this foible; he
+has lost his character, and you advise him to get into some reputable
+service or lucrative situation; vice becomes a habit with him, and you
+request him to rouse himself and shake it off; he is starving, and you
+warn him that if he breaks the law, he will be hanged. None of this
+reasoning reaches the mark it aims at. The culprit, who violates and
+suffers the vengeance of the laws, is not the dupe of ignorance, but the
+slave of passion, the victim of habit or necessity. To argue with strong
+passion, with inveterate habit, with desperate circumstances, is to talk
+to the winds. Clownish ignorance may indeed be dispelled, and
+taught better; but it is seldom that a criminal is not aware of the
+consequences of his act, or has not made up his mind to the alternative.
+They are, in general, _too knowing by half_. You tell a person of this
+stamp what is his interest; he says he does not care about his interest,
+or the world and he differ on that particular. But there is one point on
+which he must agree with them, namely, what _they_ think of his conduct,
+and that is the only hold you have of him. A man may be callous and
+indifferent to what happens to himself; but he is never indifferent to
+public opinion, or proof against open scorn and infamy. Shame, then,
+not fear, is the sheet-anchor of the law. He who is not afraid of being
+pointed at as a _thief_, will not mind a month's hard labour. He who is
+prepared to take the life of another, is already reckless of his own.
+But every one makes a sorry figure in the pillory; and the being
+launched from the New Drop lowers a man in his own opinion. The lawless
+and violent spirit, who is hurried by headstrong self-will to break the
+laws, does not like to have the ground of pride and obstinacy struck
+from under his feet. This is what gives the _swells_ of the metropolis
+such a dread of the _tread-mill_--it makes them ridiculous. It must be
+confessed, that this very circumstance renders the reform of criminals
+nearly hopeless. It is the apprehension of being stigmatized by public
+opinion, the fear of what will be thought and said of them, that deters
+men from the violation of the laws, while their character remains
+unimpeached; but honour once lost, all is lost. The man can never be
+himself again! A citizen is like a soldier, a part of a machine, who
+submits to certain hardships, privations, and dangers, not for his own
+ease, pleasure, profit, or even conscience, but--_for shame_. What is
+it that keeps the machine together in either case? Not punishment or
+discipline, but sympathy. The soldier mounts the breach or stands in
+the trenches, the peasant hedges and ditches, or the mechanic plies his
+ceaseless task, because the one will not be called a _coward_, the other
+a _rogue_: but let the one turn deserter and the other vagabond, and
+there is an end of him. The grinding law of necessity, which is no other
+than a name, a breath, loses its force; he is no longer sustained by
+the good opinion of others, and he drops out of his place in society,
+a useless clog! Mr. Bentham takes a culprit, and puts him into what he
+calls a _Panopticon_, that is, a sort of circular prison, with open
+cells, like a glass bee-hive. He sits in the middle, and sees all the
+other does. He gives him work to do, and lectures him if he does not do
+it. He takes liquor from him, and society, and liberty; but he feeds and
+clothes him, and keeps him out of mischief; and when he has convinced
+him, by force and reason together, that this life is for his good, he
+turns him out upon the world a reformed man, and as confident of the
+success of his handy-work, as the shoemaker of that which he has just
+taken off the last, or the Parisian barber in Sterne, of the buckle
+of his wig. "Dip it in the ocean," said the perruquier, "and it will
+stand!" But we doubt the durability of our projector's patchwork. Will
+our convert to the great principle of Utility work when he is from under
+Mr. Bentham's eye, because he was forced to work when under it? Will he
+keep sober, because he has been kept from liquor so long? Will he not
+return to loose company, because he has had the pleasure of sitting
+vis-a-vis with a philosopher of late? Will he not steal, now that his hands
+are untied? Will he not take the road, now that it is free to him? Will
+he not call his benefactor all the names he can set his tongue to, the
+moment his back is turned? All this is more than to be feared. The charm
+of criminal life, like that of savage life, consists in liberty, in
+hardship, in danger, and in the contempt of death, in one word, in
+extraordinary excitement; and he who has tasted of it, will no more
+return to regular habits of life, than a man will take to water after
+drinking brandy, or than a wild beast will give over hunting its prey.
+Miracles never cease, to be sure; but they are not to be had wholesale,
+or _to order_. Mr. Owen, who is another of these proprietors and
+patentees of reform, has lately got an American savage with him, whom he
+carries about in great triumph and complacency, as an antithesis to his
+_New View of Society_, and as winding up his reasoning to what it mainly
+wanted, an epigrammatic point. Does the benevolent visionary of the
+Lanark cotton-mills really think this _natural man_ will act as a foil
+to his _artificial man_? Does he for a moment imagine that his _Address
+to the higher and middle classes_, with all its advantages of fiction,
+makes any thing like so interesting a romance as _Hunter's Captivity
+among the North American Indians?_ Has he any thing to shew, in all the
+apparatus of New Lanark and its desolate monotony, to excite the thrill
+of imagination like the blankets made of wreaths of snow under which the
+wild wood-rovers bury themselves for weeks in winter? Or the skin of a
+leopard, which our hardy adventurer slew, and which served him for great
+coat and bedding? Or the rattle-snake that he found by his side as a
+bedfellow? Or his rolling himself into a ball to escape from him? Or his
+suddenly placing himself against a tree to avoid being trampled to death
+by the herd of wild buffaloes, that came rushing on like the sound of
+thunder? Or his account of the huge spiders that prey on bluebottles and
+gilded flies in green pathless forests; or of the great Pacific Ocean,
+that the natives look upon as the gulf that parts time from eternity,
+and that is to waft them to the spirits of their fathers? After all
+this, Mr. Hunter must find Mr. Owen and his parallellograms trite and
+flat, and will, we suspect, take an opportunity to escape from them!
+
+Mr. Bentham's method of reasoning, though comprehensive and exact,
+labours under the defect of most systems--it is too _topical_. It
+includes every thing; but it includes every thing alike. It is rather
+like an inventory, than a valuation of different arguments. Every
+possible suggestion finds a place, so that the mind is distracted as
+much as enlightened by this perplexing accuracy. The exceptions seem
+as important as the rule. By attending to the minute, we overlook the
+great; and in summing up an account, it will not do merely to insist on
+the number of items without considering their amount. Our author's
+page presents a very nicely dove-tailed mosaic pavement of legal
+common-places. We slip and slide over its even surface without being
+arrested any where. Or his view of the human mind resembles a map,
+rather than a picture: the outline, the disposition is correct, but it
+wants colouring and relief. There is a technicality of manner, which
+renders his writings of more value to the professional inquirer than
+to the general reader. Again, his style is unpopular, not to say
+unintelligible. He writes a language of his own, that _darkens
+knowledge_. His works have been translated into French--they ought to
+be translated into English. People wonder that Mr. Bentham has not been
+prosecuted for the boldness and severity of some of his invectives. He
+might wrap up high treason in one of his inextricable periods, and
+it would never find its way into Westminster-Hall. He is a kind of
+Manuscript author--he writes a cypher-hand, which the vulgar have no key
+to. The construction of his sentences is a curious framework with pegs
+and hooks to hang his thoughts upon, for his own use and guidance,
+but almost out of the reach of every body else. It is a barbarous
+philosophical jargon, with all the repetitions, parentheses,
+formalities, uncouth nomenclature and verbiage of law-Latin; and what
+makes it worse, it is not mere verbiage, but has a great deal of
+acuteness and meaning in it, which you would be glad to pick out if you
+could. In short, Mr. Bentham writes as if he was allowed but a single
+sentence to express his whole view of a subject in, and as if, should he
+omit a single circumstance or step of the argument, it would be lost to
+the world for ever, like an estate by a flaw in the title-deeds. This
+is over-rating the importance of our own discoveries, and mistaking the
+nature and object of language altogether. Mr. Bentham has _acquired_
+this disability--it is not natural to him. His admirable little work _On
+Usury_, published forty years ago, is clear, easy, and vigorous. But Mr.
+Bentham has shut himself up since then "in nook monastic," conversing
+only with followers of his own, or with "men of Ind," and has
+endeavoured to overlay his natural humour, sense, spirit, and style
+with the dust and cobwebs of an obscure solitude. The best of it is, he
+thinks his present mode of expressing himself perfect, and that whatever
+may be objected to his law or logic, no one can find the least fault
+with the purity, simplicity, and perspicuity of his style.
+
+Mr. Bentham, in private life, is an amiable and exemplary character.
+He is a little romantic, or so; and has dissipated part of a handsome
+fortune in practical speculations. He lends an ear to plausible
+projectors, and, if he cannot prove them to be wrong in their premises
+or their conclusions, thinks himself bound _in reason_ to stake his
+money on the venture. Strict logicians are licensed visionaries. Mr.
+Bentham is half-brother to the late Mr. Speaker Abbott[A]--_Proh pudor_!
+He was educated at Eton, and still takes our novices to task about
+a passage in Homer, or a metre in Virgil. He was afterwards at the
+University, and he has described the scruples of an ingenuous
+youthful mind about subscribing the articles, in a passage in his
+_Church-of-Englandism_, which smacks of truth and honour both, and does
+one good to read it in an age, when "to be honest" (or not to laugh at
+the very idea of honesty) "is to be one man picked out of ten thousand!"
+Mr. Bentham relieves his mind sometimes, after the fatigue of study, by
+playing on a fine old organ, and has a relish for Hogarth's prints. He
+turns wooden utensils in a lathe for exercise, and fancies he can turn
+men in the same manner. He has no great fondness for poetry, and can
+hardly extract a moral out of Shakespear. His house is warmed and
+lighted by steam. He is one of those who prefer the artificial to the
+natural in most things, and think the mind of man omnipotent. He has a
+great contempt for out-of-door prospects, for green fields and
+trees, and is for referring every thing to Utility. There is a little
+narrowness in this; for if all the sources of satisfaction are taken
+away, what is to become of utility itself? It is, indeed, the great
+fault of this able and extraordinary man, that he has concentrated his
+faculties and feelings too entirely on one subject and pursuit, and has
+not "looked enough abroad into universality."[B]
+
+
+[Footnote A: Now Lord Colchester.]
+
+[Footnote B: Lord Bacon's Advancement of Learning.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM GODWIN
+
+
+
+The Spirit of the Age was never more fully-shewn than in its treatment
+of this writer--its love of paradox and change, its dastard submission
+to prejudice and to the fashion of the day. Five-and-twenty years ago he
+was in the very zenith of a sultry and unwholesome popularity; he blazed
+as a sun in the firmament of reputation; no one was more talked of, more
+looked up to, more sought after, and wherever liberty, truth, justice
+was the theme, his name was not far off:--now he has sunk below the
+horizon, and enjoys the serene twilight of a doubtful immortality. Mr.
+Godwin, during his lifetime, has secured to himself the triumphs and the
+mortifications of an extreme notoriety and of a sort of posthumous fame.
+
+His bark, after being tossed in the revolutionary tempest, now raised to
+heaven by all the fury of popular breath, now almost dashed in pieces,
+and buried in the quicksands of ignorance, or scorched with the
+lightning of momentary indignation, at length floats on the calm wave
+that is to bear it down the stream of time. Mr. Godwin's person is not
+known, he is not pointed out in the street, his conversation is not
+courted, his opinions are not asked, he is at the head of no cabal, he
+belongs to no party in the State, he has no train of admirers, no
+one thinks it worth his while even to traduce and vilify him, he has
+scarcely friend or foe, the world make a point (as Goldsmith used to
+say) of taking no more notice of him than if such an individual had
+never existed; he is to all ordinary intents and purposes dead and
+buried; but the author of _Political Justice_ and of _Caleb Williams_
+can never die, his name is an abstraction in letters, his works are
+standard in the history of intellect. He is thought of now like any
+eminent writer a hundred-and-fifty years ago, or just as he will be
+a hundred-and-fifty years hence. He knows this, and smiles in silent
+mockery of himself, reposing on the monument of his fame--
+
+  "Sedet, in eternumque sedebit infelix Theseus."
+
+No work in our time gave such a blow to the philosophical mind of the
+country as the celebrated _Enquiry concerning Political Justice_. Tom
+Paine was considered for the time as a Tom Fool to him; Paley an old
+woman; Edmund Burke a flashy sophist. Truth, moral truth, it was
+supposed, had here taken up its abode; and these were the oracles of
+thought. "Throw aside your books of chemistry," said Wordsworth to a
+young man, a student in the Temple, "and read Godwin on Necessity." Sad
+necessity! Fatal reverse! Is truth then so variable? Is it one thing at
+twenty, and another at forty? Is it at a burning heat in 1793, and below
+_zero_ in 1814? Not so, in the name of manhood and of common sense! Let
+us pause here a little.--Mr. Godwin indulged in extreme opinions, and
+carried with him all the most sanguine and fearless understandings of
+the time. What then? Because those opinions were overcharged, were they
+therefore altogether groundless? Is the very God of our idolatry all of
+a sudden to become an abomination and an anathema? Could so many young
+men of talent, of education, and of principle have been hurried away by
+what had neither truth, nor nature, not one particle of honest feeling
+nor the least shew of reason in it? Is the _Modern Philosophy_ (as it
+has been called) at one moment a youthful bride, and the next a withered
+beldame, like the false Duessa in Spenser? Or is the vaunted edifice
+of Reason, like his House of Pride, gorgeous in front, and dazzling to
+approach, while "its hinder parts are ruinous, decayed, and old?" Has
+the main prop, which supported the mighty fabric, been shaken and given
+way under the strong grasp of some Samson; or has it not rather been
+undermined by rats and vermin? At one time, it almost seemed, that "if
+this failed,
+
+  "The pillar'd firmament was rottenness,
+  And earth's base built of stubble:"
+
+now scarce a shadow of it remains, it is crumbled to dust, nor is it
+even talked of! "What then, went ye forth for to see, a reed shaken
+with the wind?" Was it for this that our young gownsmen of the greatest
+expectation and promise, versed in classic lore, steeped in dialectics,
+armed at all points for the foe, well read, well nurtured, well provided
+for, left the University and the prospect of lawn sleeves, tearing
+asunder the shackles of the free born spirit, and the cobwebs of
+school-divinity, to throw themselves at the feet of the new Gamaliel,
+and learn wisdom from him? Was it for this, that students at the bar,
+acute, inquisitive, sceptical (here only wild enthusiasts) neglected for
+a while the paths of preferment and the law as too narrow, tortuous, and
+unseemly to bear the pure and broad light of reason? Was it for this,
+that students in medicine missed their way to Lecturerships and the top
+of their profession, deeming lightly of the health of the body, and
+dreaming only of the renovation of society and the march of mind? Was
+it to this that Mr. Southey's _Inscriptions_ pointed? to this that Mr.
+Coleridge's _Religious Musings_ tended? Was it for this, that Mr. Godwin
+himself sat with arms folded, and, "like Cato, gave his little senate
+laws?" Or rather, like another Prospero, uttered syllables that with
+their enchanted breath were to change the world, and might almost stop
+the stars in their courses? Oh! and is all forgot? Is this sun of
+intellect blotted from the sky? Or has it suffered total eclipse? Or is
+it we who make the fancied gloom, by looking at it through the paltry,
+broken, stained fragments of our own interests and prejudices? Were we
+fools then, or are we dishonest now? Or was the impulse of the mind less
+likely to be true and sound when it arose from high thought and warm
+feeling, than afterwards, when it was warped and debased by the example,
+the vices, and follies of the world?
+
+The fault, then, of Mr. Godwin's philosophy, in one word, was too much
+ambition--"by that sin fell the angels!" He conceived too nobly of his
+fellows (the most unpardonable crime against them, for there is nothing
+that annoys our self-love so much as being complimented on imaginary
+achievements, to which we are wholly unequal)--he raised the standard
+of morality above the reach of humanity, and by directing virtue to the
+most airy and romantic heights, made her path dangerous, solitary, and
+impracticable. The author of the _Political Justice_ took abstract
+reason for the rule of conduct, and abstract good for its end. He places
+the human mind on an elevation, from which it commands a view of the
+whole line of moral consequences; and requires it to conform its acts to
+the larger and more enlightened conscience which it has thus acquired.
+He absolves man from the gross and narrow ties of sense, custom,
+authority, private and local attachment, in order that he may devote
+himself to the boundless pursuit of universal benevolence. Mr. Godwin
+gives no quarter to the amiable weaknesses of our nature, nor does he
+stoop to avail himself of the supplementary aids of an imperfect virtue.
+Gratitude, promises, friendship, family affection give way, not that
+they may be merged in the opposite vices or in want of principle; but
+that the void may be filled up by the disinterested love of good, and
+the dictates of inflexible justice, which is "the law of laws, and
+sovereign of sovereigns." All minor considerations yield, in his system,
+to the stern sense of duty, as they do, in the ordinary and established
+ones, to the voice of necessity. Mr. Godwin's theory and that of more
+approved reasoners differ only in this, that what are with them the
+exceptions, the extreme cases, he makes the every-day rule. No one
+denies that on great occasions, in moments of fearful excitement, or
+when a mighty object is at stake, the lesser and merely instrumental
+points of duty are to be sacrificed without remorse at the shrine of
+patriotism, of honour, and of conscience. But the disciple of the _New
+School_ (no wonder it found so many impugners, even in its own bosom!)
+is to be always the hero of duty; the law to which he has bound himself
+never swerves nor relaxes; his feeling of what is right is to be at
+all times wrought up to a pitch of enthusiastic self-devotion; he must
+become the unshrinking martyr and confessor of the public good. If it
+be said that this scheme is chimerical and impracticable on ordinary
+occasions, and to the generality of mankind, well and good; but those
+who accuse the author of having trampled on the common feelings and
+prejudices of mankind in wantonness or insult, or without wishing to
+substitute something better (and only unattainable, because it is
+better) in their stead, accuse him wrongfully. We may not be able to
+launch the bark of our affections on the ocean-tide of humanity, we
+may be forced to paddle along its shores, or shelter in its creeks and
+rivulets: but we have no right to reproach the bold and adventurous
+pilot, who dared us to tempt the uncertain abyss, with our own want of
+courage or of skill, or with the jealousies and impatience, which deter
+us from undertaking, or might prevent us from accomplishing the voyage!
+
+The _Enquiry concerning Political Justice_ (it was urged by its
+favourers and defenders at the time, and may still be so, without either
+profaneness or levity) is a metaphysical and logical commentary on some
+of the most beautiful and striking texts of Scripture. Mr. Godwin is
+a mixture of the Stoic and of the Christian philosopher. To break the
+force of the vulgar objections and outcry that have been raised against
+the Modern Philosophy, as if it were a new and monstrous birth in
+morals, it may be worth noticing, that volumes of sermons have been
+written to excuse the founder of Christianity for not including
+friendship and private affection among its golden rules, but rather
+excluding them.[A] Moreover, the answer to the question, "Who is thy
+neighbour?" added to the divine precept, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour
+as thyself," is the same as in the exploded pages of our author,--"He to
+whom we can do most good." In determining this point, we were not to be
+influenced by any extrinsic or collateral considerations, by our own
+predilections, or the expectations of others, by our obligations to them
+or any services they might be able to render us, by the climate they
+were born in, by the house they lived in, by rank or religion, or party,
+or personal ties, but by the abstract merits, the pure and unbiassed
+justice of the case. The artificial helps and checks to moral conduct
+were set aside as spurious and unnecessary, and we came at once to the
+grand and simple question--"In what manner we could best contribute to
+the greatest possible good?" This was the paramount obligation in all
+cases whatever, from which we had no right to free ourselves upon any
+idle or formal pretext, and of which each person was to judge for
+himself, under the infallible authority of his own opinion and the
+inviolable sanction of his self-approbation. "There was the rub that
+made _philosophy_ of so short life!" Mr. Godwin's definition of morals
+was the same as the admired one of law, _reason without passion_; but
+with the unlimited scope of private opinion, and in a boundless field of
+speculation (for nothing less would satisfy the pretensions of the New
+School), there was danger that the unseasoned novice might substitute
+some pragmatical conceit of his own for the rule of right reason, and
+mistake a heartless indifference for a superiority to more natural and
+generous feelings. Our ardent and dauntless reformer followed out the
+moral of the parable of the Good Samaritan into its most rigid and
+repulsive consequences with a pen of steel, and let fall his "trenchant
+blade" on every vulnerable point of human infirmity; but there is a want
+in his system of the mild and persuasive tone of the Gospel, where "all
+is conscience and tender heart." Man was indeed screwed up, by mood and
+figure, into a logical machine, that was to forward the public good with
+the utmost punctuality and effect, and it might go very well on smooth
+ground and under favourable circumstances; but would it work up-hill
+or _against the grain_? It was to be feared that the proud Temple of
+Reason, which at a distance and in stately supposition shone like the
+palaces of the New Jerusalem, might (when placed on actual ground) be
+broken up into the sordid styes of sensuality, and the petty huckster's
+shops of self-interest! Every man (it was proposed--"so ran the tenour
+of the bond") was to be a Regulus, a Codrus, a Cato, or a Brutus--every
+woman a Mother of the Gracchi.
+
+  "------------It was well said,
+  And 'tis a kind of good deed to say well."
+
+But heroes on paper might degenerate into vagabonds in practice,
+Corinnas into courtezans. Thus a refined and permanent individual
+attachment is intended to supply the place and avoid the inconveniences
+of marriage; but vows of eternal constancy, without church security, are
+found to be fragile. A member of the _ideal_ and perfect commonwealth of
+letters lends another a hundred pounds for immediate and pressing use;
+and when he applies for it again, the borrower has still more need of it
+than he, and retains it for his own especial, which is tantamount to the
+public good. The Exchequer of pure reason, like that of the State, never
+refunds. The political as well as the religious fanatic appeals from
+the over-weening opinion and claims of others to the highest and most
+impartial tribunal, namely, his own breast. Two persons agree to
+live together in Chambers on principles of pure equality and mutual
+assistance--but when it comes to the push, one of them finds that the
+other always insists on his fetching water from the pump in Hare-court,
+and cleaning his shoes for him. A modest assurance was not the least
+indispensable virtue in the new perfectibility code; and it was hence
+discovered to be a scheme, like other schemes where there are all prizes
+and no blanks, for the accommodation of the enterprizing and cunning, at
+the expence of the credulous and honest. This broke up the system, and
+left no good odour behind it! Reason has become a sort of bye-word, and
+philosophy has "fallen first into a fasting, then into a sadness,
+then into a decline, and last, into the dissolution of which we all
+complain!" This is a worse error than the former: we may be said to have
+"lost the immortal part of ourselves, and what remains is beastly!"
+The point of view from which this matter may be fairly considered, is
+two-fold, and may be stated thus:--In the first place, it by no means
+follows, because reason is found not to be the only infallible or safe
+rule of conduct, that it is no rule at all; or that we are to discard it
+altogether with derision and ignominy. On the contrary, if not the sole,
+it is the principal ground of action; it is "the guide, the stay and
+anchor of our purest thoughts, and soul of all our moral being." In
+proportion as we strengthen and expand this principle, and bring our
+affections and subordinate, but perhaps more powerful motives of action
+into harmony with it, it will not admit of a doubt that we advance to
+the goal of perfection, and answer the ends of our creation, those ends
+which not only morality enjoins, but which religion sanctions. If with
+the utmost stretch of reason, man cannot (as some seemed inclined to
+suppose) soar up to the God, and quit the ground of human frailty, yet,
+stripped wholly of it, he sinks at once into the brute. If it cannot
+stand alone, in its naked simplicity, but requires other props to
+buttress it up, or ornaments to set it off; yet without it the moral
+structure would fall flat and dishonoured to the ground. Private reason
+is that which raises the individual above his mere animal instincts,
+appetites and passions: public reason in its gradual progress separates
+the savage from the civilized state. Without the one, men would resemble
+wild beasts in their dens; without the other, they would be speedily
+converted into hordes of barbarians or banditti. Sir Walter Scott, in
+his zeal to restore the spirit of loyalty, of passive obedience and
+non-resistance as an acknowledgment for his having been created a
+Baronet by a Prince of the House of Brunswick, may think it a fine thing
+to return in imagination to the good old times, "when in Auvergne
+alone, there were three hundred nobles whose most ordinary actions were
+robbery, rape, and murder," when the castle of each Norman baron was
+a strong hold from which the lordly proprietor issued to oppress and
+plunder the neighbouring districts, and when the Saxon peasantry
+were treated by their gay and gallant tyrants as a herd of loathsome
+swine--but for our own parts we beg to be excused; we had rather live
+in the same age with the author of Waverley and Blackwood's Magazine.
+Reason is the meter and alnager in civil intercourse, by which each
+person's upstart and contradictory pretensions are weighed and approved
+or found wanting, and without which it could not subsist, any more than
+traffic or the exchange of commodities could be carried on without
+weights and measures. It is the medium of knowledge, and the polisher of
+manners, by creating common interests and ideas. Or in the words of a
+contemporary writer, "Reason is the queen of the moral world, the soul
+of the universe, the lamp of human life, the pillar of society, the
+foundation of law, the beacon of nations, the golden chain let down from
+heaven, which links all accountable and all intelligent natures in one
+common system--and in the vain strife between fanatic innovation and
+fanatic prejudice, we are exhorted to dethrone this queen of the world,
+to blot out this light of the mind, to deface this fair column, to break
+in pieces this golden chain! We are to discard and throw from us with
+loud taunts and bitter execrations that reason, which has been the lofty
+theme of the philosopher, the poet, the moralist, and the divine, whose
+name was not first named to be abused by the enthusiasts of the French
+Revolution, or to be blasphemed by the madder enthusiasts, the advocates
+of Divine Right, but which is coeval with, and inseparable from the
+nature and faculties of man--is the image of his Maker stamped upon him
+at his birth, the understanding breathed into him with the breath of
+life, and in the participation and improvement of which alone he is
+raised above the brute creation and his own physical nature!"--The
+overstrained and ridiculous pretensions of monks and ascetics were never
+thought to justify a return to unbridled licence of manners, or the
+throwing aside of all decency. The hypocrisy, cruelty, and fanaticism,
+often attendant on peculiar professions of sanctity, have not banished
+the name of religion from the world. Neither can "the unreasonableness
+of the reason" of some modern sciolists "so unreason our reason," as to
+debar us of the benefit of this principle in future, or to disfranchise
+us of the highest privilege of our nature. In the second place, if it is
+admitted that Reason alone is not the sole and self-sufficient ground of
+morals, it is to Mr. Godwin that we are indebted for having settled the
+point. No one denied or distrusted this principle (before his time) as
+the absolute judge and interpreter in all questions of difficulty;
+and if this is no longer the case, it is because he has taken this
+principle, and followed it into its remotest consequences with more
+keenness of eye and steadiness of hand than any other expounder of
+ethics. His grand work is (at least) an _experimentum crucis_ to shew
+the weak sides and imperfections of human reason as the sole law of
+human action. By overshooting the mark, or by "flying an eagle flight,
+forth and right on," he has pointed out the limit or line of separation,
+between what is practicable and what is barely conceivable--by imposing
+impossible tasks on the naked strength of the will, he has discovered
+how far it is or is not in our power to dispense with the illusions of
+sense, to resist the calls of affection, to emancipate ourselves from
+the force of habit; and thus, though he has not said it himself, has
+enabled others to say to the towering aspirations after good, and to the
+over-bearing pride of human intellect--"Thus far shalt thou come, and no
+farther!" Captain Parry would be thought to have rendered a service
+to navigation and his country, no less by proving that there is no
+North-West Passage, than if he had ascertained that there is one: so Mr.
+Godwin has rendered an essential service to moral science, by attempting
+(in vain) to pass the Arctic Circle and Frozen Regions, where the
+understanding is no longer warmed by the affections, nor fanned by the
+breeze of fancy! This is the effect of all bold, original, and powerful
+thinking, that it either discovers the truth, or detects where error
+lies; and the only crime with which Mr. Godwin can be charged as a
+political and moral reasoner is, that he has displayed a more ardent
+spirit, and a more independent activity of thought than others, in
+establishing the fallacy (if fallacy it be) of an old popular prejudice
+that _the Just and True were one_, by "championing it to the Outrance,"
+and in the final result placing the Gothic structure of human virtue
+on an humbler, but a wider and safer foundation than it had hitherto
+occupied in the volumes and systems of the learned. Mr. Godwin is an
+inventor in the regions of romance, as well as a skilful and hardy
+explorer of those of moral truth. _Caleb Williams_ and _St. Leon_ are
+two of the most splendid and impressive works of the imagination that
+have appeared in our times. It is not merely that these novels are very
+well for a philosopher to have produced--they are admirable and complete
+in themselves, and would not lead you to suppose that the author, who is
+so entirely at home in human character and dramatic situation, had ever
+dabbled in logic or metaphysics. The first of these, particularly, is
+a master-piece, both as to invention and execution. The romantic and
+chivalrous principle of the love of personal fame is embodied in the
+finest possible manner in the character of Falkland;[B] as in Caleb
+Williams (who is not the first, but the second character in the piece)
+we see the very demon of curiosity personified. Perhaps the art with
+which these two characters are contrived to relieve and set off each
+other, has never been surpassed in any work of fiction, with the
+exception of the immortal satire of Cervantes. The restless and
+inquisitive spirit of Caleb Williams, in search and in possession of
+his patron's fatal secret, haunts the latter like a second conscience,
+plants stings in his tortured mind, fans the flame of his jealous
+ambition, struggling with agonized remorse; and the hapless but
+noble-minded Falkland at length falls a martyr to the persecution of
+that morbid and overpowering interest, of which his mingled virtues and
+vices have rendered him the object. We conceive no one ever began Caleb
+Williams that did not read it through: no one that ever read it could
+possibly forget it, or speak of it after any length of time, but with an
+impression as if the events and feelings had been personal to himself.
+This is the case also with the story of St. Leon, which, with less
+dramatic interest and intensity of purpose, is set off by a more
+gorgeous and flowing eloquence, and by a crown of preternatural imagery,
+that waves over it like a palm-tree! It is the beauty and the charm of
+Mr. Godwin's descriptions that the reader identifies himself with the
+author; and the secret of this is, that the author has identified
+himself with his personages. Indeed, he has created them. They are the
+proper issue of his brain, lawfully begot, not foundlings, nor the
+"bastards of his art." He is not an indifferent, callous spectator of
+the scenes which he himself pourtrays, but without seeming to feel them.
+There is no look of patch-work and plagiarism, the beggarly copiousness
+of borrowed wealth; no tracery-work from worm-eaten manuscripts, from
+forgotten chronicles, nor piecing out of vague traditions with fragments
+and snatches of old ballads, so that the result resembles a gaudy,
+staring transparency, in which you cannot distinguish the daubing of the
+painter from the light that shines through the flimsy colours and gives
+them brilliancy. Here all is clearly made out with strokes of the
+pencil, by fair, not by factitious means. Our author takes a given
+subject from nature or from books, and then fills it up with the ardent
+workings of his own mind, with the teeming and audible pulses of his own
+heart. The effect is entire and satisfactory in proportion. The work
+(so to speak) and the author are one. We are not puzzled to decide upon
+their respective pretensions. In reading Mr. Godwin's novels, we know
+what share of merit the author has in them. In reading the _Scotch
+Novels_, we are perpetually embarrassed in asking ourselves this
+question; and perhaps it is not altogether a false modesty that prevents
+the editor from putting his name in the title-page--he is (for any thing
+we know to the contrary) only a more voluminous sort of Allen-a-Dale.
+At least, we may claim this advantage for the English author, that the
+chains with which he rivets our attention are forged out of his own
+thoughts, link by link, blow for blow, with glowing enthusiasm: we see
+the genuine ore melted in the furnace of fervid feeling, and moulded
+into stately and _ideal_ forms; and this is so far better than peeping
+into an old iron shop, or pilfering from a dealer in marine stores!
+There is one drawback, however, attending this mode of proceeding, which
+attaches generally, indeed, to all originality of composition; namely,
+that it has a tendency to a certain degree of monotony. He who draws
+upon his own resources, easily comes to an end of his wealth. Mr.
+Godwin, in all his writings, dwells upon one idea or exclusive view of a
+subject, aggrandises a sentiment, exaggerates a character, or pushes an
+argument to extremes, and makes up by the force of style and continuity
+of feeling for what he wants in variety of incident or ease of manner.
+This necessary defect is observable in his best works, and is still more
+so in Fleetwood and Mandeville; the one of which, compared with his more
+admired performances, is mawkish, and the other morbid. Mr. Godwin is
+also an essayist, an historian--in short, what is he not, that belongs
+to the character of an indefatigable and accomplished author? His _Life
+of Chaucer_ would have given celebrity to any man of letters possessed
+of three thousand a year, with leisure to write quartos: as the legal
+acuteness displayed in his _Remarks on Judge Eyre's Charge to the
+Jury_ would have raised any briefless barrister to the height of his
+profession. This temporary effusion did more--it gave a turn to the
+trials for high treason in the year 1794, and possibly saved the lives
+of twelve innocent individuals, marked out as political victims to the
+Moloch of Legitimacy, which then skulked behind a British throne,
+and had not yet dared to stalk forth (as it has done since) from its
+lurking-place, in the face of day, to brave the opinion of the world. If
+it had then glutted its maw with its intended prey (the sharpness of Mr.
+Godwin's pen cut the legal cords with which it was attempted to bind
+them), it might have done so sooner, and with more lasting effect. The
+world do not know (and we are not sure but the intelligence may startle
+Mr. Godwin himself), that he is the author of a volume of Sermons, and
+of a Life of Chatham.[C]
+
+Mr. Fawcett (an old friend and fellow-student of our author, and who
+always spoke of his writings with admiration, tinctured with wonder)
+used to mention a circumstance with respect to the last-mentioned work,
+which may throw some light on the history and progress of Mr. Godwin's
+mind. He was anxious to make his biographical account as complete as
+he could, and applied for this purpose to many of his acquaintance to
+furnish him with anecdotes or to suggest criticisms. Amongst others Mr.
+Fawcett repeated to him what he thought a striking passage in a speech
+on _General Warrants_ delivered by Lord Chatham, at which he (Mr.
+Fawcett) had been present. "Every man's house" (said this emphatic
+thinker and speaker) "has been called his castle. And why is it called
+his castle? Is it because it is defended by a wall, because it is
+surrounded with a moat? No, it may be nothing more than a straw-built
+shed. It may be open to all the elements: the wind may enter in, the
+rain may enter in--but the king _cannot_ enter in!" His friend thought
+that the point was here palpable enough: but when he came to read the
+printed volume, he found it thus _transposed_: "Every man's house is his
+castle. And why is it called so? Is it because it is defended by a wall,
+because it is surrounded with a moat? No, it may be nothing more than a
+straw-built shed. It may be exposed to all the elements: the rain may
+enter into it, _all the winds of Heaven may whistle round it_, but the
+king cannot, &c." This was what Fawcett called a defect of _natural
+imagination_. He at the same time admitted that Mr. Godwin had improved
+his native sterility in this respect; or atoned for it by incessant
+activity of mind and by accumulated stores of thought and powers of
+language. In fact, his _forte_ is not the spontaneous, but the voluntary
+exercise of talent. He fixes his ambition on a high point of excellence,
+and spares no pains or time in attaining it. He has less of the
+appearance of a man of genius, than any one who has given such decided
+and ample proofs of it. He is ready only on reflection: dangerous only
+at the rebound. He gathers himself up, and strains every nerve and
+faculty with deliberate aim to some heroic and dazzling atchievement of
+intellect: but he must make a career before he flings himself, armed,
+upon the enemy, or he is sure to be unhorsed. Or he resembles an
+eight-day clock that must be wound up long before it can strike.
+Therefore, his powers of conversation are but limited. He has neither
+acuteness of remark, nor a flow of language, both which might be
+expected from his writings, as these are no less distinguished by a
+sustained and impassioned tone of declamation than by novelty of opinion
+or brilliant tracks of invention. In company, Horne Tooke used to make
+a mere child of him--or of any man! Mr. Godwin liked this treatment[D],
+and indeed it is his foible to fawn on those who use him _cavalierly_,
+and to be cavalier to those who express an undue or unqualified
+admiration of him. He looks up with unfeigned respect to acknowledged
+reputation (but then it must be very well ascertained before he admits
+it)--and has a favourite hypothesis that Understanding and Virtue are
+the same thing. Mr. Godwin possesses a high degree of philosophical
+candour, and studiously paid the homage of his pen and person to Mr.
+Malthus, Sir James Macintosh, and Dr. Parr, for their unsparing attacks
+on him; but woe to any poor devil who had the hardihood to defend him
+against them! In private, the author of _Political Justice_ at one
+time reminded those who knew him of the metaphysician engrafted on
+the Dissenting Minister. There was a dictatorial, captious, quibbling
+pettiness of manner. He lost this with the first blush and awkwardness
+of popularity, which surprised him in the retirement of his study;
+and he has since, with the wear and tear of society, from being too
+pragmatical, become somewhat too careless. He is, at present, as easy as
+an old glove. Perhaps there is a little attention to effect in this,
+and he wishes to appear a foil to himself. His best moments are with an
+intimate acquaintance or two, when he gossips in a fine vein about old
+authors, Clarendon's _History of the Rebellion_, or Burnet's _History of
+his own Times_; and you perceive by your host's talk, as by the taste
+of seasoned wine, that he has a _cellarage_ in his understanding! Mr.
+Godwin also has a correct _acquired_ taste in poetry and the drama. He
+relishes Donne and Ben Jonson, and recites a passage from either with an
+agreeable mixture of pedantry and _bonhommie_. He is not one of those
+who do not grow wiser with opportunity and reflection: he changes his
+opinions, and changes them for the better. The alteration of his taste
+in poetry, from an exclusive admiration of the age of Queen Anne to an
+almost equally exclusive one of that of Elizabeth, is, we suspect, owing
+to Mr. Coleridge, who some twenty years ago, threw a great stone into
+the standing pool of criticism, which splashed some persons with the
+mud, but which gave a motion to the surface and a reverberation to the
+neighbouring echoes, which has not since subsided. In common company,
+Mr. Godwin either goes to sleep himself, or sets others to sleep. He is
+at present engaged in a History of the Commonwealth of England.--_Esto
+perpetua!_ In size Mr. Godwin is below the common stature, nor is his
+deportment graceful or animated. His face is, however, fine, with an
+expression of placid temper and recondite thought. He is not unlike the
+common portraits of Locke. There is a very admirable likeness of him by
+Mr. Northcote, which with a more heroic and dignified air, only does
+justice to the profound sagacity and benevolent aspirations of our
+author's mind. Mr. Godwin has kept the best company of his time, but he
+has survived most of the celebrated persons with whom he lived in habits
+of intimacy. He speaks of them with enthusiasm and with discrimination;
+and sometimes dwells with peculiar delight on a day passed at John
+Kemble's in company with Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Curran, Mrs. Wolstonecraft
+and Mrs. Inchbald, when the conversation took a most animated turn
+and the subject was of Love. Of all these our author is the only one
+remaining. Frail tenure, on which human life and genius are lent us for
+a while to improve or to enjoy!
+
+
+[Footnote A: Shaftesbury made this an objection to Christianity, which
+was answered by Foster, Leland, and other eminent divines, on the
+ground that Christianity had a higher object in view, namely, general
+philanthropy.]
+
+[Footnote B: Mr. Fuseli used to object to this striking delineation a
+want of historical correctness, inasmuch as the animating principle of
+the true chivalrous character was the sense of honour, not the mere
+regard to, or saving of, appearances. This, we think, must be an
+hypercriticism, from all we remember of books of chivalry and heroes of
+romance.]
+
+[Footnote C: We had forgotten the tragedies of Antonio and Ferdinand.
+Peace be with their _manes_!]
+
+[Footnote D: To be sure, it was redeemed by a high respect, and by some
+magnificent compliments. Once in particular, at his own table, after a
+good deal of _badinage_ and cross-questioning about his being the author
+of the Reply to Judge Eyre's Charge, on Mr. Godwin's acknowledging that
+he was, Mr. Tooke said, "Come here then,"--and when his guest went round
+to his chair, he took his hand, and pressed it to his lips, saying--"I
+can do no less for the hand that saved my life!"]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+MR. COLERIDGE.
+
+
+
+The present is an age of talkers, and not of doers; and the reason is,
+that the world is growing old. We are so far advanced in the Arts and
+Sciences, that we live in retrospect, and doat on past atchievements.
+The accumulation of knowledge has been so great, that we are lost in
+wonder at the height it has reached, instead of attempting to climb
+or add to it; while the variety of objects distracts and dazzles the
+looker-on. What _niche_ remains unoccupied? What path untried? What is
+the use of doing anything, unless we could do better than all those who
+have gone before us? What hope is there of this? We are like those who
+have been to see some noble monument of art, who are content to admire
+without thinking of rivalling it; or like guests after a feast,
+who praise the hospitality of the donor "and thank the bounteous
+Pan"--perhaps carrying away some trifling fragments; or like the
+spectators of a mighty battle, who still hear its sound afar off, and
+the clashing of armour and the neighing of the war-horse and the shout
+of victory is in their ears, like the rushing of innumerable waters!
+
+Mr. Coleridge has "a mind reflecting ages past:" his voice is like
+the echo of the congregated roar of the "dark rearward and abyss" of
+thought. He who has seen a mouldering tower by the side of a chrystal
+lake, hid by the mist, but glittering in the wave below, may conceive
+the dim, gleaming, uncertain intelligence of his eye: he who has marked
+the evening clouds uprolled (a world of vapours), has seen the picture
+of his mind, unearthly, unsubstantial, with gorgeous tints and
+ever-varying forms--
+
+  "That which was now a horse, even with a thought
+  The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct
+  As water is in water."
+
+Our author's mind is (as he himself might express it) _tangential_.
+There is no subject on which he has not touched, none on which he has
+rested. With an understanding fertile, subtle, expansive, "quick,
+forgetive, apprehensive," beyond all living precedent, few traces of it
+will perhaps remain. He lends himself to all impressions alike; he gives
+up his mind and liberty of thought to none. He is a general lover of art
+and science, and wedded to no one in particular. He pursues knowledge as
+a mistress, with outstretched hands and winged speed; but as he is
+about to embrace her, his Daphne turns--alas! not to a laurel! Hardly a
+speculation has been left on record from the earliest time, but it is
+loosely folded up in Mr. Coleridge's memory, like a rich, but somewhat
+tattered piece of tapestry; we might add (with more seeming than real
+extravagance), that scarce a thought can pass through the mind of man,
+but its sound has at some time or other passed over his head with
+rustling pinions. On whatever question or author you speak, he is
+prepared to take up the theme with advantage--from Peter Abelard down
+to Thomas Moore, from the subtlest metaphysics to the politics of the
+_Courier_. There is no man of genius, in whose praise he descants, but
+the critic seems to stand above the author, and "what in him is weak, to
+strengthen, what is low, to raise and support:" nor is there any work of
+genius that does not come out of his hands like an Illuminated Missal,
+sparkling even in its defects. If Mr. Coleridge had not been the most
+impressive talker of his age, he would probably have been the finest
+writer; but he lays down his pen to make sure of an auditor, and
+mortgages the admiration of posterity for the stare of an idler. If he
+had not been a poet, he would have been a powerful logician; if he had
+not dipped his wing in the Unitarian controversy, he might have soared
+to the very summit of fancy. But in writing verse, he is trying
+to subject the Muse to _transcendental_ theories: in his abstract
+reasoning, he misses his way by strewing it with flowers. All that he
+has done of moment, he had done twenty years ago: since then, he may be
+said to have lived on the sound of his own voice. Mr. Coleridge is too
+rich in intellectual wealth, to need to task himself to any drudgery: he
+has only to draw the sliders of his imagination, and a thousand subjects
+expand before him, startling him with their brilliancy, or losing
+themselves in endless obscurity--
+
+  "And by the force of blear illusion,
+  They draw him on to his confusion."
+
+What is the little he could add to the stock, compared with the
+countless stores that lie about him, that he should stoop to pick up a
+name, or to polish an idle fancy? He walks abroad in the majesty of an
+universal understanding, eyeing the "rich strond," or golden sky above
+him, and "goes sounding on his way," in eloquent accents, uncompelled
+and free!
+
+Persons of the greatest capacity are often those, who for this reason
+do the least; for surveying themselves from the highest point of view,
+amidst the infinite variety of the universe, their own share in it seems
+trifling, and scarce worth a thought, and they prefer the contemplation
+of all that is, or has been, or can be, to the making a coil about doing
+what, when done, is no better than vanity. It is hard to concentrate
+all our attention and efforts on one pursuit, except from ignorance
+of others; and without this concentration of our faculties, no great
+progress can be made in any one thing. It is not merely that the mind is
+not capable of the effort; it does not think the effort worth making.
+Action is one; but thought is manifold. He whose restless eye glances
+through the wide compass of nature and art, will not consent to have
+"his own nothings monstered:" but he must do this, before he can give
+his whole soul to them. The mind, after "letting contemplation have its
+fill," or
+
+  "Sailing with supreme dominion
+  Through the azure deep of air,"
+
+sinks down on the ground, breathless, exhausted, powerless, inactive;
+or if it must have some vent to its feelings, seeks the most easy and
+obvious; is soothed by friendly flattery, lulled by the murmur of
+immediate applause, thinks as it were aloud, and babbles in its dreams!
+A scholar (so to speak) is a more disinterested and abstracted character
+than a mere author. The first looks at the numberless volumes of a
+library, and says, "All these are mine:" the other points to a single
+volume (perhaps it may be an immortal one) and says, "My name is written
+on the back of it." This is a puny and groveling ambition, beneath the
+lofty amplitude of Mr. Coleridge's mind. No, he revolves in his wayward
+soul, or utters to the passing wind, or discourses to his own shadow,
+things mightier and more various!--Let us draw the curtain, and unlock
+the shrine. Learning rocked him in his cradle, and, while yet a child,
+
+  "He lisped in numbers, for the numbers came."
+
+At sixteen he wrote his _Ode on Chatterton_, and he still reverts to
+that period with delight, not so much as it relates to himself (for that
+string of his own early promise of fame rather jars than otherwise) but
+as exemplifying the youth of a poet. Mr. Coleridge talks of himself,
+without being an egotist, for in him the individual is always merged in
+the abstract and general. He distinguished himself at school and at the
+University by his knowledge of the classics, and gained several prizes
+for Greek epigrams. How many men are there (great scholars, celebrated
+names in literature) who having done the same thing in their youth, have
+no other idea all the rest of their lives but of this achievement, of
+a fellowship and dinner, and who, installed in academic honours, would
+look down on our author as a mere strolling bard! At Christ's
+Hospital, where he was brought up, he was the idol of those among his
+schoolfellows, who mingled with their bookish studies the music of
+thought and of humanity; and he was usually attended round the cloisters
+by a group of these (inspiring and inspired) whose hearts, even then,
+burnt within them as he talked, and where the sounds yet linger to mock
+ELIA on his way, still turning pensive to the past! One of the finest
+and rarest parts of Mr. Coleridge's conversation, is when he expatiates
+on the Greek tragedians (not that he is not well acquainted, when he
+pleases, with the epic poets, or the philosophers, or orators, or
+historians of antiquity)--on the subtle reasonings and melting pathos
+of Euripides, on the harmonious gracefulness of Sophocles, tuning his
+love-laboured song, like sweetest warblings from a sacred grove; on the
+high-wrought trumpet-tongued eloquence of Aeschylus, whose Prometheus,
+above all, is like an Ode to Fate, and a pleading with Providence, his
+thoughts being let loose as his body is chained on his solitary rock,
+and his afflicted will (the emblem of mortality)
+
+  "Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny."
+
+As the impassioned critic speaks and rises in his theme, you would think
+you heard the voice of the Man hated by the Gods, contending with
+the wild winds as they roar, and his eye glitters with the spirit of
+Antiquity!
+
+Next, he was engaged with Hartley's tribes of mind, "etherial braid,
+thought-woven,"--and he busied himself for a year or two with
+vibrations and vibratiuncles and the great law of association that binds
+all things in its mystic chain, and the doctrine of Necessity (the
+mild teacher of Charity) and the Millennium, anticipative of a life to
+come--and he plunged deep into the controversy on Matter and Spirit,
+and, as an escape from Dr. Priestley's Materialism, where he felt
+himself imprisoned by the logician's spell, like Ariel in the
+cloven pine-tree, he became suddenly enamoured of Bishop Berkeley's
+fairy-world,[A] and used in all companies to build the universe, like
+a brave poetical fiction, of fine words--and he was deep-read in
+Malebranche, and in Cudworth's Intellectual System (a huge pile of
+learning, unwieldy, enormous) and in Lord Brook's hieroglyphic theories,
+and in Bishop Butler's Sermons, and in the Duchess of Newcastle's
+fantastic folios, and in Clarke and South and Tillotson, and all the
+fine thinkers and masculine reasoners of that age--and Leibnitz's
+_Pre-established Harmony_ reared its arch above his head, like the
+rainbow in the cloud, covenanting with the hopes of man--and then he
+fell plump, ten thousand fathoms down (but his wings saved him harmless)
+into the _hortus siccus_ of Dissent, where he pared religion down to the
+standard of reason and stripped faith of mystery, and preached Christ
+crucified and the Unity of the Godhead, and so dwelt for a while in the
+spirit with John Huss and Jerome of Prague and Socinus and old John
+Zisca, and ran through Neal's History of the Puritans, and Calamy's
+Non-Conformists' Memorial, having like thoughts and passions with
+them--but then Spinoza became his God, and he took up the vast chain of
+being in his hand, and the round world became the centre and the soul of
+all things in some shadowy sense, forlorn of meaning, and around him he
+beheld the living traces and the sky-pointing proportions of the mighty
+Pan--but poetry redeemed him from this spectral philosophy, and he
+bathed his heart in beauty, and gazed at the golden light of heaven, and
+drank of the spirit of the universe, and wandered at eve by fairy-stream
+or fountain,
+
+  "------When he saw nought but beauty,
+  When he heard the voice of that Almighty One
+  In every breeze that blew, or wave that murmured"--
+
+and wedded with truth in Plato's shade, and in the writings of Proclus
+and Plotinus saw the ideas of things in the eternal mind, and unfolded
+all mysteries with the Schoolmen and fathomed the depths of Duns Scotus
+and Thomas Aquinas, and entered the third heaven with Jacob Behmen, and
+walked hand in hand with Swedenborg through the pavilions of the New
+Jerusalem, and sung his faith in the promise and in the word in his
+_Religious Musings_--and lowering himself from that dizzy height, poised
+himself on Milton's wings, and spread out his thoughts in charity with
+the glad prose of Jeremy Taylor, and wept over Bowles's Sonnets, and
+studied Cowper's blankverse, and betook himself to Thomson's Castle of
+Indolence, and sported with the wits of Charles the Second's days and
+of Queen Anne, and relished Swift's style and that of the John Bull
+(Arbuthnot's we mean, not Mr. Croker's) and dallied with the British
+Essayists and Novelists, and knew all qualities of more modern writers
+with a learned spirit, Johnson, and Goldsmith, and Junius, and Burke,
+and Godwin, and the Sorrows of Werter, and Jean Jacques Rousseau, and
+Voltaire, and Marivaux, and Crebillon, and thousands more--now "laughed
+with Rabelais in his easy chair" or pointed to Hogarth, or afterwards
+dwelt on Claude's classic scenes or spoke with rapture of Raphael,
+and compared the women at Rome to figures that had walked out of his
+pictures, or visited the Oratory of Pisa, and described the works of
+Giotto and Ghirlandaio and Massaccio, and gave the moral of the picture
+of the Triumph of Death, where the beggars and the wretched invoke his
+dreadful dart, but the rich and mighty of the earth quail and shrink
+before it; and in that land of siren sights and sounds, saw a dance of
+peasant girls, and was charmed with lutes and gondolas,--or wandered
+into Germany and lost himself in the labyrinths of the Hartz Forest and
+of the Kantean philosophy, and amongst the cabalistic names of Fichtè
+and Schelling and Lessing, and God knows who--this was long after, but
+all the former while, he had nerved his heart and filled his eyes
+with tears, as he hailed the rising orb of liberty, since quenched in
+darkness and in blood, and had kindled his affections at the blaze of
+the French Revolution, and sang for joy when the towers of the Bastile
+and the proud places of the insolent and the oppressor fell, and would
+have floated his bark, freighted with fondest fancies, across the
+Atlantic wave with Southey and others to seek for peace and freedom--
+
+  "In Philarmonia's undivided dale!"
+
+Alas! "Frailty, thy name is _Genius_!"--What is become of all this
+mighty heap of hope, of thought, of learning, and humanity? It has
+ended in swallowing doses of oblivion and in writing paragraphs in the
+_Courier_.--Such, and so little is the mind of man!
+
+It was not to be supposed that Mr. Coleridge could keep on at the rate
+he set off; he could not realize all he knew or thought, and less could
+not fix his desultory ambition; other stimulants supplied the place, and
+kept up the intoxicating dream, the fever and the madness of his early
+impressions. Liberty (the philosopher's and the poet's bride) had fallen
+a victim, meanwhile, to the murderous practices of the hag, Legitimacy.
+Proscribed by court-hirelings, too romantic for the herd of vulgar
+politicians, our enthusiast stood at bay, and at last turned on the
+pivot of a subtle casuistry to the _unclean side:_ but his discursive
+reason would not let him trammel himself into a poet-laureate or
+stamp-distributor, and he stopped, ere he had quite passed that
+well-known "bourne from whence no traveller returns"--and so has sunk
+into torpid, uneasy repose, tantalized by useless resources, haunted by
+vain imaginings, his lips idly moving, but his heart forever still, or,
+as the shattered chords vibrate of themselves, making melancholy music
+to the ear of memory! Such is the fate of genius in an age, when in the
+unequal contest with sovereign wrong, every man is ground to powder who
+is not either a born slave, or who does not willingly and at once offer
+up the yearnings of humanity and the dictates of reason as a welcome
+sacrifice to besotted prejudice and loathsome power.
+
+Of all Mr. Coleridge's productions, the _Ancient Mariner_ is the only
+one that we could with confidence put into any person's hands, on whom
+we wished to impress a favourable idea of his extraordinary powers. Let
+whatever other objections be made to it, it is unquestionably a work of
+genius--of wild, irregular, overwhelming imagination, and has that rich,
+varied movement in the verse, which gives a distant idea of the lofty or
+changeful tones of Mr. Coleridge's voice. In the _Christobel_, there
+is one splendid passage on divided friendship. The _Translation of
+Schiller's Wallenstein_ is also a masterly production in its kind,
+faithful and spirited. Among his smaller pieces there are occasional
+bursts of pathos and fancy, equal to what we might expect from him; but
+these form the exception, and not the rule. Such, for instance, is his
+affecting Sonnet to the author of the Robbers.
+
+  Schiller! that hour I would have wish'd to die,
+  If through the shudd'ring midnight I had sent
+  From the dark dungeon of the tower time-rent,
+  That fearful voice, a famish'd father's cry--
+
+  That in no after-moment aught less vast
+  Might stamp me mortal! A triumphant shout
+  Black horror scream'd, and all her goblin rout
+  From the more with'ring scene diminish'd pass'd.
+
+  Ah! Bard tremendous in sublimity!
+  Could I behold thee in thy loftier mood,
+  Wand'ring at eve, with finely frenzied eye,
+  Beneath some vast old tempest-swinging wood!
+  Awhile, with mute awe gazing, I would brood,
+  Then weep aloud in a wild ecstasy.
+
+His Tragedy, entitled _Remorse_, is full of beautiful and striking
+passages, but it does not place the author in the first rank of dramatic
+writers. But if Mr. Coleridge's works do not place him in that rank,
+they injure instead of conveying a just idea of the man, for he himself
+is certainly in the first class of general intellect.
+
+If our author's poetry is inferior to his conversation, his prose is
+utterly abortive. Hardly a gleam is to be found in it of the brilliancy
+and richness of those stores of thought and language that he pours out
+incessantly, when they are lost like drops of water in the ground. The
+principal work, in which he has attempted to embody his general views of
+things, is the FRIEND, of which, though it contains some noble passages
+and fine trains of thought, prolixity and obscurity are the most
+frequent characteristics.
+
+No two persons can be conceived more opposite in character or genius
+than the subject of the present and of the preceding sketch. Mr. Godwin,
+with less natural capacity, and with fewer acquired advantages, by
+concentrating his mind on some given object, and doing what he had to do
+with all his might, has accomplished much, and will leave more than
+one monument of a powerful intellect behind him; Mr. Coleridge, by
+dissipating his, and dallying with every subject by turns, has done
+little or nothing to justify to the world or to posterity, the high
+opinion which all who have ever heard him converse, or known him
+intimately, with one accord entertain of him. Mr. Godwin's faculties
+have kept house, and plied their task in the work-shop of the brain,
+diligently and effectually: Mr. Coleridge's have gossipped away their
+time, and gadded about from house to house, as if life's business were
+to melt the hours in listless talk. Mr. Godwin is intent on a subject,
+only as it concerns himself and his reputation; he works it out as a
+matter of duty, and discards from his mind whatever does not forward his
+main object as impertinent and vain. Mr. Coleridge, on the other hand,
+delights in nothing but episodes and digressions, neglects whatever he
+undertakes to perform, and can act only on spontaneous impulses, without
+object or method. "He cannot be constrained by mastery." While he should
+be occupied with a given pursuit, he is thinking of a thousand other
+things; a thousand tastes, a thousand objects tempt him, and distract
+his mind, which keeps open house, and entertains all comers; and after
+being fatigued and amused with morning calls from idle visitors, finds
+the day consumed and its business unconcluded. Mr. Godwin, on the
+contrary, is somewhat exclusive and unsocial in his habits of mind,
+entertains no company but what he gives his whole time and attention to,
+and wisely writes over the doors of his understanding, his fancy, and
+his senses--"No admittance except on business." He has none of that
+fastidious refinement and false delicacy, which might lead him to
+balance between the endless variety of modern attainments. He does not
+throw away his life (nor a single half-hour of it) in adjusting the
+claims of different accomplishments, and in choosing between them or
+making himself master of them all. He sets about his task, (whatever
+it may be) and goes through it with spirit and fortitude. He has the
+happiness to think an author the greatest character in the world,
+and himself the greatest author in it. Mr. Coleridge, in writing an
+harmonious stanza, would stop to consider whether there was not more
+grace and beauty in a _Pas de trois_, and would not proceed till he had
+resolved this question by a chain of metaphysical reasoning without end.
+Not so Mr. Godwin. That is best to him, which he can do best. He does
+not waste himself in vain aspirations and effeminate sympathies. He is
+blind, deaf, insensible to all but the trump of Fame. Plays, operas,
+painting, music, ball-rooms, wealth, fashion, titles, lords, ladies,
+touch him not--all these are no more to him than to the magician in his
+cell, and he writes on to the end of the chapter, through good report
+and evil report. _Pingo in eternitatem_--is his motto. He neither envies
+nor admires what others are, but is contented to be what he is, and
+strives to do the utmost he can. Mr. Coleridge has flirted with the
+Muses as with a set of mistresses: Mr. Godwin has been married twice, to
+Reason and to Fancy, and has to boast no short-lived progeny by each.
+So to speak, he has _valves_ belonging to his mind, to regulate the
+quantity of gas admitted into it, so that like the bare, unsightly, but
+well-compacted steam-vessel, it cuts its liquid way, and arrives at
+its promised end: while Mr. Coleridge's bark, "taught with the little
+nautilus to sail," the sport of every breath, dancing to every wave,
+
+  "Youth at its prow, and Pleasure at its helm,"
+
+flutters its gaudy pennons in the air, glitters in the sun, but we wait
+in vain to hear of its arrival in the destined harbour. Mr. Godwin, with
+less variety and vividness, with less subtlety and susceptibility
+both of thought and feeling, has had firmer nerves, a more determined
+purpose, a more comprehensive grasp of his subject, and the results are
+as we find them. Each has met with his reward: for justice has, after
+all, been done to the pretensions of each; and we must, in all cases,
+use means to ends!
+
+
+[Footnote A: Mr. Coleridge named his eldest son (the writer of some
+beautiful Sonnets) after Hartley, and the second after Berkeley. The
+third was called Derwent, after the river of that name. Nothing can be
+more characteristic of his mind than this circumstance. All his ideas
+indeed are like a river, flowing on for ever, and still murmuring as it
+flows, discharging its waters and still replenished--
+
+  "And so by many winding nooks it strays,
+  With willing sport to the wild ocean!"]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+REV. MR. IRVING.
+
+
+
+This gentleman has gained an almost unprecedented, and not an altogether
+unmerited popularity as a preacher. As he is, perhaps, though a burning
+and a shining light, not "one of the fixed," we shall take this
+opportunity of discussing his merits, while he is at his meridian
+height; and in doing so, shall "nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in
+malice."
+
+Few circumstances shew the prevailing and preposterous rage for novelty
+in a more striking point of view, than the success of Mr. Irving's
+oratory. People go to hear him in crowds, and come away with a mixture
+of delight and astonishment--they go again to see if the effect will
+continue, and send others to try to find out the mystery--and in the
+noisy conflict between extravagant encomiums and splenetic objections,
+the true secret escapes observation, which is, that the whole thing is,
+nearly from beginning to end, a _transposition of ideas_. If the subject
+of these remarks had come out as a player, with all his advantages of
+figure, voice, and action, we think he would have failed: if, as a
+preacher, he had kept within the strict bounds of pulpit-oratory, he
+would scarcely have been much distinguished among his Calvinistic
+brethren: as a mere author, he would have excited attention rather
+by his quaintness and affectation of an obsolete style and mode of
+thinking, than by any thing else. But he has contrived to jumble these
+several characters together in an unheard-of and unwarranted manner, and
+the fascination is altogether irresistible. Our Caledonian divine is
+equally an anomaly in religion, in literature, in personal appearance,
+and in public speaking. To hear a person spout Shakspeare on the stage
+is nothing--the charm is nearly worn out--but to hear any one spout
+Shakspeare (and that not in a sneaking under-tone, but at the top of
+his voice, and with the full breadth of his chest) from a Calvinistic
+pulpit, is new and wonderful. The _Fancy_ have lately lost something of
+their gloss in public estimation, and after the last fight, few would go
+far to see a Neat or a Spring set-to;--but to see a man who is able to
+enter the ring with either of them, or brandish a quarter-staff with
+Friar Tuck, or a broad-sword with Shaw the Lifeguards' man, stand up in
+a strait-laced old-fashioned pulpit, and bandy dialectics with modern
+philosophers or give a _cross-buttock_ to a cabinet minister, there is
+something in a sight like this also, that is a cure for sore eyes. It
+is as if Crib or Molyneux had turned Methodist parson, or as if
+a Patagonian savage were to come forward as the patron-saint of
+Evangelical religion. Again, the doctrine of eternal punishment was one
+of the staple arguments with which, everlastingly drawled out, the old
+school of Presbyterian divines used to keep their audiences awake, or
+lull them to sleep; but to which people of taste and fashion paid
+little attention, as inelegant and barbarous, till Mr. Irving, with his
+cast-iron features and sledge-hammer blows, puffing like a grim Vulcan,
+set to work to forge more classic thunderbolts, and kindle the expiring
+flames anew with the very sweepings of sceptical and infidel
+libraries, so as to excite a pleasing horror in the female part of his
+congregation. In short, our popular declaimer has, contrary to the
+Scripture-caution, put new wine into old bottles, or new cloth on old
+garments. He has, with an unlimited and daring licence, mixed the
+sacred and the profane together, the carnal and the spiritual man, the
+petulance of the bar with the dogmatism of the pulpit, the theatrical
+and theological, the modern and the obsolete;--what wonder that this
+splendid piece of patchwork, splendid by contradiction and contrast,
+has delighted some and confounded others? The more serious part of his
+congregation indeed complain, though not bitterly, that their pastor
+has converted their meeting-house into a play-house: but when a lady of
+quality, introducing herself and her three daughters to the preacher,
+assures him that they have been to all the most fashionable places of
+resort, the opera, the theatre, assemblies, Miss Macauley's readings,
+and Exeter-Change, and have been equally entertained no where else, we
+apprehend that no remonstrances of a committee of ruling-elders will be
+able to bring him to his senses again, or make him forego such sweet,
+but ill-assorted praise. What we mean to insist upon is, that Mr. Irving
+owes his triumphant success, not to any one quality for which he has
+been extolled, but to a combination of qualities, the more striking
+in their immediate effect, in proportion as they are unlooked-for and
+heterogeneous, like the violent opposition of light and shade in a
+picture. We shall endeavour to explain this view of the subject more at
+large.
+
+Mr. Irving, then, is no common or mean man. He has four or five
+qualities, possessed in a moderate or in a paramount degree, which,
+added or multiplied together, fill up the important space he occupies in
+the public eye. Mr. Irving's intellect itself is of a superior order; he
+has undoubtedly both talents and acquirements beyond the ordinary run of
+every-day preachers. These alone, however, we hold, would not account
+for a twentieth part of the effect he has produced: they would have
+lifted him perhaps out of the mire and slough of sordid obscurity, but
+would never have launched him into the ocean-stream of popularity, in
+which he "lies floating many a rood;"--but to these he adds uncommon
+height, a graceful figure and action, a clear and powerful voice, a
+striking, if not a fine face, a bold and fiery spirit, and a most
+portentous obliquity of vision, which throw him to an immeasurable
+distance beyond all competition, and effectually relieve whatever there
+might be of common-place or bombast in his style of composition. Put the
+case that Mr. Irving had been five feet high--Would he ever have been
+heard of, or, as he does now, have "bestrode the world like a Colossus?"
+No, the thing speaks for itself. He would in vain have lifted
+his Lilliputian arm to Heaven, people would have laughed at his
+monkey-tricks. Again, had he been as tall as he is, but had wanted other
+recommendations, he would have been nothing.
+
+  "The player's province they but vainly try,
+  Who want these powers, deportment, voice, and eye."
+
+Conceive a rough, ugly, shock-headed Scotchman, standing up in the
+Caledonian chapel, and dealing "damnation round the land" in a broad
+northern dialect, and with a harsh, screaking voice, what ear polite,
+what smile serene would have hailed the barbarous prodigy, or not
+consigned him to utter neglect and derision? But the Rev. Edward Irving,
+with all his native wildness, "hath a smooth aspect framed to make
+women" saints; his very unusual size and height are carried off and
+moulded into elegance by the most admirable symmetry of form and ease of
+gesture; his sable locks, his clear iron-grey complexion, and firm-set
+features, turn the raw, uncouth Scotchman into the likeness of a noble
+Italian picture; and even his distortion of sight only redeems the
+otherwise "faultless monster" within the bounds of humanity, and, when
+admiration is exhausted and curiosity ceases, excites a new interest by
+leading to the idle question whether it is an advantage to the preacher
+or not. Farther, give him all his actual and remarkable advantages of
+body and mind, let him be as tall, as strait, as dark and clear of skin,
+as much at his ease, as silver-tongued, as eloquent and as argumentative
+as he is, yet with all these, and without a little charlatanery to set
+them off, he had been nothing. He might, keeping within the rigid line
+of his duty and professed calling, have preached on for ever; he
+might have divided the old-fashioned doctrines of election, grace,
+reprobation, predestination, into his sixteenth, seventeenth,
+and eighteenth heads, and his _lastly_ have been looked for as a
+"consummation devoutly to be wished;" he might have defied the devil and
+all his works, and by the help of a loud voice and strong-set person--
+
+  "A lusty man to ben an Abbot able;"--
+
+have increased his own congregation, and been quoted among the godly as
+a powerful preacher of the word; but in addition to this, he went out of
+his way to attack Jeremy Bentham, and the town was up in arms. The thing
+was new. He thus wiped the stain of musty ignorance and formal bigotry
+out of his style. Mr. Irving must have something superior in him, to
+look over the shining close-packed heads of his congregation to have a
+hit at the _Great Jurisconsult_ in his study. He next, ere the report of
+the former blow had subsided, made a lunge at Mr. Brougham, and glanced
+an eye at Mr. Canning; _mystified_ Mr. Coleridge, and _stultified_ Lord
+Liverpool in his place--in the Gallery. It was rare sport to see him,
+"like an eagle in a dovecote, flutter the Volscians in Corioli." He has
+found out the secret of attracting by repelling. Those whom he is likely
+to attack are curious to hear what he says of them: they go again,
+to show that they do not mind it. It is no less interesting to the
+by-standers, who like to witness this sort of _onslaught_--like a charge
+of cavalry, the shock, and the resistance. Mr. Irving has, in fact,
+without leave asked or a licence granted, converted the Caledonian
+Chapel into a Westminster Forum or Debating Society, with the sanctity
+of religion added to it. Our spirited polemic is not contented to defend
+the citadel of orthodoxy against all impugners, and shut himself up
+in texts of Scripture and huge volumes of the Commentators as an
+impregnable fortress;--he merely makes use of the stronghold of religion
+as a resting-place, from which he sallies forth, armed with modern
+topics and with penal fire, like Achilles of old rushing from the
+Grecian tents, against the adversaries of God and man. Peter Aretine is
+said to have laid the Princes of Europe under contribution by penning
+satires against them: so Mr. Irving keeps the public in awe by insulting
+all their favourite idols. He does not spare their politicians, their
+rulers, their moralists, their poets, their players, their critics,
+their reviewers, their magazine-writers; he levels their resorts of
+business, their places of amusement, at a blow--their cities, churches,
+palaces, ranks and professions, refinements, and elegances--and leaves
+nothing standing but himself, a mighty landmark in a degenerate age,
+overlooking the wide havoc he has made! He makes war upon all arts and
+sciences, upon the faculties and nature of man, on his vices and his
+virtues, on all existing institutions, and all possible improvements,
+that nothing may be left but the Kirk of Scotland, and that he may be
+the head of it. He literally sends a challenge to all London in the
+name of the KING of HEAVEN, to evacuate its streets, to disperse its
+population, to lay aside its employments, to burn its wealth, to
+renounce its vanities and pomp; and for what?--that he may enter in
+as the _King of Glory_; or after enforcing his threat with the
+battering-ram of logic, the grape-shot of rhetoric, and the crossfire of
+his double vision, reduce the British metropolis to a Scottish heath,
+with a few miserable hovels upon it, where they may worship God
+according to _the root of the matter_, and an old man with a blue
+bonnet, a fair-haired girl, and a little child would form the flower of
+his flock! Such is the pretension and the boast of this new Peter the
+Hermit, who would get rid of all we have done in the way of improvement
+on a state of barbarous ignorance, or still more barbarous prejudice, in
+order to begin again on a _tabula rasa_ of Calvinism, and have a world
+of his own making. It is not very surprising that when nearly the
+whole mass and texture of civil society is indicted as a nuisance, and
+threatened to be pulled down as a rotten building ready to fall on the
+heads of the inhabitants, that all classes of people run to hear the
+crash, and to see the engines and levers at work which are to effect
+this laudable purpose. What else can be the meaning of our preacher's
+taking upon himself to denounce the sentiments of the most serious
+professors in great cities, as vitiated and stark-naught, of relegating
+religion to his native glens, and pretending that the hymn of praise or
+the sigh of contrition cannot ascend acceptably to the throne of grace
+from the crowded street as well as from the barren rock or silent
+valley? Why put this affront upon his hearers? Why belie his own
+aspirations?
+
+  "God made the country, and man made the town."
+
+So says the poet; does Mr. Irving say so? If he does, and finds the air
+of the city death to his piety, why does he not return home again? But
+if he can breathe it with impunity, and still retain the fervour of his
+early enthusiasm, and the simplicity and purity of the faith that was
+once delivered to the saints, why not extend the benefit of his own
+experience to others, instead of taunting them with a vapid pastoral
+theory? Or, if our popular and eloquent divine finds a change in
+himself, that flattery prevents the growth of grace, that he is becoming
+the God of his own idolatry by being that of others, that the glittering
+of coronet-coaches rolling down Holborn-Hill to Hatton Garden, that
+titled beauty, that the parliamentary complexion of his audience, the
+compliments of poets, and the stare of peers discompose his wandering
+thoughts a little; and yet that he cannot give up these strong
+temptations tugging at his heart; why not extend more charity to others,
+and shew more candour in speaking of himself? There is either a good
+deal of bigoted intolerance with a deplorable want of self-knowledge in
+all this; or at least an equal degree of cant and quackery.
+
+To whichever cause we are to attribute this hyperbolical tone, we hold
+it certain he could not have adopted it, if he had been _a little man_.
+But his imposing figure and dignified manner enable him to hazard
+sentiments or assertions that would be fatal to others. His
+controversial daring is _backed_ by his bodily prowess; and by bringing
+his intellectual pretensions boldly into a line with his physical
+accomplishments, he, indeed, presents a very formidable front to the
+sceptic or the scoffer. Take a cubit from his stature, and his whole
+manner resolves itself into an impertinence. But with that addition, he
+_overcrows_ the town, browbeats their prejudices, and bullies them out
+of their senses, and is not afraid of being contradicted by any one
+_less than himself_. It may be said, that individuals with great
+personal defects have made a considerable figure as public speakers; and
+Mr. Wilberforce, among others, may be held out as an instance. Nothing
+can be more insignificant as to mere outward appearance, and yet he is
+listened to in the House of Commons. But he does not wield it, he does
+not insult or bully it. He leads by following opinion, he trims, he
+shifts, he glides on the silvery sounds of his undulating, flexible,
+cautiously modulated voice, winding his way betwixt heaven and earth,
+now courting popularity, now calling servility to his aid, and with a
+large estate, the "saints," and the population of Yorkshire to swell his
+influence, never venturing on the forlorn hope, or doing any thing more
+than "hitting the house between wind and water." Yet he is probably a
+cleverer man than Mr. Irving.
+
+There is a Mr. Fox, a Dissenting Minister, as fluent a speaker, with a
+sweeter voice and a more animated and beneficent countenance than Mr.
+Irving, who expresses himself with manly spirit at a public meeting,
+takes a hand at whist, and is the darling of his congregation; but he is
+no more, because he is diminutive in person. His head is not seen above
+the crowd the length of a street off. He is the Duke of Sussex in
+miniature, but the Duke of Sussex does not go to hear him preach, as he
+attends Mr. Irving, who rises up against him like a martello tower,
+and is nothing loth to confront the spirit of a man of genius with
+the blood-royal. We allow there are, or may be, talents sufficient to
+produce this equality without a single personal advantage; but we deny
+that this would be the effect of any that our great preacher possesses.
+We conceive it not improbable that the consciousness of muscular power,
+that the admiration of his person by strangers might first have inspired
+Mr. Irving with an ambition to be something, intellectually speaking,
+and have given him confidence to attempt the greatest things. He has not
+failed for want of courage. The public, as well as the fair, are won
+by a show of gallantry. Mr. Irving has shrunk from no opinion, however
+paradoxical. He has scrupled to avow no sentiment, however obnoxious. He
+has revived exploded prejudices, he has scouted prevailing fashions.
+He has opposed the spirit of the age, and not consulted the _esprit de
+corps_. He has brought back the doctrines of Calvinism in all their
+inveteracy, and relaxed the inveteracy of his northern accents. He has
+turned religion and the Caledonian Chapel topsy-turvy. He has held a
+play-book in one hand, and a Bible in the other, and quoted Shakspeare
+and Melancthon in the same breath. The tree of the knowledge of good and
+evil is no longer, with his grafting, a dry withered stump; it shoots
+its branches to the skies, and hangs out its blossoms to the gale--
+
+  "Miraturque novos fructus, et non sua poma."
+
+He has taken the thorns and briars of scholastic divinity, and garlanded
+them with the flowers of modern literature. He has done all this,
+relying on the strength of a remarkably fine person and manner, and
+through that he has succeeded--otherwise he would have perished
+miserably.
+
+Dr. Chalmers is not by any means so good a looking man, nor so
+accomplished a speaker as Mr. Irving; yet he at one time almost equalled
+his oratorical celebrity, and certainly paved the way for him. He has
+therefore more merit than his admired pupil, as he has done as much
+with fewer means. He has more scope of intellect and more intensity of
+purpose. Both his matter and his manner, setting aside his face and
+figure, are more impressive. Take the volume of "Sermons on Astronomy,"
+by Dr. Chalmers, and the "Four Orations for the Oracles of God" which
+Mr. Irving lately published, and we apprehend there can be no comparison
+as to their success. The first ran like wild-fire through the country,
+were the darlings of watering-places, were laid in the windows of
+inns,[A] and were to be met with in all places of public resort; while
+the "Orations" get on but slowly, on Milton's stilts, and are pompously
+announced as in a Third Edition. We believe the fairest and fondest of
+his admirers would rather see and hear Mr. Irving than read him. The
+reason is, that the groundwork of his compositions is trashy and
+hackneyed, though set off by extravagant metaphors and an affected
+phraseology; that without the turn of his head and wave of his hand, his
+periods have nothing in them; and that he himself is the only _idea_
+with which he has yet enriched the public mind! He must play off
+his person, as Orator Henley used to dazzle his hearers with his
+diamond-ring. The small frontispiece prefixed to the "Orations" does not
+serve to convey an adequate idea of the magnitude of the man, nor of
+the ease and freedom of his motions in the pulpit. How different is Dr.
+Chalmers! He is like "a monkey-preacher" to the other. He cannot boast
+of personal appearance to set him off. But then he is like the very
+genius or demon of theological controversy personified. He has neither
+airs nor graces at command; he thinks nothing of himself; he has nothing
+theatrical about him (which cannot be said of his successor and
+rival); but you see a man in mortal throes and agony with doubts and
+difficulties, seizing stubborn knotty points with his teeth, tearing
+them with his hands, and straining his eyeballs till they almost start
+out of their sockets, in pursuit of a train of visionary reasoning, like
+a Highland-seer with his second sight. The description of Balfour of
+Burley in his cave, with his Bible in one hand and his sword in the
+other, contending with the imaginary enemy of mankind, gasping for
+breath, and with the cold moisture running down his face, gives a lively
+idea of Dr. Chalmers's prophetic fury in the pulpit. If we could
+have looked in to have seen Burley hard-beset "by the coinage of his
+heat-oppressed brain," who would have asked whether he was a handsome
+man or not? It would be enough to see a man haunted by a spirit, under
+the strong and entire dominion of a wilful hallucination. So the
+integrity and vehemence of Dr. Chalmers's manner, the determined way in
+which he gives himself up to his subject, or lays about him and buffets
+sceptics and gainsayers, arrests attention in spite of every other
+circumstance, and fixes it on that, and that alone, which excites
+such interest and such eagerness in his own breast! Besides, he is a
+logician, has a theory in support of whatever he chooses to advance, and
+weaves the tissue of his sophistry so close and intricate, that it is
+difficult not to be entangled in it, or to escape from it. "There's
+magic in the web." Whatever appeals to the pride of the human
+understanding, has a subtle charm in it. The mind is naturally
+pugnacious, cannot refuse a challenge of strength or skill, sturdily
+enters the lists and resolves to conquer, or to yield itself vanquished
+in the forms. This is the chief hold Dr. Chalmers had upon his hearers,
+and upon the readers of his "Astronomical Discourses." No one was
+satisfied with his arguments, no one could answer them, but every one
+wanted to try what he could make of them, as we try to find out a
+riddle. "By his so potent art," the art of laying down problematical
+premises, and drawing from them still more doubtful, but not impossible,
+conclusions, "he could bedim the noonday sun, betwixt the green sea and
+the azure vault set roaring war," and almost compel the stars in their
+courses to testify to his opinions. The mode in which he undertook to
+make the circuit of the universe, and demand categorical information
+"now of the planetary and now of the fixed," might put one in mind of
+Hecate's mode of ascending in a machine from the stage, "midst troops
+of spirits," in which you now admire the skill of the artist, and next
+tremble for the fate of the performer, fearing that the audacity of
+the attempt will turn his head or break his neck. The style of these
+"Discourses" also, though not elegant or poetical, was, like the
+subject, intricate and endless. It was that of a man pushing his way
+through a labyrinth of difficulties, and determined not to flinch. The
+impression on the reader was proportionate; for, whatever were the
+merits of the style or matter, both were new and striking; and the train
+of thought that was unfolded at such length and with such strenuousness,
+was bold, well-sustained, and consistent with itself.
+
+Mr. Irving wants the continuity of thought and manner which
+distinguishes his rival--and shines by patches and in bursts. He does
+not warm or acquire increasing force or rapidity with his progress. He
+is never hurried away by a deep or lofty enthusiasm, nor touches the
+highest point of genius or fanaticism, but "in the very storm and
+whirlwind of his passion, he acquires and begets a temperance that may
+give it smoothness." He has the self-possession and masterly execution
+of an experienced player or fencer, and does not seem to express his
+natural convictions, or to be engaged in a mortal struggle. This greater
+ease and indifference is the result of vast superiority of personal
+appearance, which "to be admired needs but to be seen," and does not
+require the possessor to work himself up into a passion, or to use
+any violent contortions to gain attention or to keep it. These two
+celebrated preachers are in almost all respects an antithesis to each
+other. If Mr. Irving is an example of what can be done by the help of
+external advantages, Dr. Chalmers is a proof of what can be done without
+them. The one is most indebted to his mind, the other to his body. If
+Mr. Irving inclines one to suspect fashionable or popular religion of a
+little _anthropomorphitism_, Dr. Chalmers effectually redeems it from
+that scandal.
+
+
+[Footnote A: We remember finding the volume in the orchard at
+Burford-bridge near Boxhill, and passing a whole and very delightful
+morning in reading it, without quitting the shade of an apple-tree.
+We have not been able to pay Mr. Irving's back the same compliment of
+reading it at a sitting.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LATE MR. HORNE TOOKE.
+
+
+
+Mr. Horne Tooke was one of those who may be considered as connecting
+links between a former period and the existing generation. His education
+and accomplishments, nay, his political opinions, were of the last age;
+his mind, and the tone of his feelings were _modern_. There was a hard,
+dry materialism in the very texture of his understanding, varnished over
+by the external refinements of the old school. Mr. Tooke had great
+scope of attainment, and great versatility of pursuit; but the same
+shrewdness, quickness, cool self-possession, the same _literalness_ of
+perception, and absence of passion and enthusiasm, characterised nearly
+all he did, said, or wrote. He was without a rival (almost) in private
+conversation, an expert public speaker, a keen politician, a first-rate
+grammarian, and the finest gentleman (to say the least) of his own
+party. He had no imagination (or he would not have scorned it!)--no
+delicacy of taste, no rooted prejudices or strong attachments: his
+intellect was like a bow of polished steel, from which he shot
+sharp-pointed poisoned arrows at his friends in private, at his enemies
+in public. His mind (so to speak) had no _religion_ in it, and very
+little even of the moral qualities of genius; but he was a man of the
+world, a scholar bred, and a most acute and powerful logician. He was
+also a wit, and a formidable one: yet it may be questioned whether his
+wit was any thing more than an excess of his logical faculty: it did not
+consist in the play of fancy, but in close and cutting combinations of
+the understanding. "The law is open to every one: _so_," said Mr. Tooke,
+"_is the London Tavern_!" It is the previous deduction formed in the
+mind, and the splenetic contempt felt for a practical sophism, that
+_beats about the bush for_, and at last finds the apt illustration; not
+the casual, glancing coincidence of two objects, that points out an
+absurdity to the understanding. So, on another occasion, when Sir Allan
+Gardiner (who was a candidate for Westminster) had objected to Mr. Fox,
+that "he was always against the minister, _whether right or wrong_," and
+Mr. Fox, in his reply, had overlooked this slip of the tongue, Mr. Tooke
+immediately seized on it, and said, "he thought it at least an equal
+objection to Sir Allan, that he was always _with_ the minister, whether
+right or wrong." This retort had all the effect, and produced the same
+surprise as the most brilliant display of wit or fancy: yet it was only
+the detecting a flaw in an argument, like a flaw in an indictment, by a
+kind of legal pertinacity, or rather by a rigid and constant habit of
+attending to the exact import of every word and clause in a sentence.
+Mr. Tooke had the mind of a lawyer; but it was applied to a vast variety
+of topics and general trains of speculation.
+
+Mr. Horne Tooke was in private company, and among his friends, the
+finished gentleman of the last age. His manners were as fascinating as
+his conversation was spirited and delightful. He put one in mind of the
+burden of the song of "_The King's Old Courtier, and an Old Courtier of
+the King's_." He was, however, of the opposite party. It was curious to
+hear our modern sciolist advancing opinions of the most radical
+kind without any mixture of radical heat or violence, in a tone of
+fashionable _nonchalance_, with elegance of gesture and attitude, and
+with the most perfect good-humour. In the spirit of opposition, or in
+the pride of logical superiority, he too often shocked the prejudices or
+wounded the self-love of those about him, while he himself displayed
+the same unmoved indifference or equanimity. He said the most provoking
+things with a laughing gaiety, and a polite attention, that there was
+no withstanding. He threw others off their guard by thwarting their
+favourite theories, and then availed himself of the temperance of
+his own pulse to chafe them into madness. He had not one particle
+of deference for the opinion of others, nor of sympathy with their
+feelings; nor had he any obstinate convictions of his own to defend--
+
+  "Lord of himself, uncumbered with a _creed_!"
+
+He took up any topic by chance, and played with it at will, like a
+juggler with his cups and balls. He generally ranged himself on the
+losing side; and had rather an ill-natured delight in contradiction, and
+in perplexing the understandings of others, without leaving them any
+clue to guide them out of the labyrinth into which he had led them.
+He understood, in its perfection, the great art of throwing the _onus
+probandi_ on his adversary; and so could maintain almost any opinion,
+however absurd or fantastical, with fearless impunity. I have heard a
+sensible and well-informed man say, that he never was in company with
+Mr. Tooke without being delighted and surprised, or without feeling the
+conversation of every other person to be flat in the comparison; but
+that he did not recollect having ever heard him make a remark that
+struck him as a sound and true one, or that he himself appeared to think
+so. He used to plague Fuseli by asking him after the origin of the
+Teutonic dialects, and Dr. Parr, by wishing to know the meaning of the
+common copulative, _Is_. Once at G----'s, he defended Pitt from a charge
+of verbiage, and endeavoured to prove him superior to Fox. Some one
+imitated Pitt's manner, to show that it was monotonous, and he imitated
+him also, to show that it was not. He maintained (what would he not
+maintain?) that young Betty's acting was finer than John Kemble's, and
+recited a passage from Douglas in the manner of each, to justify the
+preference he gave to the former. The mentioning this will please the
+living; it cannot hurt the dead. He argued on the same occasion and in
+the same breath, that Addison's style was without modulation, and
+that it was physically impossible for any one to write well, who was
+habitually silent in company. He sat like a king at his own table, and
+gave law to his guests--and to the world! No man knew better how to
+manage his immediate circle, to foil or bring them out. A professed
+orator, beginning to address some observations to Mr. Tooke with a
+voluminous apology for his youth and inexperience, he said, "Speak up,
+young man!"--and by taking him at his word, cut short the flower of
+orations. Porson was the only person of whom he stood in some degree of
+awe, on account of his prodigious memory and knowledge of his favourite
+subject, Languages. Sheridan, it has been remarked, said more good
+things, but had not an equal flow of pleasantry. As an instance of
+Mr. Horne Tooke's extreme coolness and command of nerve, it has been
+mentioned that once at a public dinner when he had got on the table to
+return thanks for his health being drank with a glass of wine in his
+hand, and when there was a great clamour and opposition for some time,
+after it had subsided, he pointed to the glass to shew that it was still
+full. Mr. Holcroft (the author of the _Road to Ruin_) was one of the
+most violent and fiery-spirited of all that motley crew of persons, who
+attended the Sunday meetings at Wimbledon. One day he was so enraged by
+some paradox or raillery of his host, that he indignantly rose from his
+chair, and said, "Mr. Tooke, you are a scoundrel!" His opponent without
+manifesting the least emotion, replied, "Mr. Holcroft, when is it that
+I am to dine with you? shall it be next Thursday?"--"If you please, Mr.
+Tooke!" answered the angry philosopher, and sat down again.--It was
+delightful to see him sometimes turn from these waspish or ludicrous
+altercations with over-weening antagonists to some old friend and
+veteran politician seated at his elbow; to hear him recal the time of
+Wilkes and Liberty, the conversation mellowing like the wine with the
+smack of age; assenting to all the old man said, bringing out his
+pleasant _traits_, and pampering him into childish self-importance, and
+sending him away thirty years younger than he came!
+
+As a public or at least as a parliamentary speaker, Mr. Tooke did not
+answer the expectations that had been conceived of him, or probably
+that he had conceived of himself. It is natural for men who have felt
+a superiority over all those whom they happen to have encountered, to
+fancy that this superiority will continue, and that it will extend from
+individuals to public bodies. There is no rule in the case; or rather,
+the probability lies the contrary way. That which constitutes the
+excellence of conversation is of little use in addressing large
+assemblies of people; while other qualities are required that are hardly
+to be looked for in one and the same capacity. The way to move great
+masses of men is to shew that you yourself are moved. In a private
+circle, a ready repartee, a shrewd cross-question, ridicule and
+banter, a caustic remark or an amusing anecdote, whatever sets off
+the individual to advantage, or gratifies the curiosity or piques the
+self-love of the hearers, keeps attention alive, and secures the triumph
+of the speaker--it is a personal contest, and depends on personal and
+momentary advantages. But in appealing to the public, no one triumphs
+but in the triumph of some public cause, or by shewing a sympathy with
+the general and predominant feelings of mankind. In a private room, a
+satirist, a sophist may provoke admiration by expressing his contempt
+for each of his adversaries in turn, and by setting their opinion at
+defiance--but when men are congregated together on a great public
+question and for a weighty object, they must be treated with more
+respect; they are touched with what affects themselves or the general
+weal, not with what flatters the vanity of the speaker; they must be
+moved altogether, if they are moved at all; they are impressed with
+gratitude for a luminous exposition of their claims or for zeal in their
+cause; and the lightning of generous indignation at bad men and bad
+measures is followed by thunders of applause--even in the House of
+Commons. But a man may sneer and cavil and puzzle and fly-blow every
+question that comes before him--be despised and feared by others, and
+admired by no one but himself. He who thinks first of himself, either in
+the world or in a popular assembly, will be sure to turn attention away
+from his claims, instead of fixing it there. He must make common cause
+with his hearers. To lead, he must follow the general bias. Mr. Tooke
+did not therefore succeed as a speaker in parliament. He stood aloof,
+he played antics, he exhibited his peculiar talent--while he was on his
+legs, the question before the House stood still; the only point at issue
+respected Mr. Tooke himself, his personal address and adroitness of
+intellect.
+
+Were there to be no more places and pensions, because Mr. Tooke's style
+was terse and epigrammatic? Were the Opposition benches to be inflamed
+to an unusual pitch of "sacred vehemence," because he gave them plainly
+to understand there was not a pin to choose between Ministers and
+Opposition? Would the House let him remain among them, because, if
+they turned him out on account of his _black coat_, Lord Camelford had
+threatened to send his _black servant_ in his place? This was a good
+joke, but not a practical one. Would he gain the affections of the
+people out of doors, by scouting the question of reform? Would the King
+ever relish the old associate of Wilkes? What interest, then, what party
+did he represent? He represented nobody but himself. He was an example
+of an ingenious man, a clever talker, but he was out of his place in the
+House of Commons; where people did not come (as in his own house) to
+admire or break a lance with him, but to get through the business of
+the day, and so adjourn! He wanted effect and _momentum_. Each of his
+sentences told very well in itself, but they did not all together make
+a speech. He left off where he began. His eloquence was a succession
+of drops, not a stream. His arguments, though subtle and new, did not
+affect the main body of the question. The coldness and pettiness of
+his manner did not warm the hearts or expand the understandings of his
+hearers. Instead of encouraging, he checked the ardour of his friends;
+and teazed, instead of overpowering his antagonists. The only palpable
+hit he ever made, while he remained there, was the comparing his own
+situation in being rejected by the House, on account of the supposed
+purity of his clerical character, to the story of the girl at the
+Magdalen, who was told "she must turn out and qualify."[A] This met with
+laughter and loud applause. It was a _home_ thrust, and the House (to do
+them justice) are obliged to any one who, by a smart blow, relieves
+them of the load of grave responsibility, which sits heavy on their
+shoulders.--At the hustings, or as an election-candidate, Mr. Tooke did
+better. There was no great question to move or carry--it was an affair
+of political _sparring_ between himself and the other candidates. He
+took it in a very cool and leisurely manner--watched his competitors
+with a wary, sarcastic eye; picked up the mistakes or absurdities that
+fell from them, and retorted them on their heads; told a story to the
+mob; and smiled and took snuff with a gentlemanly and becoming air, as
+if he was already seated in the House. But a Court of Law was the place
+where Mr. Tooke made the best figure in public. He might assuredly be
+said to be "native and endued unto that element." He had here to stand
+merely on the defensive--not to advance himself, but to block up the
+way--not to impress others, but to be himself impenetrable. All he
+wanted was _negative success_; and to this no one was better qualified
+to aspire. Cross purposes, _moot-points_, pleas, demurrers, flaws in
+the indictment, double meanings, cases, inconsequentialities, these were
+the play-things, the darlings of Mr. Tooke's mind; and with these he
+baffled the Judge, dumb-founded the Counsel, and outwitted the Jury. The
+report of his trial before Lord Kenyon is a master-piece of acuteness,
+dexterity, modest assurance, and legal effect. It is much like his
+examination before the Commissioners of the Income-Tax--nothing could
+be got out of him in either case! Mr. Tooke, as a political leader,
+belonged to the class of _trimmers_; or at most, it was his delight to
+make mischief and spoil sport. He would rather be _against_ himself than
+_for_ any body else. He was neither a bold nor a safe leader. He enticed
+others into scrapes, and kept out of them himself. Provided he could
+say a clever or a spiteful thing, he did not care whether it served or
+injured the cause. Spleen or the exercise of intellectual power was the
+motive of his patriotism, rather than principle. He would talk treason
+with a saving clause; and instil sedition into the public mind, through
+the medium of a third (who was to be the responsible) party. He made Sir
+Francis Burdett his spokesman in the House and to the country, often
+venting his chagrin or singularity of sentiment at the expense of his
+friend; but what in the first was trick or reckless vanity, was in the
+last plain downright English honesty and singleness of heart. In the
+case of the State Trials, in 1794, Mr. Tooke rather compromised his
+friends to screen himself. He kept repeating that "others might have
+gone on to Windsor, but he had stopped at Hounslow," as if to go farther
+might have been dangerous and unwarrantable. It was not the question how
+far he or others had actually gone, but how far they had a right to go,
+according to the law. His conduct was not the limit of the law, nor did
+treasonable excess begin where prudence or principle taught him to stop
+short, though this was the oblique inference liable to be drawn from his
+line of defence. Mr. Tooke was uneasy and apprehensive for the issue of
+the Government-prosecution while in confinement, and said, in speaking
+of it to a friend, with a morbid feeling and an emphasis quite unusual
+with him--"They want our blood--blood--blood!" It was somewhat
+ridiculous to implicate Mr. Tooke in a charge of High Treason (and
+indeed the whole charge was built on the mistaken purport of
+an intercepted letter relating to an engagement for a private
+dinnerparty)--his politics were not at all revolutionary. In this
+respect he was a mere pettifogger, full of chicane, and captious
+objections, and unmeaning discontent; but he had none of the grand
+whirling movements of the French Revolution, nor of the tumultuous glow
+of rebellion in his head or in his heart. His politics were cast in
+a different mould, or confined to the party distinctions and court-
+intrigues and pittances of popular right, that made a noise in the 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, Barrè, 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 Mr. Harris's
+_Hermes_ as "the finest specimen of analysis since the days of
+Aristotle"--a work in which there is no analysis at all, for analysis
+consists in reducing things to their principles, and not in endless
+details and subdivisions. Mr. Harris multiplies distinctions, and
+confounds his readers. Mr. Tooke clears away the rubbish of school-boy
+technicalities, and strikes at the root of his subject. In accomplishing
+his arduous task, he was, perhaps, aided not more by the strength and
+resources of his mind than by its limits and defects. There is a web of
+old associations wound round language, that is a kind of veil over its
+natural features; and custom puts on the mask of ignorance. But this
+veil, this mask the author of _The Diversions of Purley_ threw aside and
+penetrated to the naked truth of things, by the literal, matter-of-fact,
+unimaginative nature of his understanding, and because he was not
+subject to prejudices or illusions of any kind. Words may be said to
+"bear a charmed life, that must not yield to one of woman born"--with
+womanish weaknesses and confused apprehensions. But this charm was
+broken in the case of Mr. Tooke, whose mind was the reverse of
+effeminate--hard, unbending, concrete, physical, half-savage--and who
+saw language stripped of the clothing of habit or sentiment, or the
+disguises of doting pedantry, naked in its cradle, and in its primitive
+state. Our author tells us that he found his discovery on Grammar among
+a number of papers on other subjects, which he had thrown aside and
+forgotten. Is this an idle boast? Or had he made other discoveries
+of equal importance, which he did not think it worth his while to
+communicate to the world, but chose to die the churl of knowledge? The
+whole of his reasoning turns upon shewing that the Conjunction _That_
+is the pronoun _That_, which is itself the participle of a verb, and
+in like manner that all the other mystical and hitherto unintelligible
+parts of speech are derived from the only two intelligible ones, the
+Verb and Noun. "I affirm _that_ gold is yellow," that is, "I affirm
+_that_ fact, or that proposition, viz. gold is yellow." The secret of
+the Conjunction on which so many fine heads had split, on which so many
+learned definitions were thrown away, as if it was its peculiar province
+and inborn virtue to announce oracles and formal propositions, and
+nothing else, like a Doctor of Laws, is here at once accounted for,
+inasmuch as it is clearly nothing but another part of speech, the
+pronoun, _that_, with a third part of speech, the noun, _thing_,
+understood. This is getting at a solution of words into their component
+parts, not glossing over one difficulty by bringing another to parallel
+it, nor like saying with Mr. Harris, when it is asked, "what a
+Conjunction is?" that there are conjunctions copulative, conjunctions
+disjunctive, and as many other frivolous varieties of the species as any
+one chooses to hunt out "with laborious foolery." Our author hit
+upon his parent-discovery in the course of a law-suit, while he was
+examining, with jealous watchfulness, the meaning of words to prevent
+being entrapped by them; or rather, this circumstance might itself be
+traced to the habit of satisfying his own mind as to the precise sense
+in which he himself made use of words. Mr. Tooke, though he had no
+objection to puzzle others, was mightily averse to being puzzled or
+_mystified_ himself. All was, to his determined mind, either complete
+light or complete darkness. There was no hazy, doubtful _chiaro-scuro_
+in his understanding. He wanted something "palpable to feeling as to
+sight." "What," he would say to himself, "do I mean when I use the
+conjunction _that?_ Is it an anomaly, a class by itself, a word sealed
+against all inquisitive attempts? Is it enough to call it a _copula_,
+a bridge, a link, a word connecting sentences? That is undoubtedly its
+use, but what is its origin?" Mr. Tooke thought he had answered this
+question satisfactorily, and loosened the Gordian knot of grammarians,
+"familiar as his garter," when he said, "It is the common pronoun,
+adjective, or participle, _that_, with the noun, _thing or proposition_,
+implied, and the particular example following it." So he thought, and
+so every reader has thought since, with the exception of teachers and
+writers upon grammar. Mr. Windham, indeed, who was a sophist, but not a
+logician, charged him with having found "a mare's-nest;" but it is not
+to be doubted that Mr. Tooke's etymologies will stand the test, and
+last longer than Mr. Windham's ingenious derivation of the practice of
+bull-baiting from the principles of humanity!
+
+Having thus laid the corner-stone, he proceeded to apply the same method
+of reasoning to other undecyphered and impracticable terms. Thus the
+word, _And_, he explained clearly enough to be the verb _add_, or a
+corruption of the old Saxon, _anandad_. "Two _and_ two make four," that
+is, "two _add_ two make four." Mr. Tooke, in fact, treated words as
+the chemists do substances; he separated those which are compounded of
+others from those which are not decompoundable. He did not explain the
+obscure by the more obscure, but the difficult by the plain, the complex
+by the simple. This alone is proceeding upon the true principles of
+science: the rest is pedantry and _petit-maitreship._ Our philosophical
+writer distinguished all words into _names of things_, and directions
+added for joining them together, or originally into _nouns_ and _verbs_.
+It is a pity that he has left this matter short, by omitting to define
+the Verb. After enumerating sixteen different definitions (all of which
+he dismisses with scorn and contumely) at the end of two quarto volumes,
+he refers the reader for the true solution to a third volume, which
+he did not live to finish. This extraordinary man was in the habit
+of tantalizing his guests on a Sunday afternoon with sundry abstruse
+speculations, and putting them off to the following week for a
+satisfaction of their doubts; but why should he treat posterity in the
+same scurvy manner, or leave the world without quitting scores with it?
+I question whether Mr. Tooke was himself in possession of his pretended
+_nostrum_, and whether, after trying hard at a definition of the verb as
+a distinct part of speech, as a terrier-dog mumbles a hedge-hog, he did
+not find it too much for him, and leave it to its fate. It is also a
+pity that Mr. Tooke spun out his great work with prolix and dogmatical
+dissertations on irrelevant matters; and after denying the old
+metaphysical theories of language, should attempt to found a
+metaphysical theory of his own on the nature and mechanism of language.
+The nature of words, he contended (it was the basis of his whole system)
+had no connection with the nature of things or the objects of thought;
+yet he afterwards strove to limit the nature of things and of the human
+mind by the technical structure of language. Thus he endeavours to shew
+that there are no abstract ideas, by enumerating two thousand instances
+of words, expressing abstract ideas, that are the past participles of
+certain verbs. It is difficult to know what he means by this. On the
+other hand, he maintains that "a complex idea is as great an absurdity
+as a complex star," and that words only are complex. He also makes out a
+triumphant list of metaphysical and moral non-entities, proved to be
+so on the pure principle that the names of these non-entities are
+participles, not nouns, or names of things. That is strange in so close
+a reasoner and in one who maintained that all language was a masquerade
+of words, and that the class to which they grammatically belonged had
+nothing to do with the class of ideas they represented.
+
+It is now above twenty years since the two quarto volumes of the
+_Diversions of Purley_ were published, and fifty since the same theory
+was promulgated in the celebrated _Letter to Dunning_. Yet it is a
+curious example of the _Spirit of the Age_ that Mr. Lindley Murray's
+Grammar (a work out of which Mr. C---- helps himself to English, and Mr.
+M---- to style[B]) has proceeded to the thirtieth edition in complete
+defiance of all the facts and arguments there laid down. He defines a
+noun to be the name of a thing. Is quackery a thing, _i.e._ a substance?
+He defines a verb to be a word signifying _to be, to do, or to suffer_.
+Are being, action, suffering verbs? He defines an adjective to be the
+name of a quality. Are not _wooden, golden, substantial_ adjectives? He
+maintains that there are six cases in English nouns [C], that is, six
+various terminations without any change of termination at all, and that
+English verbs have all the moods, tenses, and persons that the Latin
+ones have. This is an extraordinary stretch of blindness and obstinacy.
+He very formally translates the Latin Grammar into English (as so many
+had done before him) and fancies he has written an English Grammar; and
+divines applaud, and schoolmasters usher him into the polite world, and
+English scholars carry on the jest, while Horne Tooke's genuine
+anatomy of our native tongue is laid on the shelf. Can it be that our
+politicians smell a rat in the Member for Old Sarum? That our clergy
+do not relish Parson Horne? That the world at large are alarmed at
+acuteness and originality greater than their own? What has all this
+to do with the formation of the English language or with the first
+conditions and necessary foundation of speech itself? Is there nothing
+beyond the reach of prejudice and party-spirit? It seems in this, as in
+so many other instances, as if there was a patent for absurdity in the
+natural bias of the human mind, and that folly should be _stereotyped_!
+
+
+[Footnote A: "They receive him like a virgin at the Magdalen--_Go thou
+and do likewise_."--JUNIUS.]
+
+
+[Footnote B: This work is not without merit in the details and examples
+of English construction. But its fault even in that part is that he
+confounds the genius of the English language, making it periphrastic and
+literal, instead of elliptical and idiomatic. According to Mr. Murray,
+hardly any of our best writers ever wrote a word of English.]
+
+[Footnote C: At least, with only one change in the genitive case,]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+SIR WALTER SCOTT
+
+
+
+Sir Walter Scott is undoubtedly the most popular writer of the age--the
+"lord of the ascendant" for the time being. He is just half what the
+human intellect is capable of being: if you take the universe, and
+divide it into two parts, he knows all that it _has been_; all that
+it _is to be_ is nothing to him. His is a mind brooding over
+antiquity--scorning "the present ignorant time." He is "laudator
+temporis acti"--a "_prophesier_ of things past." The old world is to him
+a crowded map; the new one a dull, hateful blank. He dotes on all well-
+authenticated superstitions; he shudders at the shadow of innovation.
+His retentiveness of memory, his accumulated weight of interested
+prejudice or romantic association have overlaid his other faculties. The
+cells of his memory are vast, various, full even to bursting with life
+and motion; his speculative understanding is empty, flaccid, poor, and
+dead. His mind receives and treasures up every thing brought to it by
+tradition or custom--it does not project itself beyond this into the
+world unknown, but mechanically shrinks back as from the edge of a
+prejudice. The land of pure reason is to his apprehension like _Van
+Dieman's Land_;--barren, miserable, distant, a place of exile, the
+dreary abode of savages, convicts, and adventurers. Sir Walter would
+make a bad hand of a description of the _Millennium_, unless he could
+lay the scene in Scotland five hundred years ago, and then he would
+want facts and worm-eaten parchments to support his drooping style.
+Our historical novelist firmly thinks that nothing _is_ but what _has
+been_--that the moral world stands still, as the material one was
+supposed to do of old--and that we can never get beyond the point where
+we actually are without utter destruction, though every thing changes
+and will change from what it was three hundred years ago to what it is
+now,--from what it is now to all that the bigoted admirer of the good
+old times most dreads and hates!
+
+It is long since we read, and long since we thought of our author's
+poetry. It would probably have gone out of date with the immediate
+occasion, even if he himself had not contrived to banish it from our
+recollection. It is not to be denied that it had great merit, both of
+an obvious and intrinsic kind. It abounded in vivid descriptions, in
+spirited action, in smooth and flowing versification. But it wanted
+_character_. It was poetry "of no mark or likelihood." It slid out of
+the mind as soon as read, like a river; and would have been forgotten,
+but that the public curiosity was fed with ever-new supplies from the
+same teeming liquid source. It is not every man that can write six
+quarto volumes in verse, that are caught up with avidity, even by
+fastidious judges. But what a difference between _their_ popularity and
+that of the Scotch Novels! It is true, the public read and admired the
+_Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion_, and so on, and each individual was
+contented to read and admire because the public did so: but with
+regard to the prose-works of the same (supposed) author, it is quite
+_another-guess_ sort of thing. Here every one stands forward to applaud
+on his own ground, would be thought to go before the public opinion,
+is eager to extol his favourite characters louder, to understand them
+better than every body else, and has his own scale of comparative
+excellence for each work, supported by nothing but his own enthusiastic
+and fearless convictions. It must be amusing to the _Author of Waverley_
+to hear his readers and admirers (and are not these the same thing?[A])
+quarrelling which of his novels is the best, opposing character to
+character, quoting passage against passage, striving to surpass each
+other in the extravagance of their encomiums, and yet unable to settle
+the precedence, or to do the author's writings justice--so various,
+so equal, so transcendant are their merits! His volumes of poetry were
+received as fashionable and well-dressed acquaintances: we are ready
+to tear the others in pieces as old friends. There was something
+meretricious in Sir Walter's ballad-rhymes; and like those who keep
+opera _figurantes_, we were willing to have our admiration shared, and
+our taste confirmed by the town: but the Novels are like the betrothed
+of our hearts, bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, and we are
+jealous that any one should be as much delighted or as thoroughly
+acquainted with their beauties as ourselves. For which of his poetical
+heroines would the reader break a lance so soon as for Jeanie Deans?
+What _Lady of the Lake_ can compare with the beautiful Rebecca? We
+believe the late Mr. John Scott went to his death-bed (though a painful
+and premature one) with some degree of satisfaction, inasmuch as he had
+penned the most elaborate panegyric on the _Scotch Novels_ that had as
+yet appeared!--The _Epics_ are not poems, so much as metrical romances.
+There is a glittering veil of verse thrown over the features of nature
+and of old romance. The deep incisions into character are "skinned and
+filmed over"--the details are lost or shaped into flimsy and insipid
+decorum; and the truth of feeling and of circumstance is translated into
+a tinkling sound, a tinsel _common-place_. It must be owned, there is a
+power in true poetry that lifts the mind from the ground of reality to
+a higher sphere, that penetrates the inert, scattered, incoherent
+materials presented to it, and by a force and inspiration of its own,
+melts and moulds them into sublimity and beauty. But Sir Walter (we
+contend, under correction) has not this creative impulse, this plastic
+power, this capacity of reacting on his first impressions. He is a
+learned, a literal, a _matter-of-fact_ expounder of truth or fable:[B]
+he does not soar above and look down upon his subject, imparting his own
+lofty views and feelings to his descriptions of nature--he relies
+upon it, is raised by it, is one with it, or he is nothing. A poet is
+essentially a _maker_; that is, he must atone for what he loses in
+individuality and local resemblance by the energies and resources of his
+own mind. The writer of whom we speak is deficient in these last. He has
+either not the faculty or not the will to impregnate his subject by an
+effort of pure invention. The execution also is much upon a par with
+the more ephemeral effusions of the press. It is light, agreeable,
+effeminate, diffuse. Sir Walter's Muse is a _Modern Antique_. The
+smooth, glossy texture of his verse contrasts happily with the quaint,
+uncouth, rugged materials of which it is composed; and takes away any
+appearance of heaviness or harshness from the body of local traditions
+and obsolete costume. We see grim knights and iron armour; but then they
+are woven in silk with a careless, delicate hand, and have the softness
+of flowers. The poet's figures might be compared to old [C] tapestries
+copied on the finest velvet:--they are not like Raphael's _Cartoons_,
+but they are very like Mr. Westall's drawings, which accompany, and are
+intended to illustrate them. This facility and grace of execution is the
+more remarkable, as a story goes that not long before the appearance of
+the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ Sir Walter (then Mr.) Scott, having, in
+the company of a friend, to cross the Frith of Forth in a ferry-boat,
+they proposed to beguile the time by writing a number of verses on a
+given subject, and that at the end of an hour's hard study, they found
+they had produced only six lines between them. "It is plain," said the
+unconscious author to his fellow-labourer, "that you and I need never
+think of getting our living by writing poetry!" In a year or so after
+this, he set to work, and poured out quarto upon quarto, as if they had
+been drops of water. As to the rest, and compared with true and great
+poets, our Scottish Minstrel is but "a metre ballad-monger." We would
+rather have written one song of Burns, or a single passage in Lord
+Byron's _Heaven and Earth_, or one of Wordsworth's "fancies and
+good-nights," than all his epics. What is he to Spenser, over whose
+immortal, ever-amiable verse beauty hovers and trembles, and who has
+shed the purple light of Fancy, from his ambrosial wings, over all
+nature? What is there of the might of Milton, whose head is canopied in
+the blue serene, and who takes us to sit with him there? What is there
+(in his ambling rhymes) of the deep pathos of Chaucer? Or of the
+o'er-informing power of Shakespear, whose eye, watching alike the
+minutest traces of characters and the strongest movements of passion,
+"glances from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven," and with the
+lambent flame of genius, playing round each object, lights up the
+universe in a robe of its own radiance? Sir Walter has no voluntary
+power of combination: all his associations (as we said before) are those
+of habit or of tradition. He is a mere narrative and descriptive poet,
+garrulous of the old time. The definition of his poetry is a pleasing
+superficiality.
+
+Not so of his NOVELS AND ROMANCES. There we turn over a new
+leaf--another and the same--the same in matter, but in form, in power
+how different! The author of Waverley has got rid of the tagging of
+rhymes, the eking out of syllables, the supplying of epithets, the
+colours of style, the grouping of his characters, and the regular march
+of events, and comes to the point at once, and strikes at the heart
+of his subject, without dismay and without disguise. His poetry was a
+lady's waiting-maid, dressed out in cast-off finery: his prose is a
+beautiful, rustic nymph, that, like Dorothea in Don Quixote, when she is
+surprised with dishevelled tresses bathing her naked feet in the brook,
+looks round her, abashed at the admiration her charms have excited! The
+grand secret of the author's success in these latter productions is that
+he has completely got rid of the trammels of authorship; and torn off at
+one rent (as Lord Peter got rid of so many yards of lace in the _Tale of
+a Tub_) all the ornaments of fine writing and worn-out sentimentality.
+All is fresh, as from the hand of nature: by going a century or two back
+and laying the scene in a remote and uncultivated district, all becomes
+new and startling in the present advanced period.--Highland manners,
+characters, scenery, superstitions, Northern dialect and costume, the
+wars, the religion, and politics of the sixteenth and seventeenth
+centuries, give a charming and wholesome relief to the fastidious
+refinement and "over-laboured lassitude" of modern readers, like the
+effect of plunging a nervous valetudinarian into a cold-bath. The
+_Scotch Novels_, for this reason, are not so much admired in Scotland as
+in England. The contrast, the transition is less striking. From the top
+of the Calton-Hill, the inhabitants of "Auld Reekie" can descry, or
+fancy they descry the peaks of Ben Lomond and the waving outline of Rob
+Roy's country: we who live at the southern extremity of the island can
+only catch a glimpse of the billowy scene in the descriptions of the
+Author of Waverley. The mountain air is most bracing to our languid
+nerves, and it is brought us in ship-loads from the neighbourhood
+of Abbot's-Ford. There is another circumstance to be taken into the
+account. In Edinburgh there is a little opposition and something of
+the spirit of cabal between the partisans of works proceeding from Mr.
+Constable's and Mr. Blackwood's shops. Mr. Constable gives the highest
+prices; but being the Whig bookseller, it is grudged that he should
+do so. An attempt is therefore made to transfer a certain share of
+popularity to the second-rate Scotch novels, "the embryo fry, the little
+airy of _ricketty_ children," issuing through Mr. Blackwood's shop-door.
+This operates a diversion, which does not affect us here. The Author of
+Waverley wears the palm of legendary lore alone. Sir Walter may, indeed,
+surfeit us: his imitators make us sick! It may be asked, it has been
+asked, "Have we no materials for romance in England? Must we look to
+Scotland for a supply of whatever is original and striking in this
+kind?" And we answer--"Yes!" Every foot of soil is with us worked up:
+nearly every movement of the social machine is calculable. We have no
+room left for violent catastrophes; for grotesque quaintnesses; for
+wizard spells. The last skirts of ignorance and barbarism are seen
+hovering (in Sir Walter's pages) over the Border. We have, it is true,
+gipsies in this country as well as at the Cairn of Derncleugh: but they
+live under clipped hedges, and repose in camp-beds, and do not perch
+on crags, like eagles, or take shelter, like sea-mews, in basaltic
+subterranean caverns. We have heaths with rude heaps of stones upon
+them: but no existing superstition converts them into the Geese of
+Micklestane-Moor, or sees a Black Dwarf groping among them. We have
+sects in religion: but the only thing sublime or ridiculous in that way
+is Mr. Irving, the Caledonian preacher, who "comes like a satyr staring
+from the woods, and yet speaks like an orator!" We had a Parson Adams
+not quite a hundred years ago--a Sir Roger de Coverley rather more than
+a hundred! Even Sir Walter is ordinarily obliged to pitch his angle
+(strong as the hook is) a hundred miles to the North of the "Modern
+Athens" or a century back. His last work,[A] indeed, is mystical,
+is romantic in nothing but the title-page. Instead of "a
+holy-water sprinkle dipped in dew," he has given us a fashionable
+watering-place--and we see what he has made of it. He must not come down
+from his fastnesses in traditional barbarism and native rusticity: the
+level, the littleness, the frippery of modern civilization will undo him
+as it has undone us!
+
+Sir Walter has found out (oh, rare discovery) that facts are better than
+fiction; that there is no romance like the romance of real life; and
+that if we can but arrive at what men feel, do, and say in striking and
+singular situations, the result will be "more lively, audible, and full
+of vent," than the fine-spun cobwebs of the brain. With reverence be it
+spoken, he is like the man who having to imitate the squeaking of a pig
+upon the stage, brought the animal under his coat with him. Our author
+has conjured up the actual people he has to deal with, or as much as he
+could get of them, in "their habits as they lived." He has ransacked old
+chronicles, and poured the contents upon his page; he has squeezed out
+musty records; he has consulted wayfaring pilgrims, bed-rid sibyls; he
+has invoked the spirits of the air; he has conversed with the living and
+the dead, and let them tell their story their own way; and by borrowing
+of others, has enriched his own genius with everlasting variety, truth,
+and freedom. He has taken his materials from the original, authentic
+sources, in large concrete masses, and not tampered with or too much
+frittered them away. He is only the amanuensis of truth and history. It
+is impossible to say how fine his writings in consequence are, unless we
+could describe how fine nature is. All that portion of the history of
+his country that he has touched upon (wide as the scope is) the manners,
+the personages, the events, the scenery, lives over again in his
+volumes. Nothing is wanting--the illusion is complete. There is a
+hurtling in the air, a trampling of feet upon the ground, as these
+perfect representations of human character or fanciful belief come
+thronging back upon our imaginations. We will merely recall a few of
+the subjects of his pencil to the reader's recollection; for nothing we
+could add, by way of note or commendation, could make the impression
+more vivid.
+
+There is (first and foremost, because the earliest of our acquaintance)
+the Baron of Bradwardine, stately, kind-hearted, whimsical, pedantic;
+and Flora MacIvor (whom even _we_ forgive for her Jacobitism), the
+fierce Vich Ian Vohr, and Evan Dhu, constant in death, and Davie
+Gellatly roasting his eggs or turning his rhymes with restless
+volubility, and the two stag-hounds that met Waverley, as fine as ever
+Titian painted, or Paul Veronese:--then there is old Balfour of Burley,
+brandishing his sword and his Bible with fire-eyed fury, trying a
+fall with the insolent, gigantic Bothwell at the 'Change-house, and
+vanquishing him at the noble battle of Loudonhill; there is Bothwell
+himself, drawn to the life, proud, cruel, selfish, profligate, but with
+the love-letters of the gentle Alice (written thirty years before), and
+his verses to her memory, found in his pocket after his death: in the
+same volume of _Old Mortality_ is that lone figure, like a figure in
+Scripture, of the woman sitting on the stone at the turning to the
+mountain, to warn Burley that there is a lion in his path; and
+the fawning Claverhouse, beautiful as a panther, smooth-looking,
+blood-spotted; and the fanatics, Macbriar and Mucklewrath, crazed with
+zeal and sufferings; and the inflexible Morton, and the faithful Edith,
+who refused to "give her hand to another while her heart was with her
+lover in the deep and dead sea." And in _The Heart of Mid-Lothian_ we
+have Effie Deans (that sweet, faded flower) and Jeanie, her more than
+sister, and old David Deans, the patriarch of St. Leonard's Crags, and
+Butler, and Dumbiedikes, eloquent in his silence, and Mr. Bartoline
+Saddle-tree and his prudent helpmate, and Porteous swinging in the
+wind, and Madge Wildfire, full of finery and madness, and her ghastly
+mother.--Again, there is Meg Merrilies, standing on her rock, stretched
+on her bier with "her head to the east," and Dirk Hatterick (equal to
+Shakespear's Master Barnardine), and Glossin, the soul of an attorney,
+and Dandy Dinmont, with his terrier-pack and his pony Dumple, and the
+fiery Colonel Mannering, and the modish old counsellor Pleydell, and
+Dominie Sampson,[D] and Rob Roy (like the eagle in his eyry), and
+Baillie Nicol Jarvie, and the inimitable Major Galbraith, and Rashleigh
+Osbaldistone, and Die Vernon, the best of secret-keepers; and in the
+_Antiquary_, the ingenious and abstruse Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck, and the
+old beadsman Edie Ochiltree, and that preternatural figure of old Edith
+Elspeith, a living shadow, in whom the lamp of life had been long
+extinguished, had it not been fed by remorse and "thick-coming"
+recollections; and that striking picture of the effects of feudal
+tyranny and fiendish pride, the unhappy Earl of Glenallan; and the Black
+Dwarf, and his friend Habbie of the Heughfoot (the cheerful hunter), and
+his cousin Grace Armstrong, fresh and laughing like the morning; and the
+_Children of the Mint_, and the baying of the blood-hound that tracks
+their steps at a distance (the hollow echoes are in our ears now), and
+Amy and her hapless love, and the villain Varney, and the deep voice of
+George of Douglas--and the immoveable Balafre, and Master Oliver the
+Barber in Quentin Durward--and the quaint humour of the Fortunes of
+Nigel, and the comic spirit of Peveril of the Peak--and the fine old
+English romance of Ivanhoe. What a list of names! What a host of
+associations! What a thing is human life! What a power is that of
+genius! What a world of thought and feeling is thus rescued from
+oblivion! How many hours of heartfelt satisfaction has our author given
+to the gay and thoughtless! How many sad hearts has he soothed in pain
+and solitude! It is no wonder that the public repay with lengthened
+applause and gratitude the pleasure they receive. He writes as fast as
+they can read, and he does not write himself down. He is always in the
+public eye, and we do not tire of him. His worst is better than any
+other person's best. His _backgrounds_ (and his later works are little
+else but back-grounds capitally made out) are more attractive than the
+principal figures and most complicated actions of other writers. His
+works (taken together) are almost like a new edition of human nature.
+This is indeed to be an author!
+
+The political bearing of the _Scotch Novels_ has been a considerable
+recommendation to them. They are a relief to the mind, rarefied as it
+has been with modern philosophy, and heated with ultra-radicalism. At a
+time also, when we bid fair to revive the principles of the Stuarts,
+it is interesting to bring us acquainted with their persons and
+misfortunes. The candour of Sir Walter's historic pen levels our
+bristling prejudices on this score, and sees fair play between
+Roundheads and Cavaliers, between Protestant and Papist. He is a writer
+reconciling all the diversities of human nature to the reader. He does
+not enter into the distinctions of hostile sects or parties, but treats
+of the strength or the infirmity of the human mind, of the virtues or
+vices of the human breast, as they are to be found blended in the whole
+race of mankind. Nothing can shew more handsomely or be more gallantly
+executed. There was a talk at one time that our author was about to take
+Guy Faux for the subject of one of his novels, in order to put a more
+liberal and humane construction on the Gunpowder Plot than our "No
+Popery" prejudices have hitherto permitted. Sir Walter is a professed
+_clarifier_ of the age from the vulgar and still lurking old-English
+antipathy to Popery and Slavery. Through some odd process of _servile_
+logic, it should seem, that in restoring the claims of the Stuarts by
+the courtesy of romance, the House of Brunswick are more firmly seated
+in point of fact, and the Bourbons, by collateral reasoning, become
+legitimate! In any other point of view, we cannot possibly conceive
+how Sir Walter imagines "he has done something to revive the declining
+spirit of loyalty" by these novels. His loyalty is founded on _would-be_
+treason: he props the actual throne by the shadow of rebellion. Does
+he really think of making us enamoured of the "good old times" by the
+faithful and harrowing portraits he has drawn of them? Would he carry us
+back to the early stages of barbarism, of clanship, of the feudal system
+as "a consummation devoutly to be wished?" Is he infatuated enough,
+or does he so dote and drivel over his own slothful and self-willed
+prejudices, as to believe that he will make a single convert to the
+beauty of Legitimacy, that is, of lawless power and savage bigotry, when
+he himself is obliged to apologise for the horrors he describes, and
+even render his descriptions credible to the modern reader by referring
+to the authentic history of these delectable times?[E] He is indeed
+so besotted as to the moral of his own story, that he has even the
+blindness to go out of his way to have a fling at _flints_ and _dungs_
+(the contemptible ingredients, as he would have us believe, of a modern
+rabble) at the very time when he is describing a mob of the twelfth
+century--a mob (one should think) after the writer's own heart, without
+one particle of modern philosophy or revolutionary politics in their
+composition, who were to a man, to a hair, just what priests, and kings,
+and nobles _let_ them be, and who were collected to witness (a spectacle
+proper to the times) the burning of the lovely Rebecca at a stake for
+a sorceress, because she was a Jewess, beautiful and innocent, and the
+consequent victim of insane bigotry and unbridled profligacy. And it is
+at this moment (when the heart is kindled and bursting with indignation
+at the revolting abuses of self-constituted power) that Sir Walter
+_stops the press_ to have a sneer at the people, and to put a spoke (as
+he thinks) in the wheel of upstart innovation! This is what he "calls
+backing his friends"--it is thus he administers charms and philtres to
+our love of Legitimacy, makes us conceive a horror of all reform, civil,
+political, or religious, and would fain put down the _Spirit of the
+Age_. The author of Waverley might just as well get up and make a speech
+at a dinner at Edinburgh, abusing Mr. Mac-Adam for his improvements in
+the roads, on the ground that they were nearly _impassable_ in many
+places "sixty years since;" or object to Mr. Peel's _Police-Bill_, by
+insisting that Hounslow-Heath was formerly a scene of greater interest
+and terror to highwaymen and travellers, and cut a greater figure in
+the Newgate-Calendar than it does at present.--Oh! Wickliff, Luther,
+Hampden, Sidney, Somers, mistaken Whigs, and thoughtless Reformers in
+religion and politics, and all ye, whether poets or philosophers, heroes
+or sages, inventors of arts or sciences, patriots, benefactors of the
+human race, enlighteners and civilisers of the world, who have (so far)
+reduced opinion to reason, and power to law, who are the cause that we
+no longer burn witches and heretics at slow fires, that the thumb-screws
+are no longer applied by ghastly, smiling judges, to extort confession
+of imputed crimes from sufferers for conscience sake; that men are no
+longer strung up like acorns on trees without judge or jury, or hunted
+like wild beasts through thickets and glens, who have abated the cruelty
+of priests, the pride of nobles, the divinity of kings in former times;
+to whom we owe it, that we no longer wear round our necks the collar of
+Gurth the swineherd, and of Wamba the jester; that the castles of great
+lords are no longer the dens of banditti, from whence they issue with
+fire and sword, to lay waste the land; that we no longer expire in
+loathsome dungeons without knowing the cause, or have our right hands
+struck off for raising them in self-defence against wanton insult; that
+we can sleep without fear of being burnt in our beds, or travel without
+making our wills; that no Amy Robsarts are thrown down trap-doors by
+Richard Varneys with impunity; that no Red Reiver of Westburn-Flat sets
+fire to peaceful cottages; that no Claverhouse signs cold-blooded
+death-warrants in sport; that we have no Tristan the Hermit, or Petit-
+Andrè, crawling near us, like spiders, and making our flesh creep, and
+our hearts sicken within us at every moment of our lives--ye who have
+produced this change in the face of nature and society, return to earth
+once more, and beg pardon of Sir Walter and his patrons, who sigh at not
+being able to undo all that you have done! Leaving this question, there
+are two other remarks which we wished to make on the Novels. The one
+was, to express our admiration at the good-nature of the mottos, in
+which the author has taken occasion to remember and quote almost every
+living author (whether illustrious or obscure) but himself--an indirect
+argument in favour of the general opinion as to the source from which
+they spring--and the other was, to hint our astonishment at the
+innumerable and incessant in-stances of bad and slovenly English in
+them, more, we believe, than in any other works now printed. We should
+think the writer could not possibly read the manuscript after he has
+once written it, or overlook the press.
+
+If there were a writer, who "born for the universe"--
+
+"-----------Narrow'd his mind, And to party gave up what was meant for
+mankind--"
+
+
+who, from the height of his genius looking abroad into nature, and
+scanning the recesses of the human heart, "winked and shut his
+apprehension up" to every thought or purpose that tended to the future
+good of mankind--who, raised by affluence, the reward of successful
+industry, and by the voice of fame above the want of any but the most
+honourable patronage, stooped to the unworthy arts of adulation, and
+abetted the views of the great with the pettifogging feelings of the
+meanest dependant on office--who, having secured the admiration of the
+public (with the probable reversion of immortality), shewed no respect
+for himself, for that genius that had raised him to distinction, for
+that nature which he trampled under foot--who, amiable, frank, friendly,
+manly in private life, was seized with the dotage of age and the fury
+of a woman, the instant politics were concerned--who reserved all his
+candour and comprehensiveness of view for history, and vented his
+littleness, pique, resentment, bigotry, and intolerance on his
+contemporaries--who took the wrong side, and defended it by unfair
+means--who, the moment his own interest or the prejudices of others
+interfered, seemed to forget all that was due to the pride of intellect,
+to the sense of manhood--who, praised, admired by men of all parties
+alike, repaid the public liberality by striking a secret and envenomed
+blow at the reputation of every one who was not the ready tool of
+power--who strewed the slime of rankling malice and mercenary scorn
+over the bud and promise of genius, because it was not fostered in the
+hot-bed of corruption, or warped by the trammels of servility--who
+supported the worst abuses of authority in the worst spirit--who joined
+a gang of desperadoes to spread calumny, contempt, infamy, wherever they
+were merited by honesty or talent on a different side--who officiously
+undertook to decide public questions by private insinuations, to prop
+the throne by nicknames, and the altar by lies--who being (by common
+consent) the finest, the most humane and accomplished writer of his age,
+associated himself with and encouraged the lowest panders of a venal
+press; deluging, nauseating the public mind with the offal and garbage
+of Billingsgate abuse and vulgar _slang_; shewing no remorse, no
+relenting or compassion towards the victims of this nefarious and
+organized system of party-proscription, carried on under the mask of
+literary criticism and fair discussion, insulting the misfortunes of
+some, and trampling on the early grave of others--
+
+  "Who would not grieve if such a man there be?
+  Who would not weep if Atticus were he?"
+
+But we believe there is no other age or country of the world (but ours),
+in which such genius could have been so degraded!
+
+
+[Footnote A: No! For we met with a young lady who kept a circulating
+library and a milliner's-shop, in a watering-place in the country, who,
+when we inquired for the _Scotch Novels_, spoke indifferently about
+them, said they were "so dry she could hardly get through them," and
+recommended us to read _Agnes_. We never thought of it before; but we
+would venture to lay a wager that there are many other young ladies in
+the same situation, and who think "Old Mortality" "dry."]
+
+[Footnote B: Just as Cobbett is a _matter-of-fact reasoner_.]
+
+[Footnote C: St. Ronan's Well.]
+
+[Footnote D: Perhaps the finest scene in all these novels, is that where
+the Dominie meets his pupil, Miss Lucy, the morning after her brother's
+arrival.]
+
+[Footnote E: "And here we cannot but think it necessary to offer some
+better proof than the incidents of an idle tale, to vindicate the
+melancholy representation of manners which has been just laid before
+the reader. It is grievous to think that those valiant Barons, to whose
+stand against the crown the liberties of England were indebted for their
+existence, should themselves have been such dreadful oppressors, and
+capable of excesses, contrary not only to the laws of England, but to
+those of nature and humanity. But alas! we have only to extract from the
+industrious Henry one of those numerous passages which he has collected
+from contemporary historians, to prove that fiction itself can hardly
+reach the dark reality of the horrors of the period.
+
+"The description given by the author of the Saxon Chronicle of the
+cruelties exercised in the reign of King Stephen by the great barons and
+lords of castles, who were all Normans, affords a strong proof of the
+excesses of which they were capable when their passions were inflamed.
+'They grievously oppressed the poor people by building castles; and when
+they were built, they filled them with wicked men or rather devils, who
+seized both men and women who they imagined had any money, threw them
+into prison, and put them to more cruel tortures than the martyrs ever
+endured. They suffocated some in mud, and suspended others by the feet,
+or the head, or the thumbs, kindling fires below them. They squeezed the
+heads of some with knotted cords till they pierced their brains, while
+they threw others into dungeons swarming with serpents, snakes, and
+toads.' But it would be cruel to put the reader to the pain of perusing
+the remainder of the description."--_Henry's Hist_. edit. 1805, vol.
+vii. p. 346.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+LORD BYRON.
+
+
+
+Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott are among writers now living[A] the two,
+who would carry away a majority of suffrages as the greatest geniuses of
+the age. The former would, perhaps, obtain the preference with the fine
+gentlemen and ladies (squeamishness apart)--the latter with the critics
+and the vulgar. We shall treat of them in the same connection, partly
+on account of their distinguished pre-eminence, and partly because they
+afford a complete contrast to each other. In their poetry, in their
+prose, in their politics, and in their tempers no two men can be more
+unlike. If Sir Walter Scott may be thought by some to have been
+
+  "Born universal heir to all humanity,"
+
+it is plain Lord Byron can set up no such pretension. He is, in a
+striking degree, the creature of his own will. He holds no communion
+with his kind; but stands alone, without mate or fellow--
+
+  "As if a man were author of himself,
+  And owned no other kin."
+
+He is like a solitary peak, all access to which is cut off not more by
+elevation than distance. He is seated on a lofty eminence, "cloud-capt,"
+or reflecting the last rays of setting suns; and in his poetical moods,
+reminds us of the fabled Titans, retired to a ridgy steep, playing on
+their Pan's-pipes, and taking up ordinary men and things in their hands
+with haughty indifference. He raises his subject to himself, or tramples
+on it: he neither stoops to, nor loses himself in it. He exists not by
+sympathy, but by antipathy. He scorns all things, even himself. Nature
+must come to him to sit for her picture--he does not go to her. She must
+consult his time, his convenience, and his humour; and wear a _sombre_
+or a fantastic garb, or his Lordship turns his back upon her. There is
+no ease, no unaffected simplicity of manner, no "golden mean." All is
+strained, or petulant in the extreme. His thoughts are sphered and
+crystalline; his style "prouder than when blue Iris bends;" his spirit
+fiery, impatient, wayward, indefatigable. Instead of taking his
+impressions from without, in entire and almost unimpaired masses, he
+moulds them according to his own temperament, and heats the materials
+of his imagination in the furnace of his passions.--Lord Byron's verse
+glows like a flame, consuming every thing in its way; Sir Walter Scott's
+glides like a river, clear, gentle, harmless. The poetry of the first
+scorches, that of the last scarcely warms. The light of the one proceeds
+from an internal source, ensanguined, sullen, fixed; the other reflects
+the hues of Heaven, or the face of nature, glancing vivid and various.
+The productions of the Northern Bard have the rust and the freshness
+of antiquity about them; those of the Noble Poet cease to startle
+from their extreme ambition of novelty, both in style and matter. Sir
+Walter's rhymes are "silly sooth"--
+
+  "And dally with the innocence of thought,
+  Like the old age"--
+
+his Lordship's Muse spurns _the olden time_, and affects all the
+supercilious airs of a modern fine lady and an upstart. The object of
+the one writer is to restore us to truth and nature: the other chiefly
+thinks how he shall display his own power, or vent his spleen, or
+astonish the reader either by starting new subjects and trains of
+speculation, or by expressing old ones in a more striking and emphatic
+manner than they have been expressed before. He cares little what it is
+he says, so that he can say it differently from others. This may account
+for the charges of plagiarism which have been repeatedly brought against
+the Noble Poet--if he can borrow an image or sentiment from another, and
+heighten it by an epithet or an allusion of greater force and beauty
+than is to be found in the original passage, he thinks he shews his
+superiority of execution in this in a more marked manner than if
+the first suggestion had been his own. It is not the value of the
+observation itself he is solicitous about; but he wishes to shine by
+contrast--even nature only serves as a foil to set off his style. He
+therefore takes the thoughts of others (whether contemporaries or not)
+out of their mouths, and is content to make them his own, to set his
+stamp upon them, by imparting to them a more meretricious gloss, a
+higher relief, a greater loftiness of tone, and a characteristic
+inveteracy of purpose. Even in those collateral ornaments of modern
+style, slovenliness, abruptness, and eccentricity (as well as in
+terseness and significance), Lord Byron, when he pleases, defies
+competition and surpasses all his contemporaries. Whatever he does, he
+must do in a more decided and daring manner than any one else--he lounges
+with extravagance, and yawns so as to alarm the reader! Self-will,
+passion, the love of singularity, a disdain of himself and of others
+(with a conscious sense that this is among the ways and means of
+procuring admiration) are the proper categories of his mind: he is a
+lordly writer, is above his own reputation, and condescends to the Muses
+with a scornful grace!
+
+Lord Byron, who in his politics is a _liberal_, in his genius is haughty
+and aristocratic: Walter Scott, who is an aristocrat in principle, is
+popular in his writings, and is (as it were) equally _servile_ to nature
+and to opinion. The genius of Sir Walter is essentially imitative, or
+"denotes a foregone conclusion:" that of Lord Byron is self-dependent;
+or at least requires no aid, is governed by no law, but the impulses of
+its own will. We confess, however much we may admire independence of
+feeling and erectness of spirit in general or practical questions, yet
+in works of genius we prefer him who bows to the authority of nature,
+who appeals to actual objects, to mouldering superstitions, to history,
+observation, and tradition, before him who only consults the pragmatical
+and restless workings of his own breast, and gives them out as oracles
+to the world. We like a writer (whether poet or prose-writer) who takes
+in (or is willing to take in) the range of half the universe in feeling,
+character, description, much better than we do one who obstinately and
+invariably shuts himself up in the Bastile of his own ruling passions.
+In short, we had rather be Sir Walter Scott (meaning thereby the Author
+of Waverley) than Lord Byron, a hundred times over. And for the reason
+just given, namely, that he casts his descriptions in the mould of
+nature, ever-varying, never tiresome, always interesting and always
+instructive, instead of casting them constantly in the mould of his
+own individual impressions. He gives us man as he is, or as he was, in
+almost every variety of situation, action, and feeling. Lord Byron
+makes man after his own image, woman after his own heart; the one is
+a capricious tyrant, the other a yielding slave; he gives us the
+misanthrope and the voluptuary by turns; and with these two characters,
+burning or melting in their own fires, he makes out everlasting centos
+of himself. He hangs the cloud, the film of his existence over all
+outward things--sits in the centre of his thoughts, and enjoys dark
+night, bright day, the glitter and the gloom "in cell monastic"--we see
+the mournful pall, the crucifix, the death's heads, the faded chaplet of
+flowers, the gleaming tapers, the agonized brow of genius, the wasted
+form of beauty--but we are still imprisoned in a dungeon, a curtain
+intercepts our view, we do not breathe freely the air of nature or of
+our own thoughts--the other admired author draws aside the curtain, and
+the veil of egotism is rent, and he shews us the crowd of living men and
+women, the endless groups, the landscape back-ground, the cloud and
+the rainbow, and enriches our imaginations and relieves one passion
+by another, and expands and lightens reflection, and takes away that
+tightness at the breast which arises from thinking or wishing to think
+that there is nothing in the world out of a man's self!--In this point
+of view, the Author of Waverley is one of the greatest teachers of
+morality that ever lived, by emancipating the mind from petty, narrow,
+and bigotted prejudices: Lord Byron is the greatest pamperer of those
+prejudices, by seeming to think there is nothing else worth encouraging
+but the seeds or the full luxuriant growth of dogmatism and
+self-conceit. In reading the _Scotch Novels_, we never think about
+the author, except from a feeling of curiosity respecting our unknown
+benefactor: in reading Lord Byron's works, he himself is never absent
+from our minds. The colouring of Lord Byron's style, however rich and
+dipped in Tyrian dyes, is nevertheless opaque, is in itself an object
+of delight and wonder: Sir Walter Scott's is perfectly transparent. In
+studying the one, you seem to gaze at the figures cut in stained glass,
+which exclude the view beyond, and where the pure light of Heaven is
+only a means of setting off the gorgeousness of art: in reading the
+other, you look through a noble window at the clear and varied landscape
+without. Or to sum up the distinction in one word, Sir Walter Scott is
+the most _dramatic_ writer now living; and Lord Byron is the least so.
+It would be difficult to imagine that the Author of Waverley is in the
+smallest degree a pedant; as it would be hard to persuade ourselves that
+the author of Childe Harold and Don Juan is not a coxcomb, though a
+provoking and sublime one. In this decided preference given to Sir
+Walter Scott over Lord Byron, we distinctly include the prose-works of
+the former; for we do not think his poetry alone by any means entitles
+him to that precedence. Sir Walter in his poetry, though pleasing and
+natural, is a comparative trifler: it is in his anonymous productions
+that he has shewn himself for what he is!--
+
+_Intensity_ is the great and prominent distinction of Lord Byron's
+writings. He seldom gets beyond force of style, nor has he produced any
+regular work or masterly whole. He does not prepare any plan beforehand,
+nor revise and retouch what he has written with polished accuracy. His
+only object seems to be to stimulate himself and his readers for the
+moment--to keep both alive, to drive away _ennui_, to substitute a
+feverish and irritable state of excitement for listless indolence or
+even calm enjoyment. For this purpose he pitches on any subject at
+random without much thought or delicacy--he is only impatient to
+begin--and takes care to adorn and enrich it as he proceeds with
+"thoughts that breathe and words that burn." He composes (as he himself
+has said) whether he is in the bath, in his study, or on horseback--he
+writes as habitually as others talk or think--and whether we have the
+inspiration of the Muse or not, we always find the spirit of the man
+of genius breathing from his verse. He grapples with his subject, and
+moves, penetrates, and animates it by the electric force of his own
+feelings. He is often monotonous, extravagant, offensive; but he is
+never dull, or tedious, but when he writes prose. Lord Byron does not
+exhibit a new view of nature, or raise insignificant objects into
+importance by the romantic associations with which he surrounds them;
+but generally (at least) takes common-place thoughts and events, and
+endeavours to express them in stronger and statelier language than
+others. His poetry stands like a Martello tower by the side of his
+subject. He does not, like Mr. Wordsworth, lift poetry from the ground,
+or create a sentiment out of nothing. He does not describe a daisy or a
+periwinkle, but the cedar or the cypress: not "poor men's cottages, but
+princes' palaces." His Childe Harold contains a lofty and impassioned
+review of the great events of history, of the mighty objects left as
+wrecks of time, but he dwells chiefly on what is familiar to the mind of
+every school-boy; has brought out few new traits of feeling or thought;
+and has done no more than justice to the reader's preconceptions by the
+sustained force and brilliancy of his style and imagery. Lord Byron's
+earlier productions, _Lara_, the _Corsair_, &c. were wild and gloomy
+romances, put into rapid and shining verse. They discover the madness
+of poetry, together with the inspiration: sullen, moody, capricious,
+fierce, inexorable, gloating on beauty, thirsting for revenge, hurrying
+from the extremes of pleasure to pain, but with nothing permanent,
+nothing healthy or natural. The gaudy decorations and the morbid
+sentiments remind one of flowers strewed over the face of death! In
+his _Childe Harold_ (as has been just observed) he assumes a lofty and
+philosophic tone, and "reasons high of providence, fore-knowledge, will,
+and fate." He takes the highest points in the history of the world,
+and comments on them from a more commanding eminence: he shews us the
+crumbling monuments of time, he invokes the great names, the
+mighty spirit of antiquity. The universe is changed into a stately
+mausoleum:--in solemn measures he chaunts a hymn to fame. Lord Byron has
+strength and elevation enough to fill up the moulds of our classical and
+time-hallowed recollections, and to rekindle the earliest aspirations of
+the mind after greatness and true glory with a pen of fire. The names of
+Tasso, of Ariosto, of Dante, of Cincinnatus, of Caesar, of Scipio, lose
+nothing of their pomp or their lustre in his hands, and when he begins
+and continues a strain of panegyric on such subjects, we indeed sit
+down with him to a banquet of rich praise, brooding over imperishable
+glories,
+
+  "Till Contemplation has her fill."
+
+Lord Byron seems to cast himself indignantly from "this bank and shoal
+of time," or the frail tottering bark that bears up modern reputation,
+into the huge sea of ancient renown, and to revel there with untired,
+outspread plume. Even this in him is spleen--his contempt of his
+contemporaries makes him turn back to the lustrous past, or project
+himself forward to the dim future!--Lord Byron's tragedies, Faliero,[B]
+Sardanapalus, &c. are not equal to his other works. They want the
+essence of the drama. They abound in speeches and descriptions, such as
+he himself might make either to himself or others, lolling on his couch
+of a morning, but do not carry the reader out of the poet's mind to the
+scenes and events recorded. They have neither action, character,
+nor interest, but are a sort of _gossamer_ tragedies, spun out, and
+glittering, and spreading a flimsy veil over the face of nature. Yet
+he spins them on. Of all that he has done in this way the _Heaven and
+Earth_ (the same subject as Mr. Moore's _Loves of the Angels_) is the
+best. We prefer it even to _Manfred_. _Manfred_ is merely himself,
+with a fancy-drapery on: but in the dramatic fragment published in the
+_Liberal_, the space between Heaven and Earth, the stage on which
+his characters have to pass to and fro, seems to fill his Lordship's
+imagination; and the Deluge, which he has so finely described, may be
+said to have drowned all his own idle humours.
+
+We must say we think little of our author's turn for satire. His
+"English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" is dogmatical and insolent, but
+without refinement or point. He calls people names, and tries to
+transfix a character with an epithet, which does not stick, because
+it has no other foundation than his own petulance and spite; or he
+endeavours to degrade by alluding to some circumstance of external
+situation. He says of Mr. Wordsworth's poetry, that "it is his
+aversion." That may be: but whose fault is it? This is the satire of
+a lord, who is accustomed to have all his whims or dislikes taken for
+gospel, and who cannot be at the pains to do more than signify his
+contempt or displeasure. If a great man meets with a rebuff which he
+does not like, he turns on his heel, and this passes for a repartee.
+The Noble Author says of a celebrated barrister and critic, that he was
+"born in a garret sixteen stories high." The insinuation is not true; or
+if it were, it is low. The allusion degrades the person who makes, not
+him to whom it is applied. This is also the satire of a person of birth
+and quality, who measures all merit by external rank, that is, by
+his own standard. So his Lordship, in a "Letter to the Editor of My
+Grandmother's Review," addresses him fifty times as "_my dear Robarts_;"
+nor is there any other wit in the article. This is surely a mere
+assumption of superiority from his Lordship's rank, and is the sort of
+_quizzing_ he might use to a person who came to hire himself as a valet
+to him at _Long's_--the waiters might laugh, the public will not. In
+like manner, in the controversy about Pope, he claps Mr. Bowles on the
+back with a coarse facetious familiarity, as if he were his chaplain
+whom he had invited to dine with him, or was about to present to a
+benefice. The reverend divine might submit to the obligation, but he has
+no occasion to subscribe to the jest. If it is a jest that Mr. Bowles
+should be a parson, and Lord Byron a peer, the world knew this before;
+there was no need to write a pamphlet to prove it.
+
+The _Don Juan_ indeed has great power; but its power is owing to the
+force of the serious writing, and to the oddity of the contrast between
+that and the flashy passages with which it is interlarded. From the
+sublime to the ridiculous there is but one step. You laugh and are
+surprised that any one should turn round and _travestie_ himself: the
+drollery is in the utter discontinuity of ideas and feelings. He makes
+virtue serve as a foil to vice; _dandyism_ is (for want of any other) a
+variety of genius. A classical intoxication is followed by the splashing
+of soda-water, by frothy effusions of ordinary bile. After the lightning
+and the hurricane, we are introduced to the interior of the cabin and
+the contents of wash-hand basins. The solemn hero of tragedy plays
+_Scrub_ in the farce. This is "very tolerable and not to be endured."
+The Noble Lord is almost the only writer who has prostituted his talents
+in this way. He hallows in order to desecrate; takes a pleasure in
+defacing the images of beauty his hands have wrought; and raises our
+hopes and our belief in goodness to Heaven only to dash them to the
+earth again, and break them in pieces the more effectually from the very
+height they have fallen. Our enthusiasm for genius or virtue is thus
+turned into a jest by the very person who has kindled it, and who thus
+fatally quenches the sparks of both. It is not that Lord Byron is
+sometimes serious and sometimes trifling, sometimes profligate, and
+sometimes moral--but when he is most serious and most moral, he is only
+preparing to mortify the unsuspecting reader by putting a pitiful _hoax_
+upon him. This is a most unaccountable anomaly. It is as if the eagle
+were to build its eyry in a common sewer, or the owl were seen soaring
+to the mid-day sun. Such a sight might make one laugh, but one would not
+wish or expect it to occur more than once![C]
+
+In fact, Lord Byron is the spoiled child of fame as well as fortune.
+He has taken a surfeit of popularity, and is not contented to delight,
+unless he can shock the public. He would force them to admire in spite
+of decency and common sense--he would have them read what they would
+read in no one but himself, or he would not give a rush for their
+applause. He is to be "a chartered libertine," from whom insults are
+favours, whose contempt is to be a new incentive to admiration. His
+Lordship is hard to please: he is equally averse to notice or neglect,
+enraged at censure and scorning praise. He tries the patience of the
+town to the very utmost, and when they shew signs of weariness or
+disgust, threatens to _discard_ them. He says he will write on, whether
+he is read or not. He would never write another page, if it were not
+to court popular applause, or to affect a superiority over it. In this
+respect also, Lord Byron presents a striking contrast to Sir Walter
+Scott. The latter takes what part of the public favour falls to his
+share, without grumbling (to be sure he has no reason to complain) the
+former is always quarrelling with the world about his _modicum_ of
+applause, the _spolia opima_ of vanity, and ungraciously throwing the
+offerings of incense heaped on his shrine back in the faces of his
+admirers. Again, there is no taint in the writings of the Author of
+Waverley, all is fair and natural and _above-board:_ he never outrages
+the public mind. He introduces no anomalous character: broaches no
+staggering opinion. If he goes back to old prejudices and superstitions
+as a relief to the modern reader, while Lord Byron floats on swelling
+paradoxes--
+
+  "Like proud seas under him;"
+
+if the one defers too much to the spirit of antiquity, the other
+panders to the spirit of the age, goes to the very edge of extreme and
+licentious speculation, and breaks his neck over it. Grossness and
+levity are the playthings of his pen. It is a ludicrous circumstance
+that he should have dedicated his _Cain_ to the worthy Baronet! Did the
+latter ever acknowledge the obligation? We are not nice, not very nice;
+but we do not particularly approve those subjects that shine chiefly
+from their rottenness: nor do we wish to see the Muses drest out in
+the flounces of a false or questionable philosophy, like _Portia_ and
+_Nerissa_ in the garb of Doctors of Law. We like metaphysics as well as
+Lord Byron; but not to see them making flowery speeches, nor dancing a
+measure in the fetters of verse. We have as good as hinted, that his
+Lordship's poetry consists mostly of a tissue of superb common-places;
+even his paradoxes are _common-place_. They are familiar in the schools:
+they are only new and striking in his dramas and stanzas, by being out
+of place. In a word, we think that poetry moves best within the circle
+of nature and received opinion: speculative theory and subtle casuistry
+are forbidden ground to it. But Lord Byron often wanders into this
+ground wantonly, wilfully, and unwarrantably. The only apology we can
+conceive for the spirit of some of Lord Byron's writings, is the spirit
+of some of those opposed to him. They would provoke a man to write any
+thing. "Farthest from them is best." The extravagance and license of the
+one seems a proper antidote to the bigotry and narrowness of the other.
+The first _Vision of Judgment_ was a set-off to the second, though
+
+  "None but itself could be its parallel."
+
+Perhaps the chief cause of most of Lord Byron's errors is, that he is
+that anomaly in letters and in society, a Noble Poet. It is a double
+privilege, almost too much for humanity. He has all the pride of birth
+and genius. The strength of his imagination leads him to indulge in
+fantastic opinions; the elevation of his rank sets censure at defiance.
+He becomes a pampered egotist. He has a seat in the House of Lords, a
+niche in the Temple of Fame. Every-day mortals, opinions, things are not
+good enough for him to touch or think of. A mere nobleman is, in his
+estimation, but "the tenth transmitter of a foolish face:" a mere man of
+genius is no better than a worm. His Muse is also a lady of quality.
+The people are not polite enough for him: the Court not sufficiently
+intellectual. He hates the one and despises the other. By hating and
+despising others, he does not learn to be satisfied with himself. A
+fastidious man soon grows querulous and splenetic. If there is nobody
+but ourselves to come up to our idea of fancied perfection, we easily
+get tired of our idol. When a man is tired of what he is, by a natural
+perversity he sets up for what he is not. If he is a poet, he pretends
+to be a metaphysician: if he is a patrician in rank and feeling, he
+would fain be one of the people. His ruling motive is not the love of
+the people, but of distinction not of truth, but of singularity. He
+patronizes men of letters out of vanity, and deserts them from caprice,
+or from the advice of friends. He embarks in an obnoxious publication to
+provoke censure, and leaves it to shift for itself for fear of scandal.
+We do not like Sir Walter's gratuitous servility: we like Lord Byron's
+preposterous _liberalism_ little better. He may affect the principles of
+equality, but he resumes his privilege of peerage, upon occasion. His
+Lordship has made great offers of service to the Greeks--money and
+horses. He is at present in Cephalonia, waiting the event!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We had written thus far when news came of the death of Lord Byron, and
+put an end at once to a strain of somewhat peevish invective, which was
+intended to meet his eye, not to insult his memory. Had we known that we
+were writing his epitaph, we must have done it with a different feeling.
+As it is, we think it better and more like himself, to let what we had
+written stand, than to take up our leaden shafts, and try to melt them
+into "tears of sensibility," or mould them into dull praise, and an
+affected shew of candour. We were not silent during the author's
+life-time, either for his reproof or encouragement (such us we
+could give, and _he_ did not disdain to accept) nor can we now turn
+undertakers' men to fix the glittering plate upon his coffin, or fall
+into the procession of popular woe.--Death cancels every thing but
+truth; and strips a man of every thing but genius and virtue. It is a
+sort of natural canonization. It makes the meanest of us sacred--it
+installs the poet in his immortality, and lifts him to the skies. Death
+is the great assayer of the sterling ore of talent. At his touch the
+drossy particles fall off, the irritable, the personal, the gross, and
+mingle with the dust--the finer and more ethereal part mounts with the
+winged spirit to watch over our latest memory and protect our bones from
+insult. We consign the least worthy qualities to oblivion, and cherish
+the nobler and imperishable nature with double pride and fondness.
+Nothing could shew the real superiority of genius in a more striking
+point of view than the idle contests and the public indifference about
+the place of Lord Byron's interment, whether in Westminster-Abbey or
+his own family-vault. A king must have a coronation--a nobleman a
+funeral-procession.--The man is nothing without the pageant. The poet's
+cemetery is the human mind, in which he sows the seeds of never ending
+thought--his monument is to be found in his works:
+
+  "Nothing can cover his high fame but Heaven;
+  No pyramids set off his memory,
+  But the eternal substance of his greatness."
+
+Lord Byron is dead: he also died a martyr to his zeal in the cause of
+freedom, for the last, best hopes of man. Let that be his excuse and his
+epitaph!
+
+
+[Footnote A: This Essay was written just before Lord Byron's death.]
+
+[Footnote B:
+
+  "Don Juan was my Moscow, and Faliero
+  My Leipsic, and my Mont St. Jean seems Cain,"
+  _Don Juan_, Canto. XI.]
+
+[Footnote C: This censure applies to the first Cantos of DON JUAN much
+more than to the last. It has been called a TRISTRAM SHANDY in rhyme: it
+is rather a poem written about itself.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+MR. CAMPBELL AND MR. CRABBE.
+
+
+
+"Mr. Campbell may be said to hold a place (among modern poets) between
+Lord Byron and Mr. Rogers. With much of the glossy splendour, the
+pointed vigour, and romantic interest of the one, he possesses the
+fastidious refinement, the classic elegance of the other. Mr. Rogers, as
+a writer, is too effeminate, Lord Byron too extravagant: Mr. Campbell is
+neither. The author of the _Pleasures of Memory_ polishes his lines till
+they sparkle with the most exquisite finish; he attenuates them into the
+utmost degree of trembling softness: but we may complain, in spite of
+the delicacy and brilliancy of the execution, of a want of strength
+and solidity. The author of the _Pleasures of Hope_, with a richer and
+deeper vein of thought and imagination, works it out into figures of
+equal grace and dazzling beauty, avoiding on the one hand the tinsel of
+flimsy affectation, and on the other the vices of a rude and barbarous
+negligence. His Pegasus is not a rough, skittish colt, running wild
+among the mountains, covered with bur-docks and thistles, nor a tame,
+sleek pad, unable to get out of the same ambling pace, but a beautiful
+_manege_-horse, full of life and spirit in itself, and subject to the
+complete controul of the rider. Mr. Campbell gives scope to his feelings
+and his fancy, and embodies them in a noble and naturally interesting
+subject; and he at the same time conceives himself called upon (in these
+days of critical nicety) to pay the exactest attention to the expression
+of each thought, and to modulate each line into the most faultless
+harmony. The character of his mind is a lofty and self-scrutinising
+ambition, that strives to reconcile the integrity of general design with
+the perfect elaboration of each component part, that aims at striking
+effect, but is jealous of the means by which this is to be produced.
+Our poet is not averse to popularity (nay, he is tremblingly alive to
+it)--but self-respect is the primary law, the indispensable condition
+on which it must be obtained. We should dread to point out (even if we
+could) a false concord, a mixed metaphor, an imperfect rhyme in any of
+Mr. Campbell's productions; for we think that all his fame would hardly
+compensate to him for the discovery. He seeks for perfection, and
+nothing evidently short of it can satisfy his mind. He is a _high
+finisher_ in poetry, whose every work must bear inspection, whose
+slightest touch is precious--not a coarse dauber who is contented to
+impose on public wonder and credulity by some huge, ill-executed design,
+or who endeavours to wear out patience and opposition together by a load
+of lumbering, feeble, awkward, improgressive lines--on the contrary, Mr.
+Campbell labours to lend every grace of execution to his subject, while
+he borrows his ardour and inspiration from it, and to deserve the
+laurels he has earned, by true genius and by true pains. There is an
+apparent consciousness of this in most of his writings. He has attained
+to great excellence by aiming at the greatest, by a cautious and yet
+daring selection of topics, and by studiously (and with a religious
+horror) avoiding all those faults which arise from grossness, vulgarity,
+haste, and disregard of public opinion. He seizes on the highest point
+of eminence, and strives to keep it to himself--he "snatches a grace
+beyond the reach of art," and will not let it go--he steeps a single
+thought or image so deep in the Tyrian dyes of a gorgeous imagination,
+that it throws its lustre over a whole page--every where vivid _ideal_
+forms hover (in intense conception) over the poet's verse, which
+ascends, like the aloe, to the clouds, with pure flowers at its top. Or
+to take an humbler comparison (the pride of genius must sometimes stoop
+to the lowliness of criticism) Mr. Campbell's poetry often reminds us of
+the purple gilliflower, both for its colour and its scent, its glowing
+warmth, its rich, languid, sullen hue,
+
+  "Yet sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,
+  Or Cytherea's breath!"
+
+There are those who complain of the little that Mr. Campbell has done
+in poetry, and who seem to insinuate that he is deterred by his own
+reputation from making any further or higher attempts. But after having
+produced two poems that have gone to the heart of a nation, and are
+gifts to a world, he may surely linger out the rest of his life in a
+dream of immortality. There are moments in our lives so exquisite that
+all that remains of them afterwards seems useless and barren; and there
+are lines and stanzas in our author's early writings in which he may
+be thought to have exhausted all the sweetness and all the essence of
+poetry, so that nothing farther was left to his efforts or his ambition.
+Happy is it for those few and fortunate worshippers of the Muse (not
+a subject of grudging or envy to others) who already enjoy in their
+life-time a foretaste of their future fame, who see their names
+accompanying them, like a cloud of glory, from youth to age,
+
+  "And by the vision splendid,
+  Are on their way attended"--
+
+and who know that they have built a shrine for the thoughts and
+feelings, that were most dear to them, in the minds and memories
+of other men, till the language which they lisped in childhood is
+forgotten, or the human heart shall beat no more!
+
+The _Pleasures of Hope_ alone would not have called forth these remarks
+from us; but there are passages in the _Gertrude of Wyoming_ of so rare
+and ripe a beauty, that they challenge, as they exceed all praise.
+Such, for instance, is the following peerless description of Gertrude's
+childhood:--
+
+  "A loved bequest--and I may half impart
+  To those that feel the strong paternal tie,
+  How like a new existence in his heart
+  That living flow'r uprose beneath his eye,
+  Dear as she was, from cherub infancy,
+  From hours when she would round his garden play,
+  To time when as the ripening years went by,
+  Her lovely mind could culture well repay,
+  And more engaging grew from pleasing day to day.
+
+  "I may not paint those thousand infant charms
+  (Unconscious fascination, undesign'd!)
+  The orison repeated in his arms,
+  For God to bless her sire and all mankind;
+  The book, the bosom on his knee reclined,
+  Or how sweet fairy-lore he heard her con
+  (The play-mate ere the teacher of her mind)
+  All uncompanion'd else her years had gone,
+  Till now in Gertrude's eyes their ninth blue summer shone.
+
+  "And summer was the tide, and sweet the hour,
+  When sire and daughter saw, with fleet descent,
+  An Indian from his bark approach their bower,
+  Of buskin'd limb and swarthy lineament;
+  The red wild feathers on his brow were blent,
+  And bracelets bound the arm that help'd to light
+  A boy, who seem'd, as he beside him went,
+  Of Christian vesture and complexion bright,
+  Led by his dusty guide, like morning brought by night."
+
+In the foregoing stanzas we particularly admire the line--
+
+  "Till now in Gertrude's eyes their ninth blue summer shone."
+
+It appears to us like the ecstatic union of natural beauty and poetic
+fancy, and in its playful sublimity resembles the azure canopy mirrored
+in the smiling waters, bright, liquid, serene, heavenly! A great outcry,
+we know, has prevailed for some time past against poetic diction and
+affected conceits, and, to a certain degree, we go along with it; but
+this must not prevent us from feeling the thrill of pleasure when we see
+beauty linked to beauty, like kindred flame to flame, or from applauding
+the voluptuous fancy that raises and adorns the fairy fabric of thought,
+that nature has begun! Pleasure is "scattered in stray-gifts o'er the
+earth"--beauty streaks the "famous poet's page" in occasional lines of
+inconceivable brightness; and wherever this is the case, no splenetic
+censures or "jealous leer malign," no idle theories or cold indifference
+should hinder us from greeting it with rapture.--There are other parts
+of this poem equally delightful, in which there is a light startling as
+the red-bird's wing; a perfume like that of the magnolia; a music
+like the murmuring of pathless woods or of the everlasting ocean. We
+conceive, however, that Mr. Campbell excels chiefly in sentiment and
+imagery. The story moves slow, and is mechanically conducted, and rather
+resembles a Scotch canal carried over lengthened aqueducts and with a
+number of _locks_ in it, than one of those rivers that sweep in their
+majestic course, broad and full, over Transatlantic plains and lose
+themselves in rolling gulfs, or thunder down lofty precipices. But in
+the centre, the inmost recesses of our poet's heart, the pearly dew of
+sensibility is distilled and collects, like the diamond in the mine, and
+the structure of his fame rests on the crystal columns of a polished
+imagination. We prefer the _Gertrude_ to the _Pleasures of Hope_,
+because with perhaps less brilliancy, there is more of tenderness and
+natural imagery in the former. In the _Pleasures of Hope_ Mr. Campbell
+had not completely emancipated himself from the trammels of the more
+artificial style of poetry--from epigram, and antithesis, and hyperbole.
+The best line in it, in which earthly joys are said to be--
+
+  "Like angels' visits, few and far between"--
+
+is a borrowed one.[A] But in the Gertrude of Wyoming "we perceive a
+softness coming over the heart of the author, and the scales and crust
+of formality that fence in his couplets and give them a somewhat
+glittering and rigid appearance, fall off," and he has succeeded in
+engrafting the wild and more expansive interest of the romantic school
+of poetry on classic elegance and precision. After the poem we have
+just named, Mr. Campbell's SONGS are the happiest efforts of his
+Muse:--breathing freshness, blushing like the morn, they seem, like
+clustering roses, to weave a chaplet for love and liberty; or their
+bleeding words gush out in mournful and hurried succession, like "ruddy
+drops that visit the sad heart" of thoughtful Humanity. The _Battle of
+Hohenlinden_ is of all modern compositions the most lyrical in spirit
+and in sound. To justify this encomium, we need only recall the lines to
+the reader's memory.
+
+  "On Linden, when the sun was low,
+  All bloodless lay th' untrodden snow,
+  And dark as winter was the flow
+  Of Iser, rolling rapidly.
+
+  But Linden saw another sight,
+  When the drum beat at dead of night,
+  Commanding fires of death to light
+  The darkness of her scenery.
+
+  By torch and trumpet fast array'd,
+  Each horseman drew his battle blade,
+  And furious every charger neigh'd,
+  To join the dreadful revelry.
+
+  Then shook the hills with thunder riv'n,
+  Then rush'd the steed to battle driv'n,
+  And louder than the bolts of heav'n
+  Far flash'd the red artillery.
+
+  But redder yet that light shall glow
+  On Linden's hills of stained snow,
+  And bloodier yet the torrent flow
+  Of Iser, rolling rapidly.
+
+  'Tis morn, but scarce yon level sun
+  Can pierce the war-clouds, rolling[B] dun,
+  Where furious Frank and fiery Hun
+  Shout in their sulph'rous canopy.
+
+  The combat deepens.  On, ye brave,
+  Who rush to glory, or the grave!
+  Wave, Munich! all thy banners wave!
+  And charge with all thy chivalry!
+
+  Few, few shall part, where many meet!
+  The snow shall be their winding-sheet,
+  And every turf beneath their feet
+  Shall be a soldier's sepulchre."
+
+Mr. Campbell's prose-criticisms on contemporary and other poets (which
+have appeared in the New Monthly Magazine) are in a style at once
+chaste, temperate, guarded, and just.
+
+Mr. Crabbe presents an entire contrast to
+
+Mr. Campbell:--the one is the most ambitious and aspiring of living
+poets, the other the most humble and prosaic. If the poetry of the one
+is like the arch of the rainbow, spanning and adorning the earth, that
+of the other is like a dull, leaden cloud hanging over it. Mr. Crabbe's
+style might be cited as an answer to Audrey's question--"Is poetry
+a true thing?" There are here no ornaments, no flights of fancy, no
+illusions of sentiment, no tinsel of words. His song is one sad reality,
+one unraised, unvaried note of unavailing woe. Literal fidelity serves
+him in the place of invention; he assumes importance by a number of
+petty details; he rivets attention by being tedious. He not only deals
+in incessant matters of fact, but in matters of fact of the most
+familiar, the least animating, and the most unpleasant kind; but he
+relies for the effect of novelty on the microscopic minuteness with
+which he dissects the most trivial objects--and for the interest he
+excites, on the unshrinking determination with which he handles the most
+painful. His poetry has an official and professional air. He is called
+in to cases of difficult births, of fractured limbs, or breaches of the
+peace; and makes out a parochial list of accidents and offences. He
+takes the most trite, the most gross and obvious and revolting part of
+nature, for the subject of his elaborate descriptions; but it is Nature
+still, and Nature is a great and mighty Goddess! It is well for the
+Reverend Author that it is so. Individuality is, in his theory, the only
+definition of poetry. Whatever _is_, he hitches into rhyme. Whoever
+makes an exact image of any thing on the earth, however deformed or
+insignificant, according to him, must succeed--and he himself has
+succeeded. Mr. Crabbe is one of the most popular and admired of our
+living authors. That he is so, can be accounted for on no other
+principle than the strong ties that bind us to the world about us, and
+our involuntary yearnings after whatever in any manner powerfully and
+directly reminds us of it. His Muse is not one of _the Daughters of
+Memory_, but the old toothless, mumbling dame herself, doling out the
+gossip and scandal of the neighbourhood, recounting _totidem verbis et
+literis_, what happens in every place of the kingdom every hour in the
+year, and fastening always on the worst as the most palatable morsels.
+But she is a circumstantial old lady, communicative, scrupulous, leaving
+nothing to the imagination, harping on the smallest grievances, a
+village-oracle and critic, most veritable, most identical, bringing us
+acquainted with persons and things just as they chanced to exist, and
+giving us a local interest in all she knows and tells. Mr. Crabbe's
+Helicon is choked up with weeds and corruption; it reflects no light
+from heaven, it emits no cheerful sound: no flowers of love, of hope,
+or joy spring up near it, or they bloom only to wither in a moment. Our
+poet's verse does not put a spirit of youth in every thing, but a spirit
+of fear, despondency, and decay: it is not an electric spark to kindle
+or expand, but acts like the torpedo's touch to deaden or contract. It
+lends no dazzling tints to fancy, it aids no soothing feelings in the
+heart, it gladdens no prospect, it stirs no wish; in its view the
+current of life runs slow, dull, cold, dispirited, half under ground,
+muddy, and clogged with all creeping things. The world is one vast
+infirmary; the hill of Parnassus is a penitentiary, of which our author
+is the overseer: to read him is a penance, yet we read on! Mr. Crabbe,
+it must be confessed, is a repulsive writer. He contrives to "turn
+diseases to commodities," and makes a virtue of necessity. He puts us
+out of conceit with this world, which perhaps a severe divine should do;
+yet does not, as a charitable divine ought, point to another. His morbid
+feelings droop and cling to the earth, grovel where they should soar;
+and throw a dead weight on every aspiration of the soul after the good
+or beautiful. By degrees we submit, and are reconciled to our fate, like
+patients to the physician, or prisoners in the condemned cell. We can
+only explain this by saying, as we said before, that Mr. Crabbe gives
+us one part of nature, the mean, the little, the disgusting, the
+distressing; that he does this thoroughly and like a master, and we
+forgive all the rest.
+
+Mr. Crabbe's first poems were published so long ago as the year 1782,
+and received the approbation of Dr. Johnson only a little before he
+died. This was a testimony from an enemy; for Dr. Johnson was not an
+admirer of the simple in style or minute in description. Still he was an
+acute, strong-minded man, and could see truth when it was presented to
+him, even through the mist of his prejudices and his foibles. There was
+something in Mr. Crabbe's intricate points that did not, after all, so
+ill accord with the Doctor's purblind vision; and he knew quite
+enough of the petty ills of life to judge of the merit of our poet's
+descriptions, though he himself chose to slur them over in high-sounding
+dogmas or general invectives. Mr. Crabbe's earliest poem of the
+_Village_ was recommended to the notice of Dr. Johnson by Sir Joshua
+Reynolds; and we cannot help thinking that a taste for that sort of
+poetry, which leans for support on the truth and fidelity of its
+imitations of nature, began to display itself much about that time, and,
+in a good measure, in consequence of the direction of the public taste
+to the subject of painting. Book-learning, the accumulation of wordy
+common-places, the gaudy pretensions of poetical fiction, had enfeebled
+and perverted our eye for nature. The study of the fine arts, which came
+into fashion about forty years ago, and was then first considered as a
+polite accomplishment, would tend imperceptibly to restore it. Painting
+is essentially an imitative art; it cannot subsist for a moment on empty
+generalities: the critic, therefore, who had been used to this sort of
+substantial entertainment, would be disposed to read poetry with the
+eye of a connoisseur, would be little captivated with smooth, polished,
+unmeaning periods, and would turn with double eagerness and relish to
+the force and precision of individual details, transferred, as it were,
+to the page from the canvas. Thus an admirer of Teniers or Hobbima
+might think little of the pastoral sketches of Pope or Goldsmith; even
+Thompson describes not so much the naked object as what he sees in his
+mind's eye, surrounded and glowing with the mild, bland, genial vapours
+of his brain:--but the adept in Dutch interiors, hovels, and pig-styes
+must find in Mr. Crabbe a man after his own heart. He is the very thing
+itself; he paints in words, instead of colours: there is no other
+difference. As Mr. Crabbe is not a painter, only because he does not use
+a brush and colours, so he is for the most part a poet, only because
+he writes in lines of ten syllables. All the rest might be found in a
+newspaper, an old magazine, or a county-register. Our author is himself
+a little jealous of the prudish fidelity of his homely Muse, and tries
+to justify himself by precedents. He brings as a parallel instance of
+merely literal description, Pope's lines on the gay Duke of Buckingham,
+beginning "In the worst inn's worst room see Villiers lies!" But surely
+nothing can be more dissimilar. Pope describes what is striking, Crabbe
+would have described merely what was there. The objects in Pope stand
+out to the fancy from the mixture of the mean with the gaudy, from the
+contrast of the scene and the character. There is an appeal to the
+imagination; you see what is passing in a poetical point of view. In
+Crabbe there is no foil, no contrast, no impulse given to the mind. It
+is all on a level and of a piece. In fact, there is so little connection
+between the subject-matter of Mr. Crabbe's lines and the ornament of
+rhyme which is tacked to them, that many of his verses read like serious
+burlesque, and the parodies which have been made upon them are hardly so
+quaint as the originals.
+
+Mr. Crabbe's great fault is certainly that he is a sickly, a querulous,
+a uniformly dissatisfied poet. He sings the country; and he sings it in
+a pitiful tone. He chooses this subject only to take the charm out of
+it, and to dispel the illusion, the glory, and the dream, which had
+hovered over it in golden verse from Theocritus to Cowper. He sets out
+with professing to overturn the theory which had hallowed a shepherd's
+life, and made the names of grove and valley music to our ears, in order
+to give us truth in its stead; but why not lay aside the fool's cap and
+bells at once? Why not insist on the unwelcome reality in plain prose?
+If our author is a poet, why trouble himself with statistics? If he is a
+statistic writer, why set his ill news to harsh and grating verse? The
+philosopher in painting the dark side of human nature may have reason
+on his side, and a moral lesson or remedy in view. The tragic poet, who
+shews the sad vicissitudes of things and the disappointments of the
+passions, at least strengthens our yearnings after imaginary good, and
+lends wings to our desires, by which we, "at one bound, high overleap
+all bound" of actual suffering. But Mr. Crabbe does neither. He gives
+us discoloured paintings of life; helpless, repining, unprofitable,
+unedifying distress. He is not a philosopher, but a sophist, a
+misanthrope in verse; a _namby-pamby_ Mandeville, a Malthus turned
+metrical romancer. He professes historical fidelity; but his vein is not
+dramatic; nor does he give us the _pros_ and _cons_ of that versatile
+gipsey, Nature. He does not indulge his fancy, or sympathise with us, or
+tell us how the poor feel; but how he should feel in their situation,
+which we do not want to know. He does not weave the web of their lives
+of a mingled yarn, good and ill together, but clothes them all in the
+same dingy linsey-woolsey, or tinges them with a green and yellow
+melancholy. He blocks out all possibility of good, cancels the hope, or
+even the wish for it as a weakness; check-mates Tityrus and Virgil at
+the game of pastoral cross-purposes, disables all his adversary's white
+pieces, and leaves none but black ones on the board. The situation of a
+country clergyman is not necessarily favourable to the cultivation of
+the Muse. He is set down, perhaps, as he thinks, in a small curacy for
+life, and he takes his revenge by imprisoning the reader's imagination
+in luckless verse. Shut out from social converse, from learned colleges
+and halls, where he passed his youth, he has no cordial fellow-feeling
+with the unlettered manners of the _Village_ or the _Borough_; and he
+describes his neighbours as more uncomfortable and discontented than
+himself. All this while he dedicates successive volumes to rising
+generations of noble patrons; and while he desolates a line of coast
+with sterile, blighting lines, the only leaf of his books where honour,
+beauty, worth, or pleasure bloom, is that inscribed to the Rutland
+family! We might adduce instances of what we have said from every page
+of his works: let one suffice--
+
+  "Thus by himself compelled to live each day,
+  To wait for certain hours the tide's delay;
+  At the same times the same dull views to see,
+  The bounding marsh-bank and the blighted tree;
+  The water only when the tides were high,
+  When low, the mud half-covered and half-dry;
+  The sun-burnt tar that blisters on the planks,
+  And bank-side stakes in their uneven ranks;
+  Heaps of entangled weeds that slowly float,
+  As the tide rolls by the impeded boat.
+  When tides were neap, and in the sultry day,
+  Through the tall bounding mud-banks made their way,
+  Which on each side rose swelling, and below
+  The dark warm flood ran silently and slow;
+  There anchoring, Peter chose from man to hide,
+  There hang his head, and view the lazy tide
+  In its hot slimy channel slowly glide;
+  Where the small eels, that left the deeper way
+  For the warm shore, within the shallows play;
+  Where gaping muscles, left upon the mud,
+  Slope their slow passage to the fall'n flood:
+  Here dull and hopeless he'd lie down and trace
+  How side-long crabs had crawled their crooked race;
+  Or sadly listen to the tuneless cry
+  Of fishing gull or clanging golden-eye;
+  What time the sea-birds to the marsh would come,
+  And the loud bittern, from the bull-rush home,
+  Gave from the salt ditch-side the bellowing boom:
+  He nursed the feelings these dull scenes produce
+  And loved to stop beside the opening sluice;
+  Where the small stream, confined in narrow bound,
+  Ran with a dull, unvaried, saddening sound;
+  Where all, presented to the eye or ear,
+  Oppressed the soul with misery, grief, and fear."
+
+This is an exact _fac-simile_ of some of the most unlovely parts of the
+creation. Indeed the whole of Mr. Crabbe's _Borough_, from which the
+above passage is taken, is done so to the life, that it seems almost
+like some sea-monster, crawled out of the neighbouring slime, and
+harbouring a breed of strange vermin, with a strong local scent of
+tar and bulge-water. Mr. Crabbe's _Tales_ are more readable than his
+_Poems_; but in proportion as the interest increases, they become more
+oppressive. They turn, one and all, upon the same sort of teazing,
+helpless, mechanical, unimaginative distress;--and though it is not
+easy to lay them down, you never wish to take them up again. Still in
+this way, they are highly finished, striking, and original portraits,
+worked out with an eye to nature, and an intimate knowledge of the
+small and intricate folds of the human heart. Some of the best are
+the _Confidant_, the story of _Silly Shore_, the _Young Poet_, the
+_Painter_. The episode of _Phoebe Dawson_ in the _Village_, is one of
+the most tender and pensive; and the character of the methodist parson
+who persecutes the sailor's widow with his godly, selfish love, is one
+of the most profound. In a word, if Mr. Crabbe's writings do not add
+greatly to the store of entertaining and delightful fiction, yet they
+will remain "as a thorn in the side of poetry," perhaps for a century to
+come!
+
+
+[Footnote A:
+
+  "Like angels' visits, short and far between."--.
+  _Blair's Grave_.]
+
+[Footnote B: Is not this word, which occurs in the last line but one,
+(as well as before) an instance of that repetition, which we so often
+meet with in the most correct and elegant writers?]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH.
+
+
+
+The subject of the present article is one of the ablest and most
+accomplished men of the age, both as a writer, a speaker, and a
+converser. He is, in fact, master of almost every known topic, whether
+of a passing or of a more recondite nature. He has lived much in
+society, and is deeply conversant with books. He is a man of the
+world and a scholar; but the scholar gives the tone to all his other
+acquirements and pursuits. Sir James is by education and habit, and we
+were going to add, by the original turn of his mind, a college-man; and
+perhaps he would have passed his time most happily and respectably, had
+he devoted himself entirely to that kind of life. The strength of his
+faculties would have been best developed, his ambition would have met
+its proudest reward, in the accumulation and elaborate display of grave
+and useful knowledge. As it is, it may be said, that in company he talks
+well, but too much; that in writing he overlays the original subject and
+spirit of the composition, by an appeal to authorities and by too formal
+a method; that in public speaking the logician takes place of the
+orator, and that he fails to give effect to a particular point or to
+urge an immediate advantage home upon his adversary from the enlarged
+scope of his mind, and the wide career he takes in the field of
+argument.
+
+To consider him in the last point of view, first. As a political
+partisan, he is rather the lecturer than the advocate. He is able to
+instruct and delight an impartial and disinterested audience by the
+extent of his information, by his acquaintance with general principles,
+by the clearness and aptitude of his illustrations, by vigour and
+copiousness of style; but where he has a prejudiced or unfair antagonist
+to contend with, he is just as likely to put weapons into his enemy's
+hands as to wrest them from him, and his object seems to be rather to
+deserve than to obtain success. The characteristics of his mind are
+retentiveness and comprehension, with facility of production: but he is
+not equally remarkable for originality of view, or warmth of feeling, or
+liveliness of fancy. His eloquence is a little rhetorical; his reasoning
+chiefly logical: he can bring down the account of knowledge on a vast
+variety of subjects to the present moment, he can embellish any cause he
+undertakes by the most approved and graceful ornaments, he can support
+it by a host of facts and examples, but he cannot advance it a step
+forward by placing it on a new and triumphant 'vantage-ground, nor
+can he overwhelm and break down the artificial fences and bulwarks
+of sophistry by the irresistible tide of manly enthusiasm. Sir James
+Mackintosh is an accomplished debater, rather than a powerful orator: he
+is distinguished more as a man of wonderful and variable talent than
+as a man of commanding intellect. His mode of treating a question is
+critical, and not parliamentary. It has been formed in the closet and
+the schools, and is hardly fitted for scenes of active life, or the
+collisions of party-spirit. Sir James reasons on the square; while the
+arguments of his opponents are loaded with iron or gold. He makes,
+indeed, a respectable ally, but not a very formidable opponent. He is as
+likely, however, to prevail on a neutral, as he is almost certain to be
+baffled on a hotly contested ground. On any question of general
+policy or legislative improvement, the Member for Nairn is heard with
+advantage, and his speeches are attended with effect: and he would have
+equal weight and influence at other times, if it were the object of the
+House to hear reason, as it is his aim to speak it. But on subjects of
+peace or war, of political rights or foreign interference, where the
+waves of party run high, and the liberty of nations or the fate of
+mankind hangs trembling in the scales, though he probably displays equal
+talent, and does full and heaped justice to the question (abstractedly
+speaking, or if it were to be tried before an impartial assembly), yet
+we confess we have seldom heard him, on such occasions, without pain for
+the event. He did not slur his own character and pretensions, but he
+compromised the argument. He spoke _the truth, the whole truth, and
+nothing but the truth_; but the House of Commons (we dare aver it) is
+not the place where the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
+truth can be spoken with safety or with advantage. The judgment of the
+House is not a balance to weigh scruples and reasons to the turn of a
+fraction: another element, besides the love of truth, enters into the
+composition of their decisions, the reaction of which must be calculated
+upon and guarded against. If our philosophical statesman had to open the
+case before a class of tyros, or a circle of grey-beards, who wished to
+form or to strengthen their judgments upon fair and rational grounds,
+nothing could be more satisfactory, more luminous, more able or more
+decisive than the view taken of it by Sir James Mackintosh. But the
+House of Commons, as a collective body, have not the docility of youth,
+the calm wisdom of age; and often only want an excuse to do wrong, or
+to adhere to what they have already determined upon; and Sir James,
+in detailing the inexhaustible stores of his memory and reading, in
+unfolding the wide range of his theory and practice, in laying down
+the rules and the exceptions, in insisting upon the advantages and the
+objections with equal explicitness, would be sure to let something drop
+that a dextrous and watchful adversary would easily pick up and turn
+against him, if this were found necessary; or if with so many _pros_ and
+_cons_, doubts and difficulties, dilemmas and alternatives thrown into
+it, the scale, with its natural bias to interest and power, did not
+already fly up and kick the beam. There wanted unity of purpose,
+impetuosity of feeling to break through the phalanx of hostile and
+inveterate prejudice arrayed against him. He gave a handle to his
+enemies; threw stumbling-blocks in the way of his friends. He raised so
+many objections for the sake of answering them, proposed so many doubts
+for the sake of solving them, and made so many concessions where none
+were demanded, that his reasoning had the effect of neutralizing itself;
+it became a mere exercise of the understanding without zest or spirit
+left in it; and the provident engineer who was to shatter in pieces
+the strong-holds of corruption and oppression, by a well-directed and
+unsparing discharge of artillery, seemed to have brought not only his
+own cannon-balls, but his own wool-packs along with him to ward off
+the threatened mischief. This was a good deal the effect of his maiden
+speech on the transfer of Genoa, to which Lord Castlereagh did not deign
+an answer, and which another Honourable Member called "a _finical_
+speech." It was a most able, candid, closely argued, and philosophical
+exposure of that unprincipled transaction; but for this very reason it
+was a solecism in the place where it was delivered. Sir James has, since
+this period, and with the help of practice, lowered himself to the tone
+of the House; and has also applied himself to questions more congenial
+to his habits of mind, and where the success would be more likely to be
+proportioned to his zeal and his exertions.
+
+There was a greater degree of power, or of dashing and splendid effect
+(we wish we could add, an equally humane and liberal spirit) in the
+_Lectures on the Law of Nature and Nations_, formerly delivered by Sir
+James (then Mr.) Mackintosh, in Lincoln's-Inn Hall. He shewed greater
+confidence; was more at home there. The effect was more electrical and
+instantaneous, and this elicited a prouder display of intellectual
+riches, and a more animated and imposing mode of delivery. He grew
+wanton with success. Dazzling others by the brilliancy of his
+acquirements, dazzled himself by the admiration they excited, he lost
+fear as well as prudence; dared every thing, carried every thing before
+him. The Modern Philosophy, counterscarp, outworks, citadel, and all,
+fell without a blow, by "the whiff and wind of his fell _doctrine_," as
+if it had been a pack of cards. The volcano of the French Revolution
+was seen expiring in its own flames, like a bon-fire made of straw: the
+principles of Reform were scattered in all directions, like chaff before
+the keen northern blast. He laid about him like one inspired; nothing
+could withstand his envenomed tooth. Like some savage beast got into
+the garden of the fabled Hesperides, he made clear work of it, root and
+branch, with white, foaming tusks--
+
+  "Laid waste the borders, and o'erthrew the bowers."
+
+The havoc was amazing, the desolation was complete. As to our visionary
+sceptics and Utopian philosophers, they stood no chance with our
+lecturer--he did not "carve them as a dish fit for the Gods, but hewed
+them as a carcase fit for hounds." Poor Godwin, who had come, in the
+_bonhommie_ and candour of his nature, to hear what new light had broken
+in upon his old friend, was obliged to quit the field, and slunk away
+after an exulting taunt thrown out at "such fanciful chimeras as a
+golden mountain or a perfect man." Mr. Mackintosh had something of the
+air, much of the dexterity and self-possession, of a political and
+philosophical juggler; and an eager and admiring audience gaped and
+greedily swallowed the gilded bait of sophistry, prepared for their
+credulity and wonder. Those of us who attended day after day, and were
+accustomed to have all our previous notions confounded and struck out of
+our hands by some metaphysical legerdemain, were at last at some loss to
+know _whether two and two made four_, till we had heard the lecturer's
+opinion on that head. He might have some mental reservation on the
+subject, some pointed ridicule to pour upon the common supposition,
+some learned authority to quote against it. To anticipate the line of
+argument he might pursue, was evidently presumptuous and premature. One
+thing only appeared certain, that whatever opinion he chose to take up,
+he was able to make good either by the foils or the cudgels, by gross
+banter or nice distinctions, by a well-timed mixture of paradox and
+common-place, by an appeal to vulgar prejudices or startling scepticism.
+It seemed to be equally his object, or the tendency of his Discourses,
+to unsettle every principle of reason or of common sense, and to leave
+his audience at the mercy of the _dictum_ of a lawyer, the nod of a
+minister, or the shout of a mob. To effect this purpose, he drew largely
+on the learning of antiquity, on modern literature, on history, poetry,
+and the belles-lettres, on the Schoolmen and on writers of novels,
+French, English, and Italian. In mixing up the sparkling julep, that
+by its potent operation was to scour away the dregs and feculence and
+peccant humours of the body politic, he seemed to stand with his back
+to the drawers in a metaphysical dispensary, and to take out of them
+whatever ingredients suited his purpose. In this way he had an antidote
+for every error, an answer to every folly. The writings of Burke, Hume,
+Berkeley, Paley, Lord Bacon, Jeremy Taylor, Grotius, Puffendorf, Cicero,
+Aristotle, Tacitus, Livy, Sully, Machiavel, Guicciardini, Thuanus, lay
+open beside him, and he could instantly lay his hand upon the passage,
+and quote them chapter and verse to the clearing up of all difficulties,
+and the silencing of all oppugners. Mr. Mackintosh's Lectures were after
+all but a kind of philosophical centos. They were profound, brilliant,
+new to his hearers; but the profundity, the brilliancy, the novelty were
+not his own. He was like Dr. Pangloss (not Voltaire's, but Coleman's)
+who speaks only in quotations; and the pith, the marrow of Sir James's
+reasoning and rhetoric at that memorable period might be put within
+inverted commas. It, however, served its purpose and the loud echo died
+away. We remember an excellent man and a sound critic[A] going to hear
+one of these elaborate effusions; and on his want of enthusiasm being
+accounted for from its not being one of the orator's brilliant days, he
+replied, "he did not think a man of genius could speak for two hours
+without saying something by which he would have been electrified."
+We are only sorry, at this distance of time, for one thing in these
+Lectures--the tone and spirit in which they seemed to have been composed
+and to be delivered. If all that body of opinions and principles of
+which the orator read his recantation was unfounded, and there was an
+end of all those views and hopes that pointed to future improvement, it
+was not a matter of triumph or exultation to the lecturer or any body
+else, to the young or the old, the wise or the foolish; on the contrary,
+it was a subject of regret, of slow, reluctant, painful admission--
+
+  "Of lamentation loud heard through the rueful air."
+
+The immediate occasion of this sudden and violent change in Sir James's
+views and opinions was attributed to a personal interview which he
+had had a little before his death with Mr. Burke, at his house at
+Beaconsfield. In the latter end of the year 1796, appeared the _Regicide
+Peace_, from the pen of the great apostate from liberty and betrayer of
+his species into the hands of those who claimed it as their property
+by divine right--a work imposing, solid in many respects, abounding in
+facts and admirable reasoning, and in which all flashy ornaments were
+laid aside for a testamentary gravity, (the eloquence of despair
+resembling the throes and heaving and muttered threats of an earthquake,
+rather than the loud thunder-bolt)--and soon after came out a criticism
+on it in _The Monthly Review_, doing justice to the author and the
+style, and combating the inferences with force and at much length; but
+with candour and with respect, amounting to deference. It was new to Mr.
+Burke not to be called names by persons of the opposite party; it was
+an additional triumph to him to be spoken well of, to be loaded with
+well-earned praise by the author of the _Vindiciæ Gallicæ_. It was a
+testimony from an old, a powerful, and an admired antagonist.[B] He sent
+an invitation to the writer to come and see him; and in the course of
+three days' animated discussion of such subjects, Mr. Mackintosh became
+a convert not merely to the graces and gravity of Mr. Burke's style, but
+to the liberality of his views, and the solidity of his opinions.--The
+Lincoln's-Inn Lectures were the fruit of this interview: such is the
+influence exercised by men of genius and imaginative power over those
+who have nothing to oppose to their unforeseen flashes of thought and
+invention, but the dry, cold, formal deductions of the understanding.
+Our politician had time, during a few years of absence from his native
+country, and while the din of war and the cries of party-spirit "were
+lost over a wide and unhearing ocean," to recover from his surprise and
+from a temporary alienation of mind; and to return in spirit, and in the
+mild and mellowed maturity of age, to the principles and attachments of
+his early life.
+
+The appointment of Sir James Mackintosh to a Judgeship in India was one,
+which, however flattering to his vanity or favourable to his interests,
+was entirely foreign to his feelings and habits. It was an honourable
+exile. He was out of his element among black slaves and sepoys, and
+Nabobs and cadets, and writers to India. He had no one to exchange ideas
+with. The "unbought grace of life," the charm of literary conversation
+was gone. It was the habit of his mind, his ruling passion to enter into
+the shock and conflict of opinions on philosophical, political, and
+critical questions--not to dictate to raw tyros or domineer over persons
+in subordinate situations--but to obtain the guerdon and the laurels of
+superior sense and information by meeting with men of equal standing, to
+have a fair field pitched, to argue, to distinguish, to reply, to
+hunt down the game of intellect with eagerness and skill, to push an
+advantage, to cover a retreat, to give and take a fall--
+
+  "And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach."
+
+It is no wonder that this sort of friendly intellectual gladiatorship is
+Sir James's greatest pleasure, for it is his peculiar _forte_. He has
+not many equals, and scarcely any superior in it. He is too indolent for
+an author; too unimpassioned for an orator: but in society he is just
+vain enough to be pleased with immediate attention, good-humoured
+enough to listen with patience to others, with great coolness and
+self-possession, fluent, communicative, and with a manner equally free
+from violence and insipidity. Few subjects can be started, on which he
+is not qualified to appear to advantage as the gentleman and scholar. If
+there is some tinge of pedantry, it is carried off by great affability
+of address and variety of amusing and interesting topics. There is
+scarce an author that he has not read; a period of history that he is
+not conversant with; a celebrated name of which he has not a number of
+anecdotes to relate; an intricate question that he is not prepared
+to enter upon in a popular or scientific manner. If an opinion in an
+abstruse metaphysical author is referred to, he is probably able to
+repeat the passage by heart, can tell the side of the page on which it
+is to be met with, can trace it back through various descents to Locke,
+Hobbes, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, to a place in some obscure folio of
+the School-men or a note in one of the commentators on Aristotle or
+Plato, and thus give you in a few moments' space, and without any effort
+or previous notice, a chronological table of the progress of the human
+mind in that particular branch of inquiry. There is something, we think,
+perfectly admirable and delightful in an exhibition of this kind, and
+which is equally creditable to the speaker and gratifying to the hearer.
+But this kind of talent was of no use in India: the intellectual wares,
+of which the Chief Judge delighted to make a display, were in no request
+there. He languished after the friends and the society he had left
+behind; and wrote over incessantly for books from England. One that was
+sent him at this time was an _Essay on the Principles of Human Action_;
+and the way in which he spoke of that dry, tough, metaphysical
+_choke-pear_, shewed the dearth of intellectual intercourse in which he
+lived, and the craving in his mind after those studies which had once
+been his pride, and to which he still turned for consolation in his
+remote solitude.--Perhaps to another, the novelty of the scene, the
+differences of mind and manners might have atoned for a want of social
+and literary _agrèmens_: but Sir James is one of those who see nature
+through the spectacles of books. He might like to read an account of
+India; but India itself with its burning, shining face would be a mere
+blank, an endless waste to him. To persons of this class of mind things
+must be translated into words, visible images into abstract propositions
+to meet their refined apprehensions, and they have no more to say to a
+matter-of-fact staring them in the face without a label in its mouth,
+than they would to a hippopotamus!--We may add, before we quit this
+point, that we cannot conceive of any two persons more different in
+colloquial talents, in which they both excel, than Sir James Mackintosh
+and Mr. Coleridge. They have nearly an equal range of reading and of
+topics of conversation: but in the mind of the one we see nothing but
+_fixtures_, in the other every thing is fluid. The ideas of the one
+are as formal and tangible, as those of the other are shadowy and
+evanescent. Sir James Mackintosh walks over the ground, Mr. Coleridge is
+always flying off from it. The first knows all that has been said upon
+a subject; the last has something to say that was never said before. If
+the one deals too much in learned _common-places_, the other teems with
+idle fancies. The one has a good deal of the _caput mortuum_ of genius,
+the other is all volatile salt. The conversation of Sir James Mackintosh
+has the effect of reading a well-written book, that of his friend
+is like hearing a bewildered dream. The one is an Encyclopedia of
+knowledge, the other is a succession of _Sybilline Leaves_!
+
+As an author, Sir James Mackintosh may claim the foremost rank among
+those who pride themselves on artificial ornaments and acquired
+learning, or who write what may be termed a _composite_ style. His
+_Vindciae Gallicae_ is a work of great labour, great ingenuity, great
+brilliancy, and great vigour. It is a little too antithetical in the
+structure of its periods, too dogmatical in the announcement of its
+opinions. Sir James has, we believe, rejected something of the
+_false brilliant_ of the one, as he has retracted some of the abrupt
+extravagance of the other. We apprehend, however, that our author is not
+one of those who draw from their own resources and accumulated feelings,
+or who improve with age. He belongs to a class (common in Scotland
+and elsewhere) who get up school-exercises on any given subject in
+a masterly manner at twenty, and who at forty are either where they
+were--or retrograde, if they are men of sense and modesty. The reason
+is, their vanity is weaned, after the first hey-day and animal spirits
+of youth are flown, from making an affected display of knowledge, which,
+however useful, is not their own, and may be much more simply stated;
+they are tired of repeating the same arguments over and over again,
+after having exhausted and rung the changes on their whole stock for a
+number of times. Sir James Mackintosh is understood to be a writer in
+the Edinburgh Review; and the articles attributed to him there are full
+of matter of great pith and moment. But they want the trim, pointed
+expression, the ambitious ornaments, the ostentatious display and rapid
+volubility of his early productions. We have heard it objected to his
+later compositions, that his style is good as far as single words and
+phrases are concerned, but that his sentences are clumsy and disjointed,
+and that these make up still more awkward and sprawling paragraphs. This
+is a nice criticism, and we cannot speak to its truth: but if the fact
+be so, we think we can account for it from the texture and obvious
+process of the author's mind. All his ideas may be said to be given
+preconceptions. They do not arise, as it were, out of the subject, or
+out of one another at the moment, and therefore do not flow naturally
+and gracefully from one another. They have been laid down beforehand in
+a sort of formal division or frame-work of the understanding; and the
+connexion between the premises and the conclusion, between one branch
+of a subject and another, is made out in a bungling and unsatisfactory
+manner. There is no principle of fusion in the work: he strikes after
+the iron is cold, and there is a want of malleability in the style. Sir
+James is at present said to be engaged in writing a _History of England_
+after the downfall of the house of Stuart. May it be worthy of the
+talents of the author, and of the principles of the period it is
+intended to illustrate!
+
+
+[Footnote A: The late Rev. Joseph Fawcett, of Walthamstow.]
+
+[Footnote B: At the time when the _Vindiciae Gallicae_ first made its
+appearance, as a reply to the _Reflections on the French Revolution_, it
+was cried up by the partisans of the new school, as a work superior in
+the charms of composition to its redoubted rival: in acuteness, depth,
+and soundness of reasoning, of course there was supposed to be no
+comparison.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+MR. WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+
+Mr. Wordsworth's genius is a pure emanation of the Spirit of the Age.
+Had he lived in any other period of the world, he would never have been
+heard of. As it is, he has some difficulty to contend with the hebetude
+of his intellect, and the meanness of his subject. With him "lowliness
+is young ambition's ladder:" but he finds it a toil to climb in this way
+the steep of Fame. His homely Muse can hardly raise her wing from the
+ground, nor spread her hidden glories to the sun. He has "no figures nor
+no fantasies, which busy _passion_ draws in the brains of men:" neither
+the gorgeous machinery of mythologic lore, nor the splendid colours of
+poetic diction. His style is vernacular: he delivers household truths.
+He sees nothing loftier than human hopes; nothing deeper than the human
+heart. This he probes, this he tampers with, this he poises, with all
+its incalculable weight of thought and feeling, in his hands; and at the
+same time calms the throbbing pulses of his own heart, by keeping his
+eye ever fixed on the face of nature. If he can make the life-blood flow
+from the wounded breast, this is the living colouring with which he
+paints his verse: if he can assuage the pain or close up the wound with
+the balm of solitary musing, or the healing power of plants and herbs
+and "skyey influences," this is the sole triumph of his art. He takes
+the simplest elements of nature and of the human mind, the mere abstract
+conditions inseparable from our being, and tries to compound a new
+system of poetry from them; and has perhaps succeeded as well as any one
+could. "_Nihil humani a me alienum puto_"--is the motto of his works. He
+thinks nothing low or indifferent of which this can be affirmed: every
+thing that professes to be more than this, that is not an absolute
+essence of truth and feeling, he holds to be vitiated, false, and
+spurious. In a word, his poetry is founded on setting up an opposition
+(and pushing it to the utmost length) between the natural and the
+artificial: between the spirit of humanity, and the spirit of fashion
+and of the world!
+
+It is one of the innovations of the time. It partakes of, and is carried
+along with, the revolutionary movement of our age: the political changes
+of the day were the model on which he formed and conducted his poetical
+experiments. His Muse (it cannot be denied, and without this we cannot
+explain its character at all) is a levelling one. It proceeds on a
+principle of equality, and strives to reduce all things to the same
+standard. It is distinguished by a proud humility. It relies upon its
+own resources, and disdains external shew and relief. It takes the
+commonest events and objects, as a test to prove that nature is always
+interesting from its inherent truth and beauty, without any of the
+ornaments of dress or pomp of circumstances to set it off. Hence the
+unaccountable mixture of seeming simplicity and real abstruseness in the
+_Lyrical Ballads_. Fools have laughed at, wise men scarcely understand
+them. He takes a subject or a story merely as pegs or loops to hang
+thought and feeling on; the incidents are trifling, in proportion to
+his contempt for imposing appearances; the reflections are profound,
+according to the gravity and the aspiring pretensions of his mind. His
+popular, inartificial style gets rid (at a blow) of all the trappings
+of verse, of all the high places of poetry: "the cloud-capt towers, the
+solemn temples, the gorgeous palaces," are swept to the ground, and
+"like the baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a wreck behind."
+All the traditions of learning, all the superstitions of age, are
+obliterated and effaced. We begin _de novo_, on a _tabula rasa_ of
+poetry. The purple pall, the nodding plume of tragedy are exploded as
+mere pantomime and trick, to return to the simplicity of truth and
+nature. Kings, queens, priests, nobles, the altar and the throne, the
+distinctions of rank, birth, wealth, power, "the judge's robe, the
+marshall's truncheon, the ceremony that to great ones 'longs," are not
+to be found here. The author tramples on the pride of art with greater
+pride. The Ode and Epode, the Strophe and the Antistrophe, he laughs to
+scorn. The harp of Homer, the trump of Pindar and of Alcaeus are still.
+The decencies of costume, the decorations of vanity are stripped off
+without mercy as barbarous, idle, and Gothic. The jewels in the crisped
+hair, the diadem on the polished brow are thought meretricious,
+theatrical, vulgar; and nothing contents his fastidious taste beyond
+a simple garland of flowers. Neither does he avail himself of the
+advantages which nature or accident holds out to him. He chooses to have
+his subject a foil to his invention, to owe nothing but to himself. He
+gathers manna in the wilderness, he strikes the barren rock for the
+gushing moisture. He elevates the mean by the strength of his own
+aspirations; he clothes the naked with beauty and grandeur from the
+store of his own recollections. No cypress-grove loads his verse with
+perfumes: but his imagination lends a sense of joy
+
+  "To the bare trees and mountains bare,
+  And grass in the green field."
+
+No storm, no shipwreck startles us by its horrors: but the rainbow lifts
+its head in the cloud, and the breeze sighs through the withered fern.
+No sad vicissitude of fate, no overwhelming catastrophe in nature
+deforms his page: but the dew-drop glitters on the bending flower, the
+tear collects in the glistening eye.
+
+  "Beneath the hills, along the flowery vales,
+  The generations are prepared; the pangs,
+  The internal pangs are ready; the dread strife
+  Of poor humanity's afflicted will,
+  Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny."
+
+As the lark ascends from its low bed on fluttering wing, and salutes the
+morning skies; so Mr. Wordsworth's unpretending Muse, in russet guise,
+scales the summits of reflection, while it makes the round earth its
+footstool, and its home!
+
+Possibly a good deal of this may be regarded as the effect of
+disappointed views and an inverted ambition. Prevented by native pride
+and indolence from climbing the ascent of learning or greatness, taught
+by political opinions to say to the vain pomp and glory of the world, "I
+hate ye," seeing the path of classical and artificial poetry blocked up
+by the cumbrous ornaments of style and turgid _common-places_, so
+that nothing more could be achieved in that direction but by the most
+ridiculous bombast or the tamest servility; he has turned back partly
+from the bias of his mind, partly perhaps from a judicious policy--has
+struck into the sequestered vale of humble life, sought out the Muse
+among sheep-cotes and hamlets and the peasant's mountain-haunts, has
+discarded all the tinsel pageantry of verse, and endeavoured (not in
+vain) to aggrandise the trivial and add the charm of novelty to the
+familiar. No one has shewn the same imagination in raising trifles into
+importance: no one has displayed the same pathos in treating of the
+simplest feelings of the heart. Reserved, yet haughty, having no unruly
+or violent passions, (or those passions having been early suppressed,)
+Mr. Wordsworth has passed his life in solitary musing, or in daily
+converse with the face of nature. He exemplifies in an eminent degree
+the power of _association_; for his poetry has no other source or
+character. He has dwelt among pastoral scenes, till each object has
+become connected with a thousand feelings, a link in the chain of
+thought, a fibre of his own heart. Every one is by habit and familiarity
+strongly attached to the place of his birth, or to objects that recal
+the most pleasing and eventful circumstances of his life. But to the
+author of the _Lyrical Ballads_, nature is a kind of home; and he may be
+said to take a personal interest in the universe. There is no image so
+insignificant that it has not in some mood or other found the way into
+his heart: no sound that does not awaken the memory of other years.--
+
+  "To him the meanest flower that blows can give
+  Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."
+
+The daisy looks up to him with sparkling eye as an old acquaintance:
+the cuckoo haunts him with sounds of early youth not to be expressed: a
+linnet's nest startles him with boyish delight: an old withered thorn is
+weighed down with a heap of recollections: a grey cloak, seen on some
+wild moor, torn by the wind, or drenched in the rain, afterwards becomes
+an object of imagination to him: even the lichens on the rock have a
+life and being in his thoughts. He has described all these objects in a
+way and with an intensity of feeling that no one else had done before
+him, and has given a new view or aspect of nature. He is in this sense
+the most original poet now living, and the one whose writings could the
+least be spared: for they have no substitute elsewhere. The vulgar do
+not read them, the learned, who see all things through books, do not
+understand them, the great despise, the fashionable may ridicule them:
+but the author has created himself an interest in the heart of the
+retired and lonely student of nature, which can never die. Persons
+of this class will still continue to feel what he has felt: he has
+expressed what they might in vain wish to express, except with
+glistening eye and faultering tongue! There is a lofty philosophic tone,
+a thoughtful humanity, infused into his pastoral vein. Remote from the
+passions and events of the great world, he has communicated interest and
+dignity to the primal movements of the heart of man, and ingrafted his
+own conscious reflections on the casual thoughts of hinds and shepherds.
+Nursed amidst the grandeur of mountain scenery, he has stooped to have
+a nearer view of the daisy under his feet, or plucked a branch of
+white-thorn from the spray: but in describing it, his mind seems imbued
+with the majesty and solemnity of the objects around him--the tall rock
+lifts its head in the erectness of his spirit; the cataract roars in the
+sound of his verse; and in its dim and mysterious meaning, the mists
+seem to gather in the hollows of Helvellyn, and the forked Skiddaw
+hovers in the distance. There is little mention of mountainous scenery
+in Mr. Wordsworth's poetry; but by internal evidence one might be almost
+sure that it was written in a mountainous country, from its bareness,
+its simplicity, its loftiness and its depth!
+
+His later philosophic productions have a somewhat different character.
+They are a departure from, a dereliction of his first principles. They
+are classical and courtly. They are polished in style, without being
+gaudy; dignified in subject, without affectation. They seem to have
+been composed not in a cottage at Grasmere, but among the half-inspired
+groves and stately recollections of Cole-Orton. We might allude in
+particular, for examples of what we mean, to the lines on a Picture by
+Claude Lorraine, and to the exquisite poem, entitled _Laodamia_. The
+last of these breathes the pure spirit of the finest fragments of
+antiquity--the sweetness, the gravity, the strength, the beauty and the
+langour of death--
+
+  "Calm contemplation and majestic pains."
+
+Its glossy brilliancy arises from the perfection of the finishing, like
+that of careful sculpture, not from gaudy colouring--the texture of the
+thoughts has the smoothness and solidity of marble. It is a poem that
+might be read aloud in Elysium, and the spirits of departed heroes and
+sages would gather round to listen to it! Mr. Wordsworth's philosophic
+poetry, with a less glowing aspect and less tumult in the veins than
+Lord Byron's on similar occasions, bends a calmer and keener eye
+on mortality; the impression, if less vivid, is more pleasing and
+permanent; and we confess it (perhaps it is a want of taste and proper
+feeling) that there are lines and poems of our author's, that we think
+of ten times for once that we recur to any of Lord Byron's. Or if there
+are any of the latter's writings, that we can dwell upon in the same
+way, that is, as lasting and heart-felt sentiments, it is when laying
+aside his usual pomp and pretension, he descends with Mr. Wordsworth to
+the common ground of a disinterested humanity. It may be considered
+as characteristic of our poet's writings, that they either make no
+impression on the mind at all, seem mere _nonsense-verses_, or that they
+leave a mark behind them that never wears out. They either
+
+  "Fall blunted from the indurated breast"--
+
+without any perceptible result, or they absorb it like a passion. To
+one class of readers he appears sublime, to another (and we fear the
+largest) ridiculous. He has probably realised Milton's wish,--"and fit
+audience found, though few:" but we suspect he is not reconciled to the
+alternative. There are delightful passages in the EXCURSION, both of
+natural description and of inspired reflection (passages of the latter
+kind that in the sound of the thoughts and of the swelling language
+resemble heavenly symphonies, mournful _requiems_ over the grave of
+human hopes); but we must add, in justice and in sincerity, that we
+think it impossible that this work should ever become popular, even in
+the same degree as the _Lyrical Ballads_. It affects a system without
+having any intelligible clue to one; and instead of unfolding a
+principle in various and striking lights, repeats the same conclusions
+till they become flat and insipid. Mr. Wordsworth's mind is obtuse,
+except as it is the organ and the receptacle of accumulated feelings:
+it is not analytic, but synthetic; it is reflecting, rather than
+theoretical. The EXCURSION, we believe, fell stillborn from the press.
+There was something abortive, and clumsy, and ill-judged in the attempt.
+It was long and laboured. The personages, for the most part, were low,
+the fare rustic: the plan raised expectations which were not fulfilled,
+and the effect was like being ushered into a stately hall and invited
+to sit down to a splendid banquet in the company of clowns, and with
+nothing but successive courses of apple-dumplings served up. It was not
+even _toujours perdrix_!
+
+Mr. Wordsworth, in his person, is above the middle size, with marked
+features, and an air somewhat stately and Quixotic. He reminds one of
+some of Holbein's heads, grave, saturnine, with a slight indication of
+sly humour, kept under by the manners of the age or by the pretensions
+of the person. He has a peculiar sweetness in his smile, and great depth
+and manliness and a rugged harmony, in the tones of his voice. His
+manner of reading his own poetry is particularly imposing; and in his
+favourite passages his eye beams with preternatural lustre, and the
+meaning labours slowly up from his swelling breast. No one who has seen
+him at these moments could go away with an impression that he was a "man
+of no mark or likelihood." Perhaps the comment of his face and voice is
+necessary to convey a full idea of his poetry. His language may not be
+intelligible, but his manner is not to be mistaken. It is clear that
+he is either mad or inspired. In company, even in a _tête-à-tête_, Mr.
+Wordsworth is often silent, indolent, and reserved. If he is become
+verbose and oracular of late years, he was not so in his better days.
+He threw out a bold or an indifferent remark without either effort or
+pretension, and relapsed into musing again. He shone most (because he
+seemed most roused and animated) in reciting his own poetry, or in
+talking about it. He sometimes gave striking views of his feelings and
+trains of association in composing certain passages; or if one did
+not always understand his distinctions, still there was no want of
+interest--there was a latent meaning worth inquiring into, like a vein
+of ore that one Cannot exactly hit upon at the moment, but of which
+there are sure indications. His standard of poetry is high and severe,
+almost to exclusiveness. He admits of nothing below, scarcely of any
+thing above himself. It is fine to hear him talk of the way in which
+certain subjects should have been treated by eminent poets, according to
+his notions of the art. Thus he finds fault with Dryden's description of
+Bacchus in the _Alexander's Feast_, as if he were a mere good-looking
+youth, or boon companion--
+
+  "Flushed with a purple grace,
+  He shews his honest face"--
+
+instead of representing the God returning from the conquest of India,
+crowned with vine-leaves, and drawn by panthers, and followed by troops
+of satyrs, of wild men and animals that he had tamed. You would thank,
+in hearing him speak on this subject, that you saw Titian's picture of
+the meeting of _Bacchus and Ariadne_--so classic were his conceptions,
+so glowing his style. Milton is his great idol, and he sometimes dares
+to compare himself with him. His Sonnets, indeed, have something of the
+same high-raised tone and prophetic spirit. Chaucer is another prime
+favourite of his, and he has been at the pains to modernise some of the
+Canterbury Tales. Those persons who look upon Mr. Wordsworth as a merely
+puerile writer, must be rather at a loss to account for his strong
+predilection for such geniuses as Dante and Michael Angelo. We do not
+think our author has any very cordial sympathy with Shakespear. How
+should he? Shakespear was the least of an egotist of any body in the
+world. He does not much relish the variety and scope of dramatic
+composition. "He hates those interlocutions between Lucius and Caius."
+Yet Mr. Wordsworth himself wrote a tragedy when he was young; and we
+have heard the following energetic lines quoted from it, as put into the
+mouth of a person smit with remorse for some rash crime:
+
+ ----"Action is momentary,
+  The motion of a muscle this way or that;
+  Suffering is long, obscure, and infinite!"
+
+Perhaps for want of light and shade, and the unshackled spirit of the
+drama, this performance was never brought forward. Our critic has a
+great dislike to Gray, and a fondness for Thomson and Collins. It is
+mortifying to hear him speak of Pope and Dryden, whom, because they have
+been supposed to have all the possible excellences of poetry, he will
+allow to have none. Nothing, however, can be fairer, or more amusing,
+than the way in which he sometimes exposes the unmeaning verbiage of
+modern poetry. Thus, in the beginning of Dr. Johnson's _Vanity of Human
+Wishes_--
+
+  "Let observation with extensive view
+  Survey mankind from China to Peru"--
+
+he says there is a total want of imagination accompanying the words,
+the same idea is repeated three times under the disguise of a different
+phraseology: it comes to this--"let _observation_, with extensive
+_observation, observe_ mankind;" or take away the first line, and the
+second,
+
+  "Survey mankind from China to Peru,"
+
+literally conveys the whole. Mr. Wordsworth is, we must say, a perfect
+Drawcansir as to prose writers. He complains of the dry reasoners and
+matter-of-fact people for their want of _passion_; and he is jealous of
+the rhetorical declaimers and rhapsodists as trenching on the province
+of poetry. He condemns all French writers (as well of poetry as prose)
+in the lump. His list in this way is indeed small. He approves of
+Walton's Angler, Paley, and some other writers of an inoffensive modesty
+of pretension. He also likes books of voyages and travels, and Robinson
+Crusoe. In art, he greatly esteems Bewick's wood-cuts, and Waterloo's
+sylvan etchings. But he sometimes takes a higher tone, and gives his
+mind fair play. We have known him enlarge with a noble intelligence and
+enthusiasm on Nicolas Poussin's fine landscape-compositions, pointing
+out the unity of design that pervades them, the superintending mind,
+the imaginative principle that brings all to bear on the same end;
+and declaring he would not give a rush for any landscape that did not
+express the time of day, the climate, the period of the world it was
+meant to illustrate, or had not this character of _wholeness_ in it. His
+eye also does justice to Rembrandt's fine and masterly effects. In the
+way in which that artist works something out of nothing, and transforms
+the stump of a tree, a common figure into an _ideal_ object, by the
+gorgeous light and shade thrown upon it, he perceives an analogy to his
+own mode of investing the minute details of nature with an atmosphere
+of sentiment; and in pronouncing Rembrandt to be a man of genius, feels
+that he strengthens his own claim to the title. It has been said of
+Mr. Wordsworth, that "he hates conchology, that he hates the Venus of
+Medicis." But these, we hope, are mere epigrams and _jeux-d'esprit_, as
+far from truth as they are free from malice; a sort of running satire or
+critical clenches--
+
+  "Where one for sense and one for rhyme
+  Is quite sufficient at one time."
+
+We think, however, that if Mr. Wordsworth had been a more liberal and
+candid critic, he would have been a more sterling writer. If a greater
+number of sources of pleasure had been open to him, he would have
+communicated pleasure to the world more frequently. Had he been less
+fastidious in pronouncing sentence on the works of others, his own would
+have been received more favourably, and treated more leniently.
+The current of his feelings is deep, but narrow; the range of his
+understanding is lofty and aspiring rather than discursive. The force,
+the originality, the absolute truth and identity with which he feels
+some things, makes him indifferent to so many others. The simplicity and
+enthusiasm of his feelings, with respect to nature, renders him bigotted
+and intolerant in his judgments of men and things. But it happens to
+him, as to others, that his strength lies in his weakness; and perhaps
+we have no right to complain. We might get rid of the cynic and the
+egotist, and find in his stead a common-place man. We should "take the
+good the Gods provide us:" a fine and original vein of poetry is not
+one of their most contemptible gifts, and the rest is scarcely worth
+thinking of, except as it may be a mortification to those who expect
+perfection from human nature; or who have been idle enough at some
+period of their lives, to deify men of genius as possessing claims above
+it. But this is a chord that jars, and we shall not dwell upon it.
+
+Lord Byron we have called, according to the old proverb, "the spoiled
+child of fortune:" Mr. Wordsworth might plead, in mitigation of some
+peculiarities, that he is "the spoiled child of disappointment." We are
+convinced, if he had been early a popular poet, he would have borne his
+honours meekly, and would have been a person of great _bonhommie_ and
+frankness of disposition. But the sense of injustice and of undeserved
+ridicule sours the temper and narrows the views. To have produced works
+of genius, and to find them neglected or treated with scorn, is one of
+the heaviest trials of human patience. We exaggerate our own merits when
+they are denied by others, and are apt to grudge and cavil at every
+particle of praise bestowed on those to whom we feel a conscious
+superiority. In mere self-defence we turn against the world, when it
+turns against us; brood over the undeserved slights we receive; and thus
+the genial current of the soul is stopped, or vents itself in effusions
+of petulance and self-conceit. Mr. Wordsworth has thought too much of
+contemporary critics and criticism; and less than he ought of the award
+of posterity, and of the opinion, we do not say of private friends, but
+of those who were made so by their admiration of his genius. He did not
+court popularity by a conformity to established models, and he ought
+not to have been surprised that his originality was not understood as a
+matter of course. He has _gnawed too much on the bridle_; and has often
+thrown out crusts to the critics, in mere defiance or as a point of
+honour when he was challenged, which otherwise his own good sense would
+have withheld. We suspect that Mr. Wordsworth's feelings are a little
+morbid in this respect, or that he resents censure more than he is
+gratified by praise. Otherwise, the tide has turned much in his favour
+of late years--he has a large body of determined partisans--and is at
+present sufficiently in request with the public to save or relieve him
+from the last necessity to which a man of genius can be reduced--that
+of becoming the God of his own idolatry!
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+MR. MALTHUS.
+
+
+
+Mr. Malthus may be considered as one of those rare and fortunate writers
+who have attained a _scientific_ reputation in questions of moral and
+political philosophy. His name undoubtedly stands very high in the
+present age, and will in all probability go down to posterity with more
+or less of renown or obloquy. It was said by a person well qualified
+to judge both from strength and candour of mind, that "it would take
+a thousand years at least to answer his work on Population." He has
+certainly thrown a new light on that question, and changed the aspect of
+political economy in a decided and material point of view--whether he
+has not also endeavoured to spread a gloom over the hopes and more
+sanguine speculations of man, and to cast a slur upon the face of
+nature, is another question. There is this to be said for Mr. Malthus,
+that in speaking of him, one knows what one is talking about. He is
+something beyond a mere name--one has not to _beat the bush_ about his
+talents, his attainments, his vast reputation, and leave off without
+knowing what it all amounts to--he is not one of those great men, who
+set themselves off and strut and fret an hour upon the stage, during a
+day-dream of popularity, with the ornaments and jewels borrowed from the
+common stock, to which nothing but their vanity and presumption gives
+them the least individual claim--he has dug into the mine of truth, and
+brought up ore mixed with dross! In weighing his merits we come at once
+to the question of what he has done or failed to do. It is a specific
+claim that he sets up. When we speak of Mr. Malthus, we mean the _Essay
+on Population_; and when we mention the Essay on Population, we mean
+a distinct leading proposition, that stands out intelligibly from all
+trashy pretence, and is a ground on which to fix the levers that may
+move the world, backwards or forwards. He has not left opinion where
+he found it; he has advanced or given it a wrong bias, or thrown a
+stumbling-block in its way. In a word, his name is not stuck, like so
+many others, in the firmament of reputation, nobody knows why, inscribed
+in great letters, and with a transparency of TALENTS, GENIUS, LEARNING
+blazing round it--it is tantamount to an idea, it is identified with
+a principle, it means that _the population cannot go on perpetually
+increasing without pressing on the limits of the means of subsistence,
+and that a check of some kind or other must, sooner or later, be opposed
+to it_. This is the essence of the doctrine which Mr. Malthus has been
+the first to bring into general notice, and as we think, to establish
+beyond the fear of contradiction. Admitting then as we do the prominence
+and the value of his claims to public attention, it yet remains a
+question, how far those claims are (as to the talent displayed in them)
+strictly original; how far (as to the logical accuracy with which he has
+treated the subject) he has introduced foreign and doubtful matter
+into it; and how far (as to the spirit in which he has conducted his
+inquiries, and applied a general principle to particular objects) he has
+only drawn fair and inevitable conclusions from it, or endeavoured to
+tamper with and wrest it to sinister and servile purposes. A writer who
+shrinks from following up a well-founded principle into its untoward
+consequences from timidity or false delicacy, is not worthy of the
+name of a philosopher: a writer who assumes the garb of candour and an
+inflexible love of truth to garble and pervert it, to crouch to power
+and pander to prejudice, deserves a worse title than that of a sophist!
+
+Mr. Malthus's first octavo volume on this subject (published in the year
+1798) was intended as an answer to Mr. Godwin's _Enquiry concerning
+Political Justice_. It was well got up for the purpose, and had an
+immediate effect. It was what in the language of the ring is called _a
+facer_. It made Mr. Godwin and the other advocates of Modern Philosophy
+look about them. It may be almost doubted whether Mr. Malthus was in the
+first instance serious in many things that he threw out, or whether he
+did not hazard the whole as an amusing and extreme paradox, which might
+puzzle the reader as it had done himself in an idle moment, but to which
+no practical consequence whatever could attach. This state of mind would
+probably continue till the irritation of enemies and the encouragement
+of friends convinced him that what he had at first exhibited as an idle
+fancy was in fact a very valuable discovery, or "like the toad ugly and
+venomous, had yet a precious jewel in its head." Such a supposition
+would at least account for some things in the original Essay, which
+scarcely any writer would venture upon, except as professed exercises of
+ingenuity, and which have been since in part retracted. But a wrong
+bias was thus given, and the author's theory was thus rendered warped,
+disjointed, and sophistical from the very outset.
+
+Nothing could in fact be more illogical (not to say absurd) than the
+whole of Mr. Malthus's reasoning applied as an answer (_par excellence_)
+to Mr. Godwin's book, or to the theories of other Utopian philosophers.
+Mr. Godwin was not singular, but was kept in countenance by many
+authorities, both ancient and modern, in supposing a state of society
+possible in which the passions and wills of individuals would be
+conformed to the general good, in which the knowledge of the best means
+of promoting human welfare and the desire of contributing to it
+would banish vice and misery from the world, and in which, the
+stumbling-blocks of ignorance, of selfishness, and the indulgence of
+gross appetite being removed, all things would move on by the mere
+impulse of wisdom and virtue, to still higher and higher degrees of
+perfection and happiness. Compared with the lamentable and gross
+deficiencies of existing institutions, such a view of futurity as barely
+possible could not fail to allure the gaze and tempt the aspiring
+thoughts of the philanthropist and the philosopher: the hopes and the
+imaginations of speculative men could not but rush forward into this
+ideal world as into a _vacuum_ of good; and from "the mighty stream of
+tendency" (as Mr. Wordsworth in the cant of the day calls it,) there was
+danger that the proud monuments of time-hallowed institutions, that the
+strong-holds of power and corruption, that "the Corinthian capitals of
+polished society," with the base and pediments, might be overthrown
+and swept away as by a hurricane. There were not wanting persons whose
+ignorance, whose fears, whose pride, or whose prejudices contemplated
+such an alternative with horror; and who would naturally feel no small
+obligation to the man who should relieve their apprehensions from the
+stunning roar of this mighty change of opinion that thundered at a
+distance, and should be able, by some logical apparatus or unexpected
+turn of the argument, to prevent the vessel of the state from being
+hurried forward with the progress of improvement, and dashed in pieces
+down the tremendous precipice of human perfectibility. Then comes Mr.
+Malthus forward with the geometrical and arithmetical ratios in his
+hands, and holds them out to his affrighted contemporaries as the only
+means of salvation. "For" (so argued the author of the Essay) "let the
+principles of Mr. Godwin's Enquiry and of other similar works be carried
+literally and completely into effect; let every corruption and abuse of
+power be entirely got rid of; let virtue, knowledge, and civilization
+be advanced to the greatest height that these visionary reformers would
+suppose; let the passions and appetites be subjected to the utmost
+control of reason and influence of public opinion: grant them, in
+a word, all that they ask, and the more completely their views are
+realized, the sooner will they be overthrown again, and the more
+inevitable and fatal will be the catastrophe. For the principle of
+population will still prevail, and from the comfort, ease, and plenty
+that will abound, will receive an increasing force and _impetus_; the
+number of mouths to be fed will have no limit, but the food that is to
+supply them cannot keep pace with the demand for it; we must come to a
+stop somewhere, even though each square yard, by extreme improvements in
+cultivation, could maintain its man: in this state of things there
+will be no remedy, the wholesome checks of vice and misery (which have
+hitherto kept this principle within bounds) will have been done away;
+the voice of reason will be unheard; the passions only will bear
+sway; famine, distress, havoc, and dismay will spread around; hatred,
+violence, war, and bloodshed will be the infallible consequence, and
+from the pinnacle of happiness, peace, refinement, and social advantage,
+we shall be hurled once more into a profounder abyss of misery, want,
+and barbarism than ever, by the sole operation of the principle of
+population!"--Such is a brief abstract of the argument of the Essay.
+Can any thing be less conclusive, a more complete fallacy and _petitio
+principii_? Mr. Malthus concedes, he assumes a state of perfectibility,
+such as his opponents imagined, in which the general good is to obtain
+the entire mastery of individual interests, and reason of gross
+appetites and passions; and then he argues that such a perfect structure
+of society will fall by its own weight, or rather be undermined by the
+principle of population, because in the highest possible state of the
+subjugation of the passions to reason, they will be absolutely lawless
+and unchecked, and because as men become enlightened, quick sighted
+and public-spirited, they will shew themselves utterly blind to the
+consequences of their actions, utterly indifferent to their own
+well-being and that of all succeeding generations, whose fate is placed
+in their hands. This we conceive to be the boldest paralogism that ever
+was offered to the world, or palmed upon willing credulity. Against
+whatever other scheme of reform this objection might be valid, the
+one it was brought expressly to overturn was impregnable against it,
+invulnerable to its slightest graze. Say that the Utopian reasoners are
+visionaries, unfounded; that the state of virtue and knowledge they
+suppose, in which reason shall have become all-in-all, can never take
+place, that it is inconsistent with the nature of man and with all
+experience, well and good--but to say that society will have attained
+this high and "palmy state," that reason will have become the master-
+key to all our motives, and that when arrived at its greatest power it
+will cease to act at all, but will fall down dead, inert, and senseless
+before the principle of population, is an opinion which one would
+think few people would choose to advance or assent to, without strong
+inducements for maintaining or believing it.
+
+The fact, however, is, that Mr. Malthus found this argument entire (the
+principle and the application of it) in an obscure and almost forgotten
+work published about the middle of the last century, entitled _Various
+Prospects of Mankind, Nature, and Providence_, by a Scotch gentleman
+of the name of Wallace. The chapter in this work on the Principle
+of Population, considered as a bar to all ultimate views of human
+improvement, was probably written to amuse an idle hour, or read as a
+paper to exercise the wits of some literary society in the Northern
+capital, and no farther responsibility or importance annexed to it. Mr.
+Malthus, by adopting and setting his name to it, has given it sufficient
+currency and effect. It sometimes happens that one writer is the first
+to discover a certain principle or lay down a given observation, and
+that another makes an application of, or draws a remote or an immediate
+inference from it, totally unforeseen by the first, and from which, in
+all probability, he might have widely dissented. But this is not so
+in the present instance. Mr. Malthus has borrowed (perhaps without
+consciousness, at any rate without acknowledgment) both the preliminary
+statement, that the increase in the supply of food "from a limited
+earth and a limited fertility" must have an end, while the tendency to
+increase in the principle of population has none, without some external
+and forcible restraint on it, and the subsequent use made of this
+statement as an insuperable bar to all schemes of Utopian or progressive
+improvement--both these he has borrowed (whole) from Wallace, with all
+their imperfections on their heads, and has added more and greater
+ones to them out of his own store. In order to produce something of a
+startling and dramatic effect, he has strained a point or two. In order
+to quell and frighten away the bugbear of Modern Philosophy, he was
+obliged to make a sort of monster of the principle of population, which
+was brought into the field against it, and which was to swallow it up
+quick. No half-measures, no middle course of reasoning would do. With a
+view to meet the highest possible power of reason in the new order of
+things, Mr. Malthus saw the necessity of giving the greatest possible
+physical weight to the antagonist principle, and he accordingly lays
+it down that its operation is mechanical and irresistible. He premises
+these two propositions as the basis of all his reasoning, 1. _That food
+is necessary to man_; 2. _That the desire to propagate the species is an
+equally indispensable law of our existence_:--thus making it appear
+that these two wants or impulses are equal and coordinate principles
+of action. If this double statement had been true, the whole scope and
+structure of his reasoning (as hostile to human hopes and sanguine
+speculations) would have been irrefragable; but as it is not true, the
+whole (in that view) falls to the ground. According to Mr. Malthus's
+octavo edition, the sexual passion is as necessary to be gratified as
+the appetite of hunger, and a man can no more exist without propagating
+his species than he can live without eating. Were it so, neither of
+these passions would admit of any excuses, any delay, any restraint from
+reason or foresight; and the only checks to the principle of population
+must be vice and misery. The argument would be triumphant and complete.
+But there is no analogy, no parity in the two cases, such as our author
+here assumes. No man can live for any length of time without food; many
+persons live all their lives without gratifying the other sense.
+The longer the craving after food is unsatisfied, the more violent,
+imperious, and uncontroulable the desire becomes; whereas the longer the
+gratification of the sexual passion is resisted, the greater force does
+habit and resolution acquire over it; and, generally speaking, it is
+a well-known fact, attested by all observation and history, that this
+latter passion is subject more or less to controul from personal
+feelings and character, from public opinions and the institutions of
+society, so as to lead either to a lawful and regulated indulgence, or
+to partial or total abstinence, according to the dictates of _moral
+restraint_, which latter check to the inordinate excesses and unheard-of
+consequences of the principle of population, our author, having no
+longer an extreme case to make out, admits and is willing to patronize
+in addition to the two former and exclusive ones of _vice and misery_,
+in the second and remaining editions of his work. Mr. Malthus has shewn
+some awkwardness or even reluctance in softening down the harshness of
+his first peremptory decision. He sometimes grants his grand exception
+cordially, proceeds to argue stoutly, and to try conclusions upon it;
+at other times he seems disposed to cavil about or retract it:--"the
+influence of moral restraint is very inconsiderable, or none at all." It
+is indeed difficult (more particularly for so formal and nice a reasoner
+as Mr. Malthus) to piece such contradictions plausibly or gracefully
+together. We wonder how _he_ manages it--how _any one_ should attempt
+it! The whole question, the _gist_ of the argument of his early volume
+turned upon this, "Whether vice and misery were the _only_ actual or
+possible checks to the principle of population?" He then said they were,
+and farewell to building castles in the air: he now says that _moral
+restraint_ is to be coupled with these, and that its influence depends
+greatly on the state of laws and manners--and Utopia stands where
+it did, a great way off indeed, but not turned _topsy-turvy_ by our
+magician's wand! Should we ever arrive there, that is, attain to a state
+of _perfect moral restraint_, we shall not be driven headlong back into
+Epicurus's stye for want of the only possible checks to population,
+_vice and misery_; and in proportion as we advance that way, that is, as
+the influence of moral restraint is extended, the necessity for vice and
+misery will be diminished, instead of being increased according to the
+first alarm given by the Essay. Again, the advance of civilization and
+of population in consequence with the same degree of moral restraint (as
+there exists in England at this present time, for instance) is a good,
+and not an evil--but this does not appear from the Essay. The Essay
+shews that population is not (as had been sometimes taken for granted)
+an abstract and unqualified good; but it led many persons to suppose
+that it was an abstract and unqualified evil, to be checked only by vice
+and misery, and producing, according to its encouragement a greater
+quantity of vice and misery; and this error the author has not been
+at sufficient pains to do away. Another thing, in which Mr. Malthus
+attempted to _clench_ Wallace's argument, was in giving to the
+disproportionate power of increase in the principle of population
+and the supply of food a mathematical form, or reducing it to the
+arithmetical and geometrical ratios, in which we believe Mr. Malthus is
+now generally admitted, even by his friends and admirers, to have been
+wrong. There is evidently no inherent difference in the principle of
+increase in food or population; since a grain of corn, for example, will
+propagate and multiply itself much faster even than the human species.
+A bushel of wheat will sow a field; that field will furnish seed for
+twenty others. So that the limit to the means of subsistence is only the
+want of room to raise it in, or, as Wallace expresses it, "a limited
+fertility and a limited earth." Up to the point where the earth or any
+given country is fully occupied or cultivated, the means of subsistence
+naturally increase in a geometrical ratio, and will more than keep pace
+with the natural and unrestrained progress of population; and beyond
+that point, they do not go on increasing even in Mr. Malthus's
+arithmetical ratio, but are stationary or nearly so. So far, then, is
+this proportion from being universally and mathematically true, that
+in no part of the world or state of society does it hold good. But our
+theorist, by laying down this double ratio as a law of nature, gains
+this advantage, that at all times it seems as if, whether in new or
+old-peopled countries, in fertile or barren soils, the population was
+pressing hard on the means of subsistence; and again, it seems as if the
+evil increased with the progress of improvement and civilization; for if
+you cast your eye at the scale which is supposed to be calculated upon
+true and infallible _data_, you find that when the population is at
+8, the means of subsistence are at 4; so that here there is only a
+_deficit_ of one half; but when it is at 32, they have only got to 6, so
+that here there is a difference of 26 in 32, and so on in proportion;
+the farther we proceed, the more enormous is the mass of vice and
+misery we must undergo, as a consequence of the natural excess of the
+population over the means of subsistence and as a salutary check to its
+farther desolating progress. The mathematical Table, placed at the front
+of the Essay, therefore leads to a secret suspicion or a bare-faced
+assumption, that we ought in mere kindness and compassion to give every
+sort of indirect and under-hand encouragement (to say the least) to the
+providential checks of vice and misery; as the sooner we arrest this
+formidable and paramount evil in its course, the less opportunity we
+leave it of doing incalculable mischief. Accordingly, whenever there is
+the least talk of colonizing new countries, of extending the population,
+or adding to social comforts and improvements, Mr. Malthus conjures up
+his double ratios, and insists on the alarming results of advancing
+them a single step forward in the series. By the same rule, it would
+be better to return at once to a state of barbarism; and to take the
+benefit of acorns and scuttle-fish, as a security against the luxuries
+and wants of civilized life. But it is not our ingenious author's wish
+to hint at or recommend any alterations in existing institutions; and he
+is therefore silent on that unpalatable part of the subject and natural
+inference from his principles.
+
+Mr. Malthus's "gospel is preached to the poor." He lectures them on
+economy, on morality, the regulation of their passions (which, he says,
+at other times, are amenable to no restraint) and on the ungracious
+topic, that "the laws of nature, which are the laws of God, have doomed
+them and their families to starve for want of a right to the smallest
+portion of food beyond what their labour will supply, or some charitable
+hand may hold out in compassion." This is illiberal, and it is not
+philosophical. The laws of nature or of God, to which the author
+appeals, are no other than a limited fertility and a limited earth.
+Within those bounds, the rest is regulated by the laws of man. The
+division of the produce of the soil, the price of labour, the relief
+afforded to the poor, are matters of human arrangement: while any
+charitable hand can extend relief, it is a proof that the means of
+subsistence are not exhausted in themselves, that "the tables are not
+full!" Mr. Malthus says that the laws of nature, which are the laws of
+God, have rendered that relief physically impossible; and yet he would
+abrogate the poor-laws by an act of the legislature, in order to take
+away that _impossible_ relief, which the laws of God deny, and which the
+laws of man _actually_ afford. We cannot think that this view of his
+subject, which is prominent and dwelt on at great length and with much
+pertinacity, is dictated either by rigid logic or melting charity! A
+labouring man is not allowed to knock down a hare or a partridge that
+spoils his garden: a country-squire keeps a pack of hounds: a lady of
+quality rides out with a footman behind her, on two sleek, well-fed
+horses. We have not a word to say against all this as exemplifying the
+spirit of the English Constitution, as a part of the law of the land, or
+as an artful distribution of light and shade in the social picture; but
+if any one insists at the same time that "the laws of nature, which are
+the laws of God, have doomed the poor and their families to starve,"
+because the principle of population has encroached upon and swallowed up
+the means of subsistence, so that not a mouthful of food is left _by the
+grinding law of necessity_ for the poor, we beg leave to deny both fact
+and inference--and we put it to Mr. Malthus whether we are not, in
+strictness, justified in doing so?
+
+We have, perhaps, said enough to explain our feeling on the subject of
+Mr. Malthus's merits and defects. We think he had the opportunity and
+the means in his hands of producing a great work on the principle of
+population; but we believe he has let it slip from his having an eye to
+other things besides that broad and unexplored question. He wished not
+merely to advance to the discovery of certain great and valuable truths,
+but at the same time to overthrow certain unfashionable paradoxes by
+exaggerated statements--to curry favour with existing prejudices and
+interests by garbled representations. He has, in a word, as it appears
+to us on a candid retrospect and without any feelings of controversial
+asperity rankling in our minds, sunk the philosopher and the friend of
+his species (a character to which he might have aspired) in the sophist
+and party-writer. The period at which Mr. Malthus came forward teemed
+with answers to Modern Philosophy, with antidotes to liberty and
+humanity, with abusive Histories of the Greek and Roman republics, with
+fulsome panegyrics on the Roman Emperors (at the very time when we were
+reviling Buonaparte for his strides to universal empire) with the slime
+and offal of desperate servility--and we cannot but consider the
+Essay as one of the poisonous ingredients thrown into the cauldron of
+Legitimacy "to make it thick and slab." Our author has, indeed, so
+far done service to the cause of truth, that he has counteracted
+many capital errors formerly prevailing as to the universal and
+indiscriminate encouragement of population under all circumstances; but
+he has countenanced opposite errors, which if adopted in theory and
+practice would be even more mischievous, and has left it to future
+philosophers to follow up the principle, that some check must be
+provided for the unrestrained progress of population, into a set of
+wiser and more humane consequences. Mr. Godwin has lately attempted an
+answer to the Essay (thus giving Mr. Malthus a _Roland for his Oliver_)
+but we think he has judged ill in endeavouring to invalidate the
+principle, instead of confining himself to point out the misapplication
+of it. There is one argument introduced in this Reply, which will,
+perhaps, amuse the reader as a sort of metaphysical puzzle.
+
+"It has sometimes occurred to me whether Mr. Malthus did not catch the
+first hint of his geometrical ratio from a curious passage of Judge
+Blackstone, on consanguinity, which is as follows:--
+
+"The doctrine of lineal consanguinity is sufficiently plain and obvious;
+but it is at the first view astonishing to consider the number of lineal
+ancestors which every man has within no very great number of degrees:
+and so many different bloods is a man said to contain in his veins, as
+he hath lineal ancestors. Of these he hath two in the first ascending
+degree, his own parents; he hath four in the second, the parents of his
+father and the parents of his mother; he hath eight in the third, the
+parents of his two grandfathers and two grandmothers; and by the same
+rule of progression, he hath an hundred and twenty-eight in the seventh;
+a thousand and twenty-four in the tenth; and at the twentieth degree, or
+the distance of twenty generations, every man hath above a million of
+ancestors, as common arithmetic will demonstrate.
+
+"This will seem surprising to those who are unacquainted with the
+increasing power of progressive numbers; but is palpably evident from
+the following table of a geometrical progression, in which the first
+term is 2, and the denominator also 2; or, to speak more intelligibly,
+it is evident, for that each of us has two ancestors in the first
+degree; the number of which is doubled at every remove, because each of
+our ancestors had also two ancestors of his own.
+
+  _Lineal Degrees._                        _Number of Ancestors_.
+
+  1        ..       ..        ..                    2
+  2        ..       ..        ..                    4
+  3        ..       ..        ..                    8
+  4        ..       ..        ..                   16
+  5        ..       ..        ..                   32
+  6        ..       ..        ..                   64
+  7        ..       ..        ..                  128
+  8        ..       ..        ..                  256
+  9        ..       ..        ..                  512
+  10        ..       ..        ..                 1024
+  11        ..       ..        ..                 2048
+  12        ..       ..        ..                 4096
+  13        ..       ..        ..                 8192
+  14        ..       ..        ..               16,384
+  15        ..       ..        ..               32,768
+  16        ..       ..        ..               65,536
+  17        ..       ..        ..              131,072
+  18        ..       ..        ..              262,144
+  19        ..       ..        ..              524,288
+  20        ..       ..        ..            1,048,576
+
+"This argument, however," (proceeds Mr. Godwin) "from Judge Blackstone
+of a geometrical progression would much more naturally apply to
+Montesquieu's hypothesis of the depopulation of the world, and prove
+that the human species is hastening fast to extinction, than to the
+purpose for which Mr. Malthus has employed it. An ingenious sophism
+might be raised upon it, to shew that the race of mankind will
+ultimately terminate in unity. Mr. Malthus, indeed, should have
+reflected, that it is much more certain that every man has had ancestors
+than that he will have posterity, and that it is still more doubtful,
+whether he will have posterity to twenty or to an indefinite number of
+generations."--ENQUIRY CONCERNING POPULATION, p. 100.
+
+Mr. Malthus's style is correct and elegant; his tone of controversy mild
+and gentlemanly; and the care with which he has brought his facts and
+documents together, deserves the highest praise. He has lately quitted
+his favourite subject of population, and broke a lance with Mr. Ricardo
+on the question of rent and value. The partisans of Mr. Ricardo, who are
+also the admirers of Mr. Malthus, say that the usual sagacity of the
+latter has here failed him, and that he has shewn himself to be a very
+illogical writer. To have said this of him formerly on another ground,
+was accounted a heresy and a piece of presumption not easily to be
+forgiven. Indeed Mr. Malthus has always been a sort of "darling in the
+public eye," whom it was unsafe to meddle with. He has contrived to
+make himself as many friends by his attacks on the schemes of _Human
+Perfectibility_ and on the _Poor-Laws_, as Mandeville formerly procured
+enemies by his attacks on _Human Perfections_ and on _Charity-Schools_;
+and among other instances that we might mention, _Plug_ Pulteney, the
+celebrated miser, of whom Mr. Burke said on his having a large
+estate left him, "that now it was to be hoped he would _set up a
+pocket-handkerchief_," was so enamoured with the saving schemes and
+humane economy of the Essay, that he desired a friend to find out the
+author and offer him a church living! This liberal intention was (by
+design or accident) unhappily frustrated.
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+MR. GIFFORD.
+
+
+
+Mr. Gifford was originally bred to some handicraft: he afterwards
+contrived to learn Latin, and was for some time an usher in a school,
+till he became a tutor in a nobleman's family. The low-bred, self-taught
+man, the pedant, and the dependant on the great contribute to form the
+Editor of the _Quarterly Review_. He is admirably qualified for this
+situation, which he has held for some years, by a happy combination of
+defects, natural and acquired; and in the event of his death, it will be
+difficult to provide him a suitable successor.
+
+Mr. Gifford has no pretensions to be thought a man of genius, of taste,
+or even of general knowledge. He merely understands the mechanical and
+instrumental part of learning. He is a critic of the last age, when
+the different editions of an author, or the dates of his several
+performances were all that occupied the inquiries of a profound scholar,
+and the spirit of the writer or the beauties of his style were left to
+shift for themselves, or exercise the fancy of the light and superficial
+reader. In studying an old author, he has no notion of any thing beyond
+adjusting a point, proposing a different reading, or correcting, by the
+collation of various copies, an error of the press. In appreciating a
+modern one, if it is an enemy, the first thing he thinks of is to charge
+him with bad grammar--he scans his sentences instead of weighing his
+sense; or if it is a friend, the highest compliment he conceives it
+possible to pay him is, that his thoughts and expressions are moulded
+on some hackneyed model. His standard of _ideal_ perfection is what he
+himself now is, a person of _mediocre_ literary attainments: his utmost
+contempt is shewn by reducing any one to what he himself once was, a
+person without the ordinary advantages of education and learning. It is
+accordingly assumed, with much complacency in his critical pages, that
+Tory writers are classical and courtly as a matter of course; as it is
+a standing jest and evident truism, that Whigs and Reformers must be
+persons of low birth and breeding--imputations from one of which he
+himself has narrowly escaped, and both of which he holds in suitable
+abhorrence. He stands over a contemporary performance with all the
+self-conceit and self-importance of a country schoolmaster, tries it by
+technical rules, affects not to understand the meaning, examines the
+hand-writing, the spelling, shrugs up his shoulders and chuckles over a
+slip of the pen, and keeps a sharp look-out for a false concord and--a
+flogging. There is nothing liberal, nothing humane in his style of
+judging: it is altogether petty, captious, and literal. The Editor's
+political subserviency adds the last finishing to his ridiculous
+pedantry and vanity. He has all his life been a follower in the train
+of wealth and power--strives to back his pretensions on Parnassus by a
+place at court, and to gild his reputation as a man of letters by the
+smile of greatness. He thinks his works are stamped with additional
+value by having his name in the _Red-Book_. He looks up to the
+distinctions of rank and station as he does to those of learning, with
+the gross and overweening adulation of his early origin. All his notions
+are low, upstart, servile. He thinks it the highest honour to a poet to
+be patronised by a peer or by some dowager of quality. He is prouder
+of a court-livery than of a laurel-wreath; and is only sure of having
+established his claims to respectability by having sacrificed those of
+independence. He is a retainer to the Muses; a door-keeper to learning;
+a lacquey in the state. He believes that modern literature should wear
+the fetters of classical antiquity; that truth is to be weighed in the
+scales of opinion and prejudice; that power is equivalent to right; that
+genius is dependent on rules; that taste and refinement of language
+consist in _word-catching_. Many persons suppose that Mr. Gifford knows
+better than he pretends; and that he is shrewd, artful, and designing.
+But perhaps it may be nearer the mark to suppose that his dulness is
+guarantee for his sincerity; or that before he is the tool of the
+profligacy of others, he is the dupe of his own jaundiced feelings, and
+narrow, hoodwinked perceptions.
+
+  "Destroy his fib or sophistry: in vain--
+  The creature's at his dirty work again!"
+
+But this is less from choice or perversity, than because he cannot help
+it and can do nothing else. He damns a beautiful expression less out
+of spite than because he really does not understand it: any novelty of
+thought or sentiment gives him a shock from which he cannot recover
+for some time, and he naturally takes his revenge for the alarm and
+uneasiness occasioned him, without referring to venal or party motives.
+He garbles an author's meaning, not so much wilfully, as because it is a
+pain to him to enlarge his microscopic view to take in the context, when
+a particular sentence or passage has struck him as quaint and out of the
+way: he fly-blows an author's style, and picks out detached words and
+phrases for cynical reprobation, simply because he feels himself at
+home, or takes a pride and pleasure in this sort of petty warfare. He is
+tetchy and impatient of contradiction; sore with wounded pride; angry
+at obvious faults, more angry at unforeseen beauties. He has the
+_chalk-stones_ in his understanding, and from being used to long
+confinement, cannot bear the slightest jostling or irregularity of
+motion. He may call out with the fellow in the _Tempest_--"I am not
+Stephano, but a cramp!" He would go back to the standard of opinions,
+style, the faded ornaments, and insipid formalities that came into
+fashion about forty years ago. Flashes of thought, flights of fancy,
+idiomatic expressions, he sets down among the signs of the times--the
+extraordinary occurrences of the age we live in. They are marks of a
+restless and revolutionary spirit: they disturb his composure of mind,
+and threaten (by implication) the safety of the state. His slow,
+snail-paced, bed-rid habits of reasoning cannot keep up with the
+whirling, eccentric motion, the rapid, perhaps extravagant combinations
+of modern literature. He has long been stationary himself, and is
+determined that others shall remain so. The hazarding a paradox is like
+letting off a pistol close to his ear: he is alarmed and offended. The
+using an elliptical mode of expression (such as he did not use to find
+in Guides to the English Tongue) jars him like coming suddenly to a
+step in a flight of stairs that you were not aware of. He _pishes_ and
+_pshaws_ at all this, exercises a sort of interjectional criticism on
+what excites his spleen, his envy, or his wonder, and hurls his meagre
+anathemas _ex cathedrâ_ at all those writers who are indifferent alike
+to his precepts and his example!
+
+Mr. Gifford, in short, is possessed of that sort of learning which is
+likely to result from an over-anxious desire to supply the want of the
+first rudiments of education; that sort of wit, which is the offspring
+of ill-humour or bodily pain; that sort of sense, which arises from a
+spirit of contradiction and a disposition to cavil at and dispute
+the opinions of others; and that sort of reputation, which is the
+consequence of bowing to established authority and ministerial
+influence. He dedicates to some great man, and receives his compliments
+in return. He appeals to some great name, and the Under-graduates of the
+two Universities look up to him as an oracle of wisdom. He throws the
+weight of his verbal criticism and puny discoveries in _black-letter_
+reading into the gap, that is supposed to be making in the Constitution
+by Whigs and Radicals, whom he qualifies without mercy as dunces and
+miscreants; and so entitles himself to the protection of Church and
+State. The character of his mind is an utter want of independence and
+magnanimity in all that he attempts. He cannot go alone, he must have
+crutches, a go-cart and trammels, or he is timid, fretful, and helpless
+as a child. He cannot conceive of any thing different from what he finds
+it, and hates those who pretend to a greater reach of intellect
+or boldness of spirit than himself. He inclines, by a natural and
+deliberate bias, to the traditional in laws and government; to
+the orthodox in religion; to the safe in opinion; to the trite in
+imagination; to the technical in style; to whatever implies a surrender
+of individual judgment into the hands of authority, and a subjection of
+individual feeling to mechanic rules. If he finds any one flying in the
+face of these, or straggling from the beaten path, he thinks he has them
+at a notable disadvantage, and falls foul of them without loss of time,
+partly to soothe his own sense of mortified self-consequence, and as an
+edifying spectacle to his legitimate friends. He takes none but unfair
+advantages. He _twits_ his adversaries (that is, those who are not
+in the leading-strings of his school or party) with some personal or
+accidental defect. If a writer has been punished for a political libel,
+he is sure to hear of it in a literary criticism. If a lady goes on
+crutches and is out of favour at court, she is reminded of it in Mr.
+Gilford's manly satire. He sneers at people of low birth or who have
+not had a college-education, partly to hide his own want of certain
+advantages, partly as well-timed flattery to those who possess them. He
+has a right to laugh at poor, unfriended, untitled genius from wearing
+the livery of rank and letters, as footmen behind a coronet-coach laugh
+at the rabble. He keeps good company, and forgets himself. He stands at
+the door of Mr. Murray's shop, and will not let any body pass but the
+well-dressed mob, or some followers of the court. To edge into the
+_Quarterly_ Temple of Fame the candidate must have a diploma from the
+Universities, a passport from the Treasury. Otherwise, it is a breach of
+etiquette to let him pass, an insult to the better sort who aspire to
+the love of letters--and may chance to drop in to the _Feast of the
+Poets_. Or, if he cannot manage it thus, or get rid of the claim on the
+bare ground of poverty or want of school-learning, he _trumps_ up an
+excuse for the occasion, such as that "a man was confined in Newgate a
+short time before"--it is not a _lie_ on the part of the critic, it is
+only an amiable subserviency to the will of his betters, like that of
+a menial who is ordered to deny his master, a sense of propriety, a
+knowledge of the world, a poetical and moral license. Such fellows
+(such is his cue from his employers) should at any rate be kept out of
+privileged places: persons who have been convicted of prose-libels ought
+not to be suffered to write poetry--if the fact was not exactly as it
+was stated, it was something of the kind, or it _ought_ to have been
+so, the assertion was a pious fraud,--the public, the court, the prince
+himself might read the work, but for this mark of opprobrium set upon
+it--it was not to be endured that an insolent plebeian should aspire to
+elegance, taste, fancy--it was throwing down the barriers which ought
+to separate the higher and the lower classes, the loyal and the
+disloyal--the paraphrase of the story of Dante was therefore to perform
+quarantine, it was to seem not yet recovered from the gaol infection,
+there was to be a taint upon it, as there was none in it--and all this
+was performed by a single slip of Mr. Gifford's pen! We would willingly
+believe (if we could) that in this case there was as much weakness and
+prejudice as there was malice and cunning.--Again, we do not think it
+possible that under any circumstances the writer of the _Verses to Anna_
+could enter into the spirit or delicacy of Mr. Keats's poetry. The fate
+of the latter somewhat resembled that of
+
+ --"a bud bit by an envious worm,
+  Ere it could spread its sweet leaves to the air,
+  Or dedicate its beauty to the sun."
+
+Mr. Keats's ostensible crime was that he had been praised in the
+_Examiner Newspaper_: a greater and more unpardonable offence probably
+was, that he was a true poet, with all the errors and beauties of
+youthful genius to answer for. Mr. Gifford was as insensible to the one
+as he was inexorable to the other. Let the reader judge from the two
+subjoined specimens how far the one writer could ever, without a
+presumption equalled only by a want of self-knowledge, set himself in
+judgment on the other.
+
+  "Out went the taper as she hurried in;
+  Its little smoke in pallid moonshine died:
+  She closed the door, she panted, all akin
+  To spirits of the air and visions wide:
+  No utter'd syllable, or woe betide!
+  But to her heart, her heart was voluble,
+  Paining with eloquence her balmy side;
+  As though a tongueless nightingale should swell
+  Her heart in vain, and die, heart-stifled, in her dell.
+
+  "A casement high and triple-arch'd there was,
+  All garlanded with carven imag'ries
+  Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,
+  And diamonded with panes of quaint device,
+  Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,
+  As are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings;
+  And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries,
+  And twilight saints and dim emblazonings,
+  A shielded scutcheon blush'd with blood of queens and kings.
+
+  "Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,
+  And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast,
+  As down she knelt for Heaven's grace and boon;
+  Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,
+  And on her silver cross soft amethyst,
+  And on her hair a glory, like a Saint:
+  She seem'd a splendid angel, newly drest,
+  Save wings, for heaven:--Porphyro grew faint:
+  She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint.
+
+  "Anon his heart revives: her vespers done,
+  Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees;
+  Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one;
+  Loosens her fragrant boddice; by degrees
+  Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees:
+  Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed,
+  Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees,
+  In fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed,
+  But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled.
+
+  "Soon trembling in her soft and chilly nest,
+  In sort of wakeful swoon, perplex'd she lay,
+  Until the poppied warmth of sleep oppress'd
+  Her soothed limbs, and soul fatigued away
+  Flown, like a thought, until the morrow-day:
+  Blissfully haven'd both from joy and pain;
+  Clasp'd like a missal where swart Paynims pray;
+  Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain,
+  As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again."
+  EVE OF ST. AGNES.
+
+With the rich beauties and the dim obscurities of lines like these, let
+us contrast the Verses addressed _To a Tuft of early Violets_ by the
+fastidious author of the Baviad and Mæviad.--
+
+  "Sweet flowers! that from your humble beds
+  Thus prematurely dare to rise,
+  And trust your unprotected heads
+  To cold Aquarius' watery skies.
+
+  "Retire, retire! _These_ tepid airs
+  Are not the genial brood of May;
+  _That_ sun with light malignant glares,
+  And flatters only to betray.
+
+  "Stern Winter's reign is not yet past--
+  Lo! while your buds prepare to blow,
+  On icy pinions comes the blast,
+  And nips your root, and lays you low.
+
+  "Alas, for such ungentle doom!
+  But I will shield you; and supply
+  A kindlier soil on which to bloom,
+  A nobler bed on which to die.
+
+  "Come then--'ere yet the morning ray
+  Has drunk the dew that gems your crest,
+  And drawn your balmiest sweets away;
+  O come and grace my Anna's breast.
+
+  "Ye droop, fond flowers! But did ye know
+  What worth, what goodness there reside,
+  Your cups with liveliest tints would glow;
+  And spread their leaves with conscious pride.
+
+  "For there has liberal Nature joined
+  Her riches to the stores of Art,
+  And added to the vigorous mind
+  The soft, the sympathising heart.
+
+  "Come, then--'ere yet the morning ray
+  Has drunk the dew that gems your crest,
+  And drawn your balmiest sweets away;
+  O come and grace my Anna's breast.
+
+  "O! I should think--_that fragrant bed_
+  _Might I but hope with you to share_--[A]
+  Years of anxiety repaid
+  By one short hour of transport there.
+
+  "More blest than me, thus shall ye live
+  Your little day; and when ye die,
+  Sweet flowers! the grateful Muse shall give
+  A verse; the sorrowing maid, a sigh.
+
+  "While I alas! no distant date,
+  Mix with the dust from whence I came,
+  Without a friend to weep my fate,
+  Without a stone to tell my name."
+
+We subjoin one more specimen of these "wild strains"[B] said to be
+"_Written two years after the preceding_." ECCE ITERUM CRISPINUS.
+
+
+  "I wish I was where Anna lies;
+  For I am sick of lingering here,
+  And every hour Affection cries,
+  Go, and partake her humble bier.
+
+  "I wish I could! for when she died
+  I lost my all; and life has prov'd
+  Since that sad hour a dreary void,
+  A waste unlovely and unlov'd.
+
+  "But who, when I am turn'd to clay,
+  Shall duly to her grave repair,
+  And pluck the ragged moss away,
+  And weeds that have "no business there?"
+
+  "And who, with pious hand, shall bring
+  The flowers she cherish'd, snow-drops cold,
+  And violets that unheeded spring,
+  To scatter o'er her hallow'd mould?
+
+  "And who, while Memory loves to dwell
+  Upon her name for ever dear,
+  Shall feel his heart with passion swell,
+  And pour the bitter, bitter tear?
+
+  "I did it; and would fate allow,
+  Should visit still, should still deplore--
+  But health and strength have left me now,
+  But I, alas! can weep no more.
+
+  "Take then, sweet maid! this simple strain,
+  The last I offer at thy shrine;
+  Thy grave must then undeck'd remain,
+  And all thy memory fade with mine.
+
+  "And can thy soft persuasive look,
+  That voice that might with music vie,
+  Thy air that every gazer took,
+  Thy matchless eloquence of eye,
+
+  "Thy spirits, frolicsome as good,
+  Thy courage, by no ills dismay'd,
+  Thy patience, by no wrongs subdued,
+  Thy gay good-humour--can they "fade?"
+
+  "Perhaps--but sorrow dims my eye:
+  Cold turf, which I no more must view,
+  Dear name, which I no more must sigh,
+  A long, a last, a sad adieu!"
+
+It may be said in extenuation of the low, mechanic vein of these
+impoverished lines, that they were written at an early age--they were
+the inspired production of a youthful lover! Mr. Gifford was thirty when
+he wrote them, Mr. Keats died when he was scarce twenty! Farther it may
+be said, that Mr. Gifford hazarded his first poetical attempts under all
+the disadvantages of a neglected education: but the same circumstance,
+together with a few unpruned redundancies of fancy and quaintnesses of
+expression, was made the plea on which Mr. Keats was hooted out of the
+world, and his fine talents and wounded sensibilities consigned to an
+early grave. In short, the treatment of this heedless candidate for
+poetical fame might serve as a warning, and was intended to serve as a
+warning to all unfledged tyros, how they venture upon any such doubtful
+experiments, except under the auspices of some lord of the bedchamber or
+Government Aristarchus, and how they imprudently associate themselves
+with men of mere popular talent or independence of feeling!--It is the
+same in prose works. The Editor scorns to enter the lists of argument
+with any proscribed writer of the opposite party. He does not refute,
+but denounces him. He makes no concessions to an adversary, lest they
+should in some way be turned against him. He only feels himself safe in
+the fancied insignificance of others: he only feels himself superior
+to those whom he stigmatizes as the lowest of mankind. All persons are
+without common-sense and honesty who do not believe implicitly (with
+him) in the immaculateness of Ministers and the divine origin of Kings.
+Thus he informed the world that the author of TABLE-TALK was a person
+who could not write a sentence of common English and could hardly spell
+his own name, because he was not a friend to the restoration of the
+Bourbons, and had the assurance to write _Characters of Shakespears
+Plays_ in a style of criticism somewhat different from Mr. Gifford's. He
+charged this writer with imposing on the public by a flowery style; and
+when the latter ventured to refer to a work of his, called _An Essay on
+the Principles of Human Action_, which has not a single ornament in it,
+as a specimen of his original studies and the proper bias of his mind,
+the learned critic, with a shrug of great self-satisfaction, said, "It
+was amusing to see this person, sitting like one of Brouwer's Dutch
+boors over his gin and tobacco-pipes, and fancying himself a Leibnitz!"
+The question was, whether the subject of Mr. Gifford's censure had ever
+written such a work or not; for if he had, he had amused himself with
+something besides gin and tobacco-pipes. But our Editor, by virtue
+of the situation he holds, is superior to facts or arguments: he is
+accountable neither to the public nor to authors for what he says of
+them, but owes it to his employers to prejudice the work and vilify the
+writer, if the latter is not avowedly ready to range himself on the
+stronger side.--The _Quarterly Review_, besides the political _tirades_
+and denunciations of suspected writers, intended for the guidance of the
+heads of families, is filled up with accounts of books of Voyages
+and Travels for the amusement of the younger branches. The poetical
+department is almost a sinecure, consisting of mere summary decisions
+and a list of quotations. Mr. Croker is understood to contribute the
+St. Helena articles and the liberality, Mr. Canning the practical good
+sense, Mr. D'Israeli the good-nature, Mr. Jacob the modesty, Mr. Southey
+the consistency, and the Editor himself the chivalrous spirit and the
+attacks on Lady Morgan. It is a double crime, and excites a double
+portion of spleen in the Editor, when female writers are not advocates
+of passive obedience and non-resistance. This Journal, then, is a
+depository for every species of political sophistry and personal
+calumny. There is no abuse or corruption that does not there find a
+jesuitical palliation or a bare-faced vindication. There we meet the
+slime of hypocrisy, the varnish of courts, the cant of pedantry, the
+cobwebs of the law, the iron hand of power. Its object is as mischievous
+as the means by which it is pursued are odious. The intention is to
+poison the sources of public opinion and of individual fame--to pervert
+literature, from being the natural ally of freedom and humanity, into an
+engine of priestcraft and despotism, and to undermine the spirit of the
+English Constitution and the independence of the English character.
+The Editor and his friends systematically explode every principle of
+liberty, laugh patriotism and public spirit to scorn, resent every
+pretence to integrity as a piece of singularity or insolence, and strike
+at the root of all free inquiry or discussion, by running down every
+writer as a vile scribbler and a bad member of society, who is not
+a hireling and a slave. No means are stuck at in accomplishing this
+laudable end. Strong in patronage, they trample on truth, justice, and
+decency. They claim the privilege of court-favourites. They keep as
+little faith with the public, as with their opponents. No statement in
+the _Quarterly Review_ is to be trusted: there is no fact that is not
+misrepresented in it, no quotation that is not garbled, no character
+that is not slandered, if it can answer the purposes of a party to do
+so. The weight of power, of wealth, of rank is thrown into the scale,
+gives its impulse to the machine; and the whole is under the guidance of
+Mr. Gifford's instinctive genius--of the inborn hatred of servility for
+independence, of dulness for talent, of cunning and impudence for truth
+and honesty. It costs him no effort to execute his disreputable task--in
+being the tool of a crooked policy, he but labours in his natural
+vocation. He patches up a rotten system as he would supply the chasms in
+a worm-eaten manuscript, from a grovelling incapacity to do any thing
+better; thinks that if a single iota in the claims of prerogative and
+power were lost, the whole fabric of society would fall upon his
+head and crush him; and calculates that his best chance for literary
+reputation is by _black-balling_ one half of the competitors as
+Jacobins and levellers, and securing the suffrages of the other half in
+his favour as a loyal subject and trusty partisan!
+
+Mr. Gifford, as a satirist, is violent and abrupt. He takes obvious or
+physical defects, and dwells upon them with much labour and harshness of
+invective, but with very little wit or spirit. He expresses a great deal
+of anger and contempt, but you cannot tell very well why--except that he
+seems to be sore and out of humour. His satire is mere peevishness and
+spleen, or something worse--personal antipathy and rancour. We are in
+quite as much pain for the writer, as for the object of his resentment.
+His address to Peter Pindar is laughable from its outrageousness. He
+denounces him as a wretch hateful to God and man, for some of the most
+harmless and amusing trifles that ever were written--and the very good-
+humour and pleasantry of which, we suspect, constituted their offence in
+the eyes of this Drawcansir.--His attacks on Mrs. Robinson were unmanly,
+and even those on Mr. Merry and the Della-Cruscan School were much
+more ferocious than the occasion warranted. A little affectation and
+quaintness of style did not merit such severity of castigation.[C] As a
+translator, Mr. Gifford's version of the Roman satirist is the baldest,
+and, in parts, the most offensive of all others. We do not know why
+he attempted it, unless he had got it in his head that he should thus
+follow in the steps of Dryden, as he had already done in those of Pope
+in the Baviad and Maeviad. As an editor of old authors, Mr. Gifford is
+entitled to considerable praise for the pains he has taken in revising
+the text, and for some improvements he has introduced into it. He had
+better have spared the notes, in which, though he has detected the
+blunders of previous commentators, he has exposed his own ill-temper and
+narrowness of feeling more. As a critic, he has thrown no light on the
+character and spirit of his authors. He has shewn no striking power of
+analysis nor of original illustration, though he has chosen to exercise
+his pen on writers most congenial to his own turn of mind, from their
+dry and caustic vein; Massinger, and Ben Jonson. What he will make of
+Marlowe, it is difficult to guess. He has none of "the fiery quality"
+of the poet. Mr. Gifford does not take for his motto on these
+occasions--_Spiritus precipitandus est!_--His most successful efforts in
+this way are barely respectable. In general, his observations are petty,
+ill-concocted, and discover as little _tact_, as they do a habit of
+connected reasoning. Thus, for instance, in attempting to add the name
+of Massinger to the list of Catholic poets, our minute critic insists
+on the profusion of crucifixes, glories, angelic visions, garlands of
+roses, and clouds of incense scattered through the _Virgin-Martyr,_ as
+evidence of the theological sentiments meant to be inculcated by the
+play, when the least reflection might have taught him, that they proved
+nothing but the author's poetical conception of the character and
+_costume_ of his subject. A writer might, with the same sinister,
+short-sighted shrewdness, be accused of Heathenism for talking of Flora
+and Ceres in a poem on the Seasons! What are produced as the exclusive
+badges and occult proofs of Catholic bigotry, are nothing but the
+adventitious ornaments and external symbols, the gross and sensible
+language, in a word, the _poetry_ of Christianity in general. What
+indeed shews the frivolousness of the whole inference is that Deckar,
+who is asserted by our critic to have contributed some of the most
+passionate and fantastic of these devotional scenes, is not even
+suspected of a leaning to Popery. In like manner, he excuses Massinger
+for the grossness of one of his plots (that of the _Unnatural Combat_)
+by saying that it was supposed to take place before the Christian era;
+by this shallow common-place persuading himself, or fancying he could
+persuade others, that the crime in question (which yet on the very face
+of the story is made the ground of a tragic catastrophe) was first made
+_statutory_ by the Christian religion.
+
+The foregoing is a harsh criticism, and may be thought illiberal. But as
+Mr. Gifford assumes a right to say what he pleases of others--they may
+be allowed to speak the truth of him!
+
+
+[Footnote A: What an awkward bed-fellow for a tuft of violets!]
+
+[Footnote B:
+
+  "How oft, O Dart! what time the faithful pair
+  Walk'd forth, the fragrant hour of eve to share,
+  On thy romantic banks, have my _wild strains_
+  (Not yet forgot amidst my native plains)
+  While thou hast sweetly gurgled down the vale.
+  Filled up the pause of love's delightful tale!
+  While, ever as she read, the conscious maid,
+  By faultering voice and downcast looks betray'd,
+  Would blushing on her lover's neck recline,
+  And with her finger--point the tenderest line!"
+
+
+  _Mæviad_, pp. 194, 202.
+
+Yet the author assures us just before, that in these "wild strains" "all
+was plain."
+
+  "Even then (admire, John Bell! my simple ways)
+  No heaven and hell danced madly through my lays,
+  No oaths, no execrations; _all was plain_;
+  Yet trust me, while thy ever jingling train
+  Chime their sonorous woes with frigid art,
+  And shock the reason and revolt the heart;
+  My hopes and fears, in nature's language drest,
+  Awakened love in many a gentle breast."
+
+  _Ibid._ v. 185-92.
+
+If any one else had composed these "wild strains," in which "all is
+plain," Mr. Gifford would have accused them of three things, "1.
+Downright nonsense. 2. Downright frigidity. 3. Downright doggrel;" and
+proceeded to anatomise them very cordially in his way. As it is, he is
+thrilled with a very pleasing horror at his former scenes of tenderness,
+and "gasps at the recollection" _of watery Aquarius_! _he! jam satis
+est!_ "Why rack a grub--a butterfly upon a wheel?"]
+
+[Footnote C: Mr. Merry was even with our author in personality of abuse.
+See his Lines on the Story of the Ape that was given in charge to the
+ex-tutor.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+MR. JEFFREY
+
+
+
+The _Quarterly Review_ arose out of the _Edinburgh_, not as a corollary,
+but in contradiction to it. An article had appeared in the latter on Don
+Pedro Cevallos, which stung the Tories to the quick by the free way in
+which it spoke of men and things, and something must be done to check
+these _escapades_ of the _Edinburgh_. It was not to be endured that the
+truth should _out_ in this manner, even occasionally and half in jest. A
+startling shock was thus given to established prejudices, the mask was
+taken off from grave hypocrisy, and the most serious consequences were
+to be apprehended. The persons who wrote in this Review seemed "to have
+their hands full of truths", and now and then, in a fit of spleen or
+gaiety, let some of them fly; and while this practice continued, it was
+impossible to say that the Monarchy or the Hierarchy was safe. Some of
+the arrows glanced, others might stick, and in the end prove fatal. It
+was not the principles of the _Edinburgh Review_, but the spirit that
+was looked at with jealousy and alarm. The principles were by no means
+decidedly hostile to existing institutions: but the spirit was that of
+fair and free discussion; a field was open to argument and wit; every
+question was tried upon its own ostensible merits, and there was no foul
+play. The tone was that of a studied impartiality (which many called
+_trimming_) or of a sceptical indifference. This tone of impartiality
+and indifference, however, did not at all suit those who profited or
+existed by abuses, who breathed the very air of corruption. They know
+well enough that "those who are not _for_ them are _against_ them."
+They wanted a publication impervious alike to truth and candour; that,
+hood-winked itself, should lead public opinion blindfold; that should
+stick at nothing to serve the turn of a party; that should be the
+exclusive organ of prejudice, the sordid tool of power; that should go
+the whole length of want of principle in palliating every dishonest
+measure, of want of decency in defaming every honest man; that should
+prejudge every question, traduce every opponent; that should give no
+quarter to fair inquiry or liberal sentiment; that should be "ugly
+all over with hypocrisy", and present one foul blotch of servility,
+intolerance, falsehood, spite, and ill-manners. The _Quarterly Review_
+was accordingly set up.
+
+  "Sithence no fairy lights, no quickning ray,
+  Nor stir of pulse, nor object to entice
+  Abroad the spirits; but the cloister'd heart
+  Sits squat at home, like Pagod in a niche
+  Obscure!"
+
+This event was accordingly hailed (and the omen has been fulfilled!) as
+a great relief to all those of his Majesty's subjects who are firmly
+convinced that the only way to have things remain exactly as they are is
+to put a stop to all inquiries whether they are right or wrong, and that
+if you cannot answer a man's arguments, you may at least try to take
+away his character.
+
+We do not implicitly bow to the political opinions, nor to the critical
+decisions of the _Edinburgh Review_; but we must do justice to the
+talent with which they are supported, and to the tone of manly
+explicitness in which they are delivered.[A] They are eminently
+characteristic of the Spirit of the Age; as it is the express object of
+the _Quarterly Review_ to discountenance and extinguish that spirit,
+both in theory and practice. The _Edinburgh Review_ stands upon
+the ground of opinion; it asserts the supremacy of intellect: the
+pre-eminence it claims is from an acknowledged superiority of talent and
+information and literary attainment, and it does not build one tittle
+of its influence on ignorance, or prejudice, or authority, or personal
+malevolence. It takes up a question, and argues it _pro_ and _con_ with
+great knowledge and boldness and skill; it points out an absurdity, and
+runs it down, fairly, and according to the evidence adduced. In the
+former case, its conclusions may be wrong, there may be a bias in the
+mind of the writer, but he states the arguments and circumstances on
+both sides, from which a judgment is to be formed--it is not his cue,
+he has neither the effrontery nor the meanness to falsify facts or to
+suppress objections. In the latter case, or where a vein of sarcasm or
+irony is resorted to, the ridicule is not barbed by some allusion (false
+or true) to private history; the object of it has brought the infliction
+on himself by some literary folly or political delinquency which is
+referred to as the understood and justifiable provocation, instead
+of being held up to scorn as a knave for not being a tool, or as a
+blockhead for thinking for himself. In the _Edinburgh Review_ the
+talents of those on the opposite side are always extolled _pleno
+ore_--in the _Quarterly Review_ they are denied altogether, and the
+justice that is in this way withheld from them is compensated by a
+proportionable supply of personal abuse. A man of genius who is a lord,
+and who publishes with Mr. Murray, may now and then stand as good a
+chance as a lord who is not a man of genius and who publishes with
+Messrs. Longman: but that is the utmost extent of the impartiality of
+the _Quarterly_. From its account you would take Lord Byron and Mr.
+Stuart Rose for two very pretty poets; but Mr. Moore's Magdalen Muse is
+sent to Bridewell without mercy, to beat hemp in silk-stockings. In
+the _Quarterly_ nothing is regarded but the political creed or external
+circumstances of a writer: in the _Edinburgh_ nothing is ever adverted
+to but his literary merits. Or if there is a bias of any kind, it arises
+from an affectation of magnanimity and candour in giving heaped measure
+to those on the aristocratic side in politics, and in being critically
+severe on others. Thus Sir Walter Scott is lauded to the skies for his
+romantic powers, without any allusion to his political demerits (as if
+this would be compromising the dignity of genius and of criticism by the
+introduction of party-spirit)--while Lord Byron is called to a grave
+moral reckoning. There is, however, little of the cant of morality in
+the _Edinburgh Review_--and it is quite free from that of religion. It
+keeps to its province, which is that of criticism--or to the discussion
+of debateable topics, and acquits itself in both with force and spirit.
+This is the natural consequence of the composition of the two Reviews.
+The one appeals with confidence to its own intellectual resources, to
+the variety of its topics, to its very character and existence as a
+literary journal, which depend on its setting up no pretensions but
+those which it can make good by the talent and ingenuity it can bring to
+bear upon them--it therefore meets every question, whether of a lighter
+or a graver cast, on its own grounds; the other _blinks_ every question,
+for it has no confidence but in _the powers that be_--shuts itself up in
+the impregnable fastnesses of authority, or makes some paltry, cowardly
+attack (under cover of anonymous criticism) on individuals, or dispenses
+its award of merit entirely according to the rank or party of the
+writer. The faults of the _Edinburgh Review_ arise out of the very
+consciousness of critical and logical power. In political questions it
+relies too little on the broad basis of liberty and humanity, enters too
+much into mere dry formalities, deals too often in _moot-points_, and
+descends too readily to a sort of special-pleading in defence of _home_
+truths and natural feelings: in matters of taste and criticism, its tone
+is sometimes apt to be supercilious and _cavalier_ from its habitual
+faculty of analysing defects and beauties according to given principles,
+from its quickness in deciding, from its facility in illustrating its
+views. In this latter department it has been guilty of some capital
+oversights. The chief was in its treatment of the _Lyrical Ballads_ at
+their first appearance--not in its ridicule of their puerilities, but in
+its denial of their beauties, because they were included in no school,
+because they were reducible to no previous standard or theory of
+poetical excellence. For this, however, considerable reparation has been
+made by the prompt and liberal spirit that has been shewn in bringing
+forward other examples of poetical genius. Its capital sin, in a
+doctrinal point of view, has been (we shrewdly suspect) in the uniform
+and unqualified encouragement it has bestowed on Mr. Malthus's system.
+We do not mean that the _Edinburgh Review_ was to join in the general
+_hue and cry_ that was raised against this writer; but while it asserted
+the soundness of many of his arguments, and yielded its assent to the
+truths he has divulged, it need not have screened his errors. On this
+subject alone we think the _Quarterly_ has the advantage of it. But as
+the _Quarterly Review_ is a mere mass and tissue of prejudices on
+all subjects, it is the foible of the _Edinburgh Review_ to affect a
+somewhat fastidious air of superiority over prejudices of all kinds, and
+a determination not to indulge in any of the amiable weaknesses of our
+nature, except as it can give a reason for the faith that is in it.
+Luckily, it is seldom reduced to this alternative: "reasons" are with it
+"as plenty as blackberries!"
+
+Mr. Jeffrey is the Editor of the _Edinburgh Review,_ and is understood
+to have contributed nearly a fourth part of the articles from its
+commencement. No man is better qualified for this situation; nor indeed
+so much so. He is certainly a person in advance of the age, and yet
+perfectly fitted both from knowledge and habits of mind to put a curb
+upon its rash and headlong spirit. He is thoroughly acquainted with the
+progress and pretensions of modern literature and philosophy; and to
+this he adds the natural acuteness and discrimination of the logician
+with the habitual caution and coolness of his profession. If the
+_Edinburgh Review_ may be considered as the organ of or at all pledged
+to a party, that party is at least a respectable one, and is placed in
+the middle between two extremes. The Editor is bound to lend a patient
+hearing to the most paradoxical opinions and extravagant theories which
+have resulted in our times from the "infinite agitation of wit", but
+he is disposed to qualify them by a number of practical objections,
+of speculative doubts, of checks and drawbacks, arising out of actual
+circumstances and prevailing opinions, or the frailties of human nature.
+He has a great range of knowledge, an incessant activity of mind; but
+the suspension of his judgment, the well-balanced moderation of his
+sentiments, is the consequence of the very discursiveness of his reason.
+What may be considered as _a commonplace_ conclusion is often the result
+of a comprehensive view of all the circumstances of a case. Paradox,
+violence, nay even originality of conception is not seldom owing to our
+dwelling long and pertinaciously on some one part of a subject, instead
+of attending to the whole. Mr. Jeffrey is neither a bigot nor an
+enthusiast. He is not the dupe of the prejudices of others, nor of his
+own. He is not wedded to any dogma, he is not long the sport of any
+whim; before he can settle in any fond or fantastic opinion, another
+starts up to match it, like beads on sparkling wine. A too restless
+display of talent, a too undisguised statement of all that can be said
+for and against a question, is perhaps the great fault that is to be
+attributed to him. Where there is so much power and prejudice to contend
+with in the opposite scale, it may be thought that the balance of truth
+can hardly be held with a slack or an even hand; and that the infusion
+of a little more visionary speculation, of a little more popular
+indignation into the great Whig Review would be an advantage both to
+itself and to the cause of freedom. Much of this effect is chargeable
+less on an Epicurean levity of feeling or on party-trammels, than on
+real sanguineness of disposition, and a certain fineness of professional
+tact. Our sprightly Scotchman is not of a desponding and gloomy turn of
+mind. He argues well for the future hopes of mankind from the smallest
+beginnings, watches the slow, gradual, reluctant growth of liberal
+views, and smiling sees the aloe of Reform blossom at the end of a
+hundred years; while the habitual subtlety of his mind makes him
+perceive decided advantages where vulgar ignorance or passion sees only
+doubts and difficulty; and a flaw in an adversary's argument stands him
+instead of the shout of a mob, the votes of a majority, or the fate of
+a pitched battle. The Editor is satisfied with his own conclusions, and
+does not make himself uneasy about the fate of mankind. The issue, he
+thinks, will verify his moderate and well-founded expectations.--We
+believe also that late events have given a more decided turn to Mr.
+Jeffrey's mind, and that he feels that as in the struggle between
+liberty and slavery, the views of the one party have been laid bare with
+their success, so the exertions on the other side should become more
+strenuous, and a more positive stand be made against the avowed and
+appalling encroachments of priestcraft and arbitrary power.
+
+The characteristics of Mr. Jeffrey's general style as a writer
+correspond, we think, with what we have here stated as the
+characteristics of his mind. He is a master of the foils; he makes an
+exulting display of the dazzling fence of wit and argument. His strength
+consists in great range of knowledge, an equal familiarity with the
+principles and the details of a subject, and in a glancing brilliancy
+and rapidity of style. Indeed, we doubt whether the brilliancy of his
+manner does not resolve itself into the rapidity, the variety and
+aptness of his illustrations. His pen is never at a loss, never stands
+still; and would dazzle for this reason alone, like an eye that is ever
+in motion. Mr. Jeffrey is far from a flowery or affected writer; he has
+few tropes or figures, still less any odd startling thoughts or quaint
+innovations in expression:--but he has a constant supply of ingenious
+solutions and pertinent examples; he never proses, never grows dull,
+never wears an argument to tatters; and by the number, the liveliness
+and facility of his transitions, keeps up that appearance of vivacity,
+of novel and sparkling effect, for which others are too often indebted
+to singularity of combination or tinsel ornaments.
+
+It may be discovered, by a nice observer, that Mr. Jeffrey's style of
+composition is that of a person accustomed to public speaking. There is
+no pause, no meagreness, no inanimateness, but a flow, a redundance and
+volubility like that of a stream or of a rolling-stone. The language is
+more copious than select, and sometimes two or three words perform the
+office of one. This copiousness and facility is perhaps an advantage
+in _extempore_ speaking, where no stop or break is allowed in the
+discourse, and where any word or any number of words almost is better
+than coming to a dead stand; but in written compositions it gives an
+air of either too much carelessness or too much labour. Mr. Jeffrey's
+excellence, as a public speaker, has betrayed him into this peculiarity.
+He makes fewer _blots_ in addressing an audience than any one we
+remember to have heard. There is not a hair's-breadth space between any
+two of his words, nor is there a single expression either ill-chosen or
+out of its place. He speaks without stopping to take breath, with ease,
+with point, with elegance, and without "spinning the thread of his
+verbosity finer than the staple of his argument." He may be said to
+weave words into any shapes he pleases for use or ornament, as the
+glass-blower moulds the vitreous fluid with his breath; and his
+sentences shine like glass from their polished smoothness, and are
+equally transparent. His style of eloquence, indeed, is remarkable for
+neatness, for correctness, and epigrammatic point; and he has applied
+this as a standard to his written compositions, where the very same
+degree of correctness and precision produces, from the contrast between
+writing and speaking, an agreeable diffuseness, freedom, and animation.
+Whenever the Scotch advocate has appeared at the bar of the English
+House of Lords, he has been admired by those who were in the habit of
+attending to speeches there, as having the greatest fluency of language
+and the greatest subtlety of distinction of any one of the profession.
+The law-reporters were as little able to follow him from the extreme
+rapidity of his utterance as from the tenuity and evanescent nature of
+his reasoning.
+
+Mr. Jeffrey's conversation is equally lively, various, and instructive.
+There is no subject on which he is not _au fait_: no company in which he
+is not ready to scatter his pearls for sport. Whether it be politics, or
+poetry, or science, or anecdote, or wit, or raillery, he takes up his
+cue without effort, without preparation, and appears equally incapable
+of tiring himself or his hearers. His only difficulty seems to be not
+to speak, but to be silent. There is a constitutional buoyancy and
+elasticity of mind about him that cannot subside into repose, much less
+sink into dulness. There may be more original talkers, persons who
+occasionally surprise or interest you more; few, if any, with a more
+uninterrupted flow of cheerfulness and animal spirits, with a greater
+fund of information, and with fewer specimens of the _bathos_ in their
+conversation. He is never absurd, nor has he any favourite points
+which he is always bringing forward. It cannot be denied that there is
+something bordering on petulance of manner, but it is of that least
+offensive kind which may be accounted for from merit and from success,
+and implies no exclusive pretensions nor the least particle of ill-will
+to others. On the contrary, Mr. Jeffrey is profuse of his encomiums and
+admiration of others, but still with a certain reservation of a right
+to differ or to blame. He cannot rest on one side of a question: he is
+obliged by a mercurial habit and disposition to vary his point of view.
+If he is ever tedious, it is from an excess of liveliness: he oppresses
+from a sense of airy lightness. He is always setting out on a fresh
+scent: there are always _relays_ of topics; the harness is put to, and
+he rattles away as delightfully and as briskly as ever. New causes are
+called; he holds a brief in his hand for every possible question.
+This is a fault. Mr. Jeffrey is not obtrusive, is not impatient of
+opposition, is not unwilling to be interrupted; but what is said by
+another, seems to make no impression on him; he is bound to dispute, to
+answer it, as if he was in Court, or as if it were in a paltry Debating
+Society, where young beginners were trying their hands. This is not to
+maintain a character, or for want of good-nature--it is a thoughtless
+habit. He cannot help cross-examining a witness, or stating the
+adverse view of the question. He listens not to judge, but to reply.
+In consequence of this, you can as little tell the impression your
+observations make on him as what weight to assign to his. Mr. Jeffrey
+shines in mixed company; he is not good in a _tete-a-tete_. You can only
+shew your wisdom or your wit in general society: but in private your
+follies or your weaknesses are not the least interesting topics; and our
+critic has neither any of his own to confess, nor does he take delight
+in hearing those of others. Indeed in Scotland generally, the display of
+personal character, the indulging your whims and humours in the presence
+of a friend, is not much encouraged--every one there is looked upon in
+the light of a machine or a collection of topics. They turn you round
+like a cylinder to see what use they can make of you, and drag you into
+a dispute with as little ceremony as they would drag out an article from
+an Encyclopedia. They criticise every thing, analyse every thing, argue
+upon every thing, dogmatise upon every thing; and the bundle of your
+habits, feelings, humours, follies and pursuits is regarded by them no
+more than a bundle of old clothes. They stop you in a sentiment by a
+question or a stare, and cut you short in a narrative by the time of
+night. The accomplished and ingenious person of whom we speak, has been
+a little infected by the tone of his countrymen--he is too didactic,
+too pugnacious, too full of electrical shocks, too much like a voltaic
+battery, and reposes too little on his own excellent good sense, his
+own love of ease, his cordial frankness of disposition and unaffected
+candour. He ought to have belonged to us!
+
+The severest of critics (as he has been sometimes termed) is the
+best-natured of men. Whatever there may be of wavering or indecision in
+Mr. Jeffrey's reasoning, or of harshness in his critical decisions, in
+his disposition there is nothing but simplicity and kindness. He is a
+person that no one knows without esteeming, and who both in his public
+connections and private friendships, shews the same manly uprightness
+and unbiassed independence of spirit. At a distance, in his writings, or
+even in his manner, there may be something to excite a little uneasiness
+and apprehension: in his conduct there is nothing to except against.
+He is a person of strict integrity himself, without pretence or
+affectation; and knows how to respect this quality in others, without
+prudery or intolerance. He can censure a friend or a stranger, and serve
+him effectually at the same time. He expresses his disapprobation, but
+not as an excuse for closing up the avenues of his liberality. He is a
+Scotchman without one particle of hypocrisy, of cant, of servility, or
+selfishness in his composition. He has not been spoiled by fortune--has
+not been tempted by power--is firm without violence, friendly without
+weakness--a critic and even-tempered, a casuist and an honest man--and
+amidst the toils of his profession and the distractions of the world,
+retains the gaiety, the unpretending carelessness and simplicity of
+youth. Mr. Jeffrey in his person is slight, with a countenance of much
+expression, and a voice of great flexibility and acuteness of tone.
+
+
+[Footnote A: The style of philosophical criticism, which has been the
+boast of the Edinburgh Review, was first introduced into the Monthly
+Review about the year 1796, in a series of articles by Mr. William
+Taylor, of Norwich.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+MR. BROUGHAM--SIR F. BURDETT.
+
+
+
+There is a class of eloquence which has been described and particularly
+insisted on, under the style and title of _Irish Eloquence_: there is
+another class which it is not absolutely unfair to oppose to this, and
+that is the Scotch. The first of these is entirely the offspring of
+_impulse_: the last of _mechanism_. The one is as full of fancy as it is
+bare of facts: the other excludes all fancy, and is weighed down with
+facts. The one is all fire, the other all ice: the one nothing but
+enthusiasm, extravagance, eccentricity; the other nothing but logical
+deductions, and the most approved postulates. The one without scruple,
+nay, with reckless zeal, throws the reins loose on the neck of the
+imagination: the other pulls up with a curbbridle, and starts at every
+casual object it meets in the way as a bug-bear. The genius of Irish
+oratory stands forth in the naked majesty of untutored nature, its eye
+glancing wildly round on all objects, its tongue darting forked fire:
+the genius of Scottish eloquence is armed in all the panoply of the
+schools; its drawling, ambiguous dialect seconds its circumspect
+dialectics; from behind the vizor that guards its mouth and shadows
+its pent-up brows, it sees no visions but its own set purpose, its own
+_data_, and its own dogmas. It "has no figures, nor no fantasies," but
+"those which busy care draws in the brains of men," or which set off its
+own superior acquirements and wisdom. It scorns to "tread the primrose
+path of dalliance"--it shrinks back from it as from a precipice, and
+keeps in the iron rail-way of the understanding. Irish oratory, on the
+contrary, is a sort of aeronaut: it is always going up in a balloon, and
+breaking its neck, or coming down in the parachute. It is filled
+full with gaseous matter, with whim and fancy, with alliteration and
+antithesis, with heated passion and bloated metaphors, that burst the
+slender, silken covering of sense; and the airy pageant, that glittered
+in empty space and rose in all the bliss of ignorance, flutters and
+sinks down to its native bogs! If the Irish orator riots in a studied
+neglect of his subject and a natural confusion of ideas, playing with
+words, ranging them into all sorts of fantastic combinations, because in
+the unlettered void or chaos of his mind there is no obstacle to their
+coalescing into any shapes they please, it must be confessed that the
+eloquence of the Scotch is encumbered with an excess of knowledge, that
+it cannot get on for a crowd of difficulties, that it staggers under
+a load of topics, that it is so environed in the forms of logic and
+rhetoric as to be equally precluded from originality or absurdity, from
+beauty or deformity:--the plea of humanity is lost by going through the
+process of law, the firm and manly tone of principle is exchanged for
+the wavering and pitiful cant of policy, the living bursts of passion
+are reduced to a defunct _common-place_, and all true imagination
+is buried under the dust and rubbish of learned models and imposing
+authorities. If the one is a bodiless phantom, the other is a lifeless
+skeleton: if the one in its feverish and hectic extravagance resembles a
+sick man's dream, the other is akin to the sleep of death--cold, stiff,
+unfeeling, monumental! Upon the whole, we despair less of the first than
+of the last, for the principle of life and motion is, after all, the
+primary condition of all genius. The luxuriant wildness of the one may
+be disciplined, and its excesses sobered down into reason; but the dry
+and rigid formality of the other can never burst the shell or husk of
+oratory. It is true that the one is disfigured by the puerilities and
+affectation of a Phillips; but then it is redeemed by the manly sense
+and fervour of a Plunket, the impassioned appeals and flashes of wit of
+a Curran, and by the golden tide of wisdom, eloquence, and fancy, that
+flowed from the lips of a Burke. In the other, we do not sink so low in
+the negative series; but we get no higher in the ascending scale than
+a Mackintosh or a Brougham.[A] It may be suggested that the late Lord
+Erskine enjoyed a higher reputation as an orator than either of these:
+but he owed it to a dashing and graceful manner, to presence of mind,
+and to great animation in delivering his sentiments. Stripped of these
+outward and personal advantages, the matter of his speeches, like that
+of his writings, is nothing, or perfectly inert and dead. Mr. Brougham
+is from the North of England, but he was educated in Edinburgh, and
+represents that school of politics and political economy in the House.
+He differs from Sir James Mackintosh in this, that he deals less in
+abstract principles, and more in individual details. He makes less use
+of general topics, and more of immediate facts. Sir James is better
+acquainted with the balance of an argument in old authors; Mr. Brougham
+with the balance of power in Europe. If the first is better versed in
+the progress of history, no man excels the last in a knowledge of the
+course of exchange. He is apprised of the exact state of our exports and
+imports, and scarce a ship clears out its cargo at Liverpool or
+Hull, but he has notice of the bill of lading. Our colonial policy,
+prison-discipline, the state of the Hulks, agricultural distress,
+commerce and manufactures, the Bullion question, the Catholic question,
+the Bourbons or the Inquisition, "domestic treason, foreign levy,"
+nothing can come amiss to him--he is at home in the crooked mazes of
+rotten boroughs, is not baffled by Scotch law, and can follow the
+meaning of one of Mr. Canning's speeches. With so many resources, with
+such variety and solidity of information, Mr. Brougham is rather a
+powerful and alarming, than an effectual debater. In so many details
+(which he himself goes through with unwearied and unshrinking
+resolution) the spirit of the question is lost to others who have not
+the same voluntary power of attention or the same interest in hearing
+that he has in speaking; the original impulse that urged him forward is
+forgotten in so wide a field, in so interminable a career. If he can,
+others _cannot_ carry all he knows in their heads at the same time; a
+rope of circumstantial evidence does not hold well together, nor drag
+the unwilling mind along with it (the willing mind hurries on before it,
+and grows impatient and absent)--he moves in an unmanageable procession
+of facts and proofs, instead of coming to the point at once--and his
+premises (so anxious is he to proceed on sure and ample grounds) overlay
+and block up his conclusion, so that you cannot arrive at it, or not
+till the first fury and shock of the onset is over. The ball, from
+the too great width of the _calibre_ from which it is sent, and from
+striking against such a number of hard, projecting points, is almost
+spent before it reaches its destination. He keeps a ledger or a
+debtor-and-creditor account between the Government and the Country,
+posts so much actual crime, corruption, and injustice against so much
+contingent advantage or sluggish prejudice, and at the bottom of the
+page brings in the balance of indignation and contempt, where it is due.
+But people are not to be _calculated into_ contempt or indignation on
+abstract grounds; for however they may submit to this process where
+their own interests are concerned, in what regards the public good we
+believe they must see and feel instinctively, or not at all. There is
+(it is to be lamented) a good deal of froth as well as strength in the
+popular spirit, which will not admit of being _decanted_ or served out
+in formal driblets; nor will spleen (the soul of Opposition) bear to be
+corked up in square patent bottles, and kept for future use! In a word,
+Mr. Brougham's is ticketed and labelled eloquence, registered and in
+numeros (like the successive parts of a Scotch Encyclopedia)--it
+is clever, knowing, imposing, masterly, an extraordinary display of
+clearness of head, of quickness and energy of thought, of application
+and industry; but it is not the eloquence of the imagination or the
+heart, and will never save a nation or an individual from perdition.
+
+Mr. Brougham has one considerable advantage in debate: he is overcome
+by no false modesty, no deference to others. But then, by a natural
+consequence or parity of reasoning, he has little sympathy with other
+people, and is liable to be mistaken in the effect his arguments will
+have upon them. He relies too much, among other things, on the patience
+of his hearers, and on his ability to turn every thing to his own
+advantage. He accordingly goes to the full length of _his tether_ (in
+vulgar phrase) and often overshoots the mark. _C'est dommage_. He has no
+reserve of discretion, no retentiveness of mind or check upon himself.
+He needs, with so much wit,
+
+  "As much again to govern it."
+
+He cannot keep a good thing or a shrewd piece of information in his
+possession, though the letting it out should mar a cause. It is not
+that he thinks too much of himself, too little of his cause: but he is
+absorbed in the pursuit of truth as an abstract inquiry, he is led away
+by the headstrong and over-mastering activity of his own mind. He is
+borne along, almost involuntarily, and not impossibly against his better
+judgment, by the throng and restlessness of his ideas as by a crowd
+of people in motion. His perceptions are literal, tenacious,
+_epileptic_--his understanding voracious of facts, and equally
+communicative of them--and he proceeds to
+
+  "--------Pour out all as plain
+  As downright Shippen or as old Montaigne"--
+
+without either the virulence of the one or the _bonhommie_ of the other.
+The repeated, smart, unforeseen discharges of the truth jar those
+that are next him. He does not dislike this state of irritation and
+collision, indulges his curiosity or his triumph, till by calling for
+more facts or hazarding some extreme inference, he urges a question to
+the verge of a precipice, his adversaries urge it _over_, and he himself
+shrinks back from the consequence--
+
+  "Scared at the sound himself has made!"
+
+Mr. Brougham has great fearlessness, but not equal firmness; and after
+going too far on the _forlorn hope_, turns short round without due
+warning to others or respect for himself. He is adventurous, but easily
+panic-struck; and sacrifices the vanity of self-opinion to the necessity
+of self-preservation. He is too improvident for a leader, too petulant
+for a partisan; and does not sufficiently consult those with whom he is
+supposed to act in concert. He sometimes leaves them in the lurch,
+and is sometimes left in the lurch by them. He wants the principle of
+co-operation. He frequently, in a fit of thoughtless levity, gives an
+unexpected turn to the political machine, which alarms older and more
+experienced heads: if he was not himself the first to get out of harm's
+way and escape from the danger, it would be well!--We hold, indeed, as
+a general rule, that no man born or bred in Scotland can be a great
+orator, unless he is a mere quack; or a great statesman unless he turns
+plain knave. The national gravity is against the first: the national
+caution is against the last. To a Scotchman if a thing _is, it is_;
+there is an end of the question with his opinion about it. He is
+positive and abrupt, and is not in the habit of conciliating the
+feelings or soothing the follies of others. His only way therefore to
+produce a popular effect is to sail with the stream of prejudice, and
+to vent common dogmas, "the total grist, unsifted, husks and all," from
+some evangelical pulpit. This may answer, and it has answered. On the
+other hand, if a Scotchman, born or bred, comes to think at all of the
+feelings of others, it is not as they regard them, but as their
+opinion reacts on his own interest and safety. He is therefore either
+pragmatical and offensive, or if he tries to please, he becomes cowardly
+and fawning. His public spirit wants pliancy; his selfish compliances
+go all lengths. He is as impracticable as a popular partisan, as he
+is mischievous as a tool of Government. We do not wish to press
+this argument farther, and must leave it involved in some degree of
+obscurity, rather than bring the armed intellect of a whole nation on
+our heads.
+
+Mr. Brougham speaks in a loud and unmitigated tone of voice, sometimes
+almost approaching to a scream. He is fluent, rapid, vehement, full of
+his subject, with evidently a great deal to say, and very regardless
+of the manner of saying it. As a lawyer, he has not hitherto been
+remarkably successful. He is not profound in cases and reports, nor does
+he take much interest in the peculiar features of a particular cause, or
+shew much adroitness in the management of it. He carries too much weight
+of metal for ordinary and petty occasions: he must have a pretty large
+question to discuss, and must make _thorough-stitch_ work of it. He,
+however, had an encounter with Mr. Phillips the other day, and shook all
+his tender blossoms, so that they fell to the ground, and withered in an
+hour; but they soon bloomed again! Mr. Brougham writes almost, if not
+quite, as well as he speaks. In the midst of an Election contest he
+comes out to address the populace, and goes back to his study to finish
+an article for the Edinburgh Review; sometimes indeed wedging three or
+four articles (in the shape of _refaccimentos_ of his own pamphlets
+or speeches in parliament) into a single number. Such indeed is the
+activity of his mind that it appears to require neither repose, nor any
+other stimulus than a delight in its own exercise. He can turn his
+hand to any thing, but he cannot be idle. There are few intellectual
+accomplishments which he does not possess, and possess in a very
+high degree. He speaks French (and, we believe, several other modern
+languages) fluently: is a capital mathematician, and obtained an
+introduction to the celebrated Carnot in this latter character, when the
+conversation turned on squaring the circle, and not on the propriety of
+confining France within the natural boundary of the Rhine. Mr. Brougham
+is, in fact, a striking instance of the versatility and strength of the
+human mind, and also in one sense of the length of human life, if we
+make a good use of our time. There is room enough to crowd almost every
+art and science into it. If we pass "no day without a line," visit no
+place without the company of a book, we may with ease fill libraries or
+empty them of their contents. Those who complain of the shortness of
+life, let it slide by them without wishing to seize and make the most of
+its golden minutes. The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we
+are, the more leisure we have. If any one possesses any advantage in a
+considerable degree, he may make himself master of nearly as many more
+as he pleases, by employing his spare time and cultivating the waste
+faculties of his mind. While one person is determining on the choice of
+a profession or study, another shall have made a fortune or gained a
+merited reputation. While one person is dreaming over the meaning of a
+word, another will have learnt several languages. It is not incapacity,
+but indolence, indecision, want of imagination, and a proneness to a
+sort of mental tautology, to repeat the same images and tread the same
+circle, that leaves us so poor, so dull, and inert as we are, so naked
+of acquirement, so barren of resources! While we are walking backwards
+and forwards between Charing-Cross and Temple-Bar, and sitting in the
+same coffee-house every day, we might make the grand tour of Europe, and
+visit the Vatican and the Louvre. Mr. Brougham, among other means of
+strengthening and enlarging his views, has visited, we believe, most of
+the courts, and turned his attention to most of the Constitutions of the
+continent. He is, no doubt, a very accomplished, active-minded, and
+admirable person.
+
+Sir Francis Burdett, in many respects, affords a contrast to the
+foregoing character. He is a plain, unaffected, unsophisticated English
+gentleman. He is a person of great reading too and considerable
+information, but he makes very little display of these, unless it be to
+quote Shakespear, which he does often with extreme aptness and felicity.
+Sir Francis is one of the most pleasing speakers in the House, and is a
+prodigious favourite of the English people. So he ought to be: for he is
+one of the few remaining examples of the old English understanding and
+old English character. All that he pretends to is common sense and
+common honesty; and a greater compliment cannot be paid to these than
+the attention with which he is listened to in the House of Commons. We
+cannot conceive a higher proof of courage than the saying things which
+he has been known to say there; and we have seen him blush and appear
+ashamed of the truths he has been obliged to utter, like a bashful
+novice. He could not have uttered what he often did there, if, besides
+his general respectability, he had not been a very honest, a very
+good-tempered, and a very good-looking man. But there was evidently no
+wish to shine, nor any desire to offend: it was painful to him to hurt
+the feelings of those who heard him, but it was a higher duty in him not
+to suppress his sincere and earnest convictions. It is wonderful how
+much virtue and plain-dealing a man may be guilty of with impunity, if
+he has no vanity, or ill-nature, or duplicity to provoke the contempt or
+resentment of others, and to make them impatient of the superiority he
+sets up over them. We do not recollect that Sir Francis ever endeavoured
+to atone for any occasional indiscretions or intemperance by giving
+the Duke of York credit for the battle of Waterloo, or congratulating
+Ministers on the confinement of Buonaparte at St. Helena. There is no
+honest cause which he dares not avow: no oppressed individual that he
+is not forward to succour. He has the firmness of manhood with the
+unimpaired enthusiasm of youthful feeling about him. His principles are
+mellowed and improved, without having become less sound with time: for
+at one period he sometimes appeared to come charged to the House with
+the petulance and caustic sententiousness he had imbibed at Wimbledon
+Common. He is never violent or in extremes, except when the people or
+the parliament happen to be out of their senses; and then he seems to
+regret the necessity of plainly telling them he thinks so, instead of
+pluming himself upon it or exulting over impending calamities. There
+is only one error he seems to labour under (which, we believe, he also
+borrowed from Mr. Horne Tooke or Major Cartwright), the wanting to go
+back to the early times of our Constitution and history in search of the
+principles of law and liberty. He might as well
+
+  "Hunt half a day for a forgotten dream."
+
+Liberty, in our opinion, is but a modern invention (the growth of books
+and printing)--and whether new or old, is not the less desirable. A man
+may be a patriot, without being an antiquary. This is the only point
+on which Sir Francis is at all inclined to a tincture of pedantry. In
+general, his love of liberty is pure, as it is warm and steady: his
+humanity is unconstrained and free. His heart does not ask leave of his
+head to feel; nor does prudence always keep a guard upon his tongue or
+his pen. No man writes a better letter to his Constituents than the
+member for Westminster; and his compositions of that kind ought to be
+good, for they have occasionally cost him dear. He is the idol of the
+people of Westminster: few persons have a greater number of friends
+and well-wishers; and he has still greater reason to be proud of his
+enemies, for his integrity and independence have made them so. Sir
+Francis Burdett has often been left in a Minority in the House of
+Commons, with only one or two on his side. We suspect, unfortunately for
+his country, that History will be found to enter its protest on the same
+side of the question!
+
+
+[Footnote A: Mr. Brougham is not a Scotchman literally, but by
+adoption.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+LORD ELDON AND MR. WILBERFORCE.
+
+
+
+Lord Eldon is an exceedingly good-natured man; but this does not prevent
+him, like other good-natured people, from consulting his own ease or
+interest. The character of _good-nature_, as it is called, has been a
+good deal mistaken; and the present Chancellor is not a bad illustration
+of the grounds of the prevailing error. When we happen to see an
+individual whose countenance is "all tranquillity and smiles;" who
+is full of good-humour and pleasantry; whose manners are gentle and
+conciliating; who is uniformly temperate in his expressions, and
+punctual and just in his every-day dealings; we are apt to conclude from
+so fair an outside, that
+
+  "All is conscience and tender heart"
+
+within also, and that such a one would not hurt a fly. And neither would
+he without a motive. But mere good-nature (or what passes in the world
+for such) is often no better than indolent selfishness. A person
+distinguished and praised for this quality will not needlessly offend
+others, because they may retaliate; and besides, it ruffles his own
+temper. He likes to enjoy a perfect calm, and to live in an interchange
+of kind offices. He suffers few things to irritate or annoy him. He has
+a fine oiliness in his disposition, which smooths the waves of passion
+as they rise. He does not enter into the quarrels or enmities of others;
+bears their calamities with patience; he listens to the din and clang of
+war, the earthquake and the hurricane of the political and moral world
+with the temper and spirit of a philosopher; no act of injustice puts
+him beside himself, the follies and absurdities of mankind never give
+him a moment's uneasiness, he has none of the ordinary causes of
+fretfulness or chagrin that torment others from the undue interest they
+take in the conduct of their neighbours or in the public good. None of
+these idle or frivolous sources of discontent, that make such havoc
+with the peace of human life, ever discompose his features or alter the
+serenity of his pulse. If a nation is robbed of its rights,
+
+  "If wretches hang that Ministers may dine,"--
+
+the laughing jest still collects in his eye, the cordial squeeze of the
+hand is still the same. But tread on the toe of one of these amiable and
+imperturbable mortals, or let a lump of soot fall down the chimney and
+spoil their dinners, and see how they will bear it. All their patience
+is confined to the accidents that befal others: all their good-humour
+is to be resolved into giving themselves no concern about any thing but
+their own ease and self-indulgence. Their charity begins and ends at
+home. Their being free from the common infirmities of temper is owing to
+their indifference to the common feelings of humanity; and if you touch
+the sore place, they betray more resentment, and break out (like spoiled
+children) into greater fractiousness than others, partly from a greater
+degree of selfishness, and partly because they are taken by surprise,
+and mad to think they have not guarded every point against annoyance or
+attack, by a habit of callous insensibility and pampered indolence.
+
+An instance of what we mean occurred but the other day. An allusion was
+made in the House of Commons to something in the proceedings in the
+Court of Chancery, and the Lord Chancellor comes to his place in the
+Court, with the statement in his hand, fire in his eyes, and a direct
+charge of falsehood in his mouth, without knowing any thing certain
+of the matter, without making any inquiry into it, without using any
+precaution or putting the least restraint upon himself, and all on no
+better authority than a common newspaper report. The thing was (not that
+we are imputing any strong blame in this case, we merely bring it as an
+illustration) it touched himself, his office, the inviolability of his
+jurisdiction, the unexceptionableness of his proceedings, and the wet
+blanket of the Chancellor's temper instantly took fire like tinder! All
+the fine balancing was at an end; all the doubts, all the delicacy, all
+the candour real or affected, all the chances that there might be a
+mistake in the report, all the decencies to be observed towards a Member
+of the House, are overlooked by the blindness of passion, and the wary
+Judge pounces upon the paragraph without mercy, without a moment's
+delay, or the smallest attention to forms! This was indeed serious
+business, there was to be no trifling here; every instant was an age
+till the Chancellor had discharged his sense of indignation on the head
+of the indiscreet interloper on his authority. Had it been another
+person's case, another person's dignity that had been compromised,
+another person's conduct that had been called in question, who doubts
+but that the matter might have stood over till the next term, that the
+Noble Lord would have taken the Newspaper home in his pocket, that he
+would have compared it carefully with other newspapers, that he would
+have written in the most mild and gentlemanly terms to the Honourable
+Member to inquire into the truth of the statement, that he would have
+watched a convenient opportunity good-humouredly to ask other Honourable
+Members what all this was about, that the greatest caution and fairness
+would have been observed, and that to this hour the lawyers' clerks and
+the junior counsel would have been in the greatest admiration of the
+Chancellor's nicety of discrimination, and the utter inefficacy of the
+heats, importunities, haste, and passions of others to influence his
+judgment? This would have been true; yet his readiness to decide and to
+condemn where he himself is concerned, shews that passion is not dead in
+him, nor subject to the controul of reason; but that self-love is the
+main-spring that moves it, though on all beyond that limit he looks with
+the most perfect calmness and philosophic indifference.
+
+  "Resistless passion sways us to the mood
+  Of what it likes or loaths."
+
+All people are passionate in what concerns themselves, or in what they
+take an interest in. The range of this last is different in different
+persons; but the want of passion is but another name for the want of
+sympathy and imagination.
+
+The Lord Chancellor's impartiality and conscientious exactness is
+proverbial; and is, we believe, as inflexible as it is delicate in
+all cases that occur in the stated routine of legal practice. The
+impatience, the irritation, the hopes, the fears, the confident tone of
+the applicants move him not a jot from his intended course, he looks at
+their claims with the "lack lustre eye" of prefessional indifference.
+Power and influence apart, his next strongest passion is to indulge in
+the exercise of professional learning and skill, to amuse himself with
+the dry details and intricate windings of the law of equity. He delights
+to balance a straw, to see a feather turn the scale, or make it even
+again; and divides and subdivides a scruple to the smallest fraction. He
+unravels the web of argument and pieces it together again; folds it up
+and lays it aside, that he may examine it more at his leisure. He hugs
+indecision to his breast, and takes home a modest doubt or a nice point
+to solace himself with it in protracted, luxurious dalliance. Delay
+seems, in his mind, to be of the very essence of justice. He no more
+hurries through a question than if no one was waiting for the result,
+and he was merely a _dilettanti_, fanciful judge, who played at my Lord
+Chancellor, and busied himself with quibbles and punctilios as an idle
+hobby and harmless illusion. The phlegm of the Chancellor's disposition
+gives one almost a surfeit of impartiality and candour: we are sick
+of the eternal poise of childish dilatoriness; and would wish law and
+justice to be decided at once by a cast of the dice (as they were in
+Rabelais) rather than be kept in frivolous and tormenting suspense. But
+there is a limit even to this extreme refinement and scrupulousness
+of the Chancellor. The understanding acts only in the absence of the
+passions. At the approach of the loadstone, the needle trembles, and
+points to it. The air of a political question has a wonderful tendency
+to brace and quicken the learned Lord's faculties. The breath of a court
+speedily oversets a thousand objections, and scatters the cobwebs of his
+brain. The secret wish of power is a thumping _make-weight,_ where all
+is so nicely-balanced beforehand. In the case of a celebrated beauty and
+heiress, and the brother of a Noble Lord, the Chancellor hesitated long,
+and went through the forms, as usual: but who ever doubted, where all
+this indecision would end? No man in his senses, for a single instant!
+We shall not press this point, which is rather a ticklish one. Some
+persons thought that from entertaining a fellow-feeling on the subject,
+the Chancellor would have been ready to favour the Poet-Laureat's
+application to the Court of Chancery for an injunction against Wat
+Tyler. His Lordship's sentiments on such points are not so variable, he
+has too much at stake. He recollected the year 1794, though Mr. Southey
+had forgotten it!--
+
+The personal always prevails over the intellectual, where the latter is
+not backed by strong feeling and principle. Where remote and speculative
+objects do not excite a predominant interest and passion, gross and
+immediate ones are sure to carry the day, even in ingenuous and
+well-disposed minds. The will yields necessarily to some motive or
+other; and where the public good or distant consequences excite no
+sympathy in the breast, either from short-sightedness or an easiness of
+temperament that shrinks from any violent effort or painful emotion,
+self-interest, indolence, the opinion of others, a desire to please, the
+sense of personal obligation, come in and fill up the void of public
+spirit, patriotism, and humanity. The best men in the world in their own
+natural dispositions or in private life (for this reason) often become
+the most dangerous public characters, from their pliancy to the unruly
+passions of others, and from their having no set-off in strong moral
+_stamina_ to the temptations that are held out to them, if, as is
+frequently the case, they are men of versatile talent or patient
+industry.--Lord Eldon has one of the best-natured faces in the world;
+it is pleasant to meet him in the street, plodding along with an
+umbrella under his arm, without one trace of pride, of spleen, or
+discontent in his whole demeanour, void of offence, with almost rustic
+simplicity and honesty of appearance--a man that makes friends at first
+sight, and could hardly make enemies, if he would; and whose only fault
+is that he cannot say _Nay_ to power, or subject himself to an unkind
+word or look from a King or a Minister. He is a thorough-bred Tory.
+Others boggle or are at fault in their career, or give back at a pinch,
+they split into different factions, have various objects to distract
+them, their private friendships or antipathies stand in their way; but
+he has never flinched, never gone back, never missed his way, he is an
+_out-and-outer_ in this respect, his allegiance has been without flaw,
+like "one entire and perfect chrysolite," his implicit understanding is
+a kind of taffeta-lining to the Crown, his servility has assumed an air
+of the most determined independence, and he has
+
+  "Read his history in a Prince's eyes!"--
+
+There has been no stretch of power attempted in his time that he has not
+seconded: no existing abuse, so odious or so absurd, that he has not
+sanctioned it. He has gone the whole length of the most unpopular
+designs of Ministers. When the heavy artillery of interest, power, and
+prejudice is brought into the field, the paper pellets of the brain go
+for nothing: his labyrinth of nice, lady-like doubts explodes like a
+mine of gun-powder. The Chancellor may weigh and palter--the courtier
+is decided, the politician is firm, and rivetted to his place in the
+Cabinet! On all the great questions that have divided party opinion or
+agitated the public mind, the Chancellor has been found uniformly and
+without a single exception on the side of prerogative and power,
+and against every proposal for the advancement of freedom. He was a
+strenuous supporter of the wars and coalitions against the principles of
+liberty abroad; he has been equally zealous in urging or defending every
+act and infringement of the Constitution, for abridging it at home: he
+at the same time opposes every amelioration of the penal laws, on the
+alleged ground of his abhorrence of even the shadow of innovation: he
+has studiously set his face against Catholic emancipation; he laboured
+hard in his vocation to prevent the abolition of the Slave Trade; he was
+Attorney General in the trials for High Treason in 1794; and the other
+day in giving his opinion on the Queen's Trial, shed tears and protested
+his innocence before God! This was natural and to be expected; but
+on all occasions he is to be found at his post, true to the call of
+prejudice, of power, to the will of others and to his own interest.
+In the whole of his public career, and with all the goodness of his
+disposition, he has not shewn "so small a drop of pity as a wren's eye."
+He seems to be on his guard against every thing liberal and humane as
+his weak side. Others relax in their obsequiousness either from satiety
+or disgust, or a hankering after popularity, or a wish to be thought
+above narrow prejudices. The Chancellor alone is fixed and immoveable.
+Is it want of understanding or of principle? No--it is want of
+imagination, a phlegmatic habit, an excess of false complaisance and
+good-nature ... Common humanity and justice are little better than vague
+terms to him: he acts upon his immediate feelings and least irksome
+impulses. The King's hand is velvet to the touch--the Woolsack is a
+seat of honour and profit! That is all he knows about the matter. As to
+abstract metaphysical calculations, the ox that stands staring at the
+corner of the street troubles his head as much about them as he does:
+yet this last is a very good sort of animal with no harm or malice in
+him, unless he is goaded on to mischief, and then it is necessary to
+keep out of his way, or warn others against him!
+
+Mr. Wilberforce is a less perfect character in his way. He acts from
+mixed motives. He would willingly serve two masters, God and Mammon. He
+is a person of many excellent and admirable qualifications, but he has
+made a mistake in wishing to reconcile those that are incompatible.
+He has a most winning eloquence, specious, persuasive, familiar,
+silver-tongued, is amiable, charitable, conscientious, pious, loyal,
+humane, tractable to power, accessible to popularity, honouring the
+king, and no less charmed with the homage of his fellow-citizens. "What
+lacks he then?" Nothing but an economy of good parts. By aiming at
+too much, he has spoiled all, and neutralised what might have been an
+estimable character, distinguished by signal services to mankind. A
+man must take his choice not only between virtue and vice, but between
+different virtues. Otherwise, he will not gain his own approbation, or
+secure the respect of others. The graces and accomplishments of private
+life mar the man of business and the statesman. There is a severity, a
+sternness, a self-denial, and a painful sense of duty required in
+the one, which ill befits the softness and sweetness which should
+characterise the other. Loyalty, patriotism, friendship, humanity, are
+all virtues; but may they not sometimes clash? By being unwilling to
+forego the praise due to any, we may forfeit the reputation of all; and
+instead of uniting the suffrages of the whole world in our favour, we
+may end in becoming a sort of bye-word for affectation, cant, hollow
+professions, trimming, fickleness, and effeminate imbecility. It is best
+to choose and act up to some one leading character, as it is best to
+have some settled profession or regular pursuit in life.
+
+We can readily believe that Mr. Wilberforce's first object and principle
+of action is to do what he thinks right: his next (and that we fear is
+of almost equal weight with the first) is to do what will be thought so
+by other people. He is always at a game of _hawk and buzzard_ between
+these two: his "conscience will not budge," unless the world goes with
+it. He does not seem greatly to dread the denunciation in Scripture,
+but rather to court it--"Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of
+you!" We suspect he is not quite easy in his mind, because West-India
+planters and Guinea traders do not join in his praise. His ears are not
+strongly enough tuned to drink in the execrations of the spoiler and the
+oppressor as the sweetest music. It is not enough that one half of the
+human species (the images of God carved in ebony, as old Fuller calls
+them) shout his name as a champion and a saviour through vast burning
+zones, and moisten their parched lips with the gush of gratitude for
+deliverance from chains--he must have a Prime-Minister drink his health
+at a Cabinet-dinner for aiding to rivet on those of his country and
+of Europe! He goes hand and heart along with Government in all their
+notions of legitimacy and political aggrandizement, in the hope that
+they will leave him a sort of _no-man's ground_ of humanity in the Great
+Desert, where his reputation for benevolence and public spirit may
+spring up and flourish, till its head touches the clouds, and it
+stretches out its branches to the farthest part of the earth. He has
+no mercy on those who claim a property in negro-slaves as so much
+live-stock on their estates; the country rings with the applause of
+his wit, his eloquence, and his indignant appeals to common sense and
+humanity on this subject--but not a word has he to say, not a whisper
+does he breathe against the claim set up by the Despots of the Earth
+over their Continental subjects, but does every thing in his power to
+confirm and sanction it! He must give no offence. Mr. Wilberforce's
+humanity will go all lengths that it can with safety and discretion: but
+it is not to be supposed that it should lose him his seat for Yorkshire,
+the smile of Majesty, or the countenance of the loyal and pious. He is
+anxious to do all the good he can without hurting himself or his fair
+fame. His conscience and his character compound matters very amicably.
+He rather patronises honesty than is a martyr to it. His patriotism, his
+philanthropy are not so ill-bred, as to quarrel with his loyalty or to
+banish him from the first circles. He preaches vital Christianity to
+untutored savages; and tolerates its worst abuses in civilized states.
+He thus shews his respect for religion without offending the clergy, or
+circumscribing the sphere of his usefulness. There is in all this an
+appearance of a good deal of cant and tricking. His patriotism may
+be accused of being servile; his humanity ostentatious; his loyalty
+conditional; his religion a mixture of fashion and fanaticism. "Out upon
+such half-faced fellowship!" Mr. Wilberforce has the pride of being
+familiar with the great; the vanity of being popular; the conceit of an
+approving conscience. He is coy in his approaches to power; his public
+spirit is, in a manner, _under the rose_. He thus reaps the credit
+of independence, without the obloquy; and secures the advantages of
+servility, without incurring any obligations. He has two strings to his
+bow:--he by no means neglects his worldly interests, while he expects
+a bright reversion in the skies. Mr. Wilberforce is far from being
+a hypocrite; but he is, we think, as fine a specimen of _moral
+equivocation_ as can well be conceived. A hypocrite is one who is the
+very reverse of, or who despises the character he pretends to be: Mr.
+Wilberforce would be all that he pretends to be, and he is it in fact,
+as far as words, plausible theories, good inclinations, and easy
+services go, but not in heart and soul, or so as to give up the
+appearance of any one of his pretensions to preserve the reality of any
+other. He carefully chooses his ground to fight the battles of
+loyalty, religion, and humanity, and it is such as is always safe and
+advantageous to himself! This is perhaps hardly fair, and it is of
+dangerous or doubtful tendency. Lord Eldon, for instance, is known to be
+a thorough-paced ministerialist: his opinion is only that of his party.
+But Mr. Wilberforce is not a party-man. He is the more looked up to
+on this account, but not with sufficient reason. By tampering with
+different temptations and personal projects, he has all the air of the
+most perfect independence, and gains a character for impartiality and
+candour, when he is only striking a balance in his mind between the
+_éclat_ of differing from a Minister on some 'vantage ground, and the
+risk or odium that may attend it. He carries all the weight of his
+artificial popularity over to the Government on vital points and
+hard-run questions; while they, in return, lend him a little of the
+gilding of court-favour to set off his disinterested philanthropy and
+tramontane enthusiasm. As a leader or a follower, he makes an odd jumble
+of interests. By virtue of religious sympathy, he has brought the Saints
+over to the side of the abolition of Negro slavery. This his adversaries
+think hard and stealing a march upon them. What have the SAINTS to do
+with freedom or reform of any kind?--Mr. Wilberforce's style of
+speaking is not quite _parliamentary_, it is halfway between that and
+_evangelical_. He is altogether a _double-entendre:_ the very tone of
+his voice is a _double-entendre._ It winds, and undulates, and glides
+up and down on texts of Scripture, and scraps from Paley, and trite
+sophistry, and pathetic appeals to his hearers in a faltering,
+inprogressive, sidelong way, like those birds of weak wing, that are
+borne from their strait-forward course
+
+  "By every little breath that under heaven is blown."
+
+Something of this fluctuating, time-serving principle was visible even
+in the great question of the Abolition of the Slave Trade. He was, at
+one time, half inclined to surrender it into Mr. Pitt's dilatory hands,
+and seemed to think the gloss of novelty was gone from it, and the gaudy
+colouring of popularity sunk into the _sable_ ground from which it rose!
+It was, however, persisted in and carried to a triumphant conclusion.
+Mr. Wilberforce said too little on this occasion of one, compared with
+whom he was but the frontispiece to that great chapter in the history of
+the world--the mask, the varnishing, and painting--the man that effected
+it by Herculean labours of body, and equally gigantic labours of mind
+was Clarkson, the true Apostle of human Redemption on that occasion, and
+who, it is remarkable, resembles in his person and lineaments more than
+one of the Apostles in the _Cartoons_ of Raphael. He deserves to be
+added to the Twelve![A]
+
+
+[Footnote A: After all, the best as well as most amusing comment on the
+character just described was that made by Sheridan, who being picked up
+in no very creditable plight by the watch, and asked rather roughly who
+he was, made answer--"I am Mr. Wilberforce!" The guardians of the night
+conducted him home with all the honours due to Grace and Nature.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+MR. SOUTHEY.
+
+
+Mr. Southey, as we formerly remember to have seen him, had a hectic
+flush upon his cheek, a roving fire in his eye, a falcon glance, a look
+at once aspiring and dejected--it was the look that had been impressed
+upon his face by the events that marked the outset of his life, it was
+the dawn of Liberty that still tinged his cheek, a smile betwixt hope
+and sadness that still played upon his quivering lip. Mr. Southey's mind
+is essentially sanguine, even to over-weeningness. It is prophetic of
+good; it cordially embraces it; it casts a longing, lingering look after
+it, even when it is gone for ever. He cannot bear to give up the thought
+of happiness, his confidence in his fellow-man, when all else despair.
+It is the very element, "where he must live or have no life at all."
+While he supposed it possible that a better form of society could be
+introduced than any that had hitherto existed, while the light of the
+French Revolution beamed into his soul (and long after, it was seen
+reflected on his brow, like the light of setting suns on the peak of
+some high mountain, or lonely range of clouds, floating in purer ether!)
+while he had this hope, this faith in man left, he cherished it with
+child-like simplicity, he clung to it with the fondness of a lover, he
+was an enthusiast, a fanatic, a leveller; he stuck at nothing that
+he thought would banish all pain and misery from the world--in his
+impatience of the smallest error or injustice, he would have sacrificed
+himself and the existing generation (a holocaust) to his devotion to the
+right cause. But when he once believed after many staggering doubts and
+painful struggles, that this was no longer possible, when his chimeras
+and golden dreams of human perfectibility vanished from him, he turned
+suddenly round, and maintained that "whatever _is_, is right." Mr.
+Southey has not fortitude of mind, has not patience to think that evil
+is inseparable from the nature of things. His irritable sense rejects
+the alternative altogether, as a weak stomach rejects the food that
+is distasteful to it. He hopes on against hope, he believes in all
+unbelief. He must either repose on actual or on imaginary good. He
+missed his way in _Utopia_, he has found it at Old Sarum--
+
+  "His generous _ardour_ no cold medium knows:"
+
+his eagerness admits of no doubt or delay. He is ever in extremes, and
+ever in the wrong!
+
+The reason is, that not truth, but self-opinion is the ruling principle
+of Mr. Southey's mind. The charm of novelty, the applause of the
+multitude, the sanction of power, the venerableness of antiquity, pique,
+resentment, the spirit of contradiction have a good deal to do with his
+preferences. His inquiries are partial and hasty: his conclusions raw
+and unconcocted, and with a considerable infusion of whim and humour and
+a monkish spleen. His opinions are like certain wines, warm and generous
+when new; but they will not keep, and soon turn flat or sour, for want
+of a stronger spirit of the understanding to give a body to them. He
+wooed Liberty as a youthful lover, but it was perhaps more as a mistress
+than a bride; and he has since wedded with an elderly and not very
+reputable lady, called Legitimacy. _A wilful man_, according to the
+Scotch proverb, _must have his way_. If it were the cause to which he
+was sincerely attached, he would adhere to it through good report and
+evil report; but it is himself to whom he does homage, and would have
+others do so; and he therefore changes sides, rather than submit to
+apparent defeat or temporary mortification. Abstract principle has
+no rule but the understood distinction between right and wrong; the
+indulgence of vanity, of caprice, or prejudice is regulated by the
+convenience or bias of the moment. The temperament of our politician's
+mind is poetical, not philosophical. He is more the creature of impulse,
+than he is of reflection. He invents the unreal, he embellishes the
+false with the glosses of fancy, but pays little attention to "the words
+of truth and soberness." His impressions are accidental, immediate,
+personal, instead of being permanent and universal. Of all mortals he is
+surely the most impatient of contradiction, even when he has completely
+turned the tables on himself. Is not this very inconsistency the reason?
+Is he not tenacious of his opinions, in proportion as they are brittle
+and hastily formed? Is he not jealous of the grounds of his belief,
+because he fears they will not bear inspection, or is conscious he
+has shifted them? Does he not confine others to the strict line of
+orthodoxy, because he has himself taken every liberty? Is he not afraid
+to look to the right or the left, lest he should see the ghosts of his
+former extravagances staring him in the face? Does he not refuse to
+tolerate the smallest shade of difference in others, because he feels
+that he wants the utmost latitude of construction for differing so
+widely from himself? Is he not captious, dogmatical, petulant in
+delivering his sentiments, according as he has been inconsistent,
+rash, and fanciful in adopting them? He maintains that there can be no
+possible ground for differing from him, because he looks only at his
+own side of the question! He sets up his own favourite notions as the
+standard of reason and honesty, because he has changed from one extreme
+to another! He treats his opponents with contempt, because he is himself
+afraid of meeting with disrespect! He says that "a Reformer is a worse
+character than a house-breaker," in order to stifle the recollection
+that he himself once was one!
+
+We must say that "we relish Mr. Southey more in the Reformer" than in
+his lately acquired, but by no means natural or becoming character of
+poet-laureat and courtier. He may rest assured that a garland of wild
+flowers suits him better than the laureat-wreath: that his pastoral odes
+and popular inscriptions were far more adapted to his genius than
+his presentation-poems. He is nothing akin to birth-day suits and
+drawing-room fopperies. "He is nothing, if not fantastical." In his
+figure, in his movements, in his sentiments, he is sharp and angular,
+quaint and eccentric. Mr. Southey is not of the court, courtly. Every
+thing of him and about him is from the people. He is not classical, he
+is not legitimate. He is not a man cast in the mould of other men's
+opinions: he is not shaped on any model: he bows to no authority: he
+yields only to his own wayward peculiarities. He is wild, irregular,
+singular, extreme. He is no formalist, not he! All is crude and chaotic,
+self-opinionated, vain. He wants proportion, keeping, system, standard
+rules. He is not _teres et rotundus_. Mr. Southey walks with his chin
+erect through the streets of London, and with an umbrella sticking out
+under his arm, in the finest weather. He has not sacrificed to the
+Graces, nor studied decorum. With him every thing is projecting,
+starting from its place, an episode, a digression, a poetic license. He
+does not move in any given orbit, but like a falling star, shoots from
+his sphere. He is pragmatical, restless, unfixed, full of experiments,
+beginning every thing a-new, wiser than his betters, judging for
+himself, dictating to others. He is decidedly _revolutionary_. He may
+have given up the reform of the State: but depend upon it, he has some
+other _hobby_ of the same kind. Does he not dedicate to his present
+Majesty that extraordinary poem on the death of his father, called _The
+Vision of Judgment_, as a specimen of what might be done in English
+hexameters? In a court-poem all should be trite and on an approved
+model. He might as well have presented himself at the levee in a fancy
+or masquerade dress. Mr. Southey was not _to try conclusions_ with
+Majesty--still less on such an occasion. The extreme freedoms with
+departed greatness, the party-petulance carried to the Throne of
+Grace, the unchecked indulgence of private humour, the assumption of
+infallibility and even of the voice of Heaven in this poem, are pointed
+instances of what we have said. They shew the singular state of
+over-excitement of Mr. Southey's mind, and the force of old habits of
+independent and unbridled thinking, which cannot be kept down even
+in addressing his Sovereign! Look at Mr. Southey's larger poems, his
+_Kehama_, his _Thalaba_, his _Madoc_, his _Roderic_. Who will deny the
+spirit, the scope, the splendid imagery, the hurried and startling
+interest that pervades them? Who will say that they are not sustained on
+fictions wilder than his own Glendoveer, that they are not the daring
+creations of a mind curbed by no law, tamed by no fear, that they are
+not rather like the trances than the waking dreams of genius, that
+they are not the very paradoxes of poetry? All this is very well, very
+intelligible, and very harmless, if we regard the rank excrescences of
+Mr. Southey's poetry, like the red and blue flowers in corn, as the
+unweeded growth of a luxuriant and wandering fancy; or if we allow
+the yeasty workings of an ardent spirit to ferment and boil over--the
+variety, the boldness, the lively stimulus given to the mind may then
+atone for the violation of rules and the offences to bed-rid authority;
+but not if our poetic libertine sets up for a law-giver and judge, or an
+apprehender of vagrants in the regions either of taste or opinion. Our
+motley gentleman deserves the strait-waistcoat, if he is for setting
+others in the stocks of servility, or condemning them to the pillory
+for a new mode of rhyme or reason. Or if a composer of sacred Dramas on
+classic models, or a translator of an old Latin author (that will hardly
+bear translation) or a vamper-up of vapid cantos and Odes set to music,
+were to turn pander to prescription and palliater of every dull,
+incorrigible abuse, it would not be much to be wondered at or even
+regretted. But in Mr. Southey it was a lamentable falling-off. It is
+indeed to be deplored, it is a stain on genius, a blow to humanity, that
+the author of _Joan of Arc_--that work in which the love of Liberty is
+exhaled like the breath of spring, mild, balmy, heaven-born, that is
+full of tears and virgin-sighs, and yearnings of affection after truth
+and good, gushing warm and crimsoned from the heart--should ever after
+turn to folly, or become the advocate of a rotten cause. After giving up
+his heart to that subject, he ought not (whatever others might do) ever
+to have set his foot within the threshold of a court. He might be sure
+that he would not gain forgiveness or favour by it, nor obtain a single
+cordial smile from greatness. All that Mr. Southey is or that he does
+best, is independent, spontaneous, free as the vital air he draws--when
+he affects the courtier or the sophist, he is obliged to put a
+constraint upon himself, to hold in his breath, he loses his genius,
+and offers a violence to his nature. His characteristic faults are the
+excess of a lively, unguarded temperament:--oh! let them not degenerate
+into cold-blooded, heartless vices! If we speak or have ever spoken of
+Mr. Southey with severity, it is with "the malice of old friends," for
+we count ourselves among his sincerest and heartiest well-wishers. But
+while he himself is anomalous, incalculable, eccentric, from youth to
+age (the _Wat Tyler_ and the _Vision of Judgment_ are the Alpha
+and Omega of his disjointed career) full of sallies of humour, of
+ebullitions of spleen, making _jets-d'eaux,_ cascades, fountains, and
+water-works of his idle opinions, he would shut up the wits of others in
+leaden cisterns, to stagnate and corrupt, or bury them under ground--
+
+  "Far from the sun and summer gale!"
+
+He would suppress the freedom of wit and humour, of which he has set the
+example, and claim a privilege for playing antics. He would introduce an
+uniformity of intellectual weights and measures, of irregular metres and
+settled opinions, and enforce it with a high hand. This has been judged
+hard by some, and has brought down a severity of recrimination, perhaps
+disproportioned to the injury done. "Because he is virtuous," (it has
+been asked,) "are there to be no more cakes and ale?" Because he is
+loyal, are we to take all our notions from the _Quarterly Review_?
+Because he is orthodox, are we to do nothing but read the _Book of the
+Church_? We declare we think his former poetical scepticism was not only
+more amiable, but had more of the spirit of religion in it, implied a
+more heartfelt trust in nature and providence than his present bigotry.
+We are at the same time free to declare that we think his articles in
+the _Quarterly Review,_ notwithstanding their virulence and the talent
+they display, have a tendency to qualify its most pernicious effects.
+They have redeeming traits in them. "A little leaven leaveneth the whole
+lump:" and the spirit of humanity (thanks to Mr. Southey) is not quite
+expelled from the _Quarterly Review_. At the corner of his pen, "there
+hangs a vapourous drop profound" of independence and liberality, which
+falls upon its pages, and oozes out through the pores of the public
+mind. There is a fortunate difference between writers whose hearts are
+naturally callous to truth, and whose understandings are hermetically
+sealed against all impressions but those of self-interest, and a man
+like Mr. Southey. _Once a philanthropist and always a philanthropist_.
+No man can entirely baulk his nature: it breaks out in spite of him.
+In all those questions, where the spirit of contradiction does not
+interfere, on which he is not sore from old bruises, or sick from the
+extravagance of youthful intoxication, as from a last night's debauch,
+our "laureate" is still bold, free, candid, open to conviction, a
+reformist without knowing it. He does not advocate the slave-trade, he
+does not arm Mr. Malthus's revolting ratios with his authority, he does
+not strain hard to deluge Ireland with blood. On such points, where
+humanity has not become obnoxious, where liberty has not passed into a
+by-word, Mr. Southey is still liberal and humane. The elasticity of his
+spirit is unbroken: the bow recoils to its old position. He still stands
+convicted of his early passion for inquiry and improvement. He was not
+regularly articled as a Government-tool!--Perhaps the most pleasing and
+striking of all Mr. Southey's poems are not his triumphant taunts hurled
+against oppression, are not his glowing effusions to Liberty, but
+those in which, with a mild melancholy, he seems conscious of his own
+infirmities of temper, and to feel a wish to correct by thought and
+time the precocity and sharpness of his disposition. May the quaint but
+affecting aspiration expressed in one of these be fulfilled, that as
+he mellows into maturer age, all such asperities may wear off, and he
+himself become
+
+  "Like the high leaves upon the holly-tree!"
+
+Mr. Southey's prose-style can scarcely be too much praised. It is plain,
+clear, pointed, familiar, perfectly modern in its texture, but with
+a grave and sparkling admixture of _archaisms_ in its ornaments and
+occasional phraseology. He is the best and most natural prose-writer of
+any poet of the day; we mean that he is far better than Lord Byron,
+Mr. Wordsworth, or Mr. Coleridge, for instance. The manner is perhaps
+superior to the matter, that is, in his Essays and Reviews. There is
+rather a want of originality and even of _impetus_: but there is no want
+of playful or biting satire, of ingenuity, of casuistry, of
+
+learning and of information. He is "full of wise saws and modern" (as
+well as ancient) "instances." Mr. Southey may not always convince his
+opponents; but he seldom fails to stagger, never to gall them. In a
+word, we may describe his style by saying that it has not the body or
+thickness of port wine, but is like clear sherry with kernels of
+old authors thrown into it!--He also excels as an historian and
+prose-translator. His histories abound in information, and exhibit
+proofs of the most indefatigable patience and industry. By no uncommon
+process of the mind, Mr. Southey seems willing to steady the extreme
+levity of his opinions and feelings by an appeal to facts. His
+translations of the Spanish and French romances are also executed _con
+amore_, and with the literal fidelity and care of a mere linguist. That
+of the _Cid_, in particular, is a masterpiece. Not a word could be
+altered for the better, in the old scriptural style which it adopts in
+conformity to the original. It is no less interesting in itself, or as a
+record of high and chivalrous feelings and manners, than it is worthy of
+perusal as a literary curiosity.
+
+Mr. Southey's conversation has a little resemblance to a common-place
+book; his habitual deportment to a piece of clock-work. He is not
+remarkable either as a reasoner or an observer: but he is quick,
+unaffected, replete with anecdote, various and retentive in his reading,
+and exceedingly happy in his play upon words, as most scholars are who
+give their minds this sportive turn. We have chiefly seen Mr. Southey
+in company where few people appear to advantage, we mean in that of Mr.
+Coleridge. He has not certainly the same range of speculation, nor
+the same flow of sounding words, but he makes up by the details of
+knowledge, and by a scrupulous correctness of statement for what he
+wants in originality of thought, or impetuous declamation. The tones of
+Mr. Coleridge's voice are eloquence: those of Mr. Southey are meagre,
+shrill, and dry. Mr. Coleridge's _forte_ is conversation, and he is
+conscious of this: Mr. Southey evidently considers writing as his
+strong-hold, and if gravelled in an argument, or at a loss for an
+explanation, refers to something he has written on the subject, or
+brings out his port-folio, doubled down in dog-ears, in confirmation of
+some fact. He is scholastic and professional in his ideas. He sets more
+value on what he writes than on what he says: he is perhaps prouder of
+his library than of his own productions--themselves a library! He is
+more simple in his manners than his friend Mr. Coleridge; but at the
+same time less cordial or conciliating. He is less vain, or has less
+hope of pleasing, and therefore lays himself less out to please. There
+is an air of condescension in his civility. With a tall, loose figure, a
+peaked austerity of countenance, and no inclination to _embonpoint_,
+you would say he has something puritanical, something ascetic in his
+appearance. He answers to Mandeville's description of Addison, "a parson
+in a tye-wig." He is not a boon companion, nor does he indulge in the
+pleasures of the table, nor in any other vice; nor are we aware that Mr.
+Southey is chargeable with any human frailty but--_want of charity_!
+Having fewer errors to plead guilty to, he is less lenient to those of
+others. He was born an age too late. Had he lived a century or two ago,
+he would have been a happy as well as blameless character. But the
+distraction of the time has unsettled him, and the multiplicity of his
+pretensions have jostled with each other. No man in our day (at least no
+man of genius) has led so uniformly and entirely the life of a scholar
+from boyhood to the present hour, devoting himself to learning with
+the enthusiasm of an early love, with the severity and constancy of a
+religious vow--and well would it have been for him if he had confined
+himself to this, and not undertaken to pull down or to patch up the
+State! However irregular in his opinions, Mr. Southey is constant,
+unremitting, mechanical in his studies, and the performance of his
+duties. There is nothing Pindaric or Shandean here. In all the relations
+and charities of private life, he is correct, exemplary, generous, just.
+We never heard a single impropriety laid to his charge; and if he has
+many enemies, few men can boast more numerous or stauncher friends.--The
+variety and piquancy of his writings form a striking contrast to the
+mode in which they are produced. He rises early, and writes or reads
+till breakfast-time. He writes or reads after breakfast till dinner,
+after dinner till tea, and from tea till bed-time--
+
+  "And follows so the ever-running year
+  With profitable labour to his grave--"
+
+on Derwent's banks, beneath the foot of Skiddaw. Study serves him for
+business, exercise, recreation. He passes from verse to prose, from
+history to poetry, from reading to writing, by a stop-watch. He writes a
+fair hand, without blots, sitting upright in his chair, leaves off when
+he comes to the bottom of the page, and changes the subject for another,
+as opposite as the Antipodes. His mind is after all rather the recipient
+and transmitter of knowledge, than the originator of it. He has hardly
+grasp of thought enough to arrive at any great leading truth. His
+passions do not amount to more than irritability. With some gall in his
+pen, and coldness in his manner, he has a great deal of kindness in his
+heart. Rash in his opinions, he is steady in his attachments--and is a
+man, in many particulars admirable, in all respectable--his political
+inconsistency alone excepted!
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+MR. T. MOORE.--MR. LEIGH HUNT.
+
+
+  "Or winglet of the fairy humming-bird,
+  Like atoms of the rainbow fluttering round."
+
+  CAMPBELL.
+
+The lines placed at the head of this sketch, from a contemporary writer,
+appear to us very descriptive of Mr. Moore's poetry. His verse is like
+a shower of beauty; a dance of images; a stream of music; or like the
+spray of the water-fall, tinged by the morning-beam with rosy light.
+The characteristic distinction of our author's style is this continuous
+and incessant flow of voluptuous thoughts and shining allusions. He
+ought to write with a crystal pen on silver paper. His subject is set
+off by a dazzling veil of poetic diction, like a wreath of flowers
+gemmed with innumerous dewdrops, that weep, tremble, and glitter in
+liquid softness and pearly light, while the song of birds ravishes
+the ear, and languid odours breathe around, and Aurora opens Heaven's
+smiling portals, Peris and nymphs peep through the golden glades, and an
+Angel's wing glances over the glossy scene.
+
+  "No dainty flower or herb that grows on ground,
+  No arboret with painted blossoms drest,
+  And smelling sweet, but there it might be found
+  To bud out fair, and its sweet smells throw all around.
+
+  No tree, whose branches did not bravely spring;
+  No branch, whereon a fine bird did not sit;
+  No bird, but did her shrill notes sweetly sing;
+  No song, but did contain a lovely dit:
+  Trees, branches, birds, and songs were framed fit
+  For to allure frail minds to careless ease."....
+
+Mr. Campbell's imagination is fastidious and select; and hence, though
+we meet with more exquisite beauties in his writings, we meet with
+them more rarely: there is comparatively a dearth of ornament. But Mr.
+Moore's strictest economy is "wasteful and superfluous excess:" he is
+always liberal, and never at a loss; for sooner than not stimulate and
+delight the reader, he is willing to be tawdry, or superficial, or
+common-place. His Muse must be fine at any rate, though she should
+paint, and wear cast-off decorations. Rather than have any lack of
+excitement, he repeats himself; and "Eden, and Eblis, and cherub-smiles"
+fill up the pauses of the sentiment with a sickly monotony.--It has been
+too much our author's object to pander to the artificial taste of the
+age; and his productions, however brilliant and agreeable, are in
+consequence somewhat meretricious and effeminate. It was thought
+formerly enough to have an occasionally fine passage in the progress of
+a story or a poem, and an occasionally striking image or expression in
+a fine passage or description. But this style, it seems, was to be
+exploded as rude, Gothic, meagre, and dry. Now all must be raised to
+the same tantalising and preposterous level. There must be no pause, no
+interval, no repose, no gradation. Simplicity and truth yield up the
+palm to affectation and grimace. The craving of the public mind after
+novelty and effect is a false and uneasy appetite that must be pampered
+with fine words at every step--we must be tickled with sound, startled
+with shew, and relieved by the importunate, uninterrupted display of
+fancy and verbal tinsel as much as possible from the fatigue of thought
+or shock of feeling. A poem is to resemble an exhibition of fireworks,
+with a continual explosion of quaint figures and devices, flash after
+flash, that surprise for the moment, and leave no trace of light or
+warmth behind them. Or modern poetry in its retrograde progress comes at
+last to be constructed on the principles of the modern OPERA, where an
+attempt is made to gratify every sense at every instant, and where the
+understanding alone is insulted and the heart mocked. It is in this
+view only that we can discover that Mr. Moore's poetry is vitiated or
+immoral,--it seduces the taste and enervates the imagination. It creates
+a false standard of reference, and inverts or decompounds the natural
+order of association, in which objects strike the thoughts and feelings.
+His is the poetry of the bath, of the toilette, of the saloon, of the
+fashionable world; not the poetry of nature, of the heart, or of human
+life. He stunts and enfeebles equally the growth of the imagination and
+the affections, by not taking the seed of poetry and sowing it in the
+ground of truth, and letting it expand in the dew and rain, and shoot up
+to heaven,
+
+  "And spread its sweet leaves to the air,
+  Or dedicate its beauty to the sun,"--
+
+instead of which he anticipates and defeats his own object, by plucking
+flowers and blossoms from the stem, and setting them in the ground of
+idleness and folly--or in the cap of his own vanity, where they soon
+wither and disappear, "dying or ere they sicken!" This is but a sort
+of child's play, a short-sighted ambition. In Milton we meet with many
+prosaic lines, either because the subject does not require raising or
+because they are necessary to connect the story, or serve as a relief to
+other passages--there is not such a thing to be found in all Mr. Moore's
+writings. His volumes present us with "a perpetual feast of nectar'd
+sweets"--but we cannot add,--"where no crude surfeit reigns." He indeed
+cloys with sweetness; he obscures with splendour; he fatigues with
+gaiety. We are stifled on beds of roses--we literally lie "on the rack
+of restless ecstacy." His flowery fancy "looks so fair and smells so
+sweet, that the sense aches at it." His verse droops and languishes
+under a load of beauty, like a bough laden with fruit. His gorgeous
+style is like "another morn risen on mid-noon." There is no passage
+that is not made up of blushing lines, no line that is not enriched with
+a sparkling metaphor, no image that is left unadorned with a double
+epithet--all his verbs, nouns, adjectives, are equally glossy, smooth,
+and beautiful. Every stanza is transparent with light, perfumed with
+odours, floating in liquid harmony, melting in luxurious, evanescent
+delights. His Muse is never contented with an offering from one sense
+alone, but brings another rifled charm to match it, and revels in
+a fairy round of pleasure. The interest is not dramatic, but
+melo-dramatic--it is a mixture of painting, poetry, and music, of the
+natural and preternatural, of obvious sentiment and romantic costume. A
+rose is a _Gul_, a nightingale a _Bulbul_. We might fancy ourselves in
+an eastern harem, amidst Ottomans, and otto of roses, and veils and
+spangles, and marble pillars, and cool fountains, and Arab maids and
+Genii, and magicians, and Peris, and cherubs, and what not? Mr. Moore
+has a little mistaken the art of poetry for the _cosmetic art_. He does
+not compose an historic group, or work out a single figure; but throws
+a variety of elementary sensations, of vivid impressions together, and
+calls it a description. He makes out an inventory of beauty--the smile
+on the lips, the dimple on the cheeks, _item_, golden locks, _item_, a
+pair of blue wings, _item_, a silver sound, with breathing fragrance and
+radiant light, and thinks it a character or a story. He gets together a
+number of fine things and fine names, and thinks that, flung on heaps,
+they make up a fine poem. This dissipated, fulsome, painted, patch-work
+style may succeed in the levity and languor of the _boudoir_, or might
+have been adapted to the Pavilions of royalty, but it is not the style
+of Parnassus, nor a passport to Immortality. It is not the taste of the
+ancients, "'tis not classical lore"--nor the fashion of Tibullus, or
+Theocritus, or Anacreon, or Virgil, or Ariosto, or Pope, or Byron, or
+any great writer among the living or the dead, but it is the style of
+our English Anacreon, and it is (or was) the fashion of the day! Let one
+example (and that an admired one) taken from _Lalla Rookh_, suffice to
+explain the mystery and soften the harshness of the foregoing criticism.
+
+  "Now upon Syria's land of roses
+  Softly the light of eve reposes,
+  And like a glory, the broad sun
+  Hangs over sainted Lebanon:
+  Whose head in wintry grandeur towers,
+  And whitens with eternal sleet,
+  While summer, in a vale of flowers,
+  Is sleeping rosy at his feet.
+  To one who look'd from upper air,
+  O'er all th' enchanted regions there,
+  How beauteous must have been the glow,
+  The life, the sparkling from below!
+  Fair gardens, shining streams, with ranks
+  Of golden melons on their banks,
+  More golden where the sun-light falls,--
+  Gay lizards, glittering on the walls
+  Of ruin'd shrines, busy and bright
+  As they were all alive with light;--
+  And yet more splendid, numerous flocks
+  Of pigeons, settling on the rocks,
+  With their rich, restless wings, that gleam
+  Variously in the crimson beam
+  Of the warm west, as if inlaid
+  With brilliants from the mine, or made
+  Of tearless rainbows, such as span
+  The unclouded skies of Peristan!
+  And then, the mingling sounds that come
+  Of shepherd's ancient reed, with hum
+  Of the wild bees of Palestine,
+  Banquetting through the flowery vales--
+  And, Jordan, those sweet banks of thine,
+  And woods, so full of nightingales."--
+
+The following lines are the very perfection of Della Cruscan sentiment,
+and affected orientalism of style. The Peri exclaims on finding that old
+talisman and hackneyed poetical machine, "a penitent tear"--
+
+  "Joy, joy forever! my task is done--
+  The gates are pass'd, and Heaven is won!
+  Oh! am I not happy? I am, I am--
+  To thee, sweet Eden! how dark and sad
+  Are the diamond turrets of Shadukiam,
+  And the fragrant bowers of Amberabad."
+
+There is in all this a play of fancy, a glitter of words, a shallowness
+of thought, and a want of truth and solidity that is wonderful, and
+that nothing but the heedless, rapid glide of the verse could render
+tolerable:----it seems that the poet, as well as the lover,
+
+  "May bestride the Gossamer,
+  That wantons in the idle, summer air,
+  And yet not fall, so light is vanity!"
+
+Mr. Moore ought not to contend with serious difficulties or with entire
+subjects. He can write verses, not a poem. There is no principle of
+massing or of continuity in his productions--neither height nor breadth
+nor depth of capacity. There is no truth of representation, no strong
+internal feeling--but a continual flutter and display of affected airs
+and graces, like a finished coquette, who hides the want of symmetry by
+extravagance of dress, and the want of passion by flippant forwardness
+and unmeaning sentimentality. All is flimsy, all is florid to excess.
+His imagination may dally with insect beauties, with Rosicrucian spells;
+may describe a butterfly's wing, a flower-pot, a fan: but it should not
+attempt to span the great outlines of nature, or keep pace with the
+sounding march of events, or grapple with the strong fibres of the human
+heart. The great becomes turgid in his hands, the pathetic insipid. If
+Mr. Moore were to describe the heights of Chimboraco, instead of the
+loneliness, the vastness and the shadowy might, he would only think
+of adorning it with roseate tints, like a strawberry-ice, and would
+transform a magician's fortress in the Himmalaya (stripped of its
+mysterious gloom and frowning horrors) into a jeweller's toy, to be set
+upon a lady's toilette. In proof of this, see above "the diamond turrets
+of Shadukiam," &c. The description of Mokanna in the fight, though
+it has spirit and grandeur of effect, has still a great alloy of the
+mock-heroic in it. The route of blood and death, which is otherwise well
+marked, is infested with a swarm of "fire-fly" fancies.
+
+  "In vain Mokanna, 'midst the general flight,
+  Stands, like the red moon, in some stormy night.
+  Among the fugitive clouds, that hurrying by,
+  Leave only her unshaken in the sky."
+
+This simile is fine, and would have been perfect, but that the moon is
+not red, and that she seems to hurry by the clouds, not they by her. The
+description of the warrior's youthful adversary,
+
+ ----"Whose coming seems
+  A light, a glory, such as breaks in dreams."--
+
+is fantastic and enervated--a field of battle has nothing to do with
+dreams:--and again, the two lines immediately after,
+
+  "And every sword, true as o'er billows dim
+  The needle tracks the load-star, following him"--
+
+are a mere piece of enigmatical ingenuity and scientific
+_mimminee-pimminee._
+
+We cannot except the _Irish Melodies_ from the same censure. If these
+national airs do indeed express the soul of impassioned feeling in his
+countrymen, the case of Ireland is hopeless. If these prettinesses pass
+for patriotism, if a country can heave from its heart's core only these
+vapid, varnished sentiments, lip-deep, and let its tears of blood
+evaporate in an empty conceit, let it be governed as it has been. There
+are here no tones to waken Liberty, to console Humanity. Mr. Moore
+converts the wild harp of Erin into a musical snuff-box[A]!--We _do_
+except from this censure the author's political squibs, and the "Two-
+penny Post-bag." These are essences, are "nests of spicery", bitter and
+sweet, honey and gall together. No one can so well describe the set
+speech of a dull formalist[B], or the flowing locks of a Dowager,
+
+  "In the manner of Ackermann's dresses for May."
+
+His light, agreeable, polished style pierces through the body of the
+court--hits off the faded graces of "an Adonis of fifty", weighs the
+vanity of fashion in tremulous scales, mimics the grimace of affectation
+and folly, shews up the littleness of the great, and spears a phalanx of
+statesmen with its glittering point as with a diamond broach.
+
+  "In choosing songs the Regent named
+  'Had I a heart for falsehood fram'd:'
+  While gentle Hertford begg'd and pray'd
+  For 'Young I am, and sore afraid.'"
+
+Nothing in Pope or Prior ever surpassed the delicate insinuation
+and adroit satire of these lines, and hundreds more of our author's
+composition. We wish he would not take pains to make us think of them
+with less pleasure than formerly.--The "Fudge Family" is in the same
+spirit, but with a little falling-off. There is too great a mixture of
+undisguised Jacobinism and fashionable _slang_. The "divine Fanny Bias"
+and "the mountains _à la Russe_" figure in somewhat quaintly with
+Buonaparte and the Bourbons. The poet also launches the lightning of
+political indignation; but it rather plays round and illumines his own
+pen than reaches the devoted heads at which it is aimed!
+
+Mr. Moore is in private life an amiable and estimable man. The
+embellished and voluptuous style of his poetry, his unpretending origin,
+and his _mignon_ figure soon introduced him to the notice of the
+great, and his gaiety, his wit, his good-humour, and many agreeable
+accomplishments fixed him there, the darling of his friends and the idol
+of fashion. If he is no longer familiar with Royalty as with his garter,
+the fault is not his--his adherence to his principles caused the
+separation--his love of his country was the cloud that intercepted the
+sunshine of court-favour. This is so far well. Mr. Moore vindicates his
+own dignity; but the sense of intrinsic worth, of wide-spread fame, and
+of the intimacy of the great makes him perhaps a little too fastidious
+and _exigeant_ as to the pretensions of others. He has been so long
+accustomed to the society of Whig Lords, and so enchanted by the smile
+of beauty and fashion, that he really fancies himself one of the _set_,
+to which he is admitted on sufferance, and tries very unnecessarily to
+keep others out of it. He talks familiarly of works that are or are
+not read "in _our_ circle;" and seated smiling and at his ease in a
+coronet-coach, enlivening the owner by his brisk sallies and Attic
+conceits, is shocked, as he passes, to see a Peer of the realm shake
+hands with a poet. There is a little indulgence of spleen and envy, a
+little servility and pandering to aristocratic pride in this proceeding.
+Is Mr. Moore bound to advise a Noble Poet to get as fast as possible out
+of a certain publication, lest he should not be able to give an
+account at Holland or at Lansdown House, how his friend Lord B----had
+associated himself with his friend L. H----? Is he afraid that the
+"Spirit of Monarchy" will eclipse the "Fables for the Holy Alliance" in
+virulence and plain speaking? Or are the members of the "Fudge Family"
+to secure a monopoly for the abuse of the Bourbons and the doctrine of
+Divine Right? Because he is genteel and sarcastic, may not others be
+paradoxical and argumentative? Or must no one bark at a Minister or
+General, unless they have been first dandled, like a little French
+pug-dog, in the lap of a lady of quality? Does Mr. Moore insist on the
+double claim of birth and genius as a title to respectability in all
+advocates of the popular side--but himself? Or is he anxious to keep the
+pretensions of his patrician and plebeian friends quite separate, so
+as to be himself the only point of union, a sort of _double meaning_,
+between the two? It is idle to think of setting bounds to the weakness
+and illusions of self-love as long as it is confined to a man's own
+breast; but it ought not to be made a plea for holding back the powerful
+hand that is stretched out to save another struggling with the tide
+of popular prejudice, who has suffered shipwreck of health, fame and
+fortune in a common cause, and who has deserved the aid and the good
+wishes of all who are (on principle) embarked in the same cause by equal
+zeal and honesty, if not by equal talents to support and to adorn it!
+
+We shall conclude the present article with a short notice of an
+individual who, in the cast of his mind and in political principle,
+bears no very remote resemblance to the patriot and wit just spoken
+of, and on whose merits we should descant at greater length, but that
+personal intimacy might be supposed to render us partial. It is well
+when personal intimacy produces this effect; and when the light, that
+dazzled us at a distance, does not on a closer inspection turn out an
+opaque substance. This is a charge that none of his friends will bring
+against Mr. Leigh Hunt. He improves upon acquaintance. The author
+translates admirably into the man. Indeed the very faults of his style
+are virtues in the individual. His natural gaiety and sprightliness of
+manner, his high animal spirits, and the _vinous_ quality of his mind,
+produce an immediate fascination and intoxication in those who come in
+contact with him, and carry off in society whatever in his writings may
+to some seem flat and impertinent. From great sanguineness of temper,
+from great quickness and unsuspecting simplicity, he runs on to the
+public as he does at his own fire-side, and talks about himself,
+forgetting that he is not always among friends. His look, his tone are
+required to point many things that he says: his frank, cordial manner
+reconciles you instantly to a little over-bearing, over-weening self-
+complacency. "To be admired, he needs but to be seen:" but perhaps he
+ought to be seen to be fully appreciated. No one ever sought his society
+who did not come away with a more favourable opinion of him: no one was
+ever disappointed, except those who had entertained idle prejudices
+against him. He sometimes trifles with his readers, or tires of
+a subject (from not being urged on by the stimulus of immediate
+sympathy)--but in conversation he is all life and animation, combining
+the vivacity of the school-boy with the resources of the wit and the
+taste of the scholar. The personal character, the spontaneous impulses,
+do not appear to excuse the author, unless you are acquainted with his
+situation and habits--like some proud beauty who gives herself what
+we think strange airs and graces under a mask, but who is instantly
+forgiven when she shews her face. We have said that Lord Byron is a
+sublime coxcomb: why should we not say that Mr. Hunt is a delightful
+one? There is certainly an exuberance of satisfaction in his manner
+which is more than the strict logical premises warrant, and which dull
+and phlegmatic constitutions know nothing of, and cannot understand till
+they see it. He is the only poet or literary man we ever knew who puts
+us in mind of Sir John Suckling or Killigrew or Carew; or who united
+rare intellectual acquirements with outward grace and natural gentility.
+Mr. Hunt ought to have been a gentleman born, and to have patronised men
+of letters. He might then have played, and sung, and laughed, and talked
+his life away; have written manly prose, elegant verse; and his _Story
+of Rimini_ would have been praised by Mr. Blackwood. As it is, there is
+no man now living who at the same time writes prose and verse so well,
+with the exception of Mr. Southey (an exception, we fear, that will be
+little palatable to either of these gentlemen). His prose writings,
+however, display more consistency of principle than the laureate's: his
+verses more taste. We will venture to oppose his Third Canto of the
+_Story of Rimini_ for classic elegance and natural feeling to any equal
+number of lines from Mr. Southey's Epics or from Mr. Moore's Lalla
+Rookh. In a more gay and conversational style of writing, we think his
+_Epistle to Lord Byron_ on his going abroad, is a masterpiece;--and the
+_Feast of the Poets_ has run through several editions. A light, familiar
+grace, and mild unpretending pathos are the characteristics of his more
+sportive or serious writings, whether in poetry or prose. A smile
+plays round the features of the one; a tear is ready to start from the
+thoughtful gaze of the other. He perhaps takes too little pains, and
+indulges in too much wayward caprice in both. A wit and a poet, Mr. Hunt
+is also distinguished by fineness of tact and sterling sense: he has
+only been a visionary in humanity, the fool of virtue. What then is the
+drawback to so many shining qualities, that has made them useless, or
+even hurtful to their owner? His crime is, to have been Editor of the
+_Examiner_ ten years ago, when some allusion was made in it to the age
+of the present king, and that, though his Majesty has grown older, our
+luckless politician is no wiser than he was then!
+
+
+[Footnote A: Compare his songs with Burns's.]
+
+[Footnote B:
+
+  "There was a little man, and he had a little soul,
+  And he said, Little soul, let us try," &c.--
+
+Parody on
+
+  "There was a little man, and he had a little gun."--
+
+One should think this exquisite ridicule of a pedantic effusion might
+have silenced for ever the automaton that delivered it: but the
+official personage in question at the close of the Session addressed an
+extra-official congratulation to the Prince Regent on a bill that had
+_not_ passed--as if to repeat and insist upon our errors were to justify
+them.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+ELIA, AND GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+
+
+
+So Mr. Charles Lamb and Mr. Washington Irvine choose to designate
+themselves; and as their lucubrations under one or other of these _noms
+de guerre_ have gained considerable notice from the public, we shall
+here attempt to discriminate their several styles and manner, and to
+point out the beauties and defects of each in treating of somewhat
+similar subjects.
+
+Mr. Irvine is, we take it, the more popular writer of the two, or a more
+general favourite: Mr. Lamb has more devoted, and perhaps more judicious
+partisans. Mr. Irvine is by birth an American, and has, as it were,
+_skimmed the cream_, and taken off patterns with great skill and
+cleverness, from our best known and happiest writers, so that their
+thoughts and almost their reputation are indirectly transferred to his
+page, and smile upon us from another hemisphere, like "the pale reflex
+of Cynthia's brow:" he succeeds to our admiration and our sympathy by a
+sort of prescriptive title and traditional privilege. Mr. Lamb, on the
+contrary, being "native to the manner here," though he too has borrowed
+from previous sources, instead of availing himself of the most popular
+and admired, has groped out his way, and made his most successful
+researches among the more obscure and intricate, though certainly not
+the least pithy or pleasant of our writers. Mr. Washington Irvine has
+culled and transplanted the flowers of modern literature, for the
+amusement of the general reader: Mr. Lamb has raked among the dust and
+cobwebs of a more remote period, has exhibited specimens of curious
+relics, and pored over moth-eaten, decayed manuscripts, for the benefit
+of the more inquisitive and discerning part of the public. Antiquity
+after a time has the grace of novelty, as old fashions revived are
+mistaken for new ones; and a certain quaintness and singularity of style
+is an agreeable relief to the smooth and insipid monotony of modern
+composition. Mr. Lamb has succeeded not by conforming to the _Spirit of
+the Age_, but in opposition to it. He does not march boldly along with
+the crowd, but steals off the pavement to pick his way in the contrary
+direction. He prefers _bye-ways_ to _highways_. When the full tide of
+human life pours along to some festive shew, to some pageant of a day,
+Elia would stand on one side to look over an old book-stall, or stroll
+down some deserted pathway in search of a pensive inscription over a
+tottering door-way, or some quaint device in architecture, illustrative
+of embryo art and ancient manners. Mr. Lamb has the very soul of an
+antiquarian, as this implies a reflecting humanity; the film of the past
+hovers for ever before him. He is shy, sensitive, the reverse of every
+thing coarse, vulgar, obtrusive, and _common-place_. He would fain
+"shuffle off this mortal coil", and his spirit clothes itself in the
+garb of elder time, homelier, but more durable. He is borne along with
+no pompous paradoxes, shines in no glittering tinsel of a fashionable
+phraseology; is neither fop nor sophist. He has none of the turbulence
+or froth of new-fangled opinions. His style runs pure and clear,
+though it may often take an underground course, or be conveyed through
+old-fashioned conduit-pipes. Mr. Lamb does not court popularity, nor
+strut in gaudy plumes, but shrinks from every kind of ostentatious and
+obvious pretension into the retirement of his own mind.
+
+  "The self-applauding bird, the peacock see:--
+  Mark what a sumptuous pharisee is he!
+  Meridian sun-beams tempt him to unfold
+  His radiant glories, azure, green, and gold:
+  He treads as if, some solemn music near,
+  His measured step were governed by his ear:
+  And seems to say--Ye meaner fowl, give place,
+  I am all splendour, dignity, and grace!
+  Not so the pheasant on his charms presumes,
+  Though he too has a glory in his plumes.
+  He, christian-like, retreats with modest mien
+  To the close copse or far sequestered green,
+  And shines without desiring to be seen."
+
+These lines well describe the modest and delicate beauties of Mr. Lamb's
+writings, contrasted with the lofty and vain-glorious pretensions of
+some of his contemporaries. This gentleman is not one of those who pay
+all their homage to the prevailing idol: he thinks that
+
+  "New-born gauds are made and moulded of things past."
+
+nor does he
+
+  "Give to dust that is a little gilt
+  More laud than gilt o'er-dusted."
+
+His convictions "do not in broad rumour lie," nor are they "set off to
+the world in the glistering foil" of fashion; but "live and breathe
+aloft in those pure eyes, and perfect judgment of all-seeing _time_."
+Mr. Lamb rather affects and is tenacious of the obscure and remote: of
+that which rests on its own intrinsic and silent merit; which scorns all
+alliance, or even the suspicion of owing any thing to noisy clamour, to
+the glare of circumstances. There is a fine tone of _chiaro-scuro_, a
+moral perspective in his writings. He delights to dwell on that which is
+fresh to the eye of memory; he yearns after and covets what soothes the
+frailty of human nature. That touches him most nearly which is withdrawn
+to a certain distance, which verges on the borders of oblivion:--that
+piques and provokes his fancy most, which is hid from a superficial
+glance. That which, though gone by, is still remembered, is in his view
+more genuine, and has given more "vital signs that it will live," than a
+thing of yesterday, that may be forgotten to-morrow. Death has in this
+sense the spirit of life in it; and the shadowy has to our author
+something substantial in it. Ideas savour most of reality in his mind;
+or rather his imagination loiters on the edge of each, and a page of his
+writings recals to our fancy the _stranger_ on the grate, fluttering in
+its dusky tensity, with its idle superstition and hospitable welcome!
+
+Mr. Lamb has a distaste to new faces, to new books, to new buildings, to
+new customs. He is shy of all imposing appearances, of all assumptions
+of self-importance, of all adventitious ornaments, of all mechanical
+advantages, even to a nervous excess. It is not merely that he does
+not rely upon, or ordinarily avail himself of them; he holds them in
+abhorrence, he utterly abjures and discards them, and places a great
+gulph between him and them. He disdains all the vulgar artifices of
+authorship, all the cant of criticism, and helps to notoriety. He has no
+grand swelling theories to attract the visionary and the enthusiast, no
+passing topics to allure the thoughtless and the vain. He evades the
+present, he mocks the future. His affections revert to, and settle on
+the past, but then, even this must have something personal and local in
+it to interest him deeply and thoroughly; he pitches his tent in the
+suburbs of existing manners; brings down the account of character to the
+few straggling remains of the last generation; seldom ventures beyond
+the bills of mortality, and occupies that nice point between egotism
+and disinterested humanity. No one makes the tour of our southern
+metropolis, or describes the manners of the last age, so well as Mr.
+Lamb--with so fine, and yet so formal an air--with such vivid obscurity,
+with such arch piquancy, such picturesque quaintness, such smiling
+pathos. How admirably he has sketched the former inmates of the South-
+Sea House; what "fine fretwork he makes of their double and single
+entries!" With what a firm, yet subtle pencil he has embodied _Mrs.
+Battle's Opinions on Whist_! How notably he embalms a battered _beau_;
+how delightfully an amour, that was cold forty years ago, revives in
+his pages! With what well-disguised humour he introduces us to his
+relations, and how freely he serves up his friends! Certainly, some of
+his portraits are _fixtures_, and will do to hang up as lasting and
+lively emblems of human infirmity. Then there is no one who has so sure
+an ear for "the chimes at midnight", not even excepting Mr. Justice
+Shallow; nor could Master Silence himself take his "cheese and pippins"
+with a more significant and satisfactory air. With what a gusto Mr. Lamb
+describes the inns and courts of law, the Temple and Gray's-Inn, as if
+he had been a student there for the last two hundred years, and had been
+as well acquainted with the person of Sir Francis Bacon as he is with
+his portrait or writings! It is hard to say whether St. John's Gate is
+connected with more intense and authentic associations in his mind, as
+a part of old London Wall, or as the frontispiece (time out of mind) of
+the Gentleman's Magazine. He haunts Watling-street like a gentle spirit;
+the avenues to the play-houses are thick with panting recollections,
+and Christ's-Hospital still breathes the balmy breath of infancy in his
+description of it! Whittington and his Cat are a fine hallucination for
+Mr. Lamb's historic Muse, and we believe he never heartily forgave a
+certain writer who took the subject of Guy Faux out of his hands. The
+streets of London are his fairy-land, teeming with wonder, with life
+and interest to his retrospective glance, as it did to the eager eye
+of childhood; he has contrived to weave its tritest traditions into a
+bright and endless romance!
+
+Mr. Lamb's taste in books is also fine, and it is peculiar. It is not
+the worse for a little _idiosyncrasy_. He does not go deep into the
+Scotch novels, but he is at home in Smollett and Fielding. He is little
+read in Junius or Gibbon, but no man can give a better account of
+Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, or Sir Thomas Brown's Urn-Burial,
+or Fuller's Worthies, or John Bunyan's Holy War. No one is more
+unimpressible to a specious declamation; no one relishes a recondite
+beauty more. His admiration of Shakespear and Milton does not make
+him despise Pope; and he can read Parnell with patience, and Gay
+with delight. His taste in French and German literature is somewhat
+defective: nor has he made much progress in the science of Political
+Economy or other abstruse studies, though he has read vast folios of
+controversial divinity, merely for the sake of the intricacy of style,
+and to save himself the pain of thinking. Mr. Lamb is a good judge of
+prints and pictures. His admiration of Hogarth does credit to both,
+particularly when it is considered that Leonardo da Vinci is his next
+greatest favourite, and that his love of the _actual_ does not
+proceed from a want of taste for the _ideal_. His worst fault is an
+over-eagerness of enthusiasm, which occasionally makes him take a
+surfeit of his highest favourites.--Mr. Lamb excels in familiar
+conversation almost as much as in writing, when his modesty does not
+overpower his self-possession. He is as little of a proser as possible;
+but he _blurts_ out the finest wit and sense in the world. He keeps
+a good deal in the back-ground at first, till some excellent conceit
+pushes him forward, and then he abounds in whim and pleasantry. There
+is a primitive simplicity and self-denial about his manners; and a
+Quakerism in his personal appearance, which is, however, relieved by
+a fine Titian head, full of dumb eloquence! Mr. Lamb is a general
+favourite with those who know him. His character is equally singular and
+amiable. He is endeared to his friends not less by his foibles than his
+virtues; he insures their esteem by the one, and does not wound their
+self-love by the other. He gains ground in the opinion of others,
+by making no advances in his own. We easily admire genius where the
+diffidence of the possessor makes our acknowledgment of merit seem like
+a sort of patronage, or act of condescension, as we willingly extend our
+good offices where they are not exacted as obligations, or repaid with
+sullen indifference.--The style of the Essays of Elia is liable to the
+charge of a certain _mannerism_. His sentences are cast in the mould of
+old authors; his expressions are borrowed from them; but his feelings
+and observations are genuine and original, taken from actual life, or
+from his own breast; and he may be said (if any one can) "to have
+coined his heart for _jests_," and to have split his brain for fine
+distinctions! Mr. Lamb, from the peculiarity of his exterior and address
+as an author, would probably never have made his way by detached and
+independent efforts; but, fortunately for himself and others, he has
+taken advantage of the Periodical Press, where he has been stuck into
+notice, and the texture of his compositions is assuredly fine enough to
+bear the broadest glare of popularity that has hitherto shone upon them.
+Mr. Lamb's literary efforts have procured him civic honours (a thing
+unheard of in our times), and he has been invited, in his character of
+ELIA, to dine at a select party with the Lord Mayor. We should prefer
+this distinction to that of being poet-laureat. We would recommend
+to Mr. Waithman's perusal (if Mr. Lamb has not anticipated us) the
+_Rosamond Gray_ and the _John Woodvil_ of the same author, as an
+agreeable relief to the noise of a city feast, and the heat of city
+elections. A friend, a short time ago, quoted some lines[A] from the
+last-mentioned of these works, which meeting Mr. Godwin's eye, he was
+so struck with the beauty of the passage, and with a consciousness of
+having seen it before, that he was uneasy till he could recollect where,
+and after hunting in vain for it in Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher,
+and other not unlikely places, sent to Mr. Lamb to know if he could help
+him to the author!
+
+Mr. Washington Irvine's acquaintance with English literature begins
+almost where Mr. Lamb's ends,--with the Spectator, Tom Brown's works,
+and the wits of Queen Anne. He is not bottomed in our elder writers, nor
+do we think he has tasked his own faculties much, at least on English
+ground. Of the merit of his _Knicker-bocker,_ and New York stories,
+we cannot pretend to judge. But in his _Sketch-book_ and
+_Bracebridge-Hall_ he gives us very good American copies of our British
+Essayists and Novelists, which may be very well on the other side of the
+water, and as proofs of the capabilities of the national genius, but
+which might be dispensed with here, where we have to boast of the
+originals. Not only Mr. Irvine's language is with great taste and
+felicity modelled on that of Addison, Sterne, Goldsmith, or Mackenzie;
+but the thoughts and sentiments are taken at the rebound, and as they
+are brought forward at the present period, want both freshness and
+probability. Mr. Irvine's writings are literary _anachronisms_. He comes
+to England for the first time; and being on the spot, fancies himself in
+the midst of those characters and manners which he had read of in the
+Spectator and other approved authors, and which were the only idea he
+had hitherto formed of the parent country. Instead of looking round
+to see what _we are_, he sets to work to describe us as _we were_--at
+second hand. He has Parson Adams, or Sir Roger de Coverley in his
+"_mind's eye_"; and he makes a village curate, or a country 'squire in
+Yorkshire or Hampshire sit to these admired models for their portraits
+in the beginning of the nineteenth century. Whatever the ingenious
+author has been most delighted with in the representations of books, he
+transfers to his port-folio, and swears that he has found it actually
+existing in the course of his observation and travels through Great
+Britain. Instead of tracing the changes that have taken place in society
+since Addison or Fielding wrote, he transcribes their account in a
+different hand-writing, and thus keeps us stationary, at least in our
+most attractive and praise-worthy qualities of simplicity, honesty,
+hospitality, modesty, and good-nature. This is a very flattering mode
+of turning fiction into history, or history into fiction; and we should
+scarcely know ourselves again in the softened and altered likeness,
+but that it bears the date of 1820, and issues from the press in
+Albemarle-street. This is one way of complimenting our national and
+Tory prejudices; and coupled with literal or exaggerated portraits of
+_Yankee_ peculiarities, could hardly fail to please. The first Essay in
+the _Sketch-book_, that on National Antipathies, is the best; but after
+that, the sterling ore of wit or feeling is gradually spun thinner and
+thinner, till it fades to the shadow of a shade. Mr. Irvine is himself,
+we believe, a most agreeable and deserving man, and has been led into
+the natural and pardonable error we speak of, by the tempting bait of
+European popularity, in which he thought there was no more likely method
+of succeeding than by imitating the style of our standard authors, and
+giving us credit for the virtues of our forefathers.
+
+
+[Footnote A: The description of sports in the forest:
+
+  "To see the sun to bed and to arise,
+  Like some hot amourist with glowing eyes," &c.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+We should not feel that we had discharged our obligations to truth or
+friendship, if we were to let this volume go without introducing into it
+the name of the author of _Virginius_. This is the more proper, inasmuch
+as he is a character by himself, and the only poet now living that is a
+mere poet. If we were asked what sort of a man Mr. Knowles is, we could
+only say, "he is the writer of Virginius." His most intimate friends see
+nothing in him, by which they could trace the work to the author. The
+seeds of dramatic genius are contained and fostered in the warmth of the
+blood that flows in his veins; his heart dictates to his head. The most
+unconscious, the most unpretending, the most artless of mortals, he
+instinctively obeys the impulses of natural feeling, and produces a
+perfect work of art. He has hardly read a poem or a play or seen any
+thing of the world, but he hears the anxious beatings of his own heart,
+and makes others feel them by the force of sympathy. Ignorant alike
+of rules, regardless of models, he follows the steps of truth and
+simplicity; and strength, proportion, and delicacy are the infallible
+results. By thinking of nothing but his subject, he rivets the attention
+of the audience to it. All his dialogue tends to action, all his
+situations form classic groups. There is no doubt that Virginius is the
+best acting tragedy that has been produced on the modern stage. Mr.
+Knowles himself was a player at one time, and this circumstance has
+probably enabled him to judge of the picturesque and dramatic effect of
+his lines, as we think it might have assisted Shakespear. There is
+no impertinent display, no flaunting poetry; the writer immediately
+conceives how a thought would tell if he had to speak it himself. Mr.
+Knowles is the first tragic writer of the age; in other respects he is
+a common man; and divides his time and his affections between his
+plots and his fishing-tackle, between the Muses' spring, and those
+mountain-streams which sparkle like his own eye, that gush out like his
+own voice at the sight of an old friend. We have known him almost from a
+child, and we must say he appears to us the same boy-poet that he ever
+was. He has been cradled in song, and rocked in it as in a dream,
+forgetful of himself and of the world!
+
+
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Spirit of the Age, by William Hazlitt
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE ***
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Spirit of the Age, by William Hazlitt
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Spirit of the Age
+       Contemporary Portraits
+
+Author: William Hazlitt
+
+Release Date: February 12, 2004 [EBook #11068]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Riikka Talonpoika, Frank van Drogen and PG Distributed
+Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+SPIRIT OF THE AGE:
+
+
+OR
+
+
+CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.
+
+
+
+
+"To know another well were to know one's self."
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+JEREMY BENTHAM
+
+WILLIAM GODWIN
+
+MR. COLERIDGE
+
+REV. MR. IRVING
+
+THE LATE MR. HORNE TOOKE
+
+SIR WALTER SCOTT
+
+LORD BYRON
+
+MR. CAMPBELL--MR. CRABBE
+
+SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH
+
+MR. WORDSWORTH
+
+MR. MALTHUS
+
+MR. GIFFORD
+
+MR. JEFFREY
+
+MR. BROUGHAM--SIR F. BURDETT
+
+LORD ELDON--MR. WILBERFORCE
+
+MR. SOUTHEY
+
+MR. T. MOORE--MR. LEIGH HUNT
+
+ELIA--GEOFFREY CRAYON
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+SPIRIT OF THE AGE.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+JEREMY BENTHAM.
+
+
+
+Mr. Bentham is one of those persons who verify the old adage, that "A
+prophet has no honour, except out of his own country." His reputation
+lies at the circumference; and the lights of his understanding are
+reflected, with increasing lustre, on the other side of the globe. His
+name is little known in England, better in Europe, best of all in the
+plains of Chili and the mines of Mexico. He has offered constitutions
+for the New World, and legislated for future times. The people of
+Westminster, where he lives, hardly know of such a person; but the
+Siberian savage has received cold comfort from his lunar aspect, and may
+say to him with Caliban--"I know thee, and thy dog and thy bush!" The
+tawny Indian may hold out the hand of fellowship to him across the GREAT
+PACIFIC. We believe that the Empress Catherine corresponded with him;
+and we know that the Emperor Alexander called upon him, and presented
+him with his miniature in a gold snuff-box, which the philosopher, to
+his eternal honour, returned. Mr. Hobhouse is a greater man at the
+hustings, Lord Rolle at Plymouth Dock; but Mr. Bentham would carry it
+hollow, on the score of popularity, at Paris or Pegu. The reason is,
+that our author's influence is purely intellectual. He has devoted
+his life to the pursuit of abstract and general truths, and to those
+studies--
+
+  "That waft a _thought_ from Indus to the Pole"--
+
+and has never mixed himself up with personal intrigues or party
+politics. He once, indeed, stuck up a hand-bill to say that he (Jeremy
+Bentham) being of sound mind, was of opinion that Sir Samuel Romilly was
+the most proper person to represent Westminster; but this was the whim
+of the moment. Otherwise, his reasonings, if true at all, are true
+everywhere alike: his speculations concern humanity at large, and are
+not confined to the hundred or the bills of mortality. It is in moral as
+in physical magnitude. The little is seen best near: the great appears
+in its proper dimensions, only from a more commanding point of view, and
+gains strength with time, and elevation from distance!
+
+Mr. Bentham is very much among philosophers what La Fontaine was among
+poets:--in general habits and in all but his professional pursuits, he
+is a mere child. He has lived for the last forty years in a house
+in Westminster, overlooking the Park, like an anchoret in his cell,
+reducing law to a system, and the mind of man to a machine. He scarcely
+ever goes out, and sees very little company. The favoured few, who have
+the privilege of the _entree_, are always admitted one by one. He does
+not like to have witnesses to his conversation. He talks a great deal,
+and listens to nothing but facts. When any one calls upon him, he
+invites them to take a turn round his garden with him (Mr. Bentham is
+an economist of his time, and sets apart this portion of it to air and
+exercise)--and there you may see the lively old man, his mind still
+buoyant with thought and with the prospect of futurity, in eager
+conversation with some Opposition Member, some expatriated Patriot, or
+Transatlantic Adventurer, urging the extinction of Close Boroughs, or
+planning a code of laws for some "lone island in the watery waste,"
+his walk almost amounting to a run, his tongue keeping pace with it in
+shrill, cluttering accents, negligent of his person, his dress, and his
+manner, intent only on his grand theme of UTILITY--or pausing, perhaps,
+for want of breath and with lack-lustre eye to point out to the stranger
+a stone in the wall at the end of his garden (overarched by two
+beautiful cotton-trees) _Inscribed to the Prince of Poets_, which
+marks the house where Milton formerly lived. To shew how little the
+refinements of taste or fancy enter into our author's system, he
+proposed at one time to cut down these beautiful trees, to convert the
+garden where he had breathed the air of Truth and Heaven for near half
+a century into a paltry _Chreistomathic School_, and to make Milton's
+house (the cradle of Paradise Lost) a thoroughfare, like a three-stalled
+stable, for the idle rabble of Westminster to pass backwards and
+forwards to it with their cloven hoofs. Let us not, however, be getting
+on too fast--Milton himself taught school! There is something not
+altogether dissimilar between Mr. Bentham's appearance, and the
+portraits of Milton, the same silvery tone, a few dishevelled hairs, a
+peevish, yet puritanical expression, an irritable temperament corrected
+by habit and discipline. Or in modern times, he is something between
+Franklin and Charles Fox, with the comfortable double-chin and sleek
+thriving look of the one, and the quivering lip, the restless eye, and
+animated acuteness of the other. His eye is quick and lively; but it
+glances not from object to object, but from thought to thought. He is
+evidently a man occupied with some train of fine and inward association.
+He regards the people about him no more than the flies of a summer. He
+meditates the coming age. He hears and sees only what suits his purpose,
+or some "foregone conclusion;" and looks out for facts and passing
+occurrences in order to put them into his logical machinery and grind
+them into the dust and powder of some subtle theory, as the miller looks
+out for grist to his mill! Add to this physiognomical sketch the minor
+points of costume, the open shirt-collar, the single-breasted coat, the
+old-fashioned half-boots and ribbed stockings; and you will find in Mr.
+Bentham's general appearance a singular mixture of boyish simplicity and
+of the venerableness of age. In a word, our celebrated jurist presents a
+striking illustration of the difference between the _philosophical_ and
+the _regal_ look; that is, between the merely abstracted and the merely
+personal. There is a lackadaisical _bonhommie_ about his whole aspect,
+none of the fierceness of pride or power; an unconscious neglect of
+his own person, instead of a stately assumption of superiority; a
+good-humoured, placid intelligence, instead of a lynx-eyed watchfulness,
+as if it wished to make others its prey, or was afraid they might turn
+and rend him; he is a beneficent spirit, prying into the universe, not
+lording it over it; a thoughtful spectator of the scenes of life, or
+ruminator on the fate of mankind, not a painted pageant, a stupid idol
+set up on its pedestal of pride for men to fall down and worship with
+idiot fear and wonder at the thing themselves have made, and which,
+without that fear and wonder, would in itself be nothing!
+
+Mr. Bentham, perhaps, over-rates the importance of his own theories. He
+has been heard to say (without any appearance of pride or affectation)
+that "he should like to live the remaining years of his life, a year at
+a time at the end of the next six or eight centuries, to see the effect
+which his writings would by that time have had upon the world." Alas!
+his name will hardly live so long! Nor do we think, in point of fact,
+that Mr. Bentham has given any new or decided impulse to the human mind.
+He cannot be looked upon in the light of a discoverer in legislation
+or morals. He has not struck out any great leading principle or
+parent-truth, from which a number of others might be deduced; nor has he
+enriched the common and established stock of intelligence with original
+observations, like pearls thrown into wine. One truth discovered is
+immortal, and entitles its author to be so: for, like a new substance
+in nature, it cannot be destroyed. But Mr. Bentham's _forte_ is
+arrangement; and the form of truth, though not its essence, varies with
+time and circumstance. He has methodised, collated, and condensed all
+the materials prepared to his hand on the subjects of which he treats,
+in a masterly and scientific manner; but we should find a difficulty
+in adducing from his different works (however elaborate or closely
+reasoned) any new element of thought, or even a new fact or
+illustration. His writings are, therefore, chiefly valuable as _books of
+reference_, as bringing down the account of intellectual inquiry to the
+present period, and disposing the results in a compendious, connected,
+and tangible shape; but books of reference are chiefly serviceable for
+facilitating the acquisition of knowledge, and are constantly liable
+to be superseded and to grow out of fashion with its progress, as the
+scaffolding is thrown down as soon as the building is completed. Mr.
+Bentham is not the first writer (by a great many) who has assumed the
+principle of UTILITY as the foundation of just laws, and of all moral
+and political reasoning:--his merit is, that he has applied this
+principle more closely and literally; that he has brought all the
+objections and arguments, more distinctly labelled and ticketted, under
+this one head, and made a more constant and explicit reference to it at
+every step of his progress, than any other writer. Perhaps the weak side
+of his conclusions also is, that he has carried this single view of his
+subject too far, and not made sufficient allowance for the varieties of
+human nature, and the caprices and irregularities of the human will. "He
+has not allowed for the _wind_." It is not that you can be said to see
+his favourite doctrine of Utility glittering everywhere through his
+system, like a vein of rich, shining ore (that is not the nature of the
+material)--but it might be plausibly objected that he had struck the
+whole mass of fancy, prejudice, passion, sense, whim, with his petrific,
+leaden mace, that he had "bound volatile Hermes," and reduced the theory
+and practice of human life to a _caput mortuum_ of reason, and dull,
+plodding, technical calculation. The gentleman is himself a capital
+logician; and he has been led by this circumstance to consider man as a
+logical animal. We fear this view of the matter will hardly hold water.
+If we attend to the _moral_ man, the constitution of his mind will
+scarcely be found to be built up of pure reason and a regard to
+consequences: if we consider the _criminal_ man (with whom the
+legislator has chiefly to do) it will be found to be still less so.
+
+Every pleasure, says Mr. Bentham, is equally a good, and is to be taken
+into the account as such in a moral estimate, whether it be the pleasure
+of sense or of conscience, whether it arise from the exercise of virtue
+or the perpetration of crime. We are afraid the human mind does not
+readily come into this doctrine, this _ultima ratio philosophorum_,
+interpreted according to the letter. Our moral sentiments are made up of
+sympathies and antipathies, of sense and imagination, of understanding
+and prejudice. The soul, by reason of its weakness, is an aggregating
+and an exclusive principle; it clings obstinately to some things, and
+violently rejects others. And it must do so, in a great measure, or it
+would act contrary to its own nature. It needs helps and stages in its
+progress, and "all appliances and means to boot," which can raise it to
+a partial conformity to truth and good (the utmost it is capable of) and
+bring it into a tolerable harmony with the universe. By aiming at too
+much, by dismissing collateral aids, by extending itself to the farthest
+verge of the conceivable and possible, it loses its elasticity and
+vigour, its impulse and its direction. The moralist can no more do
+without the intermediate use of rules and principles, without the
+'vantage ground of habit, without the levers of the understanding, than
+the mechanist can discard the use of wheels and pulleys, and perform
+every thing by simple motion. If the mind of man were competent to
+comprehend the whole of truth and good, and act upon it at once, and
+independently of all other considerations, Mr. Bentham's plan would be
+a feasible one, and _the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
+truth_ would be the best possible ground to place morality upon. But
+it is not so. In ascertaining the rules of moral conduct, we must have
+regard not merely to the nature of the object, but to the capacity of
+the agent, and to his fitness for apprehending or attaining it. Pleasure
+is that which is so in itself: good is that which approves itself as
+such on reflection, or the idea of which is a source of satisfaction.
+All pleasure is not, therefore (morally speaking) equally a good; for
+all pleasure does not equally bear reflecting on. There are some tastes
+that are sweet in the mouth and bitter in the belly; and there is a
+similar contradiction and anomaly in the mind and heart of man. Again,
+what would become of the _Posthaec meminisse juvabit_ of the poet, if
+a principle of fluctuation and reaction is not inherent in the very
+constitution of our nature, or if all moral truth is a mere literal
+truism? We are not, then, so much to inquire what certain things are
+abstractedly or in themselves, as how they affect the mind, and to
+approve or condemn them accordingly. The same object seen near strikes
+us more powerfully than at a distance: things thrown into masses give
+a greater blow to the imagination than when scattered and divided into
+their component parts. A number of mole-hills do not make a mountain,
+though a mountain is actually made up of atoms: so moral truth must
+present itself under a certain aspect and from a certain point of view,
+in order to produce its full and proper effect upon the mind. The laws
+of the affections are as necessary as those of optics. A calculation of
+consequences is no more equivalent to a sentiment, than a _seriatim_
+enumeration of square yards or feet touches the fancy like the sight of
+the Alps or Andes!
+
+To give an instance or two of what we mean. Those who on pure
+cosmopolite principles, or on the ground of abstract humanity affect an
+extraordinary regard for the Turks and Tartars, have been accused of
+neglecting their duties to their friends and next-door neighbours. Well,
+then, what is the state of the question here? One human being is, no
+doubt, as much worth in himself, independently of the circumstances of
+time or place, as another; but he is not of so much value to us and
+our affections. Could our imagination take wing (with our speculative
+faculties) to the other side of the globe or to the ends of the
+universe, could our eyes behold whatever our reason teaches us to be
+possible, could our hands reach as far as our thoughts or wishes, we
+might then busy ourselves to advantage with the Hottentots, or hold
+intimate converse with the inhabitants of the Moon; but being as we are,
+our feelings evaporate in so large a space--we must draw the circle of
+our affections and duties somewhat closer--the heart hovers and fixes
+nearer home. It is true, the bands of private, or of local and natural
+affection are often, nay in general, too tightly strained, so as
+frequently to do harm instead of good: but the present question is
+whether we can, with safety and effect, be wholly emancipated from them?
+Whether we should shake them off at pleasure and without mercy, as the
+only bar to the triumph of truth and justice? Or whether benevolence,
+constructed upon a logical scale, would not be merely _nominal_, whether
+duty, raised to too lofty a pitch of refinement, might not sink into
+callous indifference or hollow selfishness? Again, is it not to exact
+too high a strain from humanity, to ask us to qualify the degree
+of abhorrence we feel against a murderer by taking into our cool
+consideration the pleasure he may have in committing the deed, and in
+the prospect of gratifying his avarice or his revenge? We are hardly so
+formed as to sympathise at the same moment with the assassin and
+his victim. The degree of pleasure the former may feel, instead of
+extenuating, aggravates his guilt, and shews the depth of his malignity.
+Now the mind revolts against this by mere natural antipathy, if it is
+itself well-disposed; or the slow process of reason would afford but a
+feeble resistance to violence and wrong. The will, which is necessary to
+give consistency and promptness to our good intentions, cannot extend so
+much candour and courtesy to the antagonist principle of evil: virtue,
+to be sincere and practical, cannot be divested entirely of the
+blindness and impetuosity of passion! It has been made a plea (half
+jest, half earnest) for the horrors of war, that they promote trade
+and manufactures. It has been said, as a set-off for the atrocities
+practised upon the negro slaves in the West Indies, that without their
+blood and sweat, so many millions of people could not have sugar to
+sweeten their tea. Fires and murders have been argued to be beneficial,
+as they serve to fill the newspapers, and for a subject to talk of--
+this is a sort of sophistry that it might be difficult to disprove on
+the bare scheme of contingent utility; but on the ground that we have
+stated, it must pass for a mere irony. What the proportion between the
+good and the evil will really be found in any of the supposed cases,
+may be a question to the understanding; but to the imagination and the
+heart, that is, to the natural feelings of mankind, it admits of none!
+
+Mr. Bentham, in adjusting the provisions of a penal code, lays too
+little stress on the cooperation of the natural prejudices of mankind,
+and the habitual feelings of that class of persons for whom they are
+more particularly designed. Legislators (we mean writers on legislation)
+are philosophers, and governed by their reason: criminals, for whose
+controul laws are made, are a set of desperadoes, governed only by their
+passions. What wonder that so little progress has been made towards a
+mutual understanding between the two parties! They are quite a different
+species, and speak a different language, and are sadly at a loss for a
+common interpreter between them. Perhaps the Ordinary of Newgate bids
+as fair for this office as any one. What should Mr. Bentham, sitting at
+ease in his arm-chair, composing his mind before he begins to write by a
+prelude on the organ, and looking out at a beautiful prospect when he
+is at a loss for an idea, know of the principles of action of rogues,
+outlaws, and vagabonds? No more than Montaigne of the motions of his
+cat! If sanguine and tender-hearted philanthropists have set on foot an
+inquiry into the barbarity and the defects of penal laws, the practical
+improvements have been mostly suggested by reformed cut-throats,
+turnkeys, and thief-takers. What even can the Honourable House, who when
+the Speaker has pronounced the well-known, wished-for sounds "That this
+house do now adjourn," retire, after voting a royal crusade or a loan of
+millions, to lie on down, and feed on plate in spacious palaces, know
+of what passes in the hearts of wretches in garrets and night-cellars,
+petty pilferers and marauders, who cut throats and pick pockets with
+their own hands? The thing is impossible. The laws of the country are,
+therefore, ineffectual and abortive, because they are made by the rich
+for the poor, by the wise for the ignorant, by the respectable and
+exalted in station for the very scum and refuse of the community. If
+Newgate would resolve itself into a committee of the whole Press-yard,
+with Jack Ketch at its head, aided by confidential persons from the
+county prisons or the Hulks, and would make a clear breast, some _data_
+might be found out to proceed upon; but as it is, the _criminal mind_ of
+the country is a book sealed, no one has been able to penetrate to the
+inside! Mr. Bentham, in his attempts to revise and amend our criminal
+jurisprudence, proceeds entirely on his favourite principle of Utility.
+Convince highwaymen and house-breakers that it will be for their
+interest to reform, and they will reform and lead honest lives;
+according to Mr. Bentham. He says, "All men act from calculation, even
+madmen reason." And, in our opinion, he might as well carry this maxim
+to Bedlam or St. Luke's, and apply it to the inhabitants, as think to
+coerce or overawe the inmates of a gaol, or those whose practices
+make them candidates for that distinction, by the mere dry, detailed
+convictions of the understanding. Criminals are not to be influenced by
+reason; for it is of the very essence of crime to disregard consequences
+both to ourselves and others. You may as well preach philosophy to a
+drunken man, or to the dead, as to those who are under the instigation
+of any mischievous passion. A man is a drunkard, and you tell him he
+ought to be sober; he is debauched, and you ask him to reform; he
+is idle, and you recommend industry to him as his wisest course; he
+gambles, and you remind him that he may be ruined by this foible; he
+has lost his character, and you advise him to get into some reputable
+service or lucrative situation; vice becomes a habit with him, and you
+request him to rouse himself and shake it off; he is starving, and you
+warn him that if he breaks the law, he will be hanged. None of this
+reasoning reaches the mark it aims at. The culprit, who violates and
+suffers the vengeance of the laws, is not the dupe of ignorance, but the
+slave of passion, the victim of habit or necessity. To argue with strong
+passion, with inveterate habit, with desperate circumstances, is to talk
+to the winds. Clownish ignorance may indeed be dispelled, and
+taught better; but it is seldom that a criminal is not aware of the
+consequences of his act, or has not made up his mind to the alternative.
+They are, in general, _too knowing by half_. You tell a person of this
+stamp what is his interest; he says he does not care about his interest,
+or the world and he differ on that particular. But there is one point on
+which he must agree with them, namely, what _they_ think of his conduct,
+and that is the only hold you have of him. A man may be callous and
+indifferent to what happens to himself; but he is never indifferent to
+public opinion, or proof against open scorn and infamy. Shame, then,
+not fear, is the sheet-anchor of the law. He who is not afraid of being
+pointed at as a _thief_, will not mind a month's hard labour. He who is
+prepared to take the life of another, is already reckless of his own.
+But every one makes a sorry figure in the pillory; and the being
+launched from the New Drop lowers a man in his own opinion. The lawless
+and violent spirit, who is hurried by headstrong self-will to break the
+laws, does not like to have the ground of pride and obstinacy struck
+from under his feet. This is what gives the _swells_ of the metropolis
+such a dread of the _tread-mill_--it makes them ridiculous. It must be
+confessed, that this very circumstance renders the reform of criminals
+nearly hopeless. It is the apprehension of being stigmatized by public
+opinion, the fear of what will be thought and said of them, that deters
+men from the violation of the laws, while their character remains
+unimpeached; but honour once lost, all is lost. The man can never be
+himself again! A citizen is like a soldier, a part of a machine, who
+submits to certain hardships, privations, and dangers, not for his own
+ease, pleasure, profit, or even conscience, but--_for shame_. What is
+it that keeps the machine together in either case? Not punishment or
+discipline, but sympathy. The soldier mounts the breach or stands in
+the trenches, the peasant hedges and ditches, or the mechanic plies his
+ceaseless task, because the one will not be called a _coward_, the other
+a _rogue_: but let the one turn deserter and the other vagabond, and
+there is an end of him. The grinding law of necessity, which is no other
+than a name, a breath, loses its force; he is no longer sustained by
+the good opinion of others, and he drops out of his place in society,
+a useless clog! Mr. Bentham takes a culprit, and puts him into what he
+calls a _Panopticon_, that is, a sort of circular prison, with open
+cells, like a glass bee-hive. He sits in the middle, and sees all the
+other does. He gives him work to do, and lectures him if he does not do
+it. He takes liquor from him, and society, and liberty; but he feeds and
+clothes him, and keeps him out of mischief; and when he has convinced
+him, by force and reason together, that this life is for his good, he
+turns him out upon the world a reformed man, and as confident of the
+success of his handy-work, as the shoemaker of that which he has just
+taken off the last, or the Parisian barber in Sterne, of the buckle
+of his wig. "Dip it in the ocean," said the perruquier, "and it will
+stand!" But we doubt the durability of our projector's patchwork. Will
+our convert to the great principle of Utility work when he is from under
+Mr. Bentham's eye, because he was forced to work when under it? Will he
+keep sober, because he has been kept from liquor so long? Will he not
+return to loose company, because he has had the pleasure of sitting
+vis-a-vis with a philosopher of late? Will he not steal, now that his hands
+are untied? Will he not take the road, now that it is free to him? Will
+he not call his benefactor all the names he can set his tongue to, the
+moment his back is turned? All this is more than to be feared. The charm
+of criminal life, like that of savage life, consists in liberty, in
+hardship, in danger, and in the contempt of death, in one word, in
+extraordinary excitement; and he who has tasted of it, will no more
+return to regular habits of life, than a man will take to water after
+drinking brandy, or than a wild beast will give over hunting its prey.
+Miracles never cease, to be sure; but they are not to be had wholesale,
+or _to order_. Mr. Owen, who is another of these proprietors and
+patentees of reform, has lately got an American savage with him, whom he
+carries about in great triumph and complacency, as an antithesis to his
+_New View of Society_, and as winding up his reasoning to what it mainly
+wanted, an epigrammatic point. Does the benevolent visionary of the
+Lanark cotton-mills really think this _natural man_ will act as a foil
+to his _artificial man_? Does he for a moment imagine that his _Address
+to the higher and middle classes_, with all its advantages of fiction,
+makes any thing like so interesting a romance as _Hunter's Captivity
+among the North American Indians?_ Has he any thing to shew, in all the
+apparatus of New Lanark and its desolate monotony, to excite the thrill
+of imagination like the blankets made of wreaths of snow under which the
+wild wood-rovers bury themselves for weeks in winter? Or the skin of a
+leopard, which our hardy adventurer slew, and which served him for great
+coat and bedding? Or the rattle-snake that he found by his side as a
+bedfellow? Or his rolling himself into a ball to escape from him? Or his
+suddenly placing himself against a tree to avoid being trampled to death
+by the herd of wild buffaloes, that came rushing on like the sound of
+thunder? Or his account of the huge spiders that prey on bluebottles and
+gilded flies in green pathless forests; or of the great Pacific Ocean,
+that the natives look upon as the gulf that parts time from eternity,
+and that is to waft them to the spirits of their fathers? After all
+this, Mr. Hunter must find Mr. Owen and his parallellograms trite and
+flat, and will, we suspect, take an opportunity to escape from them!
+
+Mr. Bentham's method of reasoning, though comprehensive and exact,
+labours under the defect of most systems--it is too _topical_. It
+includes every thing; but it includes every thing alike. It is rather
+like an inventory, than a valuation of different arguments. Every
+possible suggestion finds a place, so that the mind is distracted as
+much as enlightened by this perplexing accuracy. The exceptions seem
+as important as the rule. By attending to the minute, we overlook the
+great; and in summing up an account, it will not do merely to insist on
+the number of items without considering their amount. Our author's
+page presents a very nicely dove-tailed mosaic pavement of legal
+common-places. We slip and slide over its even surface without being
+arrested any where. Or his view of the human mind resembles a map,
+rather than a picture: the outline, the disposition is correct, but it
+wants colouring and relief. There is a technicality of manner, which
+renders his writings of more value to the professional inquirer than
+to the general reader. Again, his style is unpopular, not to say
+unintelligible. He writes a language of his own, that _darkens
+knowledge_. His works have been translated into French--they ought to
+be translated into English. People wonder that Mr. Bentham has not been
+prosecuted for the boldness and severity of some of his invectives. He
+might wrap up high treason in one of his inextricable periods, and
+it would never find its way into Westminster-Hall. He is a kind of
+Manuscript author--he writes a cypher-hand, which the vulgar have no key
+to. The construction of his sentences is a curious framework with pegs
+and hooks to hang his thoughts upon, for his own use and guidance,
+but almost out of the reach of every body else. It is a barbarous
+philosophical jargon, with all the repetitions, parentheses,
+formalities, uncouth nomenclature and verbiage of law-Latin; and what
+makes it worse, it is not mere verbiage, but has a great deal of
+acuteness and meaning in it, which you would be glad to pick out if you
+could. In short, Mr. Bentham writes as if he was allowed but a single
+sentence to express his whole view of a subject in, and as if, should he
+omit a single circumstance or step of the argument, it would be lost to
+the world for ever, like an estate by a flaw in the title-deeds. This
+is over-rating the importance of our own discoveries, and mistaking the
+nature and object of language altogether. Mr. Bentham has _acquired_
+this disability--it is not natural to him. His admirable little work _On
+Usury_, published forty years ago, is clear, easy, and vigorous. But Mr.
+Bentham has shut himself up since then "in nook monastic," conversing
+only with followers of his own, or with "men of Ind," and has
+endeavoured to overlay his natural humour, sense, spirit, and style
+with the dust and cobwebs of an obscure solitude. The best of it is, he
+thinks his present mode of expressing himself perfect, and that whatever
+may be objected to his law or logic, no one can find the least fault
+with the purity, simplicity, and perspicuity of his style.
+
+Mr. Bentham, in private life, is an amiable and exemplary character.
+He is a little romantic, or so; and has dissipated part of a handsome
+fortune in practical speculations. He lends an ear to plausible
+projectors, and, if he cannot prove them to be wrong in their premises
+or their conclusions, thinks himself bound _in reason_ to stake his
+money on the venture. Strict logicians are licensed visionaries. Mr.
+Bentham is half-brother to the late Mr. Speaker Abbott[A]--_Proh pudor_!
+He was educated at Eton, and still takes our novices to task about
+a passage in Homer, or a metre in Virgil. He was afterwards at the
+University, and he has described the scruples of an ingenuous
+youthful mind about subscribing the articles, in a passage in his
+_Church-of-Englandism_, which smacks of truth and honour both, and does
+one good to read it in an age, when "to be honest" (or not to laugh at
+the very idea of honesty) "is to be one man picked out of ten thousand!"
+Mr. Bentham relieves his mind sometimes, after the fatigue of study, by
+playing on a fine old organ, and has a relish for Hogarth's prints. He
+turns wooden utensils in a lathe for exercise, and fancies he can turn
+men in the same manner. He has no great fondness for poetry, and can
+hardly extract a moral out of Shakespear. His house is warmed and
+lighted by steam. He is one of those who prefer the artificial to the
+natural in most things, and think the mind of man omnipotent. He has a
+great contempt for out-of-door prospects, for green fields and
+trees, and is for referring every thing to Utility. There is a little
+narrowness in this; for if all the sources of satisfaction are taken
+away, what is to become of utility itself? It is, indeed, the great
+fault of this able and extraordinary man, that he has concentrated his
+faculties and feelings too entirely on one subject and pursuit, and has
+not "looked enough abroad into universality."[B]
+
+
+[Footnote A: Now Lord Colchester.]
+
+[Footnote B: Lord Bacon's Advancement of Learning.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM GODWIN
+
+
+
+The Spirit of the Age was never more fully-shewn than in its treatment
+of this writer--its love of paradox and change, its dastard submission
+to prejudice and to the fashion of the day. Five-and-twenty years ago he
+was in the very zenith of a sultry and unwholesome popularity; he blazed
+as a sun in the firmament of reputation; no one was more talked of, more
+looked up to, more sought after, and wherever liberty, truth, justice
+was the theme, his name was not far off:--now he has sunk below the
+horizon, and enjoys the serene twilight of a doubtful immortality. Mr.
+Godwin, during his lifetime, has secured to himself the triumphs and the
+mortifications of an extreme notoriety and of a sort of posthumous fame.
+
+His bark, after being tossed in the revolutionary tempest, now raised to
+heaven by all the fury of popular breath, now almost dashed in pieces,
+and buried in the quicksands of ignorance, or scorched with the
+lightning of momentary indignation, at length floats on the calm wave
+that is to bear it down the stream of time. Mr. Godwin's person is not
+known, he is not pointed out in the street, his conversation is not
+courted, his opinions are not asked, he is at the head of no cabal, he
+belongs to no party in the State, he has no train of admirers, no
+one thinks it worth his while even to traduce and vilify him, he has
+scarcely friend or foe, the world make a point (as Goldsmith used to
+say) of taking no more notice of him than if such an individual had
+never existed; he is to all ordinary intents and purposes dead and
+buried; but the author of _Political Justice_ and of _Caleb Williams_
+can never die, his name is an abstraction in letters, his works are
+standard in the history of intellect. He is thought of now like any
+eminent writer a hundred-and-fifty years ago, or just as he will be
+a hundred-and-fifty years hence. He knows this, and smiles in silent
+mockery of himself, reposing on the monument of his fame--
+
+  "Sedet, in eternumque sedebit infelix Theseus."
+
+No work in our time gave such a blow to the philosophical mind of the
+country as the celebrated _Enquiry concerning Political Justice_. Tom
+Paine was considered for the time as a Tom Fool to him; Paley an old
+woman; Edmund Burke a flashy sophist. Truth, moral truth, it was
+supposed, had here taken up its abode; and these were the oracles of
+thought. "Throw aside your books of chemistry," said Wordsworth to a
+young man, a student in the Temple, "and read Godwin on Necessity." Sad
+necessity! Fatal reverse! Is truth then so variable? Is it one thing at
+twenty, and another at forty? Is it at a burning heat in 1793, and below
+_zero_ in 1814? Not so, in the name of manhood and of common sense! Let
+us pause here a little.--Mr. Godwin indulged in extreme opinions, and
+carried with him all the most sanguine and fearless understandings of
+the time. What then? Because those opinions were overcharged, were they
+therefore altogether groundless? Is the very God of our idolatry all of
+a sudden to become an abomination and an anathema? Could so many young
+men of talent, of education, and of principle have been hurried away by
+what had neither truth, nor nature, not one particle of honest feeling
+nor the least shew of reason in it? Is the _Modern Philosophy_ (as it
+has been called) at one moment a youthful bride, and the next a withered
+beldame, like the false Duessa in Spenser? Or is the vaunted edifice
+of Reason, like his House of Pride, gorgeous in front, and dazzling to
+approach, while "its hinder parts are ruinous, decayed, and old?" Has
+the main prop, which supported the mighty fabric, been shaken and given
+way under the strong grasp of some Samson; or has it not rather been
+undermined by rats and vermin? At one time, it almost seemed, that "if
+this failed,
+
+  "The pillar'd firmament was rottenness,
+  And earth's base built of stubble:"
+
+now scarce a shadow of it remains, it is crumbled to dust, nor is it
+even talked of! "What then, went ye forth for to see, a reed shaken
+with the wind?" Was it for this that our young gownsmen of the greatest
+expectation and promise, versed in classic lore, steeped in dialectics,
+armed at all points for the foe, well read, well nurtured, well provided
+for, left the University and the prospect of lawn sleeves, tearing
+asunder the shackles of the free born spirit, and the cobwebs of
+school-divinity, to throw themselves at the feet of the new Gamaliel,
+and learn wisdom from him? Was it for this, that students at the bar,
+acute, inquisitive, sceptical (here only wild enthusiasts) neglected for
+a while the paths of preferment and the law as too narrow, tortuous, and
+unseemly to bear the pure and broad light of reason? Was it for this,
+that students in medicine missed their way to Lecturerships and the top
+of their profession, deeming lightly of the health of the body, and
+dreaming only of the renovation of society and the march of mind? Was
+it to this that Mr. Southey's _Inscriptions_ pointed? to this that Mr.
+Coleridge's _Religious Musings_ tended? Was it for this, that Mr. Godwin
+himself sat with arms folded, and, "like Cato, gave his little senate
+laws?" Or rather, like another Prospero, uttered syllables that with
+their enchanted breath were to change the world, and might almost stop
+the stars in their courses? Oh! and is all forgot? Is this sun of
+intellect blotted from the sky? Or has it suffered total eclipse? Or is
+it we who make the fancied gloom, by looking at it through the paltry,
+broken, stained fragments of our own interests and prejudices? Were we
+fools then, or are we dishonest now? Or was the impulse of the mind less
+likely to be true and sound when it arose from high thought and warm
+feeling, than afterwards, when it was warped and debased by the example,
+the vices, and follies of the world?
+
+The fault, then, of Mr. Godwin's philosophy, in one word, was too much
+ambition--"by that sin fell the angels!" He conceived too nobly of his
+fellows (the most unpardonable crime against them, for there is nothing
+that annoys our self-love so much as being complimented on imaginary
+achievements, to which we are wholly unequal)--he raised the standard
+of morality above the reach of humanity, and by directing virtue to the
+most airy and romantic heights, made her path dangerous, solitary, and
+impracticable. The author of the _Political Justice_ took abstract
+reason for the rule of conduct, and abstract good for its end. He places
+the human mind on an elevation, from which it commands a view of the
+whole line of moral consequences; and requires it to conform its acts to
+the larger and more enlightened conscience which it has thus acquired.
+He absolves man from the gross and narrow ties of sense, custom,
+authority, private and local attachment, in order that he may devote
+himself to the boundless pursuit of universal benevolence. Mr. Godwin
+gives no quarter to the amiable weaknesses of our nature, nor does he
+stoop to avail himself of the supplementary aids of an imperfect virtue.
+Gratitude, promises, friendship, family affection give way, not that
+they may be merged in the opposite vices or in want of principle; but
+that the void may be filled up by the disinterested love of good, and
+the dictates of inflexible justice, which is "the law of laws, and
+sovereign of sovereigns." All minor considerations yield, in his system,
+to the stern sense of duty, as they do, in the ordinary and established
+ones, to the voice of necessity. Mr. Godwin's theory and that of more
+approved reasoners differ only in this, that what are with them the
+exceptions, the extreme cases, he makes the every-day rule. No one
+denies that on great occasions, in moments of fearful excitement, or
+when a mighty object is at stake, the lesser and merely instrumental
+points of duty are to be sacrificed without remorse at the shrine of
+patriotism, of honour, and of conscience. But the disciple of the _New
+School_ (no wonder it found so many impugners, even in its own bosom!)
+is to be always the hero of duty; the law to which he has bound himself
+never swerves nor relaxes; his feeling of what is right is to be at
+all times wrought up to a pitch of enthusiastic self-devotion; he must
+become the unshrinking martyr and confessor of the public good. If it
+be said that this scheme is chimerical and impracticable on ordinary
+occasions, and to the generality of mankind, well and good; but those
+who accuse the author of having trampled on the common feelings and
+prejudices of mankind in wantonness or insult, or without wishing to
+substitute something better (and only unattainable, because it is
+better) in their stead, accuse him wrongfully. We may not be able to
+launch the bark of our affections on the ocean-tide of humanity, we
+may be forced to paddle along its shores, or shelter in its creeks and
+rivulets: but we have no right to reproach the bold and adventurous
+pilot, who dared us to tempt the uncertain abyss, with our own want of
+courage or of skill, or with the jealousies and impatience, which deter
+us from undertaking, or might prevent us from accomplishing the voyage!
+
+The _Enquiry concerning Political Justice_ (it was urged by its
+favourers and defenders at the time, and may still be so, without either
+profaneness or levity) is a metaphysical and logical commentary on some
+of the most beautiful and striking texts of Scripture. Mr. Godwin is
+a mixture of the Stoic and of the Christian philosopher. To break the
+force of the vulgar objections and outcry that have been raised against
+the Modern Philosophy, as if it were a new and monstrous birth in
+morals, it may be worth noticing, that volumes of sermons have been
+written to excuse the founder of Christianity for not including
+friendship and private affection among its golden rules, but rather
+excluding them.[A] Moreover, the answer to the question, "Who is thy
+neighbour?" added to the divine precept, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour
+as thyself," is the same as in the exploded pages of our author,--"He to
+whom we can do most good." In determining this point, we were not to be
+influenced by any extrinsic or collateral considerations, by our own
+predilections, or the expectations of others, by our obligations to them
+or any services they might be able to render us, by the climate they
+were born in, by the house they lived in, by rank or religion, or party,
+or personal ties, but by the abstract merits, the pure and unbiassed
+justice of the case. The artificial helps and checks to moral conduct
+were set aside as spurious and unnecessary, and we came at once to the
+grand and simple question--"In what manner we could best contribute to
+the greatest possible good?" This was the paramount obligation in all
+cases whatever, from which we had no right to free ourselves upon any
+idle or formal pretext, and of which each person was to judge for
+himself, under the infallible authority of his own opinion and the
+inviolable sanction of his self-approbation. "There was the rub that
+made _philosophy_ of so short life!" Mr. Godwin's definition of morals
+was the same as the admired one of law, _reason without passion_; but
+with the unlimited scope of private opinion, and in a boundless field of
+speculation (for nothing less would satisfy the pretensions of the New
+School), there was danger that the unseasoned novice might substitute
+some pragmatical conceit of his own for the rule of right reason, and
+mistake a heartless indifference for a superiority to more natural and
+generous feelings. Our ardent and dauntless reformer followed out the
+moral of the parable of the Good Samaritan into its most rigid and
+repulsive consequences with a pen of steel, and let fall his "trenchant
+blade" on every vulnerable point of human infirmity; but there is a want
+in his system of the mild and persuasive tone of the Gospel, where "all
+is conscience and tender heart." Man was indeed screwed up, by mood and
+figure, into a logical machine, that was to forward the public good with
+the utmost punctuality and effect, and it might go very well on smooth
+ground and under favourable circumstances; but would it work up-hill
+or _against the grain_? It was to be feared that the proud Temple of
+Reason, which at a distance and in stately supposition shone like the
+palaces of the New Jerusalem, might (when placed on actual ground) be
+broken up into the sordid styes of sensuality, and the petty huckster's
+shops of self-interest! Every man (it was proposed--"so ran the tenour
+of the bond") was to be a Regulus, a Codrus, a Cato, or a Brutus--every
+woman a Mother of the Gracchi.
+
+  "------------It was well said,
+  And 'tis a kind of good deed to say well."
+
+But heroes on paper might degenerate into vagabonds in practice,
+Corinnas into courtezans. Thus a refined and permanent individual
+attachment is intended to supply the place and avoid the inconveniences
+of marriage; but vows of eternal constancy, without church security, are
+found to be fragile. A member of the _ideal_ and perfect commonwealth of
+letters lends another a hundred pounds for immediate and pressing use;
+and when he applies for it again, the borrower has still more need of it
+than he, and retains it for his own especial, which is tantamount to the
+public good. The Exchequer of pure reason, like that of the State, never
+refunds. The political as well as the religious fanatic appeals from
+the over-weening opinion and claims of others to the highest and most
+impartial tribunal, namely, his own breast. Two persons agree to
+live together in Chambers on principles of pure equality and mutual
+assistance--but when it comes to the push, one of them finds that the
+other always insists on his fetching water from the pump in Hare-court,
+and cleaning his shoes for him. A modest assurance was not the least
+indispensable virtue in the new perfectibility code; and it was hence
+discovered to be a scheme, like other schemes where there are all prizes
+and no blanks, for the accommodation of the enterprizing and cunning, at
+the expence of the credulous and honest. This broke up the system, and
+left no good odour behind it! Reason has become a sort of bye-word, and
+philosophy has "fallen first into a fasting, then into a sadness,
+then into a decline, and last, into the dissolution of which we all
+complain!" This is a worse error than the former: we may be said to have
+"lost the immortal part of ourselves, and what remains is beastly!"
+The point of view from which this matter may be fairly considered, is
+two-fold, and may be stated thus:--In the first place, it by no means
+follows, because reason is found not to be the only infallible or safe
+rule of conduct, that it is no rule at all; or that we are to discard it
+altogether with derision and ignominy. On the contrary, if not the sole,
+it is the principal ground of action; it is "the guide, the stay and
+anchor of our purest thoughts, and soul of all our moral being." In
+proportion as we strengthen and expand this principle, and bring our
+affections and subordinate, but perhaps more powerful motives of action
+into harmony with it, it will not admit of a doubt that we advance to
+the goal of perfection, and answer the ends of our creation, those ends
+which not only morality enjoins, but which religion sanctions. If with
+the utmost stretch of reason, man cannot (as some seemed inclined to
+suppose) soar up to the God, and quit the ground of human frailty, yet,
+stripped wholly of it, he sinks at once into the brute. If it cannot
+stand alone, in its naked simplicity, but requires other props to
+buttress it up, or ornaments to set it off; yet without it the moral
+structure would fall flat and dishonoured to the ground. Private reason
+is that which raises the individual above his mere animal instincts,
+appetites and passions: public reason in its gradual progress separates
+the savage from the civilized state. Without the one, men would resemble
+wild beasts in their dens; without the other, they would be speedily
+converted into hordes of barbarians or banditti. Sir Walter Scott, in
+his zeal to restore the spirit of loyalty, of passive obedience and
+non-resistance as an acknowledgment for his having been created a
+Baronet by a Prince of the House of Brunswick, may think it a fine thing
+to return in imagination to the good old times, "when in Auvergne
+alone, there were three hundred nobles whose most ordinary actions were
+robbery, rape, and murder," when the castle of each Norman baron was
+a strong hold from which the lordly proprietor issued to oppress and
+plunder the neighbouring districts, and when the Saxon peasantry
+were treated by their gay and gallant tyrants as a herd of loathsome
+swine--but for our own parts we beg to be excused; we had rather live
+in the same age with the author of Waverley and Blackwood's Magazine.
+Reason is the meter and alnager in civil intercourse, by which each
+person's upstart and contradictory pretensions are weighed and approved
+or found wanting, and without which it could not subsist, any more than
+traffic or the exchange of commodities could be carried on without
+weights and measures. It is the medium of knowledge, and the polisher of
+manners, by creating common interests and ideas. Or in the words of a
+contemporary writer, "Reason is the queen of the moral world, the soul
+of the universe, the lamp of human life, the pillar of society, the
+foundation of law, the beacon of nations, the golden chain let down from
+heaven, which links all accountable and all intelligent natures in one
+common system--and in the vain strife between fanatic innovation and
+fanatic prejudice, we are exhorted to dethrone this queen of the world,
+to blot out this light of the mind, to deface this fair column, to break
+in pieces this golden chain! We are to discard and throw from us with
+loud taunts and bitter execrations that reason, which has been the lofty
+theme of the philosopher, the poet, the moralist, and the divine, whose
+name was not first named to be abused by the enthusiasts of the French
+Revolution, or to be blasphemed by the madder enthusiasts, the advocates
+of Divine Right, but which is coeval with, and inseparable from the
+nature and faculties of man--is the image of his Maker stamped upon him
+at his birth, the understanding breathed into him with the breath of
+life, and in the participation and improvement of which alone he is
+raised above the brute creation and his own physical nature!"--The
+overstrained and ridiculous pretensions of monks and ascetics were never
+thought to justify a return to unbridled licence of manners, or the
+throwing aside of all decency. The hypocrisy, cruelty, and fanaticism,
+often attendant on peculiar professions of sanctity, have not banished
+the name of religion from the world. Neither can "the unreasonableness
+of the reason" of some modern sciolists "so unreason our reason," as to
+debar us of the benefit of this principle in future, or to disfranchise
+us of the highest privilege of our nature. In the second place, if it is
+admitted that Reason alone is not the sole and self-sufficient ground of
+morals, it is to Mr. Godwin that we are indebted for having settled the
+point. No one denied or distrusted this principle (before his time) as
+the absolute judge and interpreter in all questions of difficulty;
+and if this is no longer the case, it is because he has taken this
+principle, and followed it into its remotest consequences with more
+keenness of eye and steadiness of hand than any other expounder of
+ethics. His grand work is (at least) an _experimentum crucis_ to shew
+the weak sides and imperfections of human reason as the sole law of
+human action. By overshooting the mark, or by "flying an eagle flight,
+forth and right on," he has pointed out the limit or line of separation,
+between what is practicable and what is barely conceivable--by imposing
+impossible tasks on the naked strength of the will, he has discovered
+how far it is or is not in our power to dispense with the illusions of
+sense, to resist the calls of affection, to emancipate ourselves from
+the force of habit; and thus, though he has not said it himself, has
+enabled others to say to the towering aspirations after good, and to the
+over-bearing pride of human intellect--"Thus far shalt thou come, and no
+farther!" Captain Parry would be thought to have rendered a service
+to navigation and his country, no less by proving that there is no
+North-West Passage, than if he had ascertained that there is one: so Mr.
+Godwin has rendered an essential service to moral science, by attempting
+(in vain) to pass the Arctic Circle and Frozen Regions, where the
+understanding is no longer warmed by the affections, nor fanned by the
+breeze of fancy! This is the effect of all bold, original, and powerful
+thinking, that it either discovers the truth, or detects where error
+lies; and the only crime with which Mr. Godwin can be charged as a
+political and moral reasoner is, that he has displayed a more ardent
+spirit, and a more independent activity of thought than others, in
+establishing the fallacy (if fallacy it be) of an old popular prejudice
+that _the Just and True were one_, by "championing it to the Outrance,"
+and in the final result placing the Gothic structure of human virtue
+on an humbler, but a wider and safer foundation than it had hitherto
+occupied in the volumes and systems of the learned. Mr. Godwin is an
+inventor in the regions of romance, as well as a skilful and hardy
+explorer of those of moral truth. _Caleb Williams_ and _St. Leon_ are
+two of the most splendid and impressive works of the imagination that
+have appeared in our times. It is not merely that these novels are very
+well for a philosopher to have produced--they are admirable and complete
+in themselves, and would not lead you to suppose that the author, who is
+so entirely at home in human character and dramatic situation, had ever
+dabbled in logic or metaphysics. The first of these, particularly, is
+a master-piece, both as to invention and execution. The romantic and
+chivalrous principle of the love of personal fame is embodied in the
+finest possible manner in the character of Falkland;[B] as in Caleb
+Williams (who is not the first, but the second character in the piece)
+we see the very demon of curiosity personified. Perhaps the art with
+which these two characters are contrived to relieve and set off each
+other, has never been surpassed in any work of fiction, with the
+exception of the immortal satire of Cervantes. The restless and
+inquisitive spirit of Caleb Williams, in search and in possession of
+his patron's fatal secret, haunts the latter like a second conscience,
+plants stings in his tortured mind, fans the flame of his jealous
+ambition, struggling with agonized remorse; and the hapless but
+noble-minded Falkland at length falls a martyr to the persecution of
+that morbid and overpowering interest, of which his mingled virtues and
+vices have rendered him the object. We conceive no one ever began Caleb
+Williams that did not read it through: no one that ever read it could
+possibly forget it, or speak of it after any length of time, but with an
+impression as if the events and feelings had been personal to himself.
+This is the case also with the story of St. Leon, which, with less
+dramatic interest and intensity of purpose, is set off by a more
+gorgeous and flowing eloquence, and by a crown of preternatural imagery,
+that waves over it like a palm-tree! It is the beauty and the charm of
+Mr. Godwin's descriptions that the reader identifies himself with the
+author; and the secret of this is, that the author has identified
+himself with his personages. Indeed, he has created them. They are the
+proper issue of his brain, lawfully begot, not foundlings, nor the
+"bastards of his art." He is not an indifferent, callous spectator of
+the scenes which he himself pourtrays, but without seeming to feel them.
+There is no look of patch-work and plagiarism, the beggarly copiousness
+of borrowed wealth; no tracery-work from worm-eaten manuscripts, from
+forgotten chronicles, nor piecing out of vague traditions with fragments
+and snatches of old ballads, so that the result resembles a gaudy,
+staring transparency, in which you cannot distinguish the daubing of the
+painter from the light that shines through the flimsy colours and gives
+them brilliancy. Here all is clearly made out with strokes of the
+pencil, by fair, not by factitious means. Our author takes a given
+subject from nature or from books, and then fills it up with the ardent
+workings of his own mind, with the teeming and audible pulses of his own
+heart. The effect is entire and satisfactory in proportion. The work
+(so to speak) and the author are one. We are not puzzled to decide upon
+their respective pretensions. In reading Mr. Godwin's novels, we know
+what share of merit the author has in them. In reading the _Scotch
+Novels_, we are perpetually embarrassed in asking ourselves this
+question; and perhaps it is not altogether a false modesty that prevents
+the editor from putting his name in the title-page--he is (for any thing
+we know to the contrary) only a more voluminous sort of Allen-a-Dale.
+At least, we may claim this advantage for the English author, that the
+chains with which he rivets our attention are forged out of his own
+thoughts, link by link, blow for blow, with glowing enthusiasm: we see
+the genuine ore melted in the furnace of fervid feeling, and moulded
+into stately and _ideal_ forms; and this is so far better than peeping
+into an old iron shop, or pilfering from a dealer in marine stores!
+There is one drawback, however, attending this mode of proceeding, which
+attaches generally, indeed, to all originality of composition; namely,
+that it has a tendency to a certain degree of monotony. He who draws
+upon his own resources, easily comes to an end of his wealth. Mr.
+Godwin, in all his writings, dwells upon one idea or exclusive view of a
+subject, aggrandises a sentiment, exaggerates a character, or pushes an
+argument to extremes, and makes up by the force of style and continuity
+of feeling for what he wants in variety of incident or ease of manner.
+This necessary defect is observable in his best works, and is still more
+so in Fleetwood and Mandeville; the one of which, compared with his more
+admired performances, is mawkish, and the other morbid. Mr. Godwin is
+also an essayist, an historian--in short, what is he not, that belongs
+to the character of an indefatigable and accomplished author? His _Life
+of Chaucer_ would have given celebrity to any man of letters possessed
+of three thousand a year, with leisure to write quartos: as the legal
+acuteness displayed in his _Remarks on Judge Eyre's Charge to the
+Jury_ would have raised any briefless barrister to the height of his
+profession. This temporary effusion did more--it gave a turn to the
+trials for high treason in the year 1794, and possibly saved the lives
+of twelve innocent individuals, marked out as political victims to the
+Moloch of Legitimacy, which then skulked behind a British throne,
+and had not yet dared to stalk forth (as it has done since) from its
+lurking-place, in the face of day, to brave the opinion of the world. If
+it had then glutted its maw with its intended prey (the sharpness of Mr.
+Godwin's pen cut the legal cords with which it was attempted to bind
+them), it might have done so sooner, and with more lasting effect. The
+world do not know (and we are not sure but the intelligence may startle
+Mr. Godwin himself), that he is the author of a volume of Sermons, and
+of a Life of Chatham.[C]
+
+Mr. Fawcett (an old friend and fellow-student of our author, and who
+always spoke of his writings with admiration, tinctured with wonder)
+used to mention a circumstance with respect to the last-mentioned work,
+which may throw some light on the history and progress of Mr. Godwin's
+mind. He was anxious to make his biographical account as complete as
+he could, and applied for this purpose to many of his acquaintance to
+furnish him with anecdotes or to suggest criticisms. Amongst others Mr.
+Fawcett repeated to him what he thought a striking passage in a speech
+on _General Warrants_ delivered by Lord Chatham, at which he (Mr.
+Fawcett) had been present. "Every man's house" (said this emphatic
+thinker and speaker) "has been called his castle. And why is it called
+his castle? Is it because it is defended by a wall, because it is
+surrounded with a moat? No, it may be nothing more than a straw-built
+shed. It may be open to all the elements: the wind may enter in, the
+rain may enter in--but the king _cannot_ enter in!" His friend thought
+that the point was here palpable enough: but when he came to read the
+printed volume, he found it thus _transposed_: "Every man's house is his
+castle. And why is it called so? Is it because it is defended by a wall,
+because it is surrounded with a moat? No, it may be nothing more than a
+straw-built shed. It may be exposed to all the elements: the rain may
+enter into it, _all the winds of Heaven may whistle round it_, but the
+king cannot, &c." This was what Fawcett called a defect of _natural
+imagination_. He at the same time admitted that Mr. Godwin had improved
+his native sterility in this respect; or atoned for it by incessant
+activity of mind and by accumulated stores of thought and powers of
+language. In fact, his _forte_ is not the spontaneous, but the voluntary
+exercise of talent. He fixes his ambition on a high point of excellence,
+and spares no pains or time in attaining it. He has less of the
+appearance of a man of genius, than any one who has given such decided
+and ample proofs of it. He is ready only on reflection: dangerous only
+at the rebound. He gathers himself up, and strains every nerve and
+faculty with deliberate aim to some heroic and dazzling atchievement of
+intellect: but he must make a career before he flings himself, armed,
+upon the enemy, or he is sure to be unhorsed. Or he resembles an
+eight-day clock that must be wound up long before it can strike.
+Therefore, his powers of conversation are but limited. He has neither
+acuteness of remark, nor a flow of language, both which might be
+expected from his writings, as these are no less distinguished by a
+sustained and impassioned tone of declamation than by novelty of opinion
+or brilliant tracks of invention. In company, Horne Tooke used to make
+a mere child of him--or of any man! Mr. Godwin liked this treatment[D],
+and indeed it is his foible to fawn on those who use him _cavalierly_,
+and to be cavalier to those who express an undue or unqualified
+admiration of him. He looks up with unfeigned respect to acknowledged
+reputation (but then it must be very well ascertained before he admits
+it)--and has a favourite hypothesis that Understanding and Virtue are
+the same thing. Mr. Godwin possesses a high degree of philosophical
+candour, and studiously paid the homage of his pen and person to Mr.
+Malthus, Sir James Macintosh, and Dr. Parr, for their unsparing attacks
+on him; but woe to any poor devil who had the hardihood to defend him
+against them! In private, the author of _Political Justice_ at one
+time reminded those who knew him of the metaphysician engrafted on
+the Dissenting Minister. There was a dictatorial, captious, quibbling
+pettiness of manner. He lost this with the first blush and awkwardness
+of popularity, which surprised him in the retirement of his study;
+and he has since, with the wear and tear of society, from being too
+pragmatical, become somewhat too careless. He is, at present, as easy as
+an old glove. Perhaps there is a little attention to effect in this,
+and he wishes to appear a foil to himself. His best moments are with an
+intimate acquaintance or two, when he gossips in a fine vein about old
+authors, Clarendon's _History of the Rebellion_, or Burnet's _History of
+his own Times_; and you perceive by your host's talk, as by the taste
+of seasoned wine, that he has a _cellarage_ in his understanding! Mr.
+Godwin also has a correct _acquired_ taste in poetry and the drama. He
+relishes Donne and Ben Jonson, and recites a passage from either with an
+agreeable mixture of pedantry and _bonhommie_. He is not one of those
+who do not grow wiser with opportunity and reflection: he changes his
+opinions, and changes them for the better. The alteration of his taste
+in poetry, from an exclusive admiration of the age of Queen Anne to an
+almost equally exclusive one of that of Elizabeth, is, we suspect, owing
+to Mr. Coleridge, who some twenty years ago, threw a great stone into
+the standing pool of criticism, which splashed some persons with the
+mud, but which gave a motion to the surface and a reverberation to the
+neighbouring echoes, which has not since subsided. In common company,
+Mr. Godwin either goes to sleep himself, or sets others to sleep. He is
+at present engaged in a History of the Commonwealth of England.--_Esto
+perpetua!_ In size Mr. Godwin is below the common stature, nor is his
+deportment graceful or animated. His face is, however, fine, with an
+expression of placid temper and recondite thought. He is not unlike the
+common portraits of Locke. There is a very admirable likeness of him by
+Mr. Northcote, which with a more heroic and dignified air, only does
+justice to the profound sagacity and benevolent aspirations of our
+author's mind. Mr. Godwin has kept the best company of his time, but he
+has survived most of the celebrated persons with whom he lived in habits
+of intimacy. He speaks of them with enthusiasm and with discrimination;
+and sometimes dwells with peculiar delight on a day passed at John
+Kemble's in company with Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Curran, Mrs. Wolstonecraft
+and Mrs. Inchbald, when the conversation took a most animated turn
+and the subject was of Love. Of all these our author is the only one
+remaining. Frail tenure, on which human life and genius are lent us for
+a while to improve or to enjoy!
+
+
+[Footnote A: Shaftesbury made this an objection to Christianity, which
+was answered by Foster, Leland, and other eminent divines, on the
+ground that Christianity had a higher object in view, namely, general
+philanthropy.]
+
+[Footnote B: Mr. Fuseli used to object to this striking delineation a
+want of historical correctness, inasmuch as the animating principle of
+the true chivalrous character was the sense of honour, not the mere
+regard to, or saving of, appearances. This, we think, must be an
+hypercriticism, from all we remember of books of chivalry and heroes of
+romance.]
+
+[Footnote C: We had forgotten the tragedies of Antonio and Ferdinand.
+Peace be with their _manes_!]
+
+[Footnote D: To be sure, it was redeemed by a high respect, and by some
+magnificent compliments. Once in particular, at his own table, after a
+good deal of _badinage_ and cross-questioning about his being the author
+of the Reply to Judge Eyre's Charge, on Mr. Godwin's acknowledging that
+he was, Mr. Tooke said, "Come here then,"--and when his guest went round
+to his chair, he took his hand, and pressed it to his lips, saying--"I
+can do no less for the hand that saved my life!"]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+MR. COLERIDGE.
+
+
+
+The present is an age of talkers, and not of doers; and the reason is,
+that the world is growing old. We are so far advanced in the Arts and
+Sciences, that we live in retrospect, and doat on past atchievements.
+The accumulation of knowledge has been so great, that we are lost in
+wonder at the height it has reached, instead of attempting to climb
+or add to it; while the variety of objects distracts and dazzles the
+looker-on. What _niche_ remains unoccupied? What path untried? What is
+the use of doing anything, unless we could do better than all those who
+have gone before us? What hope is there of this? We are like those who
+have been to see some noble monument of art, who are content to admire
+without thinking of rivalling it; or like guests after a feast,
+who praise the hospitality of the donor "and thank the bounteous
+Pan"--perhaps carrying away some trifling fragments; or like the
+spectators of a mighty battle, who still hear its sound afar off, and
+the clashing of armour and the neighing of the war-horse and the shout
+of victory is in their ears, like the rushing of innumerable waters!
+
+Mr. Coleridge has "a mind reflecting ages past:" his voice is like
+the echo of the congregated roar of the "dark rearward and abyss" of
+thought. He who has seen a mouldering tower by the side of a chrystal
+lake, hid by the mist, but glittering in the wave below, may conceive
+the dim, gleaming, uncertain intelligence of his eye: he who has marked
+the evening clouds uprolled (a world of vapours), has seen the picture
+of his mind, unearthly, unsubstantial, with gorgeous tints and
+ever-varying forms--
+
+  "That which was now a horse, even with a thought
+  The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct
+  As water is in water."
+
+Our author's mind is (as he himself might express it) _tangential_.
+There is no subject on which he has not touched, none on which he has
+rested. With an understanding fertile, subtle, expansive, "quick,
+forgetive, apprehensive," beyond all living precedent, few traces of it
+will perhaps remain. He lends himself to all impressions alike; he gives
+up his mind and liberty of thought to none. He is a general lover of art
+and science, and wedded to no one in particular. He pursues knowledge as
+a mistress, with outstretched hands and winged speed; but as he is
+about to embrace her, his Daphne turns--alas! not to a laurel! Hardly a
+speculation has been left on record from the earliest time, but it is
+loosely folded up in Mr. Coleridge's memory, like a rich, but somewhat
+tattered piece of tapestry; we might add (with more seeming than real
+extravagance), that scarce a thought can pass through the mind of man,
+but its sound has at some time or other passed over his head with
+rustling pinions. On whatever question or author you speak, he is
+prepared to take up the theme with advantage--from Peter Abelard down
+to Thomas Moore, from the subtlest metaphysics to the politics of the
+_Courier_. There is no man of genius, in whose praise he descants, but
+the critic seems to stand above the author, and "what in him is weak, to
+strengthen, what is low, to raise and support:" nor is there any work of
+genius that does not come out of his hands like an Illuminated Missal,
+sparkling even in its defects. If Mr. Coleridge had not been the most
+impressive talker of his age, he would probably have been the finest
+writer; but he lays down his pen to make sure of an auditor, and
+mortgages the admiration of posterity for the stare of an idler. If he
+had not been a poet, he would have been a powerful logician; if he had
+not dipped his wing in the Unitarian controversy, he might have soared
+to the very summit of fancy. But in writing verse, he is trying
+to subject the Muse to _transcendental_ theories: in his abstract
+reasoning, he misses his way by strewing it with flowers. All that he
+has done of moment, he had done twenty years ago: since then, he may be
+said to have lived on the sound of his own voice. Mr. Coleridge is too
+rich in intellectual wealth, to need to task himself to any drudgery: he
+has only to draw the sliders of his imagination, and a thousand subjects
+expand before him, startling him with their brilliancy, or losing
+themselves in endless obscurity--
+
+  "And by the force of blear illusion,
+  They draw him on to his confusion."
+
+What is the little he could add to the stock, compared with the
+countless stores that lie about him, that he should stoop to pick up a
+name, or to polish an idle fancy? He walks abroad in the majesty of an
+universal understanding, eyeing the "rich strond," or golden sky above
+him, and "goes sounding on his way," in eloquent accents, uncompelled
+and free!
+
+Persons of the greatest capacity are often those, who for this reason
+do the least; for surveying themselves from the highest point of view,
+amidst the infinite variety of the universe, their own share in it seems
+trifling, and scarce worth a thought, and they prefer the contemplation
+of all that is, or has been, or can be, to the making a coil about doing
+what, when done, is no better than vanity. It is hard to concentrate
+all our attention and efforts on one pursuit, except from ignorance
+of others; and without this concentration of our faculties, no great
+progress can be made in any one thing. It is not merely that the mind is
+not capable of the effort; it does not think the effort worth making.
+Action is one; but thought is manifold. He whose restless eye glances
+through the wide compass of nature and art, will not consent to have
+"his own nothings monstered:" but he must do this, before he can give
+his whole soul to them. The mind, after "letting contemplation have its
+fill," or
+
+  "Sailing with supreme dominion
+  Through the azure deep of air,"
+
+sinks down on the ground, breathless, exhausted, powerless, inactive;
+or if it must have some vent to its feelings, seeks the most easy and
+obvious; is soothed by friendly flattery, lulled by the murmur of
+immediate applause, thinks as it were aloud, and babbles in its dreams!
+A scholar (so to speak) is a more disinterested and abstracted character
+than a mere author. The first looks at the numberless volumes of a
+library, and says, "All these are mine:" the other points to a single
+volume (perhaps it may be an immortal one) and says, "My name is written
+on the back of it." This is a puny and groveling ambition, beneath the
+lofty amplitude of Mr. Coleridge's mind. No, he revolves in his wayward
+soul, or utters to the passing wind, or discourses to his own shadow,
+things mightier and more various!--Let us draw the curtain, and unlock
+the shrine. Learning rocked him in his cradle, and, while yet a child,
+
+  "He lisped in numbers, for the numbers came."
+
+At sixteen he wrote his _Ode on Chatterton_, and he still reverts to
+that period with delight, not so much as it relates to himself (for that
+string of his own early promise of fame rather jars than otherwise) but
+as exemplifying the youth of a poet. Mr. Coleridge talks of himself,
+without being an egotist, for in him the individual is always merged in
+the abstract and general. He distinguished himself at school and at the
+University by his knowledge of the classics, and gained several prizes
+for Greek epigrams. How many men are there (great scholars, celebrated
+names in literature) who having done the same thing in their youth, have
+no other idea all the rest of their lives but of this achievement, of
+a fellowship and dinner, and who, installed in academic honours, would
+look down on our author as a mere strolling bard! At Christ's
+Hospital, where he was brought up, he was the idol of those among his
+schoolfellows, who mingled with their bookish studies the music of
+thought and of humanity; and he was usually attended round the cloisters
+by a group of these (inspiring and inspired) whose hearts, even then,
+burnt within them as he talked, and where the sounds yet linger to mock
+ELIA on his way, still turning pensive to the past! One of the finest
+and rarest parts of Mr. Coleridge's conversation, is when he expatiates
+on the Greek tragedians (not that he is not well acquainted, when he
+pleases, with the epic poets, or the philosophers, or orators, or
+historians of antiquity)--on the subtle reasonings and melting pathos
+of Euripides, on the harmonious gracefulness of Sophocles, tuning his
+love-laboured song, like sweetest warblings from a sacred grove; on the
+high-wrought trumpet-tongued eloquence of Aeschylus, whose Prometheus,
+above all, is like an Ode to Fate, and a pleading with Providence, his
+thoughts being let loose as his body is chained on his solitary rock,
+and his afflicted will (the emblem of mortality)
+
+  "Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny."
+
+As the impassioned critic speaks and rises in his theme, you would think
+you heard the voice of the Man hated by the Gods, contending with
+the wild winds as they roar, and his eye glitters with the spirit of
+Antiquity!
+
+Next, he was engaged with Hartley's tribes of mind, "etherial braid,
+thought-woven,"--and he busied himself for a year or two with
+vibrations and vibratiuncles and the great law of association that binds
+all things in its mystic chain, and the doctrine of Necessity (the
+mild teacher of Charity) and the Millennium, anticipative of a life to
+come--and he plunged deep into the controversy on Matter and Spirit,
+and, as an escape from Dr. Priestley's Materialism, where he felt
+himself imprisoned by the logician's spell, like Ariel in the
+cloven pine-tree, he became suddenly enamoured of Bishop Berkeley's
+fairy-world,[A] and used in all companies to build the universe, like
+a brave poetical fiction, of fine words--and he was deep-read in
+Malebranche, and in Cudworth's Intellectual System (a huge pile of
+learning, unwieldy, enormous) and in Lord Brook's hieroglyphic theories,
+and in Bishop Butler's Sermons, and in the Duchess of Newcastle's
+fantastic folios, and in Clarke and South and Tillotson, and all the
+fine thinkers and masculine reasoners of that age--and Leibnitz's
+_Pre-established Harmony_ reared its arch above his head, like the
+rainbow in the cloud, covenanting with the hopes of man--and then he
+fell plump, ten thousand fathoms down (but his wings saved him harmless)
+into the _hortus siccus_ of Dissent, where he pared religion down to the
+standard of reason and stripped faith of mystery, and preached Christ
+crucified and the Unity of the Godhead, and so dwelt for a while in the
+spirit with John Huss and Jerome of Prague and Socinus and old John
+Zisca, and ran through Neal's History of the Puritans, and Calamy's
+Non-Conformists' Memorial, having like thoughts and passions with
+them--but then Spinoza became his God, and he took up the vast chain of
+being in his hand, and the round world became the centre and the soul of
+all things in some shadowy sense, forlorn of meaning, and around him he
+beheld the living traces and the sky-pointing proportions of the mighty
+Pan--but poetry redeemed him from this spectral philosophy, and he
+bathed his heart in beauty, and gazed at the golden light of heaven, and
+drank of the spirit of the universe, and wandered at eve by fairy-stream
+or fountain,
+
+  "------When he saw nought but beauty,
+  When he heard the voice of that Almighty One
+  In every breeze that blew, or wave that murmured"--
+
+and wedded with truth in Plato's shade, and in the writings of Proclus
+and Plotinus saw the ideas of things in the eternal mind, and unfolded
+all mysteries with the Schoolmen and fathomed the depths of Duns Scotus
+and Thomas Aquinas, and entered the third heaven with Jacob Behmen, and
+walked hand in hand with Swedenborg through the pavilions of the New
+Jerusalem, and sung his faith in the promise and in the word in his
+_Religious Musings_--and lowering himself from that dizzy height, poised
+himself on Milton's wings, and spread out his thoughts in charity with
+the glad prose of Jeremy Taylor, and wept over Bowles's Sonnets, and
+studied Cowper's blankverse, and betook himself to Thomson's Castle of
+Indolence, and sported with the wits of Charles the Second's days and
+of Queen Anne, and relished Swift's style and that of the John Bull
+(Arbuthnot's we mean, not Mr. Croker's) and dallied with the British
+Essayists and Novelists, and knew all qualities of more modern writers
+with a learned spirit, Johnson, and Goldsmith, and Junius, and Burke,
+and Godwin, and the Sorrows of Werter, and Jean Jacques Rousseau, and
+Voltaire, and Marivaux, and Crebillon, and thousands more--now "laughed
+with Rabelais in his easy chair" or pointed to Hogarth, or afterwards
+dwelt on Claude's classic scenes or spoke with rapture of Raphael,
+and compared the women at Rome to figures that had walked out of his
+pictures, or visited the Oratory of Pisa, and described the works of
+Giotto and Ghirlandaio and Massaccio, and gave the moral of the picture
+of the Triumph of Death, where the beggars and the wretched invoke his
+dreadful dart, but the rich and mighty of the earth quail and shrink
+before it; and in that land of siren sights and sounds, saw a dance of
+peasant girls, and was charmed with lutes and gondolas,--or wandered
+into Germany and lost himself in the labyrinths of the Hartz Forest and
+of the Kantean philosophy, and amongst the cabalistic names of Fichte
+and Schelling and Lessing, and God knows who--this was long after, but
+all the former while, he had nerved his heart and filled his eyes
+with tears, as he hailed the rising orb of liberty, since quenched in
+darkness and in blood, and had kindled his affections at the blaze of
+the French Revolution, and sang for joy when the towers of the Bastile
+and the proud places of the insolent and the oppressor fell, and would
+have floated his bark, freighted with fondest fancies, across the
+Atlantic wave with Southey and others to seek for peace and freedom--
+
+  "In Philarmonia's undivided dale!"
+
+Alas! "Frailty, thy name is _Genius_!"--What is become of all this
+mighty heap of hope, of thought, of learning, and humanity? It has
+ended in swallowing doses of oblivion and in writing paragraphs in the
+_Courier_.--Such, and so little is the mind of man!
+
+It was not to be supposed that Mr. Coleridge could keep on at the rate
+he set off; he could not realize all he knew or thought, and less could
+not fix his desultory ambition; other stimulants supplied the place, and
+kept up the intoxicating dream, the fever and the madness of his early
+impressions. Liberty (the philosopher's and the poet's bride) had fallen
+a victim, meanwhile, to the murderous practices of the hag, Legitimacy.
+Proscribed by court-hirelings, too romantic for the herd of vulgar
+politicians, our enthusiast stood at bay, and at last turned on the
+pivot of a subtle casuistry to the _unclean side:_ but his discursive
+reason would not let him trammel himself into a poet-laureate or
+stamp-distributor, and he stopped, ere he had quite passed that
+well-known "bourne from whence no traveller returns"--and so has sunk
+into torpid, uneasy repose, tantalized by useless resources, haunted by
+vain imaginings, his lips idly moving, but his heart forever still, or,
+as the shattered chords vibrate of themselves, making melancholy music
+to the ear of memory! Such is the fate of genius in an age, when in the
+unequal contest with sovereign wrong, every man is ground to powder who
+is not either a born slave, or who does not willingly and at once offer
+up the yearnings of humanity and the dictates of reason as a welcome
+sacrifice to besotted prejudice and loathsome power.
+
+Of all Mr. Coleridge's productions, the _Ancient Mariner_ is the only
+one that we could with confidence put into any person's hands, on whom
+we wished to impress a favourable idea of his extraordinary powers. Let
+whatever other objections be made to it, it is unquestionably a work of
+genius--of wild, irregular, overwhelming imagination, and has that rich,
+varied movement in the verse, which gives a distant idea of the lofty or
+changeful tones of Mr. Coleridge's voice. In the _Christobel_, there
+is one splendid passage on divided friendship. The _Translation of
+Schiller's Wallenstein_ is also a masterly production in its kind,
+faithful and spirited. Among his smaller pieces there are occasional
+bursts of pathos and fancy, equal to what we might expect from him; but
+these form the exception, and not the rule. Such, for instance, is his
+affecting Sonnet to the author of the Robbers.
+
+  Schiller! that hour I would have wish'd to die,
+  If through the shudd'ring midnight I had sent
+  From the dark dungeon of the tower time-rent,
+  That fearful voice, a famish'd father's cry--
+
+  That in no after-moment aught less vast
+  Might stamp me mortal! A triumphant shout
+  Black horror scream'd, and all her goblin rout
+  From the more with'ring scene diminish'd pass'd.
+
+  Ah! Bard tremendous in sublimity!
+  Could I behold thee in thy loftier mood,
+  Wand'ring at eve, with finely frenzied eye,
+  Beneath some vast old tempest-swinging wood!
+  Awhile, with mute awe gazing, I would brood,
+  Then weep aloud in a wild ecstasy.
+
+His Tragedy, entitled _Remorse_, is full of beautiful and striking
+passages, but it does not place the author in the first rank of dramatic
+writers. But if Mr. Coleridge's works do not place him in that rank,
+they injure instead of conveying a just idea of the man, for he himself
+is certainly in the first class of general intellect.
+
+If our author's poetry is inferior to his conversation, his prose is
+utterly abortive. Hardly a gleam is to be found in it of the brilliancy
+and richness of those stores of thought and language that he pours out
+incessantly, when they are lost like drops of water in the ground. The
+principal work, in which he has attempted to embody his general views of
+things, is the FRIEND, of which, though it contains some noble passages
+and fine trains of thought, prolixity and obscurity are the most
+frequent characteristics.
+
+No two persons can be conceived more opposite in character or genius
+than the subject of the present and of the preceding sketch. Mr. Godwin,
+with less natural capacity, and with fewer acquired advantages, by
+concentrating his mind on some given object, and doing what he had to do
+with all his might, has accomplished much, and will leave more than
+one monument of a powerful intellect behind him; Mr. Coleridge, by
+dissipating his, and dallying with every subject by turns, has done
+little or nothing to justify to the world or to posterity, the high
+opinion which all who have ever heard him converse, or known him
+intimately, with one accord entertain of him. Mr. Godwin's faculties
+have kept house, and plied their task in the work-shop of the brain,
+diligently and effectually: Mr. Coleridge's have gossipped away their
+time, and gadded about from house to house, as if life's business were
+to melt the hours in listless talk. Mr. Godwin is intent on a subject,
+only as it concerns himself and his reputation; he works it out as a
+matter of duty, and discards from his mind whatever does not forward his
+main object as impertinent and vain. Mr. Coleridge, on the other hand,
+delights in nothing but episodes and digressions, neglects whatever he
+undertakes to perform, and can act only on spontaneous impulses, without
+object or method. "He cannot be constrained by mastery." While he should
+be occupied with a given pursuit, he is thinking of a thousand other
+things; a thousand tastes, a thousand objects tempt him, and distract
+his mind, which keeps open house, and entertains all comers; and after
+being fatigued and amused with morning calls from idle visitors, finds
+the day consumed and its business unconcluded. Mr. Godwin, on the
+contrary, is somewhat exclusive and unsocial in his habits of mind,
+entertains no company but what he gives his whole time and attention to,
+and wisely writes over the doors of his understanding, his fancy, and
+his senses--"No admittance except on business." He has none of that
+fastidious refinement and false delicacy, which might lead him to
+balance between the endless variety of modern attainments. He does not
+throw away his life (nor a single half-hour of it) in adjusting the
+claims of different accomplishments, and in choosing between them or
+making himself master of them all. He sets about his task, (whatever
+it may be) and goes through it with spirit and fortitude. He has the
+happiness to think an author the greatest character in the world,
+and himself the greatest author in it. Mr. Coleridge, in writing an
+harmonious stanza, would stop to consider whether there was not more
+grace and beauty in a _Pas de trois_, and would not proceed till he had
+resolved this question by a chain of metaphysical reasoning without end.
+Not so Mr. Godwin. That is best to him, which he can do best. He does
+not waste himself in vain aspirations and effeminate sympathies. He is
+blind, deaf, insensible to all but the trump of Fame. Plays, operas,
+painting, music, ball-rooms, wealth, fashion, titles, lords, ladies,
+touch him not--all these are no more to him than to the magician in his
+cell, and he writes on to the end of the chapter, through good report
+and evil report. _Pingo in eternitatem_--is his motto. He neither envies
+nor admires what others are, but is contented to be what he is, and
+strives to do the utmost he can. Mr. Coleridge has flirted with the
+Muses as with a set of mistresses: Mr. Godwin has been married twice, to
+Reason and to Fancy, and has to boast no short-lived progeny by each.
+So to speak, he has _valves_ belonging to his mind, to regulate the
+quantity of gas admitted into it, so that like the bare, unsightly, but
+well-compacted steam-vessel, it cuts its liquid way, and arrives at
+its promised end: while Mr. Coleridge's bark, "taught with the little
+nautilus to sail," the sport of every breath, dancing to every wave,
+
+  "Youth at its prow, and Pleasure at its helm,"
+
+flutters its gaudy pennons in the air, glitters in the sun, but we wait
+in vain to hear of its arrival in the destined harbour. Mr. Godwin, with
+less variety and vividness, with less subtlety and susceptibility
+both of thought and feeling, has had firmer nerves, a more determined
+purpose, a more comprehensive grasp of his subject, and the results are
+as we find them. Each has met with his reward: for justice has, after
+all, been done to the pretensions of each; and we must, in all cases,
+use means to ends!
+
+
+[Footnote A: Mr. Coleridge named his eldest son (the writer of some
+beautiful Sonnets) after Hartley, and the second after Berkeley. The
+third was called Derwent, after the river of that name. Nothing can be
+more characteristic of his mind than this circumstance. All his ideas
+indeed are like a river, flowing on for ever, and still murmuring as it
+flows, discharging its waters and still replenished--
+
+  "And so by many winding nooks it strays,
+  With willing sport to the wild ocean!"]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+REV. MR. IRVING.
+
+
+
+This gentleman has gained an almost unprecedented, and not an altogether
+unmerited popularity as a preacher. As he is, perhaps, though a burning
+and a shining light, not "one of the fixed," we shall take this
+opportunity of discussing his merits, while he is at his meridian
+height; and in doing so, shall "nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in
+malice."
+
+Few circumstances shew the prevailing and preposterous rage for novelty
+in a more striking point of view, than the success of Mr. Irving's
+oratory. People go to hear him in crowds, and come away with a mixture
+of delight and astonishment--they go again to see if the effect will
+continue, and send others to try to find out the mystery--and in the
+noisy conflict between extravagant encomiums and splenetic objections,
+the true secret escapes observation, which is, that the whole thing is,
+nearly from beginning to end, a _transposition of ideas_. If the subject
+of these remarks had come out as a player, with all his advantages of
+figure, voice, and action, we think he would have failed: if, as a
+preacher, he had kept within the strict bounds of pulpit-oratory, he
+would scarcely have been much distinguished among his Calvinistic
+brethren: as a mere author, he would have excited attention rather
+by his quaintness and affectation of an obsolete style and mode of
+thinking, than by any thing else. But he has contrived to jumble these
+several characters together in an unheard-of and unwarranted manner, and
+the fascination is altogether irresistible. Our Caledonian divine is
+equally an anomaly in religion, in literature, in personal appearance,
+and in public speaking. To hear a person spout Shakspeare on the stage
+is nothing--the charm is nearly worn out--but to hear any one spout
+Shakspeare (and that not in a sneaking under-tone, but at the top of
+his voice, and with the full breadth of his chest) from a Calvinistic
+pulpit, is new and wonderful. The _Fancy_ have lately lost something of
+their gloss in public estimation, and after the last fight, few would go
+far to see a Neat or a Spring set-to;--but to see a man who is able to
+enter the ring with either of them, or brandish a quarter-staff with
+Friar Tuck, or a broad-sword with Shaw the Lifeguards' man, stand up in
+a strait-laced old-fashioned pulpit, and bandy dialectics with modern
+philosophers or give a _cross-buttock_ to a cabinet minister, there is
+something in a sight like this also, that is a cure for sore eyes. It
+is as if Crib or Molyneux had turned Methodist parson, or as if
+a Patagonian savage were to come forward as the patron-saint of
+Evangelical religion. Again, the doctrine of eternal punishment was one
+of the staple arguments with which, everlastingly drawled out, the old
+school of Presbyterian divines used to keep their audiences awake, or
+lull them to sleep; but to which people of taste and fashion paid
+little attention, as inelegant and barbarous, till Mr. Irving, with his
+cast-iron features and sledge-hammer blows, puffing like a grim Vulcan,
+set to work to forge more classic thunderbolts, and kindle the expiring
+flames anew with the very sweepings of sceptical and infidel
+libraries, so as to excite a pleasing horror in the female part of his
+congregation. In short, our popular declaimer has, contrary to the
+Scripture-caution, put new wine into old bottles, or new cloth on old
+garments. He has, with an unlimited and daring licence, mixed the
+sacred and the profane together, the carnal and the spiritual man, the
+petulance of the bar with the dogmatism of the pulpit, the theatrical
+and theological, the modern and the obsolete;--what wonder that this
+splendid piece of patchwork, splendid by contradiction and contrast,
+has delighted some and confounded others? The more serious part of his
+congregation indeed complain, though not bitterly, that their pastor
+has converted their meeting-house into a play-house: but when a lady of
+quality, introducing herself and her three daughters to the preacher,
+assures him that they have been to all the most fashionable places of
+resort, the opera, the theatre, assemblies, Miss Macauley's readings,
+and Exeter-Change, and have been equally entertained no where else, we
+apprehend that no remonstrances of a committee of ruling-elders will be
+able to bring him to his senses again, or make him forego such sweet,
+but ill-assorted praise. What we mean to insist upon is, that Mr. Irving
+owes his triumphant success, not to any one quality for which he has
+been extolled, but to a combination of qualities, the more striking
+in their immediate effect, in proportion as they are unlooked-for and
+heterogeneous, like the violent opposition of light and shade in a
+picture. We shall endeavour to explain this view of the subject more at
+large.
+
+Mr. Irving, then, is no common or mean man. He has four or five
+qualities, possessed in a moderate or in a paramount degree, which,
+added or multiplied together, fill up the important space he occupies in
+the public eye. Mr. Irving's intellect itself is of a superior order; he
+has undoubtedly both talents and acquirements beyond the ordinary run of
+every-day preachers. These alone, however, we hold, would not account
+for a twentieth part of the effect he has produced: they would have
+lifted him perhaps out of the mire and slough of sordid obscurity, but
+would never have launched him into the ocean-stream of popularity, in
+which he "lies floating many a rood;"--but to these he adds uncommon
+height, a graceful figure and action, a clear and powerful voice, a
+striking, if not a fine face, a bold and fiery spirit, and a most
+portentous obliquity of vision, which throw him to an immeasurable
+distance beyond all competition, and effectually relieve whatever there
+might be of common-place or bombast in his style of composition. Put the
+case that Mr. Irving had been five feet high--Would he ever have been
+heard of, or, as he does now, have "bestrode the world like a Colossus?"
+No, the thing speaks for itself. He would in vain have lifted
+his Lilliputian arm to Heaven, people would have laughed at his
+monkey-tricks. Again, had he been as tall as he is, but had wanted other
+recommendations, he would have been nothing.
+
+  "The player's province they but vainly try,
+  Who want these powers, deportment, voice, and eye."
+
+Conceive a rough, ugly, shock-headed Scotchman, standing up in the
+Caledonian chapel, and dealing "damnation round the land" in a broad
+northern dialect, and with a harsh, screaking voice, what ear polite,
+what smile serene would have hailed the barbarous prodigy, or not
+consigned him to utter neglect and derision? But the Rev. Edward Irving,
+with all his native wildness, "hath a smooth aspect framed to make
+women" saints; his very unusual size and height are carried off and
+moulded into elegance by the most admirable symmetry of form and ease of
+gesture; his sable locks, his clear iron-grey complexion, and firm-set
+features, turn the raw, uncouth Scotchman into the likeness of a noble
+Italian picture; and even his distortion of sight only redeems the
+otherwise "faultless monster" within the bounds of humanity, and, when
+admiration is exhausted and curiosity ceases, excites a new interest by
+leading to the idle question whether it is an advantage to the preacher
+or not. Farther, give him all his actual and remarkable advantages of
+body and mind, let him be as tall, as strait, as dark and clear of skin,
+as much at his ease, as silver-tongued, as eloquent and as argumentative
+as he is, yet with all these, and without a little charlatanery to set
+them off, he had been nothing. He might, keeping within the rigid line
+of his duty and professed calling, have preached on for ever; he
+might have divided the old-fashioned doctrines of election, grace,
+reprobation, predestination, into his sixteenth, seventeenth,
+and eighteenth heads, and his _lastly_ have been looked for as a
+"consummation devoutly to be wished;" he might have defied the devil and
+all his works, and by the help of a loud voice and strong-set person--
+
+  "A lusty man to ben an Abbot able;"--
+
+have increased his own congregation, and been quoted among the godly as
+a powerful preacher of the word; but in addition to this, he went out of
+his way to attack Jeremy Bentham, and the town was up in arms. The thing
+was new. He thus wiped the stain of musty ignorance and formal bigotry
+out of his style. Mr. Irving must have something superior in him, to
+look over the shining close-packed heads of his congregation to have a
+hit at the _Great Jurisconsult_ in his study. He next, ere the report of
+the former blow had subsided, made a lunge at Mr. Brougham, and glanced
+an eye at Mr. Canning; _mystified_ Mr. Coleridge, and _stultified_ Lord
+Liverpool in his place--in the Gallery. It was rare sport to see him,
+"like an eagle in a dovecote, flutter the Volscians in Corioli." He has
+found out the secret of attracting by repelling. Those whom he is likely
+to attack are curious to hear what he says of them: they go again,
+to show that they do not mind it. It is no less interesting to the
+by-standers, who like to witness this sort of _onslaught_--like a charge
+of cavalry, the shock, and the resistance. Mr. Irving has, in fact,
+without leave asked or a licence granted, converted the Caledonian
+Chapel into a Westminster Forum or Debating Society, with the sanctity
+of religion added to it. Our spirited polemic is not contented to defend
+the citadel of orthodoxy against all impugners, and shut himself up
+in texts of Scripture and huge volumes of the Commentators as an
+impregnable fortress;--he merely makes use of the stronghold of religion
+as a resting-place, from which he sallies forth, armed with modern
+topics and with penal fire, like Achilles of old rushing from the
+Grecian tents, against the adversaries of God and man. Peter Aretine is
+said to have laid the Princes of Europe under contribution by penning
+satires against them: so Mr. Irving keeps the public in awe by insulting
+all their favourite idols. He does not spare their politicians, their
+rulers, their moralists, their poets, their players, their critics,
+their reviewers, their magazine-writers; he levels their resorts of
+business, their places of amusement, at a blow--their cities, churches,
+palaces, ranks and professions, refinements, and elegances--and leaves
+nothing standing but himself, a mighty landmark in a degenerate age,
+overlooking the wide havoc he has made! He makes war upon all arts and
+sciences, upon the faculties and nature of man, on his vices and his
+virtues, on all existing institutions, and all possible improvements,
+that nothing may be left but the Kirk of Scotland, and that he may be
+the head of it. He literally sends a challenge to all London in the
+name of the KING of HEAVEN, to evacuate its streets, to disperse its
+population, to lay aside its employments, to burn its wealth, to
+renounce its vanities and pomp; and for what?--that he may enter in
+as the _King of Glory_; or after enforcing his threat with the
+battering-ram of logic, the grape-shot of rhetoric, and the crossfire of
+his double vision, reduce the British metropolis to a Scottish heath,
+with a few miserable hovels upon it, where they may worship God
+according to _the root of the matter_, and an old man with a blue
+bonnet, a fair-haired girl, and a little child would form the flower of
+his flock! Such is the pretension and the boast of this new Peter the
+Hermit, who would get rid of all we have done in the way of improvement
+on a state of barbarous ignorance, or still more barbarous prejudice, in
+order to begin again on a _tabula rasa_ of Calvinism, and have a world
+of his own making. It is not very surprising that when nearly the
+whole mass and texture of civil society is indicted as a nuisance, and
+threatened to be pulled down as a rotten building ready to fall on the
+heads of the inhabitants, that all classes of people run to hear the
+crash, and to see the engines and levers at work which are to effect
+this laudable purpose. What else can be the meaning of our preacher's
+taking upon himself to denounce the sentiments of the most serious
+professors in great cities, as vitiated and stark-naught, of relegating
+religion to his native glens, and pretending that the hymn of praise or
+the sigh of contrition cannot ascend acceptably to the throne of grace
+from the crowded street as well as from the barren rock or silent
+valley? Why put this affront upon his hearers? Why belie his own
+aspirations?
+
+  "God made the country, and man made the town."
+
+So says the poet; does Mr. Irving say so? If he does, and finds the air
+of the city death to his piety, why does he not return home again? But
+if he can breathe it with impunity, and still retain the fervour of his
+early enthusiasm, and the simplicity and purity of the faith that was
+once delivered to the saints, why not extend the benefit of his own
+experience to others, instead of taunting them with a vapid pastoral
+theory? Or, if our popular and eloquent divine finds a change in
+himself, that flattery prevents the growth of grace, that he is becoming
+the God of his own idolatry by being that of others, that the glittering
+of coronet-coaches rolling down Holborn-Hill to Hatton Garden, that
+titled beauty, that the parliamentary complexion of his audience, the
+compliments of poets, and the stare of peers discompose his wandering
+thoughts a little; and yet that he cannot give up these strong
+temptations tugging at his heart; why not extend more charity to others,
+and shew more candour in speaking of himself? There is either a good
+deal of bigoted intolerance with a deplorable want of self-knowledge in
+all this; or at least an equal degree of cant and quackery.
+
+To whichever cause we are to attribute this hyperbolical tone, we hold
+it certain he could not have adopted it, if he had been _a little man_.
+But his imposing figure and dignified manner enable him to hazard
+sentiments or assertions that would be fatal to others. His
+controversial daring is _backed_ by his bodily prowess; and by bringing
+his intellectual pretensions boldly into a line with his physical
+accomplishments, he, indeed, presents a very formidable front to the
+sceptic or the scoffer. Take a cubit from his stature, and his whole
+manner resolves itself into an impertinence. But with that addition, he
+_overcrows_ the town, browbeats their prejudices, and bullies them out
+of their senses, and is not afraid of being contradicted by any one
+_less than himself_. It may be said, that individuals with great
+personal defects have made a considerable figure as public speakers; and
+Mr. Wilberforce, among others, may be held out as an instance. Nothing
+can be more insignificant as to mere outward appearance, and yet he is
+listened to in the House of Commons. But he does not wield it, he does
+not insult or bully it. He leads by following opinion, he trims, he
+shifts, he glides on the silvery sounds of his undulating, flexible,
+cautiously modulated voice, winding his way betwixt heaven and earth,
+now courting popularity, now calling servility to his aid, and with a
+large estate, the "saints," and the population of Yorkshire to swell his
+influence, never venturing on the forlorn hope, or doing any thing more
+than "hitting the house between wind and water." Yet he is probably a
+cleverer man than Mr. Irving.
+
+There is a Mr. Fox, a Dissenting Minister, as fluent a speaker, with a
+sweeter voice and a more animated and beneficent countenance than Mr.
+Irving, who expresses himself with manly spirit at a public meeting,
+takes a hand at whist, and is the darling of his congregation; but he is
+no more, because he is diminutive in person. His head is not seen above
+the crowd the length of a street off. He is the Duke of Sussex in
+miniature, but the Duke of Sussex does not go to hear him preach, as he
+attends Mr. Irving, who rises up against him like a martello tower,
+and is nothing loth to confront the spirit of a man of genius with
+the blood-royal. We allow there are, or may be, talents sufficient to
+produce this equality without a single personal advantage; but we deny
+that this would be the effect of any that our great preacher possesses.
+We conceive it not improbable that the consciousness of muscular power,
+that the admiration of his person by strangers might first have inspired
+Mr. Irving with an ambition to be something, intellectually speaking,
+and have given him confidence to attempt the greatest things. He has not
+failed for want of courage. The public, as well as the fair, are won
+by a show of gallantry. Mr. Irving has shrunk from no opinion, however
+paradoxical. He has scrupled to avow no sentiment, however obnoxious. He
+has revived exploded prejudices, he has scouted prevailing fashions.
+He has opposed the spirit of the age, and not consulted the _esprit de
+corps_. He has brought back the doctrines of Calvinism in all their
+inveteracy, and relaxed the inveteracy of his northern accents. He has
+turned religion and the Caledonian Chapel topsy-turvy. He has held a
+play-book in one hand, and a Bible in the other, and quoted Shakspeare
+and Melancthon in the same breath. The tree of the knowledge of good and
+evil is no longer, with his grafting, a dry withered stump; it shoots
+its branches to the skies, and hangs out its blossoms to the gale--
+
+  "Miraturque novos fructus, et non sua poma."
+
+He has taken the thorns and briars of scholastic divinity, and garlanded
+them with the flowers of modern literature. He has done all this,
+relying on the strength of a remarkably fine person and manner, and
+through that he has succeeded--otherwise he would have perished
+miserably.
+
+Dr. Chalmers is not by any means so good a looking man, nor so
+accomplished a speaker as Mr. Irving; yet he at one time almost equalled
+his oratorical celebrity, and certainly paved the way for him. He has
+therefore more merit than his admired pupil, as he has done as much
+with fewer means. He has more scope of intellect and more intensity of
+purpose. Both his matter and his manner, setting aside his face and
+figure, are more impressive. Take the volume of "Sermons on Astronomy,"
+by Dr. Chalmers, and the "Four Orations for the Oracles of God" which
+Mr. Irving lately published, and we apprehend there can be no comparison
+as to their success. The first ran like wild-fire through the country,
+were the darlings of watering-places, were laid in the windows of
+inns,[A] and were to be met with in all places of public resort; while
+the "Orations" get on but slowly, on Milton's stilts, and are pompously
+announced as in a Third Edition. We believe the fairest and fondest of
+his admirers would rather see and hear Mr. Irving than read him. The
+reason is, that the groundwork of his compositions is trashy and
+hackneyed, though set off by extravagant metaphors and an affected
+phraseology; that without the turn of his head and wave of his hand, his
+periods have nothing in them; and that he himself is the only _idea_
+with which he has yet enriched the public mind! He must play off
+his person, as Orator Henley used to dazzle his hearers with his
+diamond-ring. The small frontispiece prefixed to the "Orations" does not
+serve to convey an adequate idea of the magnitude of the man, nor of
+the ease and freedom of his motions in the pulpit. How different is Dr.
+Chalmers! He is like "a monkey-preacher" to the other. He cannot boast
+of personal appearance to set him off. But then he is like the very
+genius or demon of theological controversy personified. He has neither
+airs nor graces at command; he thinks nothing of himself; he has nothing
+theatrical about him (which cannot be said of his successor and
+rival); but you see a man in mortal throes and agony with doubts and
+difficulties, seizing stubborn knotty points with his teeth, tearing
+them with his hands, and straining his eyeballs till they almost start
+out of their sockets, in pursuit of a train of visionary reasoning, like
+a Highland-seer with his second sight. The description of Balfour of
+Burley in his cave, with his Bible in one hand and his sword in the
+other, contending with the imaginary enemy of mankind, gasping for
+breath, and with the cold moisture running down his face, gives a lively
+idea of Dr. Chalmers's prophetic fury in the pulpit. If we could
+have looked in to have seen Burley hard-beset "by the coinage of his
+heat-oppressed brain," who would have asked whether he was a handsome
+man or not? It would be enough to see a man haunted by a spirit, under
+the strong and entire dominion of a wilful hallucination. So the
+integrity and vehemence of Dr. Chalmers's manner, the determined way in
+which he gives himself up to his subject, or lays about him and buffets
+sceptics and gainsayers, arrests attention in spite of every other
+circumstance, and fixes it on that, and that alone, which excites
+such interest and such eagerness in his own breast! Besides, he is a
+logician, has a theory in support of whatever he chooses to advance, and
+weaves the tissue of his sophistry so close and intricate, that it is
+difficult not to be entangled in it, or to escape from it. "There's
+magic in the web." Whatever appeals to the pride of the human
+understanding, has a subtle charm in it. The mind is naturally
+pugnacious, cannot refuse a challenge of strength or skill, sturdily
+enters the lists and resolves to conquer, or to yield itself vanquished
+in the forms. This is the chief hold Dr. Chalmers had upon his hearers,
+and upon the readers of his "Astronomical Discourses." No one was
+satisfied with his arguments, no one could answer them, but every one
+wanted to try what he could make of them, as we try to find out a
+riddle. "By his so potent art," the art of laying down problematical
+premises, and drawing from them still more doubtful, but not impossible,
+conclusions, "he could bedim the noonday sun, betwixt the green sea and
+the azure vault set roaring war," and almost compel the stars in their
+courses to testify to his opinions. The mode in which he undertook to
+make the circuit of the universe, and demand categorical information
+"now of the planetary and now of the fixed," might put one in mind of
+Hecate's mode of ascending in a machine from the stage, "midst troops
+of spirits," in which you now admire the skill of the artist, and next
+tremble for the fate of the performer, fearing that the audacity of
+the attempt will turn his head or break his neck. The style of these
+"Discourses" also, though not elegant or poetical, was, like the
+subject, intricate and endless. It was that of a man pushing his way
+through a labyrinth of difficulties, and determined not to flinch. The
+impression on the reader was proportionate; for, whatever were the
+merits of the style or matter, both were new and striking; and the train
+of thought that was unfolded at such length and with such strenuousness,
+was bold, well-sustained, and consistent with itself.
+
+Mr. Irving wants the continuity of thought and manner which
+distinguishes his rival--and shines by patches and in bursts. He does
+not warm or acquire increasing force or rapidity with his progress. He
+is never hurried away by a deep or lofty enthusiasm, nor touches the
+highest point of genius or fanaticism, but "in the very storm and
+whirlwind of his passion, he acquires and begets a temperance that may
+give it smoothness." He has the self-possession and masterly execution
+of an experienced player or fencer, and does not seem to express his
+natural convictions, or to be engaged in a mortal struggle. This greater
+ease and indifference is the result of vast superiority of personal
+appearance, which "to be admired needs but to be seen," and does not
+require the possessor to work himself up into a passion, or to use
+any violent contortions to gain attention or to keep it. These two
+celebrated preachers are in almost all respects an antithesis to each
+other. If Mr. Irving is an example of what can be done by the help of
+external advantages, Dr. Chalmers is a proof of what can be done without
+them. The one is most indebted to his mind, the other to his body. If
+Mr. Irving inclines one to suspect fashionable or popular religion of a
+little _anthropomorphitism_, Dr. Chalmers effectually redeems it from
+that scandal.
+
+
+[Footnote A: We remember finding the volume in the orchard at
+Burford-bridge near Boxhill, and passing a whole and very delightful
+morning in reading it, without quitting the shade of an apple-tree.
+We have not been able to pay Mr. Irving's back the same compliment of
+reading it at a sitting.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LATE MR. HORNE TOOKE.
+
+
+
+Mr. Horne Tooke was one of those who may be considered as connecting
+links between a former period and the existing generation. His education
+and accomplishments, nay, his political opinions, were of the last age;
+his mind, and the tone of his feelings were _modern_. There was a hard,
+dry materialism in the very texture of his understanding, varnished over
+by the external refinements of the old school. Mr. Tooke had great
+scope of attainment, and great versatility of pursuit; but the same
+shrewdness, quickness, cool self-possession, the same _literalness_ of
+perception, and absence of passion and enthusiasm, characterised nearly
+all he did, said, or wrote. He was without a rival (almost) in private
+conversation, an expert public speaker, a keen politician, a first-rate
+grammarian, and the finest gentleman (to say the least) of his own
+party. He had no imagination (or he would not have scorned it!)--no
+delicacy of taste, no rooted prejudices or strong attachments: his
+intellect was like a bow of polished steel, from which he shot
+sharp-pointed poisoned arrows at his friends in private, at his enemies
+in public. His mind (so to speak) had no _religion_ in it, and very
+little even of the moral qualities of genius; but he was a man of the
+world, a scholar bred, and a most acute and powerful logician. He was
+also a wit, and a formidable one: yet it may be questioned whether his
+wit was any thing more than an excess of his logical faculty: it did not
+consist in the play of fancy, but in close and cutting combinations of
+the understanding. "The law is open to every one: _so_," said Mr. Tooke,
+"_is the London Tavern_!" It is the previous deduction formed in the
+mind, and the splenetic contempt felt for a practical sophism, that
+_beats about the bush for_, and at last finds the apt illustration; not
+the casual, glancing coincidence of two objects, that points out an
+absurdity to the understanding. So, on another occasion, when Sir Allan
+Gardiner (who was a candidate for Westminster) had objected to Mr. Fox,
+that "he was always against the minister, _whether right or wrong_," and
+Mr. Fox, in his reply, had overlooked this slip of the tongue, Mr. Tooke
+immediately seized on it, and said, "he thought it at least an equal
+objection to Sir Allan, that he was always _with_ the minister, whether
+right or wrong." This retort had all the effect, and produced the same
+surprise as the most brilliant display of wit or fancy: yet it was only
+the detecting a flaw in an argument, like a flaw in an indictment, by a
+kind of legal pertinacity, or rather by a rigid and constant habit of
+attending to the exact import of every word and clause in a sentence.
+Mr. Tooke had the mind of a lawyer; but it was applied to a vast variety
+of topics and general trains of speculation.
+
+Mr. Horne Tooke was in private company, and among his friends, the
+finished gentleman of the last age. His manners were as fascinating as
+his conversation was spirited and delightful. He put one in mind of the
+burden of the song of "_The King's Old Courtier, and an Old Courtier of
+the King's_." He was, however, of the opposite party. It was curious to
+hear our modern sciolist advancing opinions of the most radical
+kind without any mixture of radical heat or violence, in a tone of
+fashionable _nonchalance_, with elegance of gesture and attitude, and
+with the most perfect good-humour. In the spirit of opposition, or in
+the pride of logical superiority, he too often shocked the prejudices or
+wounded the self-love of those about him, while he himself displayed
+the same unmoved indifference or equanimity. He said the most provoking
+things with a laughing gaiety, and a polite attention, that there was
+no withstanding. He threw others off their guard by thwarting their
+favourite theories, and then availed himself of the temperance of
+his own pulse to chafe them into madness. He had not one particle
+of deference for the opinion of others, nor of sympathy with their
+feelings; nor had he any obstinate convictions of his own to defend--
+
+  "Lord of himself, uncumbered with a _creed_!"
+
+He took up any topic by chance, and played with it at will, like a
+juggler with his cups and balls. He generally ranged himself on the
+losing side; and had rather an ill-natured delight in contradiction, and
+in perplexing the understandings of others, without leaving them any
+clue to guide them out of the labyrinth into which he had led them.
+He understood, in its perfection, the great art of throwing the _onus
+probandi_ on his adversary; and so could maintain almost any opinion,
+however absurd or fantastical, with fearless impunity. I have heard a
+sensible and well-informed man say, that he never was in company with
+Mr. Tooke without being delighted and surprised, or without feeling the
+conversation of every other person to be flat in the comparison; but
+that he did not recollect having ever heard him make a remark that
+struck him as a sound and true one, or that he himself appeared to think
+so. He used to plague Fuseli by asking him after the origin of the
+Teutonic dialects, and Dr. Parr, by wishing to know the meaning of the
+common copulative, _Is_. Once at G----'s, he defended Pitt from a charge
+of verbiage, and endeavoured to prove him superior to Fox. Some one
+imitated Pitt's manner, to show that it was monotonous, and he imitated
+him also, to show that it was not. He maintained (what would he not
+maintain?) that young Betty's acting was finer than John Kemble's, and
+recited a passage from Douglas in the manner of each, to justify the
+preference he gave to the former. The mentioning this will please the
+living; it cannot hurt the dead. He argued on the same occasion and in
+the same breath, that Addison's style was without modulation, and
+that it was physically impossible for any one to write well, who was
+habitually silent in company. He sat like a king at his own table, and
+gave law to his guests--and to the world! No man knew better how to
+manage his immediate circle, to foil or bring them out. A professed
+orator, beginning to address some observations to Mr. Tooke with a
+voluminous apology for his youth and inexperience, he said, "Speak up,
+young man!"--and by taking him at his word, cut short the flower of
+orations. Porson was the only person of whom he stood in some degree of
+awe, on account of his prodigious memory and knowledge of his favourite
+subject, Languages. Sheridan, it has been remarked, said more good
+things, but had not an equal flow of pleasantry. As an instance of
+Mr. Horne Tooke's extreme coolness and command of nerve, it has been
+mentioned that once at a public dinner when he had got on the table to
+return thanks for his health being drank with a glass of wine in his
+hand, and when there was a great clamour and opposition for some time,
+after it had subsided, he pointed to the glass to shew that it was still
+full. Mr. Holcroft (the author of the _Road to Ruin_) was one of the
+most violent and fiery-spirited of all that motley crew of persons, who
+attended the Sunday meetings at Wimbledon. One day he was so enraged by
+some paradox or raillery of his host, that he indignantly rose from his
+chair, and said, "Mr. Tooke, you are a scoundrel!" His opponent without
+manifesting the least emotion, replied, "Mr. Holcroft, when is it that
+I am to dine with you? shall it be next Thursday?"--"If you please, Mr.
+Tooke!" answered the angry philosopher, and sat down again.--It was
+delightful to see him sometimes turn from these waspish or ludicrous
+altercations with over-weening antagonists to some old friend and
+veteran politician seated at his elbow; to hear him recal the time of
+Wilkes and Liberty, the conversation mellowing like the wine with the
+smack of age; assenting to all the old man said, bringing out his
+pleasant _traits_, and pampering him into childish self-importance, and
+sending him away thirty years younger than he came!
+
+As a public or at least as a parliamentary speaker, Mr. Tooke did not
+answer the expectations that had been conceived of him, or probably
+that he had conceived of himself. It is natural for men who have felt
+a superiority over all those whom they happen to have encountered, to
+fancy that this superiority will continue, and that it will extend from
+individuals to public bodies. There is no rule in the case; or rather,
+the probability lies the contrary way. That which constitutes the
+excellence of conversation is of little use in addressing large
+assemblies of people; while other qualities are required that are hardly
+to be looked for in one and the same capacity. The way to move great
+masses of men is to shew that you yourself are moved. In a private
+circle, a ready repartee, a shrewd cross-question, ridicule and
+banter, a caustic remark or an amusing anecdote, whatever sets off
+the individual to advantage, or gratifies the curiosity or piques the
+self-love of the hearers, keeps attention alive, and secures the triumph
+of the speaker--it is a personal contest, and depends on personal and
+momentary advantages. But in appealing to the public, no one triumphs
+but in the triumph of some public cause, or by shewing a sympathy with
+the general and predominant feelings of mankind. In a private room, a
+satirist, a sophist may provoke admiration by expressing his contempt
+for each of his adversaries in turn, and by setting their opinion at
+defiance--but when men are congregated together on a great public
+question and for a weighty object, they must be treated with more
+respect; they are touched with what affects themselves or the general
+weal, not with what flatters the vanity of the speaker; they must be
+moved altogether, if they are moved at all; they are impressed with
+gratitude for a luminous exposition of their claims or for zeal in their
+cause; and the lightning of generous indignation at bad men and bad
+measures is followed by thunders of applause--even in the House of
+Commons. But a man may sneer and cavil and puzzle and fly-blow every
+question that comes before him--be despised and feared by others, and
+admired by no one but himself. He who thinks first of himself, either in
+the world or in a popular assembly, will be sure to turn attention away
+from his claims, instead of fixing it there. He must make common cause
+with his hearers. To lead, he must follow the general bias. Mr. Tooke
+did not therefore succeed as a speaker in parliament. He stood aloof,
+he played antics, he exhibited his peculiar talent--while he was on his
+legs, the question before the House stood still; the only point at issue
+respected Mr. Tooke himself, his personal address and adroitness of
+intellect.
+
+Were there to be no more places and pensions, because Mr. Tooke's style
+was terse and epigrammatic? Were the Opposition benches to be inflamed
+to an unusual pitch of "sacred vehemence," because he gave them plainly
+to understand there was not a pin to choose between Ministers and
+Opposition? Would the House let him remain among them, because, if
+they turned him out on account of his _black coat_, Lord Camelford had
+threatened to send his _black servant_ in his place? This was a good
+joke, but not a practical one. Would he gain the affections of the
+people out of doors, by scouting the question of reform? Would the King
+ever relish the old associate of Wilkes? What interest, then, what party
+did he represent? He represented nobody but himself. He was an example
+of an ingenious man, a clever talker, but he was out of his place in the
+House of Commons; where people did not come (as in his own house) to
+admire or break a lance with him, but to get through the business of
+the day, and so adjourn! He wanted effect and _momentum_. Each of his
+sentences told very well in itself, but they did not all together make
+a speech. He left off where he began. His eloquence was a succession
+of drops, not a stream. His arguments, though subtle and new, did not
+affect the main body of the question. The coldness and pettiness of
+his manner did not warm the hearts or expand the understandings of his
+hearers. Instead of encouraging, he checked the ardour of his friends;
+and teazed, instead of overpowering his antagonists. The only palpable
+hit he ever made, while he remained there, was the comparing his own
+situation in being rejected by the House, on account of the supposed
+purity of his clerical character, to the story of the girl at the
+Magdalen, who was told "she must turn out and qualify."[A] This met with
+laughter and loud applause. It was a _home_ thrust, and the House (to do
+them justice) are obliged to any one who, by a smart blow, relieves
+them of the load of grave responsibility, which sits heavy on their
+shoulders.--At the hustings, or as an election-candidate, Mr. Tooke did
+better. There was no great question to move or carry--it was an affair
+of political _sparring_ between himself and the other candidates. He
+took it in a very cool and leisurely manner--watched his competitors
+with a wary, sarcastic eye; picked up the mistakes or absurdities that
+fell from them, and retorted them on their heads; told a story to the
+mob; and smiled and took snuff with a gentlemanly and becoming air, as
+if he was already seated in the House. But a Court of Law was the place
+where Mr. Tooke made the best figure in public. He might assuredly be
+said to be "native and endued unto that element." He had here to stand
+merely on the defensive--not to advance himself, but to block up the
+way--not to impress others, but to be himself impenetrable. All he
+wanted was _negative success_; and to this no one was better qualified
+to aspire. Cross purposes, _moot-points_, pleas, demurrers, flaws in
+the indictment, double meanings, cases, inconsequentialities, these were
+the play-things, the darlings of Mr. Tooke's mind; and with these he
+baffled the Judge, dumb-founded the Counsel, and outwitted the Jury. The
+report of his trial before Lord Kenyon is a master-piece of acuteness,
+dexterity, modest assurance, and legal effect. It is much like his
+examination before the Commissioners of the Income-Tax--nothing could
+be got out of him in either case! Mr. Tooke, as a political leader,
+belonged to the class of _trimmers_; or at most, it was his delight to
+make mischief and spoil sport. He would rather be _against_ himself than
+_for_ any body else. He was neither a bold nor a safe leader. He enticed
+others into scrapes, and kept out of them himself. Provided he could
+say a clever or a spiteful thing, he did not care whether it served or
+injured the cause. Spleen or the exercise of intellectual power was the
+motive of his patriotism, rather than principle. He would talk treason
+with a saving clause; and instil sedition into the public mind, through
+the medium of a third (who was to be the responsible) party. He made Sir
+Francis Burdett his spokesman in the House and to the country, often
+venting his chagrin or singularity of sentiment at the expense of his
+friend; but what in the first was trick or reckless vanity, was in the
+last plain downright English honesty and singleness of heart. In the
+case of the State Trials, in 1794, Mr. Tooke rather compromised his
+friends to screen himself. He kept repeating that "others might have
+gone on to Windsor, but he had stopped at Hounslow," as if to go farther
+might have been dangerous and unwarrantable. It was not the question how
+far he or others had actually gone, but how far they had a right to go,
+according to the law. His conduct was not the limit of the law, nor did
+treasonable excess begin where prudence or principle taught him to stop
+short, though this was the oblique inference liable to be drawn from his
+line of defence. Mr. Tooke was uneasy and apprehensive for the issue of
+the Government-prosecution while in confinement, and said, in speaking
+of it to a friend, with a morbid feeling and an emphasis quite unusual
+with him--"They want our blood--blood--blood!" It was somewhat
+ridiculous to implicate Mr. Tooke in a charge of High Treason (and
+indeed the whole charge was built on the mistaken purport of
+an intercepted letter relating to an engagement for a private
+dinnerparty)--his politics were not at all revolutionary. In this
+respect he was a mere pettifogger, full of chicane, and captious
+objections, and unmeaning discontent; but he had none of the grand
+whirling movements of the French Revolution, nor of the tumultuous glow
+of rebellion in his head or in his heart. His politics were cast in
+a different mould, or confined to the party distinctions and court-
+intrigues and pittances of popular right, that made a noise in the 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 Mr. Harris's
+_Hermes_ as "the finest specimen of analysis since the days of
+Aristotle"--a work in which there is no analysis at all, for analysis
+consists in reducing things to their principles, and not in endless
+details and subdivisions. Mr. Harris multiplies distinctions, and
+confounds his readers. Mr. Tooke clears away the rubbish of school-boy
+technicalities, and strikes at the root of his subject. In accomplishing
+his arduous task, he was, perhaps, aided not more by the strength and
+resources of his mind than by its limits and defects. There is a web of
+old associations wound round language, that is a kind of veil over its
+natural features; and custom puts on the mask of ignorance. But this
+veil, this mask the author of _The Diversions of Purley_ threw aside and
+penetrated to the naked truth of things, by the literal, matter-of-fact,
+unimaginative nature of his understanding, and because he was not
+subject to prejudices or illusions of any kind. Words may be said to
+"bear a charmed life, that must not yield to one of woman born"--with
+womanish weaknesses and confused apprehensions. But this charm was
+broken in the case of Mr. Tooke, whose mind was the reverse of
+effeminate--hard, unbending, concrete, physical, half-savage--and who
+saw language stripped of the clothing of habit or sentiment, or the
+disguises of doting pedantry, naked in its cradle, and in its primitive
+state. Our author tells us that he found his discovery on Grammar among
+a number of papers on other subjects, which he had thrown aside and
+forgotten. Is this an idle boast? Or had he made other discoveries
+of equal importance, which he did not think it worth his while to
+communicate to the world, but chose to die the churl of knowledge? The
+whole of his reasoning turns upon shewing that the Conjunction _That_
+is the pronoun _That_, which is itself the participle of a verb, and
+in like manner that all the other mystical and hitherto unintelligible
+parts of speech are derived from the only two intelligible ones, the
+Verb and Noun. "I affirm _that_ gold is yellow," that is, "I affirm
+_that_ fact, or that proposition, viz. gold is yellow." The secret of
+the Conjunction on which so many fine heads had split, on which so many
+learned definitions were thrown away, as if it was its peculiar province
+and inborn virtue to announce oracles and formal propositions, and
+nothing else, like a Doctor of Laws, is here at once accounted for,
+inasmuch as it is clearly nothing but another part of speech, the
+pronoun, _that_, with a third part of speech, the noun, _thing_,
+understood. This is getting at a solution of words into their component
+parts, not glossing over one difficulty by bringing another to parallel
+it, nor like saying with Mr. Harris, when it is asked, "what a
+Conjunction is?" that there are conjunctions copulative, conjunctions
+disjunctive, and as many other frivolous varieties of the species as any
+one chooses to hunt out "with laborious foolery." Our author hit
+upon his parent-discovery in the course of a law-suit, while he was
+examining, with jealous watchfulness, the meaning of words to prevent
+being entrapped by them; or rather, this circumstance might itself be
+traced to the habit of satisfying his own mind as to the precise sense
+in which he himself made use of words. Mr. Tooke, though he had no
+objection to puzzle others, was mightily averse to being puzzled or
+_mystified_ himself. All was, to his determined mind, either complete
+light or complete darkness. There was no hazy, doubtful _chiaro-scuro_
+in his understanding. He wanted something "palpable to feeling as to
+sight." "What," he would say to himself, "do I mean when I use the
+conjunction _that?_ Is it an anomaly, a class by itself, a word sealed
+against all inquisitive attempts? Is it enough to call it a _copula_,
+a bridge, a link, a word connecting sentences? That is undoubtedly its
+use, but what is its origin?" Mr. Tooke thought he had answered this
+question satisfactorily, and loosened the Gordian knot of grammarians,
+"familiar as his garter," when he said, "It is the common pronoun,
+adjective, or participle, _that_, with the noun, _thing or proposition_,
+implied, and the particular example following it." So he thought, and
+so every reader has thought since, with the exception of teachers and
+writers upon grammar. Mr. Windham, indeed, who was a sophist, but not a
+logician, charged him with having found "a mare's-nest;" but it is not
+to be doubted that Mr. Tooke's etymologies will stand the test, and
+last longer than Mr. Windham's ingenious derivation of the practice of
+bull-baiting from the principles of humanity!
+
+Having thus laid the corner-stone, he proceeded to apply the same method
+of reasoning to other undecyphered and impracticable terms. Thus the
+word, _And_, he explained clearly enough to be the verb _add_, or a
+corruption of the old Saxon, _anandad_. "Two _and_ two make four," that
+is, "two _add_ two make four." Mr. Tooke, in fact, treated words as
+the chemists do substances; he separated those which are compounded of
+others from those which are not decompoundable. He did not explain the
+obscure by the more obscure, but the difficult by the plain, the complex
+by the simple. This alone is proceeding upon the true principles of
+science: the rest is pedantry and _petit-maitreship._ Our philosophical
+writer distinguished all words into _names of things_, and directions
+added for joining them together, or originally into _nouns_ and _verbs_.
+It is a pity that he has left this matter short, by omitting to define
+the Verb. After enumerating sixteen different definitions (all of which
+he dismisses with scorn and contumely) at the end of two quarto volumes,
+he refers the reader for the true solution to a third volume, which
+he did not live to finish. This extraordinary man was in the habit
+of tantalizing his guests on a Sunday afternoon with sundry abstruse
+speculations, and putting them off to the following week for a
+satisfaction of their doubts; but why should he treat posterity in the
+same scurvy manner, or leave the world without quitting scores with it?
+I question whether Mr. Tooke was himself in possession of his pretended
+_nostrum_, and whether, after trying hard at a definition of the verb as
+a distinct part of speech, as a terrier-dog mumbles a hedge-hog, he did
+not find it too much for him, and leave it to its fate. It is also a
+pity that Mr. Tooke spun out his great work with prolix and dogmatical
+dissertations on irrelevant matters; and after denying the old
+metaphysical theories of language, should attempt to found a
+metaphysical theory of his own on the nature and mechanism of language.
+The nature of words, he contended (it was the basis of his whole system)
+had no connection with the nature of things or the objects of thought;
+yet he afterwards strove to limit the nature of things and of the human
+mind by the technical structure of language. Thus he endeavours to shew
+that there are no abstract ideas, by enumerating two thousand instances
+of words, expressing abstract ideas, that are the past participles of
+certain verbs. It is difficult to know what he means by this. On the
+other hand, he maintains that "a complex idea is as great an absurdity
+as a complex star," and that words only are complex. He also makes out a
+triumphant list of metaphysical and moral non-entities, proved to be
+so on the pure principle that the names of these non-entities are
+participles, not nouns, or names of things. That is strange in so close
+a reasoner and in one who maintained that all language was a masquerade
+of words, and that the class to which they grammatically belonged had
+nothing to do with the class of ideas they represented.
+
+It is now above twenty years since the two quarto volumes of the
+_Diversions of Purley_ were published, and fifty since the same theory
+was promulgated in the celebrated _Letter to Dunning_. Yet it is a
+curious example of the _Spirit of the Age_ that Mr. Lindley Murray's
+Grammar (a work out of which Mr. C---- helps himself to English, and Mr.
+M---- to style[B]) has proceeded to the thirtieth edition in complete
+defiance of all the facts and arguments there laid down. He defines a
+noun to be the name of a thing. Is quackery a thing, _i.e._ a substance?
+He defines a verb to be a word signifying _to be, to do, or to suffer_.
+Are being, action, suffering verbs? He defines an adjective to be the
+name of a quality. Are not _wooden, golden, substantial_ adjectives? He
+maintains that there are six cases in English nouns [C], that is, six
+various terminations without any change of termination at all, and that
+English verbs have all the moods, tenses, and persons that the Latin
+ones have. This is an extraordinary stretch of blindness and obstinacy.
+He very formally translates the Latin Grammar into English (as so many
+had done before him) and fancies he has written an English Grammar; and
+divines applaud, and schoolmasters usher him into the polite world, and
+English scholars carry on the jest, while Horne Tooke's genuine
+anatomy of our native tongue is laid on the shelf. Can it be that our
+politicians smell a rat in the Member for Old Sarum? That our clergy
+do not relish Parson Horne? That the world at large are alarmed at
+acuteness and originality greater than their own? What has all this
+to do with the formation of the English language or with the first
+conditions and necessary foundation of speech itself? Is there nothing
+beyond the reach of prejudice and party-spirit? It seems in this, as in
+so many other instances, as if there was a patent for absurdity in the
+natural bias of the human mind, and that folly should be _stereotyped_!
+
+
+[Footnote A: "They receive him like a virgin at the Magdalen--_Go thou
+and do likewise_."--JUNIUS.]
+
+
+[Footnote B: This work is not without merit in the details and examples
+of English construction. But its fault even in that part is that he
+confounds the genius of the English language, making it periphrastic and
+literal, instead of elliptical and idiomatic. According to Mr. Murray,
+hardly any of our best writers ever wrote a word of English.]
+
+[Footnote C: At least, with only one change in the genitive case,]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+SIR WALTER SCOTT
+
+
+
+Sir Walter Scott is undoubtedly the most popular writer of the age--the
+"lord of the ascendant" for the time being. He is just half what the
+human intellect is capable of being: if you take the universe, and
+divide it into two parts, he knows all that it _has been_; all that
+it _is to be_ is nothing to him. His is a mind brooding over
+antiquity--scorning "the present ignorant time." He is "laudator
+temporis acti"--a "_prophesier_ of things past." The old world is to him
+a crowded map; the new one a dull, hateful blank. He dotes on all well-
+authenticated superstitions; he shudders at the shadow of innovation.
+His retentiveness of memory, his accumulated weight of interested
+prejudice or romantic association have overlaid his other faculties. The
+cells of his memory are vast, various, full even to bursting with life
+and motion; his speculative understanding is empty, flaccid, poor, and
+dead. His mind receives and treasures up every thing brought to it by
+tradition or custom--it does not project itself beyond this into the
+world unknown, but mechanically shrinks back as from the edge of a
+prejudice. The land of pure reason is to his apprehension like _Van
+Dieman's Land_;--barren, miserable, distant, a place of exile, the
+dreary abode of savages, convicts, and adventurers. Sir Walter would
+make a bad hand of a description of the _Millennium_, unless he could
+lay the scene in Scotland five hundred years ago, and then he would
+want facts and worm-eaten parchments to support his drooping style.
+Our historical novelist firmly thinks that nothing _is_ but what _has
+been_--that the moral world stands still, as the material one was
+supposed to do of old--and that we can never get beyond the point where
+we actually are without utter destruction, though every thing changes
+and will change from what it was three hundred years ago to what it is
+now,--from what it is now to all that the bigoted admirer of the good
+old times most dreads and hates!
+
+It is long since we read, and long since we thought of our author's
+poetry. It would probably have gone out of date with the immediate
+occasion, even if he himself had not contrived to banish it from our
+recollection. It is not to be denied that it had great merit, both of
+an obvious and intrinsic kind. It abounded in vivid descriptions, in
+spirited action, in smooth and flowing versification. But it wanted
+_character_. It was poetry "of no mark or likelihood." It slid out of
+the mind as soon as read, like a river; and would have been forgotten,
+but that the public curiosity was fed with ever-new supplies from the
+same teeming liquid source. It is not every man that can write six
+quarto volumes in verse, that are caught up with avidity, even by
+fastidious judges. But what a difference between _their_ popularity and
+that of the Scotch Novels! It is true, the public read and admired the
+_Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion_, and so on, and each individual was
+contented to read and admire because the public did so: but with
+regard to the prose-works of the same (supposed) author, it is quite
+_another-guess_ sort of thing. Here every one stands forward to applaud
+on his own ground, would be thought to go before the public opinion,
+is eager to extol his favourite characters louder, to understand them
+better than every body else, and has his own scale of comparative
+excellence for each work, supported by nothing but his own enthusiastic
+and fearless convictions. It must be amusing to the _Author of Waverley_
+to hear his readers and admirers (and are not these the same thing?[A])
+quarrelling which of his novels is the best, opposing character to
+character, quoting passage against passage, striving to surpass each
+other in the extravagance of their encomiums, and yet unable to settle
+the precedence, or to do the author's writings justice--so various,
+so equal, so transcendant are their merits! His volumes of poetry were
+received as fashionable and well-dressed acquaintances: we are ready
+to tear the others in pieces as old friends. There was something
+meretricious in Sir Walter's ballad-rhymes; and like those who keep
+opera _figurantes_, we were willing to have our admiration shared, and
+our taste confirmed by the town: but the Novels are like the betrothed
+of our hearts, bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, and we are
+jealous that any one should be as much delighted or as thoroughly
+acquainted with their beauties as ourselves. For which of his poetical
+heroines would the reader break a lance so soon as for Jeanie Deans?
+What _Lady of the Lake_ can compare with the beautiful Rebecca? We
+believe the late Mr. John Scott went to his death-bed (though a painful
+and premature one) with some degree of satisfaction, inasmuch as he had
+penned the most elaborate panegyric on the _Scotch Novels_ that had as
+yet appeared!--The _Epics_ are not poems, so much as metrical romances.
+There is a glittering veil of verse thrown over the features of nature
+and of old romance. The deep incisions into character are "skinned and
+filmed over"--the details are lost or shaped into flimsy and insipid
+decorum; and the truth of feeling and of circumstance is translated into
+a tinkling sound, a tinsel _common-place_. It must be owned, there is a
+power in true poetry that lifts the mind from the ground of reality to
+a higher sphere, that penetrates the inert, scattered, incoherent
+materials presented to it, and by a force and inspiration of its own,
+melts and moulds them into sublimity and beauty. But Sir Walter (we
+contend, under correction) has not this creative impulse, this plastic
+power, this capacity of reacting on his first impressions. He is a
+learned, a literal, a _matter-of-fact_ expounder of truth or fable:[B]
+he does not soar above and look down upon his subject, imparting his own
+lofty views and feelings to his descriptions of nature--he relies
+upon it, is raised by it, is one with it, or he is nothing. A poet is
+essentially a _maker_; that is, he must atone for what he loses in
+individuality and local resemblance by the energies and resources of his
+own mind. The writer of whom we speak is deficient in these last. He has
+either not the faculty or not the will to impregnate his subject by an
+effort of pure invention. The execution also is much upon a par with
+the more ephemeral effusions of the press. It is light, agreeable,
+effeminate, diffuse. Sir Walter's Muse is a _Modern Antique_. The
+smooth, glossy texture of his verse contrasts happily with the quaint,
+uncouth, rugged materials of which it is composed; and takes away any
+appearance of heaviness or harshness from the body of local traditions
+and obsolete costume. We see grim knights and iron armour; but then they
+are woven in silk with a careless, delicate hand, and have the softness
+of flowers. The poet's figures might be compared to old [C] tapestries
+copied on the finest velvet:--they are not like Raphael's _Cartoons_,
+but they are very like Mr. Westall's drawings, which accompany, and are
+intended to illustrate them. This facility and grace of execution is the
+more remarkable, as a story goes that not long before the appearance of
+the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ Sir Walter (then Mr.) Scott, having, in
+the company of a friend, to cross the Frith of Forth in a ferry-boat,
+they proposed to beguile the time by writing a number of verses on a
+given subject, and that at the end of an hour's hard study, they found
+they had produced only six lines between them. "It is plain," said the
+unconscious author to his fellow-labourer, "that you and I need never
+think of getting our living by writing poetry!" In a year or so after
+this, he set to work, and poured out quarto upon quarto, as if they had
+been drops of water. As to the rest, and compared with true and great
+poets, our Scottish Minstrel is but "a metre ballad-monger." We would
+rather have written one song of Burns, or a single passage in Lord
+Byron's _Heaven and Earth_, or one of Wordsworth's "fancies and
+good-nights," than all his epics. What is he to Spenser, over whose
+immortal, ever-amiable verse beauty hovers and trembles, and who has
+shed the purple light of Fancy, from his ambrosial wings, over all
+nature? What is there of the might of Milton, whose head is canopied in
+the blue serene, and who takes us to sit with him there? What is there
+(in his ambling rhymes) of the deep pathos of Chaucer? Or of the
+o'er-informing power of Shakespear, whose eye, watching alike the
+minutest traces of characters and the strongest movements of passion,
+"glances from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven," and with the
+lambent flame of genius, playing round each object, lights up the
+universe in a robe of its own radiance? Sir Walter has no voluntary
+power of combination: all his associations (as we said before) are those
+of habit or of tradition. He is a mere narrative and descriptive poet,
+garrulous of the old time. The definition of his poetry is a pleasing
+superficiality.
+
+Not so of his NOVELS AND ROMANCES. There we turn over a new
+leaf--another and the same--the same in matter, but in form, in power
+how different! The author of Waverley has got rid of the tagging of
+rhymes, the eking out of syllables, the supplying of epithets, the
+colours of style, the grouping of his characters, and the regular march
+of events, and comes to the point at once, and strikes at the heart
+of his subject, without dismay and without disguise. His poetry was a
+lady's waiting-maid, dressed out in cast-off finery: his prose is a
+beautiful, rustic nymph, that, like Dorothea in Don Quixote, when she is
+surprised with dishevelled tresses bathing her naked feet in the brook,
+looks round her, abashed at the admiration her charms have excited! The
+grand secret of the author's success in these latter productions is that
+he has completely got rid of the trammels of authorship; and torn off at
+one rent (as Lord Peter got rid of so many yards of lace in the _Tale of
+a Tub_) all the ornaments of fine writing and worn-out sentimentality.
+All is fresh, as from the hand of nature: by going a century or two back
+and laying the scene in a remote and uncultivated district, all becomes
+new and startling in the present advanced period.--Highland manners,
+characters, scenery, superstitions, Northern dialect and costume, the
+wars, the religion, and politics of the sixteenth and seventeenth
+centuries, give a charming and wholesome relief to the fastidious
+refinement and "over-laboured lassitude" of modern readers, like the
+effect of plunging a nervous valetudinarian into a cold-bath. The
+_Scotch Novels_, for this reason, are not so much admired in Scotland as
+in England. The contrast, the transition is less striking. From the top
+of the Calton-Hill, the inhabitants of "Auld Reekie" can descry, or
+fancy they descry the peaks of Ben Lomond and the waving outline of Rob
+Roy's country: we who live at the southern extremity of the island can
+only catch a glimpse of the billowy scene in the descriptions of the
+Author of Waverley. The mountain air is most bracing to our languid
+nerves, and it is brought us in ship-loads from the neighbourhood
+of Abbot's-Ford. There is another circumstance to be taken into the
+account. In Edinburgh there is a little opposition and something of
+the spirit of cabal between the partisans of works proceeding from Mr.
+Constable's and Mr. Blackwood's shops. Mr. Constable gives the highest
+prices; but being the Whig bookseller, it is grudged that he should
+do so. An attempt is therefore made to transfer a certain share of
+popularity to the second-rate Scotch novels, "the embryo fry, the little
+airy of _ricketty_ children," issuing through Mr. Blackwood's shop-door.
+This operates a diversion, which does not affect us here. The Author of
+Waverley wears the palm of legendary lore alone. Sir Walter may, indeed,
+surfeit us: his imitators make us sick! It may be asked, it has been
+asked, "Have we no materials for romance in England? Must we look to
+Scotland for a supply of whatever is original and striking in this
+kind?" And we answer--"Yes!" Every foot of soil is with us worked up:
+nearly every movement of the social machine is calculable. We have no
+room left for violent catastrophes; for grotesque quaintnesses; for
+wizard spells. The last skirts of ignorance and barbarism are seen
+hovering (in Sir Walter's pages) over the Border. We have, it is true,
+gipsies in this country as well as at the Cairn of Derncleugh: but they
+live under clipped hedges, and repose in camp-beds, and do not perch
+on crags, like eagles, or take shelter, like sea-mews, in basaltic
+subterranean caverns. We have heaths with rude heaps of stones upon
+them: but no existing superstition converts them into the Geese of
+Micklestane-Moor, or sees a Black Dwarf groping among them. We have
+sects in religion: but the only thing sublime or ridiculous in that way
+is Mr. Irving, the Caledonian preacher, who "comes like a satyr staring
+from the woods, and yet speaks like an orator!" We had a Parson Adams
+not quite a hundred years ago--a Sir Roger de Coverley rather more than
+a hundred! Even Sir Walter is ordinarily obliged to pitch his angle
+(strong as the hook is) a hundred miles to the North of the "Modern
+Athens" or a century back. His last work,[A] indeed, is mystical,
+is romantic in nothing but the title-page. Instead of "a
+holy-water sprinkle dipped in dew," he has given us a fashionable
+watering-place--and we see what he has made of it. He must not come down
+from his fastnesses in traditional barbarism and native rusticity: the
+level, the littleness, the frippery of modern civilization will undo him
+as it has undone us!
+
+Sir Walter has found out (oh, rare discovery) that facts are better than
+fiction; that there is no romance like the romance of real life; and
+that if we can but arrive at what men feel, do, and say in striking and
+singular situations, the result will be "more lively, audible, and full
+of vent," than the fine-spun cobwebs of the brain. With reverence be it
+spoken, he is like the man who having to imitate the squeaking of a pig
+upon the stage, brought the animal under his coat with him. Our author
+has conjured up the actual people he has to deal with, or as much as he
+could get of them, in "their habits as they lived." He has ransacked old
+chronicles, and poured the contents upon his page; he has squeezed out
+musty records; he has consulted wayfaring pilgrims, bed-rid sibyls; he
+has invoked the spirits of the air; he has conversed with the living and
+the dead, and let them tell their story their own way; and by borrowing
+of others, has enriched his own genius with everlasting variety, truth,
+and freedom. He has taken his materials from the original, authentic
+sources, in large concrete masses, and not tampered with or too much
+frittered them away. He is only the amanuensis of truth and history. It
+is impossible to say how fine his writings in consequence are, unless we
+could describe how fine nature is. All that portion of the history of
+his country that he has touched upon (wide as the scope is) the manners,
+the personages, the events, the scenery, lives over again in his
+volumes. Nothing is wanting--the illusion is complete. There is a
+hurtling in the air, a trampling of feet upon the ground, as these
+perfect representations of human character or fanciful belief come
+thronging back upon our imaginations. We will merely recall a few of
+the subjects of his pencil to the reader's recollection; for nothing we
+could add, by way of note or commendation, could make the impression
+more vivid.
+
+There is (first and foremost, because the earliest of our acquaintance)
+the Baron of Bradwardine, stately, kind-hearted, whimsical, pedantic;
+and Flora MacIvor (whom even _we_ forgive for her Jacobitism), the
+fierce Vich Ian Vohr, and Evan Dhu, constant in death, and Davie
+Gellatly roasting his eggs or turning his rhymes with restless
+volubility, and the two stag-hounds that met Waverley, as fine as ever
+Titian painted, or Paul Veronese:--then there is old Balfour of Burley,
+brandishing his sword and his Bible with fire-eyed fury, trying a
+fall with the insolent, gigantic Bothwell at the 'Change-house, and
+vanquishing him at the noble battle of Loudonhill; there is Bothwell
+himself, drawn to the life, proud, cruel, selfish, profligate, but with
+the love-letters of the gentle Alice (written thirty years before), and
+his verses to her memory, found in his pocket after his death: in the
+same volume of _Old Mortality_ is that lone figure, like a figure in
+Scripture, of the woman sitting on the stone at the turning to the
+mountain, to warn Burley that there is a lion in his path; and
+the fawning Claverhouse, beautiful as a panther, smooth-looking,
+blood-spotted; and the fanatics, Macbriar and Mucklewrath, crazed with
+zeal and sufferings; and the inflexible Morton, and the faithful Edith,
+who refused to "give her hand to another while her heart was with her
+lover in the deep and dead sea." And in _The Heart of Mid-Lothian_ we
+have Effie Deans (that sweet, faded flower) and Jeanie, her more than
+sister, and old David Deans, the patriarch of St. Leonard's Crags, and
+Butler, and Dumbiedikes, eloquent in his silence, and Mr. Bartoline
+Saddle-tree and his prudent helpmate, and Porteous swinging in the
+wind, and Madge Wildfire, full of finery and madness, and her ghastly
+mother.--Again, there is Meg Merrilies, standing on her rock, stretched
+on her bier with "her head to the east," and Dirk Hatterick (equal to
+Shakespear's Master Barnardine), and Glossin, the soul of an attorney,
+and Dandy Dinmont, with his terrier-pack and his pony Dumple, and the
+fiery Colonel Mannering, and the modish old counsellor Pleydell, and
+Dominie Sampson,[D] and Rob Roy (like the eagle in his eyry), and
+Baillie Nicol Jarvie, and the inimitable Major Galbraith, and Rashleigh
+Osbaldistone, and Die Vernon, the best of secret-keepers; and in the
+_Antiquary_, the ingenious and abstruse Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck, and the
+old beadsman Edie Ochiltree, and that preternatural figure of old Edith
+Elspeith, a living shadow, in whom the lamp of life had been long
+extinguished, had it not been fed by remorse and "thick-coming"
+recollections; and that striking picture of the effects of feudal
+tyranny and fiendish pride, the unhappy Earl of Glenallan; and the Black
+Dwarf, and his friend Habbie of the Heughfoot (the cheerful hunter), and
+his cousin Grace Armstrong, fresh and laughing like the morning; and the
+_Children of the Mint_, and the baying of the blood-hound that tracks
+their steps at a distance (the hollow echoes are in our ears now), and
+Amy and her hapless love, and the villain Varney, and the deep voice of
+George of Douglas--and the immoveable Balafre, and Master Oliver the
+Barber in Quentin Durward--and the quaint humour of the Fortunes of
+Nigel, and the comic spirit of Peveril of the Peak--and the fine old
+English romance of Ivanhoe. What a list of names! What a host of
+associations! What a thing is human life! What a power is that of
+genius! What a world of thought and feeling is thus rescued from
+oblivion! How many hours of heartfelt satisfaction has our author given
+to the gay and thoughtless! How many sad hearts has he soothed in pain
+and solitude! It is no wonder that the public repay with lengthened
+applause and gratitude the pleasure they receive. He writes as fast as
+they can read, and he does not write himself down. He is always in the
+public eye, and we do not tire of him. His worst is better than any
+other person's best. His _backgrounds_ (and his later works are little
+else but back-grounds capitally made out) are more attractive than the
+principal figures and most complicated actions of other writers. His
+works (taken together) are almost like a new edition of human nature.
+This is indeed to be an author!
+
+The political bearing of the _Scotch Novels_ has been a considerable
+recommendation to them. They are a relief to the mind, rarefied as it
+has been with modern philosophy, and heated with ultra-radicalism. At a
+time also, when we bid fair to revive the principles of the Stuarts,
+it is interesting to bring us acquainted with their persons and
+misfortunes. The candour of Sir Walter's historic pen levels our
+bristling prejudices on this score, and sees fair play between
+Roundheads and Cavaliers, between Protestant and Papist. He is a writer
+reconciling all the diversities of human nature to the reader. He does
+not enter into the distinctions of hostile sects or parties, but treats
+of the strength or the infirmity of the human mind, of the virtues or
+vices of the human breast, as they are to be found blended in the whole
+race of mankind. Nothing can shew more handsomely or be more gallantly
+executed. There was a talk at one time that our author was about to take
+Guy Faux for the subject of one of his novels, in order to put a more
+liberal and humane construction on the Gunpowder Plot than our "No
+Popery" prejudices have hitherto permitted. Sir Walter is a professed
+_clarifier_ of the age from the vulgar and still lurking old-English
+antipathy to Popery and Slavery. Through some odd process of _servile_
+logic, it should seem, that in restoring the claims of the Stuarts by
+the courtesy of romance, the House of Brunswick are more firmly seated
+in point of fact, and the Bourbons, by collateral reasoning, become
+legitimate! In any other point of view, we cannot possibly conceive
+how Sir Walter imagines "he has done something to revive the declining
+spirit of loyalty" by these novels. His loyalty is founded on _would-be_
+treason: he props the actual throne by the shadow of rebellion. Does
+he really think of making us enamoured of the "good old times" by the
+faithful and harrowing portraits he has drawn of them? Would he carry us
+back to the early stages of barbarism, of clanship, of the feudal system
+as "a consummation devoutly to be wished?" Is he infatuated enough,
+or does he so dote and drivel over his own slothful and self-willed
+prejudices, as to believe that he will make a single convert to the
+beauty of Legitimacy, that is, of lawless power and savage bigotry, when
+he himself is obliged to apologise for the horrors he describes, and
+even render his descriptions credible to the modern reader by referring
+to the authentic history of these delectable times?[E] He is indeed
+so besotted as to the moral of his own story, that he has even the
+blindness to go out of his way to have a fling at _flints_ and _dungs_
+(the contemptible ingredients, as he would have us believe, of a modern
+rabble) at the very time when he is describing a mob of the twelfth
+century--a mob (one should think) after the writer's own heart, without
+one particle of modern philosophy or revolutionary politics in their
+composition, who were to a man, to a hair, just what priests, and kings,
+and nobles _let_ them be, and who were collected to witness (a spectacle
+proper to the times) the burning of the lovely Rebecca at a stake for
+a sorceress, because she was a Jewess, beautiful and innocent, and the
+consequent victim of insane bigotry and unbridled profligacy. And it is
+at this moment (when the heart is kindled and bursting with indignation
+at the revolting abuses of self-constituted power) that Sir Walter
+_stops the press_ to have a sneer at the people, and to put a spoke (as
+he thinks) in the wheel of upstart innovation! This is what he "calls
+backing his friends"--it is thus he administers charms and philtres to
+our love of Legitimacy, makes us conceive a horror of all reform, civil,
+political, or religious, and would fain put down the _Spirit of the
+Age_. The author of Waverley might just as well get up and make a speech
+at a dinner at Edinburgh, abusing Mr. Mac-Adam for his improvements in
+the roads, on the ground that they were nearly _impassable_ in many
+places "sixty years since;" or object to Mr. Peel's _Police-Bill_, by
+insisting that Hounslow-Heath was formerly a scene of greater interest
+and terror to highwaymen and travellers, and cut a greater figure in
+the Newgate-Calendar than it does at present.--Oh! Wickliff, Luther,
+Hampden, Sidney, Somers, mistaken Whigs, and thoughtless Reformers in
+religion and politics, and all ye, whether poets or philosophers, heroes
+or sages, inventors of arts or sciences, patriots, benefactors of the
+human race, enlighteners and civilisers of the world, who have (so far)
+reduced opinion to reason, and power to law, who are the cause that we
+no longer burn witches and heretics at slow fires, that the thumb-screws
+are no longer applied by ghastly, smiling judges, to extort confession
+of imputed crimes from sufferers for conscience sake; that men are no
+longer strung up like acorns on trees without judge or jury, or hunted
+like wild beasts through thickets and glens, who have abated the cruelty
+of priests, the pride of nobles, the divinity of kings in former times;
+to whom we owe it, that we no longer wear round our necks the collar of
+Gurth the swineherd, and of Wamba the jester; that the castles of great
+lords are no longer the dens of banditti, from whence they issue with
+fire and sword, to lay waste the land; that we no longer expire in
+loathsome dungeons without knowing the cause, or have our right hands
+struck off for raising them in self-defence against wanton insult; that
+we can sleep without fear of being burnt in our beds, or travel without
+making our wills; that no Amy Robsarts are thrown down trap-doors by
+Richard Varneys with impunity; that no Red Reiver of Westburn-Flat sets
+fire to peaceful cottages; that no Claverhouse signs cold-blooded
+death-warrants in sport; that we have no Tristan the Hermit, or Petit-
+Andre, crawling near us, like spiders, and making our flesh creep, and
+our hearts sicken within us at every moment of our lives--ye who have
+produced this change in the face of nature and society, return to earth
+once more, and beg pardon of Sir Walter and his patrons, who sigh at not
+being able to undo all that you have done! Leaving this question, there
+are two other remarks which we wished to make on the Novels. The one
+was, to express our admiration at the good-nature of the mottos, in
+which the author has taken occasion to remember and quote almost every
+living author (whether illustrious or obscure) but himself--an indirect
+argument in favour of the general opinion as to the source from which
+they spring--and the other was, to hint our astonishment at the
+innumerable and incessant in-stances of bad and slovenly English in
+them, more, we believe, than in any other works now printed. We should
+think the writer could not possibly read the manuscript after he has
+once written it, or overlook the press.
+
+If there were a writer, who "born for the universe"--
+
+"-----------Narrow'd his mind, And to party gave up what was meant for
+mankind--"
+
+
+who, from the height of his genius looking abroad into nature, and
+scanning the recesses of the human heart, "winked and shut his
+apprehension up" to every thought or purpose that tended to the future
+good of mankind--who, raised by affluence, the reward of successful
+industry, and by the voice of fame above the want of any but the most
+honourable patronage, stooped to the unworthy arts of adulation, and
+abetted the views of the great with the pettifogging feelings of the
+meanest dependant on office--who, having secured the admiration of the
+public (with the probable reversion of immortality), shewed no respect
+for himself, for that genius that had raised him to distinction, for
+that nature which he trampled under foot--who, amiable, frank, friendly,
+manly in private life, was seized with the dotage of age and the fury
+of a woman, the instant politics were concerned--who reserved all his
+candour and comprehensiveness of view for history, and vented his
+littleness, pique, resentment, bigotry, and intolerance on his
+contemporaries--who took the wrong side, and defended it by unfair
+means--who, the moment his own interest or the prejudices of others
+interfered, seemed to forget all that was due to the pride of intellect,
+to the sense of manhood--who, praised, admired by men of all parties
+alike, repaid the public liberality by striking a secret and envenomed
+blow at the reputation of every one who was not the ready tool of
+power--who strewed the slime of rankling malice and mercenary scorn
+over the bud and promise of genius, because it was not fostered in the
+hot-bed of corruption, or warped by the trammels of servility--who
+supported the worst abuses of authority in the worst spirit--who joined
+a gang of desperadoes to spread calumny, contempt, infamy, wherever they
+were merited by honesty or talent on a different side--who officiously
+undertook to decide public questions by private insinuations, to prop
+the throne by nicknames, and the altar by lies--who being (by common
+consent) the finest, the most humane and accomplished writer of his age,
+associated himself with and encouraged the lowest panders of a venal
+press; deluging, nauseating the public mind with the offal and garbage
+of Billingsgate abuse and vulgar _slang_; shewing no remorse, no
+relenting or compassion towards the victims of this nefarious and
+organized system of party-proscription, carried on under the mask of
+literary criticism and fair discussion, insulting the misfortunes of
+some, and trampling on the early grave of others--
+
+  "Who would not grieve if such a man there be?
+  Who would not weep if Atticus were he?"
+
+But we believe there is no other age or country of the world (but ours),
+in which such genius could have been so degraded!
+
+
+[Footnote A: No! For we met with a young lady who kept a circulating
+library and a milliner's-shop, in a watering-place in the country, who,
+when we inquired for the _Scotch Novels_, spoke indifferently about
+them, said they were "so dry she could hardly get through them," and
+recommended us to read _Agnes_. We never thought of it before; but we
+would venture to lay a wager that there are many other young ladies in
+the same situation, and who think "Old Mortality" "dry."]
+
+[Footnote B: Just as Cobbett is a _matter-of-fact reasoner_.]
+
+[Footnote C: St. Ronan's Well.]
+
+[Footnote D: Perhaps the finest scene in all these novels, is that where
+the Dominie meets his pupil, Miss Lucy, the morning after her brother's
+arrival.]
+
+[Footnote E: "And here we cannot but think it necessary to offer some
+better proof than the incidents of an idle tale, to vindicate the
+melancholy representation of manners which has been just laid before
+the reader. It is grievous to think that those valiant Barons, to whose
+stand against the crown the liberties of England were indebted for their
+existence, should themselves have been such dreadful oppressors, and
+capable of excesses, contrary not only to the laws of England, but to
+those of nature and humanity. But alas! we have only to extract from the
+industrious Henry one of those numerous passages which he has collected
+from contemporary historians, to prove that fiction itself can hardly
+reach the dark reality of the horrors of the period.
+
+"The description given by the author of the Saxon Chronicle of the
+cruelties exercised in the reign of King Stephen by the great barons and
+lords of castles, who were all Normans, affords a strong proof of the
+excesses of which they were capable when their passions were inflamed.
+'They grievously oppressed the poor people by building castles; and when
+they were built, they filled them with wicked men or rather devils, who
+seized both men and women who they imagined had any money, threw them
+into prison, and put them to more cruel tortures than the martyrs ever
+endured. They suffocated some in mud, and suspended others by the feet,
+or the head, or the thumbs, kindling fires below them. They squeezed the
+heads of some with knotted cords till they pierced their brains, while
+they threw others into dungeons swarming with serpents, snakes, and
+toads.' But it would be cruel to put the reader to the pain of perusing
+the remainder of the description."--_Henry's Hist_. edit. 1805, vol.
+vii. p. 346.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+LORD BYRON.
+
+
+
+Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott are among writers now living[A] the two,
+who would carry away a majority of suffrages as the greatest geniuses of
+the age. The former would, perhaps, obtain the preference with the fine
+gentlemen and ladies (squeamishness apart)--the latter with the critics
+and the vulgar. We shall treat of them in the same connection, partly
+on account of their distinguished pre-eminence, and partly because they
+afford a complete contrast to each other. In their poetry, in their
+prose, in their politics, and in their tempers no two men can be more
+unlike. If Sir Walter Scott may be thought by some to have been
+
+  "Born universal heir to all humanity,"
+
+it is plain Lord Byron can set up no such pretension. He is, in a
+striking degree, the creature of his own will. He holds no communion
+with his kind; but stands alone, without mate or fellow--
+
+  "As if a man were author of himself,
+  And owned no other kin."
+
+He is like a solitary peak, all access to which is cut off not more by
+elevation than distance. He is seated on a lofty eminence, "cloud-capt,"
+or reflecting the last rays of setting suns; and in his poetical moods,
+reminds us of the fabled Titans, retired to a ridgy steep, playing on
+their Pan's-pipes, and taking up ordinary men and things in their hands
+with haughty indifference. He raises his subject to himself, or tramples
+on it: he neither stoops to, nor loses himself in it. He exists not by
+sympathy, but by antipathy. He scorns all things, even himself. Nature
+must come to him to sit for her picture--he does not go to her. She must
+consult his time, his convenience, and his humour; and wear a _sombre_
+or a fantastic garb, or his Lordship turns his back upon her. There is
+no ease, no unaffected simplicity of manner, no "golden mean." All is
+strained, or petulant in the extreme. His thoughts are sphered and
+crystalline; his style "prouder than when blue Iris bends;" his spirit
+fiery, impatient, wayward, indefatigable. Instead of taking his
+impressions from without, in entire and almost unimpaired masses, he
+moulds them according to his own temperament, and heats the materials
+of his imagination in the furnace of his passions.--Lord Byron's verse
+glows like a flame, consuming every thing in its way; Sir Walter Scott's
+glides like a river, clear, gentle, harmless. The poetry of the first
+scorches, that of the last scarcely warms. The light of the one proceeds
+from an internal source, ensanguined, sullen, fixed; the other reflects
+the hues of Heaven, or the face of nature, glancing vivid and various.
+The productions of the Northern Bard have the rust and the freshness
+of antiquity about them; those of the Noble Poet cease to startle
+from their extreme ambition of novelty, both in style and matter. Sir
+Walter's rhymes are "silly sooth"--
+
+  "And dally with the innocence of thought,
+  Like the old age"--
+
+his Lordship's Muse spurns _the olden time_, and affects all the
+supercilious airs of a modern fine lady and an upstart. The object of
+the one writer is to restore us to truth and nature: the other chiefly
+thinks how he shall display his own power, or vent his spleen, or
+astonish the reader either by starting new subjects and trains of
+speculation, or by expressing old ones in a more striking and emphatic
+manner than they have been expressed before. He cares little what it is
+he says, so that he can say it differently from others. This may account
+for the charges of plagiarism which have been repeatedly brought against
+the Noble Poet--if he can borrow an image or sentiment from another, and
+heighten it by an epithet or an allusion of greater force and beauty
+than is to be found in the original passage, he thinks he shews his
+superiority of execution in this in a more marked manner than if
+the first suggestion had been his own. It is not the value of the
+observation itself he is solicitous about; but he wishes to shine by
+contrast--even nature only serves as a foil to set off his style. He
+therefore takes the thoughts of others (whether contemporaries or not)
+out of their mouths, and is content to make them his own, to set his
+stamp upon them, by imparting to them a more meretricious gloss, a
+higher relief, a greater loftiness of tone, and a characteristic
+inveteracy of purpose. Even in those collateral ornaments of modern
+style, slovenliness, abruptness, and eccentricity (as well as in
+terseness and significance), Lord Byron, when he pleases, defies
+competition and surpasses all his contemporaries. Whatever he does, he
+must do in a more decided and daring manner than any one else--he lounges
+with extravagance, and yawns so as to alarm the reader! Self-will,
+passion, the love of singularity, a disdain of himself and of others
+(with a conscious sense that this is among the ways and means of
+procuring admiration) are the proper categories of his mind: he is a
+lordly writer, is above his own reputation, and condescends to the Muses
+with a scornful grace!
+
+Lord Byron, who in his politics is a _liberal_, in his genius is haughty
+and aristocratic: Walter Scott, who is an aristocrat in principle, is
+popular in his writings, and is (as it were) equally _servile_ to nature
+and to opinion. The genius of Sir Walter is essentially imitative, or
+"denotes a foregone conclusion:" that of Lord Byron is self-dependent;
+or at least requires no aid, is governed by no law, but the impulses of
+its own will. We confess, however much we may admire independence of
+feeling and erectness of spirit in general or practical questions, yet
+in works of genius we prefer him who bows to the authority of nature,
+who appeals to actual objects, to mouldering superstitions, to history,
+observation, and tradition, before him who only consults the pragmatical
+and restless workings of his own breast, and gives them out as oracles
+to the world. We like a writer (whether poet or prose-writer) who takes
+in (or is willing to take in) the range of half the universe in feeling,
+character, description, much better than we do one who obstinately and
+invariably shuts himself up in the Bastile of his own ruling passions.
+In short, we had rather be Sir Walter Scott (meaning thereby the Author
+of Waverley) than Lord Byron, a hundred times over. And for the reason
+just given, namely, that he casts his descriptions in the mould of
+nature, ever-varying, never tiresome, always interesting and always
+instructive, instead of casting them constantly in the mould of his
+own individual impressions. He gives us man as he is, or as he was, in
+almost every variety of situation, action, and feeling. Lord Byron
+makes man after his own image, woman after his own heart; the one is
+a capricious tyrant, the other a yielding slave; he gives us the
+misanthrope and the voluptuary by turns; and with these two characters,
+burning or melting in their own fires, he makes out everlasting centos
+of himself. He hangs the cloud, the film of his existence over all
+outward things--sits in the centre of his thoughts, and enjoys dark
+night, bright day, the glitter and the gloom "in cell monastic"--we see
+the mournful pall, the crucifix, the death's heads, the faded chaplet of
+flowers, the gleaming tapers, the agonized brow of genius, the wasted
+form of beauty--but we are still imprisoned in a dungeon, a curtain
+intercepts our view, we do not breathe freely the air of nature or of
+our own thoughts--the other admired author draws aside the curtain, and
+the veil of egotism is rent, and he shews us the crowd of living men and
+women, the endless groups, the landscape back-ground, the cloud and
+the rainbow, and enriches our imaginations and relieves one passion
+by another, and expands and lightens reflection, and takes away that
+tightness at the breast which arises from thinking or wishing to think
+that there is nothing in the world out of a man's self!--In this point
+of view, the Author of Waverley is one of the greatest teachers of
+morality that ever lived, by emancipating the mind from petty, narrow,
+and bigotted prejudices: Lord Byron is the greatest pamperer of those
+prejudices, by seeming to think there is nothing else worth encouraging
+but the seeds or the full luxuriant growth of dogmatism and
+self-conceit. In reading the _Scotch Novels_, we never think about
+the author, except from a feeling of curiosity respecting our unknown
+benefactor: in reading Lord Byron's works, he himself is never absent
+from our minds. The colouring of Lord Byron's style, however rich and
+dipped in Tyrian dyes, is nevertheless opaque, is in itself an object
+of delight and wonder: Sir Walter Scott's is perfectly transparent. In
+studying the one, you seem to gaze at the figures cut in stained glass,
+which exclude the view beyond, and where the pure light of Heaven is
+only a means of setting off the gorgeousness of art: in reading the
+other, you look through a noble window at the clear and varied landscape
+without. Or to sum up the distinction in one word, Sir Walter Scott is
+the most _dramatic_ writer now living; and Lord Byron is the least so.
+It would be difficult to imagine that the Author of Waverley is in the
+smallest degree a pedant; as it would be hard to persuade ourselves that
+the author of Childe Harold and Don Juan is not a coxcomb, though a
+provoking and sublime one. In this decided preference given to Sir
+Walter Scott over Lord Byron, we distinctly include the prose-works of
+the former; for we do not think his poetry alone by any means entitles
+him to that precedence. Sir Walter in his poetry, though pleasing and
+natural, is a comparative trifler: it is in his anonymous productions
+that he has shewn himself for what he is!--
+
+_Intensity_ is the great and prominent distinction of Lord Byron's
+writings. He seldom gets beyond force of style, nor has he produced any
+regular work or masterly whole. He does not prepare any plan beforehand,
+nor revise and retouch what he has written with polished accuracy. His
+only object seems to be to stimulate himself and his readers for the
+moment--to keep both alive, to drive away _ennui_, to substitute a
+feverish and irritable state of excitement for listless indolence or
+even calm enjoyment. For this purpose he pitches on any subject at
+random without much thought or delicacy--he is only impatient to
+begin--and takes care to adorn and enrich it as he proceeds with
+"thoughts that breathe and words that burn." He composes (as he himself
+has said) whether he is in the bath, in his study, or on horseback--he
+writes as habitually as others talk or think--and whether we have the
+inspiration of the Muse or not, we always find the spirit of the man
+of genius breathing from his verse. He grapples with his subject, and
+moves, penetrates, and animates it by the electric force of his own
+feelings. He is often monotonous, extravagant, offensive; but he is
+never dull, or tedious, but when he writes prose. Lord Byron does not
+exhibit a new view of nature, or raise insignificant objects into
+importance by the romantic associations with which he surrounds them;
+but generally (at least) takes common-place thoughts and events, and
+endeavours to express them in stronger and statelier language than
+others. His poetry stands like a Martello tower by the side of his
+subject. He does not, like Mr. Wordsworth, lift poetry from the ground,
+or create a sentiment out of nothing. He does not describe a daisy or a
+periwinkle, but the cedar or the cypress: not "poor men's cottages, but
+princes' palaces." His Childe Harold contains a lofty and impassioned
+review of the great events of history, of the mighty objects left as
+wrecks of time, but he dwells chiefly on what is familiar to the mind of
+every school-boy; has brought out few new traits of feeling or thought;
+and has done no more than justice to the reader's preconceptions by the
+sustained force and brilliancy of his style and imagery. Lord Byron's
+earlier productions, _Lara_, the _Corsair_, &c. were wild and gloomy
+romances, put into rapid and shining verse. They discover the madness
+of poetry, together with the inspiration: sullen, moody, capricious,
+fierce, inexorable, gloating on beauty, thirsting for revenge, hurrying
+from the extremes of pleasure to pain, but with nothing permanent,
+nothing healthy or natural. The gaudy decorations and the morbid
+sentiments remind one of flowers strewed over the face of death! In
+his _Childe Harold_ (as has been just observed) he assumes a lofty and
+philosophic tone, and "reasons high of providence, fore-knowledge, will,
+and fate." He takes the highest points in the history of the world,
+and comments on them from a more commanding eminence: he shews us the
+crumbling monuments of time, he invokes the great names, the
+mighty spirit of antiquity. The universe is changed into a stately
+mausoleum:--in solemn measures he chaunts a hymn to fame. Lord Byron has
+strength and elevation enough to fill up the moulds of our classical and
+time-hallowed recollections, and to rekindle the earliest aspirations of
+the mind after greatness and true glory with a pen of fire. The names of
+Tasso, of Ariosto, of Dante, of Cincinnatus, of Caesar, of Scipio, lose
+nothing of their pomp or their lustre in his hands, and when he begins
+and continues a strain of panegyric on such subjects, we indeed sit
+down with him to a banquet of rich praise, brooding over imperishable
+glories,
+
+  "Till Contemplation has her fill."
+
+Lord Byron seems to cast himself indignantly from "this bank and shoal
+of time," or the frail tottering bark that bears up modern reputation,
+into the huge sea of ancient renown, and to revel there with untired,
+outspread plume. Even this in him is spleen--his contempt of his
+contemporaries makes him turn back to the lustrous past, or project
+himself forward to the dim future!--Lord Byron's tragedies, Faliero,[B]
+Sardanapalus, &c. are not equal to his other works. They want the
+essence of the drama. They abound in speeches and descriptions, such as
+he himself might make either to himself or others, lolling on his couch
+of a morning, but do not carry the reader out of the poet's mind to the
+scenes and events recorded. They have neither action, character,
+nor interest, but are a sort of _gossamer_ tragedies, spun out, and
+glittering, and spreading a flimsy veil over the face of nature. Yet
+he spins them on. Of all that he has done in this way the _Heaven and
+Earth_ (the same subject as Mr. Moore's _Loves of the Angels_) is the
+best. We prefer it even to _Manfred_. _Manfred_ is merely himself,
+with a fancy-drapery on: but in the dramatic fragment published in the
+_Liberal_, the space between Heaven and Earth, the stage on which
+his characters have to pass to and fro, seems to fill his Lordship's
+imagination; and the Deluge, which he has so finely described, may be
+said to have drowned all his own idle humours.
+
+We must say we think little of our author's turn for satire. His
+"English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" is dogmatical and insolent, but
+without refinement or point. He calls people names, and tries to
+transfix a character with an epithet, which does not stick, because
+it has no other foundation than his own petulance and spite; or he
+endeavours to degrade by alluding to some circumstance of external
+situation. He says of Mr. Wordsworth's poetry, that "it is his
+aversion." That may be: but whose fault is it? This is the satire of
+a lord, who is accustomed to have all his whims or dislikes taken for
+gospel, and who cannot be at the pains to do more than signify his
+contempt or displeasure. If a great man meets with a rebuff which he
+does not like, he turns on his heel, and this passes for a repartee.
+The Noble Author says of a celebrated barrister and critic, that he was
+"born in a garret sixteen stories high." The insinuation is not true; or
+if it were, it is low. The allusion degrades the person who makes, not
+him to whom it is applied. This is also the satire of a person of birth
+and quality, who measures all merit by external rank, that is, by
+his own standard. So his Lordship, in a "Letter to the Editor of My
+Grandmother's Review," addresses him fifty times as "_my dear Robarts_;"
+nor is there any other wit in the article. This is surely a mere
+assumption of superiority from his Lordship's rank, and is the sort of
+_quizzing_ he might use to a person who came to hire himself as a valet
+to him at _Long's_--the waiters might laugh, the public will not. In
+like manner, in the controversy about Pope, he claps Mr. Bowles on the
+back with a coarse facetious familiarity, as if he were his chaplain
+whom he had invited to dine with him, or was about to present to a
+benefice. The reverend divine might submit to the obligation, but he has
+no occasion to subscribe to the jest. If it is a jest that Mr. Bowles
+should be a parson, and Lord Byron a peer, the world knew this before;
+there was no need to write a pamphlet to prove it.
+
+The _Don Juan_ indeed has great power; but its power is owing to the
+force of the serious writing, and to the oddity of the contrast between
+that and the flashy passages with which it is interlarded. From the
+sublime to the ridiculous there is but one step. You laugh and are
+surprised that any one should turn round and _travestie_ himself: the
+drollery is in the utter discontinuity of ideas and feelings. He makes
+virtue serve as a foil to vice; _dandyism_ is (for want of any other) a
+variety of genius. A classical intoxication is followed by the splashing
+of soda-water, by frothy effusions of ordinary bile. After the lightning
+and the hurricane, we are introduced to the interior of the cabin and
+the contents of wash-hand basins. The solemn hero of tragedy plays
+_Scrub_ in the farce. This is "very tolerable and not to be endured."
+The Noble Lord is almost the only writer who has prostituted his talents
+in this way. He hallows in order to desecrate; takes a pleasure in
+defacing the images of beauty his hands have wrought; and raises our
+hopes and our belief in goodness to Heaven only to dash them to the
+earth again, and break them in pieces the more effectually from the very
+height they have fallen. Our enthusiasm for genius or virtue is thus
+turned into a jest by the very person who has kindled it, and who thus
+fatally quenches the sparks of both. It is not that Lord Byron is
+sometimes serious and sometimes trifling, sometimes profligate, and
+sometimes moral--but when he is most serious and most moral, he is only
+preparing to mortify the unsuspecting reader by putting a pitiful _hoax_
+upon him. This is a most unaccountable anomaly. It is as if the eagle
+were to build its eyry in a common sewer, or the owl were seen soaring
+to the mid-day sun. Such a sight might make one laugh, but one would not
+wish or expect it to occur more than once![C]
+
+In fact, Lord Byron is the spoiled child of fame as well as fortune.
+He has taken a surfeit of popularity, and is not contented to delight,
+unless he can shock the public. He would force them to admire in spite
+of decency and common sense--he would have them read what they would
+read in no one but himself, or he would not give a rush for their
+applause. He is to be "a chartered libertine," from whom insults are
+favours, whose contempt is to be a new incentive to admiration. His
+Lordship is hard to please: he is equally averse to notice or neglect,
+enraged at censure and scorning praise. He tries the patience of the
+town to the very utmost, and when they shew signs of weariness or
+disgust, threatens to _discard_ them. He says he will write on, whether
+he is read or not. He would never write another page, if it were not
+to court popular applause, or to affect a superiority over it. In this
+respect also, Lord Byron presents a striking contrast to Sir Walter
+Scott. The latter takes what part of the public favour falls to his
+share, without grumbling (to be sure he has no reason to complain) the
+former is always quarrelling with the world about his _modicum_ of
+applause, the _spolia opima_ of vanity, and ungraciously throwing the
+offerings of incense heaped on his shrine back in the faces of his
+admirers. Again, there is no taint in the writings of the Author of
+Waverley, all is fair and natural and _above-board:_ he never outrages
+the public mind. He introduces no anomalous character: broaches no
+staggering opinion. If he goes back to old prejudices and superstitions
+as a relief to the modern reader, while Lord Byron floats on swelling
+paradoxes--
+
+  "Like proud seas under him;"
+
+if the one defers too much to the spirit of antiquity, the other
+panders to the spirit of the age, goes to the very edge of extreme and
+licentious speculation, and breaks his neck over it. Grossness and
+levity are the playthings of his pen. It is a ludicrous circumstance
+that he should have dedicated his _Cain_ to the worthy Baronet! Did the
+latter ever acknowledge the obligation? We are not nice, not very nice;
+but we do not particularly approve those subjects that shine chiefly
+from their rottenness: nor do we wish to see the Muses drest out in
+the flounces of a false or questionable philosophy, like _Portia_ and
+_Nerissa_ in the garb of Doctors of Law. We like metaphysics as well as
+Lord Byron; but not to see them making flowery speeches, nor dancing a
+measure in the fetters of verse. We have as good as hinted, that his
+Lordship's poetry consists mostly of a tissue of superb common-places;
+even his paradoxes are _common-place_. They are familiar in the schools:
+they are only new and striking in his dramas and stanzas, by being out
+of place. In a word, we think that poetry moves best within the circle
+of nature and received opinion: speculative theory and subtle casuistry
+are forbidden ground to it. But Lord Byron often wanders into this
+ground wantonly, wilfully, and unwarrantably. The only apology we can
+conceive for the spirit of some of Lord Byron's writings, is the spirit
+of some of those opposed to him. They would provoke a man to write any
+thing. "Farthest from them is best." The extravagance and license of the
+one seems a proper antidote to the bigotry and narrowness of the other.
+The first _Vision of Judgment_ was a set-off to the second, though
+
+  "None but itself could be its parallel."
+
+Perhaps the chief cause of most of Lord Byron's errors is, that he is
+that anomaly in letters and in society, a Noble Poet. It is a double
+privilege, almost too much for humanity. He has all the pride of birth
+and genius. The strength of his imagination leads him to indulge in
+fantastic opinions; the elevation of his rank sets censure at defiance.
+He becomes a pampered egotist. He has a seat in the House of Lords, a
+niche in the Temple of Fame. Every-day mortals, opinions, things are not
+good enough for him to touch or think of. A mere nobleman is, in his
+estimation, but "the tenth transmitter of a foolish face:" a mere man of
+genius is no better than a worm. His Muse is also a lady of quality.
+The people are not polite enough for him: the Court not sufficiently
+intellectual. He hates the one and despises the other. By hating and
+despising others, he does not learn to be satisfied with himself. A
+fastidious man soon grows querulous and splenetic. If there is nobody
+but ourselves to come up to our idea of fancied perfection, we easily
+get tired of our idol. When a man is tired of what he is, by a natural
+perversity he sets up for what he is not. If he is a poet, he pretends
+to be a metaphysician: if he is a patrician in rank and feeling, he
+would fain be one of the people. His ruling motive is not the love of
+the people, but of distinction not of truth, but of singularity. He
+patronizes men of letters out of vanity, and deserts them from caprice,
+or from the advice of friends. He embarks in an obnoxious publication to
+provoke censure, and leaves it to shift for itself for fear of scandal.
+We do not like Sir Walter's gratuitous servility: we like Lord Byron's
+preposterous _liberalism_ little better. He may affect the principles of
+equality, but he resumes his privilege of peerage, upon occasion. His
+Lordship has made great offers of service to the Greeks--money and
+horses. He is at present in Cephalonia, waiting the event!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We had written thus far when news came of the death of Lord Byron, and
+put an end at once to a strain of somewhat peevish invective, which was
+intended to meet his eye, not to insult his memory. Had we known that we
+were writing his epitaph, we must have done it with a different feeling.
+As it is, we think it better and more like himself, to let what we had
+written stand, than to take up our leaden shafts, and try to melt them
+into "tears of sensibility," or mould them into dull praise, and an
+affected shew of candour. We were not silent during the author's
+life-time, either for his reproof or encouragement (such us we
+could give, and _he_ did not disdain to accept) nor can we now turn
+undertakers' men to fix the glittering plate upon his coffin, or fall
+into the procession of popular woe.--Death cancels every thing but
+truth; and strips a man of every thing but genius and virtue. It is a
+sort of natural canonization. It makes the meanest of us sacred--it
+installs the poet in his immortality, and lifts him to the skies. Death
+is the great assayer of the sterling ore of talent. At his touch the
+drossy particles fall off, the irritable, the personal, the gross, and
+mingle with the dust--the finer and more ethereal part mounts with the
+winged spirit to watch over our latest memory and protect our bones from
+insult. We consign the least worthy qualities to oblivion, and cherish
+the nobler and imperishable nature with double pride and fondness.
+Nothing could shew the real superiority of genius in a more striking
+point of view than the idle contests and the public indifference about
+the place of Lord Byron's interment, whether in Westminster-Abbey or
+his own family-vault. A king must have a coronation--a nobleman a
+funeral-procession.--The man is nothing without the pageant. The poet's
+cemetery is the human mind, in which he sows the seeds of never ending
+thought--his monument is to be found in his works:
+
+  "Nothing can cover his high fame but Heaven;
+  No pyramids set off his memory,
+  But the eternal substance of his greatness."
+
+Lord Byron is dead: he also died a martyr to his zeal in the cause of
+freedom, for the last, best hopes of man. Let that be his excuse and his
+epitaph!
+
+
+[Footnote A: This Essay was written just before Lord Byron's death.]
+
+[Footnote B:
+
+  "Don Juan was my Moscow, and Faliero
+  My Leipsic, and my Mont St. Jean seems Cain,"
+  _Don Juan_, Canto. XI.]
+
+[Footnote C: This censure applies to the first Cantos of DON JUAN much
+more than to the last. It has been called a TRISTRAM SHANDY in rhyme: it
+is rather a poem written about itself.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+MR. CAMPBELL AND MR. CRABBE.
+
+
+
+"Mr. Campbell may be said to hold a place (among modern poets) between
+Lord Byron and Mr. Rogers. With much of the glossy splendour, the
+pointed vigour, and romantic interest of the one, he possesses the
+fastidious refinement, the classic elegance of the other. Mr. Rogers, as
+a writer, is too effeminate, Lord Byron too extravagant: Mr. Campbell is
+neither. The author of the _Pleasures of Memory_ polishes his lines till
+they sparkle with the most exquisite finish; he attenuates them into the
+utmost degree of trembling softness: but we may complain, in spite of
+the delicacy and brilliancy of the execution, of a want of strength
+and solidity. The author of the _Pleasures of Hope_, with a richer and
+deeper vein of thought and imagination, works it out into figures of
+equal grace and dazzling beauty, avoiding on the one hand the tinsel of
+flimsy affectation, and on the other the vices of a rude and barbarous
+negligence. His Pegasus is not a rough, skittish colt, running wild
+among the mountains, covered with bur-docks and thistles, nor a tame,
+sleek pad, unable to get out of the same ambling pace, but a beautiful
+_manege_-horse, full of life and spirit in itself, and subject to the
+complete controul of the rider. Mr. Campbell gives scope to his feelings
+and his fancy, and embodies them in a noble and naturally interesting
+subject; and he at the same time conceives himself called upon (in these
+days of critical nicety) to pay the exactest attention to the expression
+of each thought, and to modulate each line into the most faultless
+harmony. The character of his mind is a lofty and self-scrutinising
+ambition, that strives to reconcile the integrity of general design with
+the perfect elaboration of each component part, that aims at striking
+effect, but is jealous of the means by which this is to be produced.
+Our poet is not averse to popularity (nay, he is tremblingly alive to
+it)--but self-respect is the primary law, the indispensable condition
+on which it must be obtained. We should dread to point out (even if we
+could) a false concord, a mixed metaphor, an imperfect rhyme in any of
+Mr. Campbell's productions; for we think that all his fame would hardly
+compensate to him for the discovery. He seeks for perfection, and
+nothing evidently short of it can satisfy his mind. He is a _high
+finisher_ in poetry, whose every work must bear inspection, whose
+slightest touch is precious--not a coarse dauber who is contented to
+impose on public wonder and credulity by some huge, ill-executed design,
+or who endeavours to wear out patience and opposition together by a load
+of lumbering, feeble, awkward, improgressive lines--on the contrary, Mr.
+Campbell labours to lend every grace of execution to his subject, while
+he borrows his ardour and inspiration from it, and to deserve the
+laurels he has earned, by true genius and by true pains. There is an
+apparent consciousness of this in most of his writings. He has attained
+to great excellence by aiming at the greatest, by a cautious and yet
+daring selection of topics, and by studiously (and with a religious
+horror) avoiding all those faults which arise from grossness, vulgarity,
+haste, and disregard of public opinion. He seizes on the highest point
+of eminence, and strives to keep it to himself--he "snatches a grace
+beyond the reach of art," and will not let it go--he steeps a single
+thought or image so deep in the Tyrian dyes of a gorgeous imagination,
+that it throws its lustre over a whole page--every where vivid _ideal_
+forms hover (in intense conception) over the poet's verse, which
+ascends, like the aloe, to the clouds, with pure flowers at its top. Or
+to take an humbler comparison (the pride of genius must sometimes stoop
+to the lowliness of criticism) Mr. Campbell's poetry often reminds us of
+the purple gilliflower, both for its colour and its scent, its glowing
+warmth, its rich, languid, sullen hue,
+
+  "Yet sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,
+  Or Cytherea's breath!"
+
+There are those who complain of the little that Mr. Campbell has done
+in poetry, and who seem to insinuate that he is deterred by his own
+reputation from making any further or higher attempts. But after having
+produced two poems that have gone to the heart of a nation, and are
+gifts to a world, he may surely linger out the rest of his life in a
+dream of immortality. There are moments in our lives so exquisite that
+all that remains of them afterwards seems useless and barren; and there
+are lines and stanzas in our author's early writings in which he may
+be thought to have exhausted all the sweetness and all the essence of
+poetry, so that nothing farther was left to his efforts or his ambition.
+Happy is it for those few and fortunate worshippers of the Muse (not
+a subject of grudging or envy to others) who already enjoy in their
+life-time a foretaste of their future fame, who see their names
+accompanying them, like a cloud of glory, from youth to age,
+
+  "And by the vision splendid,
+  Are on their way attended"--
+
+and who know that they have built a shrine for the thoughts and
+feelings, that were most dear to them, in the minds and memories
+of other men, till the language which they lisped in childhood is
+forgotten, or the human heart shall beat no more!
+
+The _Pleasures of Hope_ alone would not have called forth these remarks
+from us; but there are passages in the _Gertrude of Wyoming_ of so rare
+and ripe a beauty, that they challenge, as they exceed all praise.
+Such, for instance, is the following peerless description of Gertrude's
+childhood:--
+
+  "A loved bequest--and I may half impart
+  To those that feel the strong paternal tie,
+  How like a new existence in his heart
+  That living flow'r uprose beneath his eye,
+  Dear as she was, from cherub infancy,
+  From hours when she would round his garden play,
+  To time when as the ripening years went by,
+  Her lovely mind could culture well repay,
+  And more engaging grew from pleasing day to day.
+
+  "I may not paint those thousand infant charms
+  (Unconscious fascination, undesign'd!)
+  The orison repeated in his arms,
+  For God to bless her sire and all mankind;
+  The book, the bosom on his knee reclined,
+  Or how sweet fairy-lore he heard her con
+  (The play-mate ere the teacher of her mind)
+  All uncompanion'd else her years had gone,
+  Till now in Gertrude's eyes their ninth blue summer shone.
+
+  "And summer was the tide, and sweet the hour,
+  When sire and daughter saw, with fleet descent,
+  An Indian from his bark approach their bower,
+  Of buskin'd limb and swarthy lineament;
+  The red wild feathers on his brow were blent,
+  And bracelets bound the arm that help'd to light
+  A boy, who seem'd, as he beside him went,
+  Of Christian vesture and complexion bright,
+  Led by his dusty guide, like morning brought by night."
+
+In the foregoing stanzas we particularly admire the line--
+
+  "Till now in Gertrude's eyes their ninth blue summer shone."
+
+It appears to us like the ecstatic union of natural beauty and poetic
+fancy, and in its playful sublimity resembles the azure canopy mirrored
+in the smiling waters, bright, liquid, serene, heavenly! A great outcry,
+we know, has prevailed for some time past against poetic diction and
+affected conceits, and, to a certain degree, we go along with it; but
+this must not prevent us from feeling the thrill of pleasure when we see
+beauty linked to beauty, like kindred flame to flame, or from applauding
+the voluptuous fancy that raises and adorns the fairy fabric of thought,
+that nature has begun! Pleasure is "scattered in stray-gifts o'er the
+earth"--beauty streaks the "famous poet's page" in occasional lines of
+inconceivable brightness; and wherever this is the case, no splenetic
+censures or "jealous leer malign," no idle theories or cold indifference
+should hinder us from greeting it with rapture.--There are other parts
+of this poem equally delightful, in which there is a light startling as
+the red-bird's wing; a perfume like that of the magnolia; a music
+like the murmuring of pathless woods or of the everlasting ocean. We
+conceive, however, that Mr. Campbell excels chiefly in sentiment and
+imagery. The story moves slow, and is mechanically conducted, and rather
+resembles a Scotch canal carried over lengthened aqueducts and with a
+number of _locks_ in it, than one of those rivers that sweep in their
+majestic course, broad and full, over Transatlantic plains and lose
+themselves in rolling gulfs, or thunder down lofty precipices. But in
+the centre, the inmost recesses of our poet's heart, the pearly dew of
+sensibility is distilled and collects, like the diamond in the mine, and
+the structure of his fame rests on the crystal columns of a polished
+imagination. We prefer the _Gertrude_ to the _Pleasures of Hope_,
+because with perhaps less brilliancy, there is more of tenderness and
+natural imagery in the former. In the _Pleasures of Hope_ Mr. Campbell
+had not completely emancipated himself from the trammels of the more
+artificial style of poetry--from epigram, and antithesis, and hyperbole.
+The best line in it, in which earthly joys are said to be--
+
+  "Like angels' visits, few and far between"--
+
+is a borrowed one.[A] But in the Gertrude of Wyoming "we perceive a
+softness coming over the heart of the author, and the scales and crust
+of formality that fence in his couplets and give them a somewhat
+glittering and rigid appearance, fall off," and he has succeeded in
+engrafting the wild and more expansive interest of the romantic school
+of poetry on classic elegance and precision. After the poem we have
+just named, Mr. Campbell's SONGS are the happiest efforts of his
+Muse:--breathing freshness, blushing like the morn, they seem, like
+clustering roses, to weave a chaplet for love and liberty; or their
+bleeding words gush out in mournful and hurried succession, like "ruddy
+drops that visit the sad heart" of thoughtful Humanity. The _Battle of
+Hohenlinden_ is of all modern compositions the most lyrical in spirit
+and in sound. To justify this encomium, we need only recall the lines to
+the reader's memory.
+
+  "On Linden, when the sun was low,
+  All bloodless lay th' untrodden snow,
+  And dark as winter was the flow
+  Of Iser, rolling rapidly.
+
+  But Linden saw another sight,
+  When the drum beat at dead of night,
+  Commanding fires of death to light
+  The darkness of her scenery.
+
+  By torch and trumpet fast array'd,
+  Each horseman drew his battle blade,
+  And furious every charger neigh'd,
+  To join the dreadful revelry.
+
+  Then shook the hills with thunder riv'n,
+  Then rush'd the steed to battle driv'n,
+  And louder than the bolts of heav'n
+  Far flash'd the red artillery.
+
+  But redder yet that light shall glow
+  On Linden's hills of stained snow,
+  And bloodier yet the torrent flow
+  Of Iser, rolling rapidly.
+
+  'Tis morn, but scarce yon level sun
+  Can pierce the war-clouds, rolling[B] dun,
+  Where furious Frank and fiery Hun
+  Shout in their sulph'rous canopy.
+
+  The combat deepens.  On, ye brave,
+  Who rush to glory, or the grave!
+  Wave, Munich! all thy banners wave!
+  And charge with all thy chivalry!
+
+  Few, few shall part, where many meet!
+  The snow shall be their winding-sheet,
+  And every turf beneath their feet
+  Shall be a soldier's sepulchre."
+
+Mr. Campbell's prose-criticisms on contemporary and other poets (which
+have appeared in the New Monthly Magazine) are in a style at once
+chaste, temperate, guarded, and just.
+
+Mr. Crabbe presents an entire contrast to
+
+Mr. Campbell:--the one is the most ambitious and aspiring of living
+poets, the other the most humble and prosaic. If the poetry of the one
+is like the arch of the rainbow, spanning and adorning the earth, that
+of the other is like a dull, leaden cloud hanging over it. Mr. Crabbe's
+style might be cited as an answer to Audrey's question--"Is poetry
+a true thing?" There are here no ornaments, no flights of fancy, no
+illusions of sentiment, no tinsel of words. His song is one sad reality,
+one unraised, unvaried note of unavailing woe. Literal fidelity serves
+him in the place of invention; he assumes importance by a number of
+petty details; he rivets attention by being tedious. He not only deals
+in incessant matters of fact, but in matters of fact of the most
+familiar, the least animating, and the most unpleasant kind; but he
+relies for the effect of novelty on the microscopic minuteness with
+which he dissects the most trivial objects--and for the interest he
+excites, on the unshrinking determination with which he handles the most
+painful. His poetry has an official and professional air. He is called
+in to cases of difficult births, of fractured limbs, or breaches of the
+peace; and makes out a parochial list of accidents and offences. He
+takes the most trite, the most gross and obvious and revolting part of
+nature, for the subject of his elaborate descriptions; but it is Nature
+still, and Nature is a great and mighty Goddess! It is well for the
+Reverend Author that it is so. Individuality is, in his theory, the only
+definition of poetry. Whatever _is_, he hitches into rhyme. Whoever
+makes an exact image of any thing on the earth, however deformed or
+insignificant, according to him, must succeed--and he himself has
+succeeded. Mr. Crabbe is one of the most popular and admired of our
+living authors. That he is so, can be accounted for on no other
+principle than the strong ties that bind us to the world about us, and
+our involuntary yearnings after whatever in any manner powerfully and
+directly reminds us of it. His Muse is not one of _the Daughters of
+Memory_, but the old toothless, mumbling dame herself, doling out the
+gossip and scandal of the neighbourhood, recounting _totidem verbis et
+literis_, what happens in every place of the kingdom every hour in the
+year, and fastening always on the worst as the most palatable morsels.
+But she is a circumstantial old lady, communicative, scrupulous, leaving
+nothing to the imagination, harping on the smallest grievances, a
+village-oracle and critic, most veritable, most identical, bringing us
+acquainted with persons and things just as they chanced to exist, and
+giving us a local interest in all she knows and tells. Mr. Crabbe's
+Helicon is choked up with weeds and corruption; it reflects no light
+from heaven, it emits no cheerful sound: no flowers of love, of hope,
+or joy spring up near it, or they bloom only to wither in a moment. Our
+poet's verse does not put a spirit of youth in every thing, but a spirit
+of fear, despondency, and decay: it is not an electric spark to kindle
+or expand, but acts like the torpedo's touch to deaden or contract. It
+lends no dazzling tints to fancy, it aids no soothing feelings in the
+heart, it gladdens no prospect, it stirs no wish; in its view the
+current of life runs slow, dull, cold, dispirited, half under ground,
+muddy, and clogged with all creeping things. The world is one vast
+infirmary; the hill of Parnassus is a penitentiary, of which our author
+is the overseer: to read him is a penance, yet we read on! Mr. Crabbe,
+it must be confessed, is a repulsive writer. He contrives to "turn
+diseases to commodities," and makes a virtue of necessity. He puts us
+out of conceit with this world, which perhaps a severe divine should do;
+yet does not, as a charitable divine ought, point to another. His morbid
+feelings droop and cling to the earth, grovel where they should soar;
+and throw a dead weight on every aspiration of the soul after the good
+or beautiful. By degrees we submit, and are reconciled to our fate, like
+patients to the physician, or prisoners in the condemned cell. We can
+only explain this by saying, as we said before, that Mr. Crabbe gives
+us one part of nature, the mean, the little, the disgusting, the
+distressing; that he does this thoroughly and like a master, and we
+forgive all the rest.
+
+Mr. Crabbe's first poems were published so long ago as the year 1782,
+and received the approbation of Dr. Johnson only a little before he
+died. This was a testimony from an enemy; for Dr. Johnson was not an
+admirer of the simple in style or minute in description. Still he was an
+acute, strong-minded man, and could see truth when it was presented to
+him, even through the mist of his prejudices and his foibles. There was
+something in Mr. Crabbe's intricate points that did not, after all, so
+ill accord with the Doctor's purblind vision; and he knew quite
+enough of the petty ills of life to judge of the merit of our poet's
+descriptions, though he himself chose to slur them over in high-sounding
+dogmas or general invectives. Mr. Crabbe's earliest poem of the
+_Village_ was recommended to the notice of Dr. Johnson by Sir Joshua
+Reynolds; and we cannot help thinking that a taste for that sort of
+poetry, which leans for support on the truth and fidelity of its
+imitations of nature, began to display itself much about that time, and,
+in a good measure, in consequence of the direction of the public taste
+to the subject of painting. Book-learning, the accumulation of wordy
+common-places, the gaudy pretensions of poetical fiction, had enfeebled
+and perverted our eye for nature. The study of the fine arts, which came
+into fashion about forty years ago, and was then first considered as a
+polite accomplishment, would tend imperceptibly to restore it. Painting
+is essentially an imitative art; it cannot subsist for a moment on empty
+generalities: the critic, therefore, who had been used to this sort of
+substantial entertainment, would be disposed to read poetry with the
+eye of a connoisseur, would be little captivated with smooth, polished,
+unmeaning periods, and would turn with double eagerness and relish to
+the force and precision of individual details, transferred, as it were,
+to the page from the canvas. Thus an admirer of Teniers or Hobbima
+might think little of the pastoral sketches of Pope or Goldsmith; even
+Thompson describes not so much the naked object as what he sees in his
+mind's eye, surrounded and glowing with the mild, bland, genial vapours
+of his brain:--but the adept in Dutch interiors, hovels, and pig-styes
+must find in Mr. Crabbe a man after his own heart. He is the very thing
+itself; he paints in words, instead of colours: there is no other
+difference. As Mr. Crabbe is not a painter, only because he does not use
+a brush and colours, so he is for the most part a poet, only because
+he writes in lines of ten syllables. All the rest might be found in a
+newspaper, an old magazine, or a county-register. Our author is himself
+a little jealous of the prudish fidelity of his homely Muse, and tries
+to justify himself by precedents. He brings as a parallel instance of
+merely literal description, Pope's lines on the gay Duke of Buckingham,
+beginning "In the worst inn's worst room see Villiers lies!" But surely
+nothing can be more dissimilar. Pope describes what is striking, Crabbe
+would have described merely what was there. The objects in Pope stand
+out to the fancy from the mixture of the mean with the gaudy, from the
+contrast of the scene and the character. There is an appeal to the
+imagination; you see what is passing in a poetical point of view. In
+Crabbe there is no foil, no contrast, no impulse given to the mind. It
+is all on a level and of a piece. In fact, there is so little connection
+between the subject-matter of Mr. Crabbe's lines and the ornament of
+rhyme which is tacked to them, that many of his verses read like serious
+burlesque, and the parodies which have been made upon them are hardly so
+quaint as the originals.
+
+Mr. Crabbe's great fault is certainly that he is a sickly, a querulous,
+a uniformly dissatisfied poet. He sings the country; and he sings it in
+a pitiful tone. He chooses this subject only to take the charm out of
+it, and to dispel the illusion, the glory, and the dream, which had
+hovered over it in golden verse from Theocritus to Cowper. He sets out
+with professing to overturn the theory which had hallowed a shepherd's
+life, and made the names of grove and valley music to our ears, in order
+to give us truth in its stead; but why not lay aside the fool's cap and
+bells at once? Why not insist on the unwelcome reality in plain prose?
+If our author is a poet, why trouble himself with statistics? If he is a
+statistic writer, why set his ill news to harsh and grating verse? The
+philosopher in painting the dark side of human nature may have reason
+on his side, and a moral lesson or remedy in view. The tragic poet, who
+shews the sad vicissitudes of things and the disappointments of the
+passions, at least strengthens our yearnings after imaginary good, and
+lends wings to our desires, by which we, "at one bound, high overleap
+all bound" of actual suffering. But Mr. Crabbe does neither. He gives
+us discoloured paintings of life; helpless, repining, unprofitable,
+unedifying distress. He is not a philosopher, but a sophist, a
+misanthrope in verse; a _namby-pamby_ Mandeville, a Malthus turned
+metrical romancer. He professes historical fidelity; but his vein is not
+dramatic; nor does he give us the _pros_ and _cons_ of that versatile
+gipsey, Nature. He does not indulge his fancy, or sympathise with us, or
+tell us how the poor feel; but how he should feel in their situation,
+which we do not want to know. He does not weave the web of their lives
+of a mingled yarn, good and ill together, but clothes them all in the
+same dingy linsey-woolsey, or tinges them with a green and yellow
+melancholy. He blocks out all possibility of good, cancels the hope, or
+even the wish for it as a weakness; check-mates Tityrus and Virgil at
+the game of pastoral cross-purposes, disables all his adversary's white
+pieces, and leaves none but black ones on the board. The situation of a
+country clergyman is not necessarily favourable to the cultivation of
+the Muse. He is set down, perhaps, as he thinks, in a small curacy for
+life, and he takes his revenge by imprisoning the reader's imagination
+in luckless verse. Shut out from social converse, from learned colleges
+and halls, where he passed his youth, he has no cordial fellow-feeling
+with the unlettered manners of the _Village_ or the _Borough_; and he
+describes his neighbours as more uncomfortable and discontented than
+himself. All this while he dedicates successive volumes to rising
+generations of noble patrons; and while he desolates a line of coast
+with sterile, blighting lines, the only leaf of his books where honour,
+beauty, worth, or pleasure bloom, is that inscribed to the Rutland
+family! We might adduce instances of what we have said from every page
+of his works: let one suffice--
+
+  "Thus by himself compelled to live each day,
+  To wait for certain hours the tide's delay;
+  At the same times the same dull views to see,
+  The bounding marsh-bank and the blighted tree;
+  The water only when the tides were high,
+  When low, the mud half-covered and half-dry;
+  The sun-burnt tar that blisters on the planks,
+  And bank-side stakes in their uneven ranks;
+  Heaps of entangled weeds that slowly float,
+  As the tide rolls by the impeded boat.
+  When tides were neap, and in the sultry day,
+  Through the tall bounding mud-banks made their way,
+  Which on each side rose swelling, and below
+  The dark warm flood ran silently and slow;
+  There anchoring, Peter chose from man to hide,
+  There hang his head, and view the lazy tide
+  In its hot slimy channel slowly glide;
+  Where the small eels, that left the deeper way
+  For the warm shore, within the shallows play;
+  Where gaping muscles, left upon the mud,
+  Slope their slow passage to the fall'n flood:
+  Here dull and hopeless he'd lie down and trace
+  How side-long crabs had crawled their crooked race;
+  Or sadly listen to the tuneless cry
+  Of fishing gull or clanging golden-eye;
+  What time the sea-birds to the marsh would come,
+  And the loud bittern, from the bull-rush home,
+  Gave from the salt ditch-side the bellowing boom:
+  He nursed the feelings these dull scenes produce
+  And loved to stop beside the opening sluice;
+  Where the small stream, confined in narrow bound,
+  Ran with a dull, unvaried, saddening sound;
+  Where all, presented to the eye or ear,
+  Oppressed the soul with misery, grief, and fear."
+
+This is an exact _fac-simile_ of some of the most unlovely parts of the
+creation. Indeed the whole of Mr. Crabbe's _Borough_, from which the
+above passage is taken, is done so to the life, that it seems almost
+like some sea-monster, crawled out of the neighbouring slime, and
+harbouring a breed of strange vermin, with a strong local scent of
+tar and bulge-water. Mr. Crabbe's _Tales_ are more readable than his
+_Poems_; but in proportion as the interest increases, they become more
+oppressive. They turn, one and all, upon the same sort of teazing,
+helpless, mechanical, unimaginative distress;--and though it is not
+easy to lay them down, you never wish to take them up again. Still in
+this way, they are highly finished, striking, and original portraits,
+worked out with an eye to nature, and an intimate knowledge of the
+small and intricate folds of the human heart. Some of the best are
+the _Confidant_, the story of _Silly Shore_, the _Young Poet_, the
+_Painter_. The episode of _Phoebe Dawson_ in the _Village_, is one of
+the most tender and pensive; and the character of the methodist parson
+who persecutes the sailor's widow with his godly, selfish love, is one
+of the most profound. In a word, if Mr. Crabbe's writings do not add
+greatly to the store of entertaining and delightful fiction, yet they
+will remain "as a thorn in the side of poetry," perhaps for a century to
+come!
+
+
+[Footnote A:
+
+  "Like angels' visits, short and far between."--.
+  _Blair's Grave_.]
+
+[Footnote B: Is not this word, which occurs in the last line but one,
+(as well as before) an instance of that repetition, which we so often
+meet with in the most correct and elegant writers?]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH.
+
+
+
+The subject of the present article is one of the ablest and most
+accomplished men of the age, both as a writer, a speaker, and a
+converser. He is, in fact, master of almost every known topic, whether
+of a passing or of a more recondite nature. He has lived much in
+society, and is deeply conversant with books. He is a man of the
+world and a scholar; but the scholar gives the tone to all his other
+acquirements and pursuits. Sir James is by education and habit, and we
+were going to add, by the original turn of his mind, a college-man; and
+perhaps he would have passed his time most happily and respectably, had
+he devoted himself entirely to that kind of life. The strength of his
+faculties would have been best developed, his ambition would have met
+its proudest reward, in the accumulation and elaborate display of grave
+and useful knowledge. As it is, it may be said, that in company he talks
+well, but too much; that in writing he overlays the original subject and
+spirit of the composition, by an appeal to authorities and by too formal
+a method; that in public speaking the logician takes place of the
+orator, and that he fails to give effect to a particular point or to
+urge an immediate advantage home upon his adversary from the enlarged
+scope of his mind, and the wide career he takes in the field of
+argument.
+
+To consider him in the last point of view, first. As a political
+partisan, he is rather the lecturer than the advocate. He is able to
+instruct and delight an impartial and disinterested audience by the
+extent of his information, by his acquaintance with general principles,
+by the clearness and aptitude of his illustrations, by vigour and
+copiousness of style; but where he has a prejudiced or unfair antagonist
+to contend with, he is just as likely to put weapons into his enemy's
+hands as to wrest them from him, and his object seems to be rather to
+deserve than to obtain success. The characteristics of his mind are
+retentiveness and comprehension, with facility of production: but he is
+not equally remarkable for originality of view, or warmth of feeling, or
+liveliness of fancy. His eloquence is a little rhetorical; his reasoning
+chiefly logical: he can bring down the account of knowledge on a vast
+variety of subjects to the present moment, he can embellish any cause he
+undertakes by the most approved and graceful ornaments, he can support
+it by a host of facts and examples, but he cannot advance it a step
+forward by placing it on a new and triumphant 'vantage-ground, nor
+can he overwhelm and break down the artificial fences and bulwarks
+of sophistry by the irresistible tide of manly enthusiasm. Sir James
+Mackintosh is an accomplished debater, rather than a powerful orator: he
+is distinguished more as a man of wonderful and variable talent than
+as a man of commanding intellect. His mode of treating a question is
+critical, and not parliamentary. It has been formed in the closet and
+the schools, and is hardly fitted for scenes of active life, or the
+collisions of party-spirit. Sir James reasons on the square; while the
+arguments of his opponents are loaded with iron or gold. He makes,
+indeed, a respectable ally, but not a very formidable opponent. He is as
+likely, however, to prevail on a neutral, as he is almost certain to be
+baffled on a hotly contested ground. On any question of general
+policy or legislative improvement, the Member for Nairn is heard with
+advantage, and his speeches are attended with effect: and he would have
+equal weight and influence at other times, if it were the object of the
+House to hear reason, as it is his aim to speak it. But on subjects of
+peace or war, of political rights or foreign interference, where the
+waves of party run high, and the liberty of nations or the fate of
+mankind hangs trembling in the scales, though he probably displays equal
+talent, and does full and heaped justice to the question (abstractedly
+speaking, or if it were to be tried before an impartial assembly), yet
+we confess we have seldom heard him, on such occasions, without pain for
+the event. He did not slur his own character and pretensions, but he
+compromised the argument. He spoke _the truth, the whole truth, and
+nothing but the truth_; but the House of Commons (we dare aver it) is
+not the place where the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
+truth can be spoken with safety or with advantage. The judgment of the
+House is not a balance to weigh scruples and reasons to the turn of a
+fraction: another element, besides the love of truth, enters into the
+composition of their decisions, the reaction of which must be calculated
+upon and guarded against. If our philosophical statesman had to open the
+case before a class of tyros, or a circle of grey-beards, who wished to
+form or to strengthen their judgments upon fair and rational grounds,
+nothing could be more satisfactory, more luminous, more able or more
+decisive than the view taken of it by Sir James Mackintosh. But the
+House of Commons, as a collective body, have not the docility of youth,
+the calm wisdom of age; and often only want an excuse to do wrong, or
+to adhere to what they have already determined upon; and Sir James,
+in detailing the inexhaustible stores of his memory and reading, in
+unfolding the wide range of his theory and practice, in laying down
+the rules and the exceptions, in insisting upon the advantages and the
+objections with equal explicitness, would be sure to let something drop
+that a dextrous and watchful adversary would easily pick up and turn
+against him, if this were found necessary; or if with so many _pros_ and
+_cons_, doubts and difficulties, dilemmas and alternatives thrown into
+it, the scale, with its natural bias to interest and power, did not
+already fly up and kick the beam. There wanted unity of purpose,
+impetuosity of feeling to break through the phalanx of hostile and
+inveterate prejudice arrayed against him. He gave a handle to his
+enemies; threw stumbling-blocks in the way of his friends. He raised so
+many objections for the sake of answering them, proposed so many doubts
+for the sake of solving them, and made so many concessions where none
+were demanded, that his reasoning had the effect of neutralizing itself;
+it became a mere exercise of the understanding without zest or spirit
+left in it; and the provident engineer who was to shatter in pieces
+the strong-holds of corruption and oppression, by a well-directed and
+unsparing discharge of artillery, seemed to have brought not only his
+own cannon-balls, but his own wool-packs along with him to ward off
+the threatened mischief. This was a good deal the effect of his maiden
+speech on the transfer of Genoa, to which Lord Castlereagh did not deign
+an answer, and which another Honourable Member called "a _finical_
+speech." It was a most able, candid, closely argued, and philosophical
+exposure of that unprincipled transaction; but for this very reason it
+was a solecism in the place where it was delivered. Sir James has, since
+this period, and with the help of practice, lowered himself to the tone
+of the House; and has also applied himself to questions more congenial
+to his habits of mind, and where the success would be more likely to be
+proportioned to his zeal and his exertions.
+
+There was a greater degree of power, or of dashing and splendid effect
+(we wish we could add, an equally humane and liberal spirit) in the
+_Lectures on the Law of Nature and Nations_, formerly delivered by Sir
+James (then Mr.) Mackintosh, in Lincoln's-Inn Hall. He shewed greater
+confidence; was more at home there. The effect was more electrical and
+instantaneous, and this elicited a prouder display of intellectual
+riches, and a more animated and imposing mode of delivery. He grew
+wanton with success. Dazzling others by the brilliancy of his
+acquirements, dazzled himself by the admiration they excited, he lost
+fear as well as prudence; dared every thing, carried every thing before
+him. The Modern Philosophy, counterscarp, outworks, citadel, and all,
+fell without a blow, by "the whiff and wind of his fell _doctrine_," as
+if it had been a pack of cards. The volcano of the French Revolution
+was seen expiring in its own flames, like a bon-fire made of straw: the
+principles of Reform were scattered in all directions, like chaff before
+the keen northern blast. He laid about him like one inspired; nothing
+could withstand his envenomed tooth. Like some savage beast got into
+the garden of the fabled Hesperides, he made clear work of it, root and
+branch, with white, foaming tusks--
+
+  "Laid waste the borders, and o'erthrew the bowers."
+
+The havoc was amazing, the desolation was complete. As to our visionary
+sceptics and Utopian philosophers, they stood no chance with our
+lecturer--he did not "carve them as a dish fit for the Gods, but hewed
+them as a carcase fit for hounds." Poor Godwin, who had come, in the
+_bonhommie_ and candour of his nature, to hear what new light had broken
+in upon his old friend, was obliged to quit the field, and slunk away
+after an exulting taunt thrown out at "such fanciful chimeras as a
+golden mountain or a perfect man." Mr. Mackintosh had something of the
+air, much of the dexterity and self-possession, of a political and
+philosophical juggler; and an eager and admiring audience gaped and
+greedily swallowed the gilded bait of sophistry, prepared for their
+credulity and wonder. Those of us who attended day after day, and were
+accustomed to have all our previous notions confounded and struck out of
+our hands by some metaphysical legerdemain, were at last at some loss to
+know _whether two and two made four_, till we had heard the lecturer's
+opinion on that head. He might have some mental reservation on the
+subject, some pointed ridicule to pour upon the common supposition,
+some learned authority to quote against it. To anticipate the line of
+argument he might pursue, was evidently presumptuous and premature. One
+thing only appeared certain, that whatever opinion he chose to take up,
+he was able to make good either by the foils or the cudgels, by gross
+banter or nice distinctions, by a well-timed mixture of paradox and
+common-place, by an appeal to vulgar prejudices or startling scepticism.
+It seemed to be equally his object, or the tendency of his Discourses,
+to unsettle every principle of reason or of common sense, and to leave
+his audience at the mercy of the _dictum_ of a lawyer, the nod of a
+minister, or the shout of a mob. To effect this purpose, he drew largely
+on the learning of antiquity, on modern literature, on history, poetry,
+and the belles-lettres, on the Schoolmen and on writers of novels,
+French, English, and Italian. In mixing up the sparkling julep, that
+by its potent operation was to scour away the dregs and feculence and
+peccant humours of the body politic, he seemed to stand with his back
+to the drawers in a metaphysical dispensary, and to take out of them
+whatever ingredients suited his purpose. In this way he had an antidote
+for every error, an answer to every folly. The writings of Burke, Hume,
+Berkeley, Paley, Lord Bacon, Jeremy Taylor, Grotius, Puffendorf, Cicero,
+Aristotle, Tacitus, Livy, Sully, Machiavel, Guicciardini, Thuanus, lay
+open beside him, and he could instantly lay his hand upon the passage,
+and quote them chapter and verse to the clearing up of all difficulties,
+and the silencing of all oppugners. Mr. Mackintosh's Lectures were after
+all but a kind of philosophical centos. They were profound, brilliant,
+new to his hearers; but the profundity, the brilliancy, the novelty were
+not his own. He was like Dr. Pangloss (not Voltaire's, but Coleman's)
+who speaks only in quotations; and the pith, the marrow of Sir James's
+reasoning and rhetoric at that memorable period might be put within
+inverted commas. It, however, served its purpose and the loud echo died
+away. We remember an excellent man and a sound critic[A] going to hear
+one of these elaborate effusions; and on his want of enthusiasm being
+accounted for from its not being one of the orator's brilliant days, he
+replied, "he did not think a man of genius could speak for two hours
+without saying something by which he would have been electrified."
+We are only sorry, at this distance of time, for one thing in these
+Lectures--the tone and spirit in which they seemed to have been composed
+and to be delivered. If all that body of opinions and principles of
+which the orator read his recantation was unfounded, and there was an
+end of all those views and hopes that pointed to future improvement, it
+was not a matter of triumph or exultation to the lecturer or any body
+else, to the young or the old, the wise or the foolish; on the contrary,
+it was a subject of regret, of slow, reluctant, painful admission--
+
+  "Of lamentation loud heard through the rueful air."
+
+The immediate occasion of this sudden and violent change in Sir James's
+views and opinions was attributed to a personal interview which he
+had had a little before his death with Mr. Burke, at his house at
+Beaconsfield. In the latter end of the year 1796, appeared the _Regicide
+Peace_, from the pen of the great apostate from liberty and betrayer of
+his species into the hands of those who claimed it as their property
+by divine right--a work imposing, solid in many respects, abounding in
+facts and admirable reasoning, and in which all flashy ornaments were
+laid aside for a testamentary gravity, (the eloquence of despair
+resembling the throes and heaving and muttered threats of an earthquake,
+rather than the loud thunder-bolt)--and soon after came out a criticism
+on it in _The Monthly Review_, doing justice to the author and the
+style, and combating the inferences with force and at much length; but
+with candour and with respect, amounting to deference. It was new to Mr.
+Burke not to be called names by persons of the opposite party; it was
+an additional triumph to him to be spoken well of, to be loaded with
+well-earned praise by the author of the _Vindiciae Gallicae_. It was a
+testimony from an old, a powerful, and an admired antagonist.[B] He sent
+an invitation to the writer to come and see him; and in the course of
+three days' animated discussion of such subjects, Mr. Mackintosh became
+a convert not merely to the graces and gravity of Mr. Burke's style, but
+to the liberality of his views, and the solidity of his opinions.--The
+Lincoln's-Inn Lectures were the fruit of this interview: such is the
+influence exercised by men of genius and imaginative power over those
+who have nothing to oppose to their unforeseen flashes of thought and
+invention, but the dry, cold, formal deductions of the understanding.
+Our politician had time, during a few years of absence from his native
+country, and while the din of war and the cries of party-spirit "were
+lost over a wide and unhearing ocean," to recover from his surprise and
+from a temporary alienation of mind; and to return in spirit, and in the
+mild and mellowed maturity of age, to the principles and attachments of
+his early life.
+
+The appointment of Sir James Mackintosh to a Judgeship in India was one,
+which, however flattering to his vanity or favourable to his interests,
+was entirely foreign to his feelings and habits. It was an honourable
+exile. He was out of his element among black slaves and sepoys, and
+Nabobs and cadets, and writers to India. He had no one to exchange ideas
+with. The "unbought grace of life," the charm of literary conversation
+was gone. It was the habit of his mind, his ruling passion to enter into
+the shock and conflict of opinions on philosophical, political, and
+critical questions--not to dictate to raw tyros or domineer over persons
+in subordinate situations--but to obtain the guerdon and the laurels of
+superior sense and information by meeting with men of equal standing, to
+have a fair field pitched, to argue, to distinguish, to reply, to
+hunt down the game of intellect with eagerness and skill, to push an
+advantage, to cover a retreat, to give and take a fall--
+
+  "And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach."
+
+It is no wonder that this sort of friendly intellectual gladiatorship is
+Sir James's greatest pleasure, for it is his peculiar _forte_. He has
+not many equals, and scarcely any superior in it. He is too indolent for
+an author; too unimpassioned for an orator: but in society he is just
+vain enough to be pleased with immediate attention, good-humoured
+enough to listen with patience to others, with great coolness and
+self-possession, fluent, communicative, and with a manner equally free
+from violence and insipidity. Few subjects can be started, on which he
+is not qualified to appear to advantage as the gentleman and scholar. If
+there is some tinge of pedantry, it is carried off by great affability
+of address and variety of amusing and interesting topics. There is
+scarce an author that he has not read; a period of history that he is
+not conversant with; a celebrated name of which he has not a number of
+anecdotes to relate; an intricate question that he is not prepared
+to enter upon in a popular or scientific manner. If an opinion in an
+abstruse metaphysical author is referred to, he is probably able to
+repeat the passage by heart, can tell the side of the page on which it
+is to be met with, can trace it back through various descents to Locke,
+Hobbes, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, to a place in some obscure folio of
+the School-men or a note in one of the commentators on Aristotle or
+Plato, and thus give you in a few moments' space, and without any effort
+or previous notice, a chronological table of the progress of the human
+mind in that particular branch of inquiry. There is something, we think,
+perfectly admirable and delightful in an exhibition of this kind, and
+which is equally creditable to the speaker and gratifying to the hearer.
+But this kind of talent was of no use in India: the intellectual wares,
+of which the Chief Judge delighted to make a display, were in no request
+there. He languished after the friends and the society he had left
+behind; and wrote over incessantly for books from England. One that was
+sent him at this time was an _Essay on the Principles of Human Action_;
+and the way in which he spoke of that dry, tough, metaphysical
+_choke-pear_, shewed the dearth of intellectual intercourse in which he
+lived, and the craving in his mind after those studies which had once
+been his pride, and to which he still turned for consolation in his
+remote solitude.--Perhaps to another, the novelty of the scene, the
+differences of mind and manners might have atoned for a want of social
+and literary _agremens_: but Sir James is one of those who see nature
+through the spectacles of books. He might like to read an account of
+India; but India itself with its burning, shining face would be a mere
+blank, an endless waste to him. To persons of this class of mind things
+must be translated into words, visible images into abstract propositions
+to meet their refined apprehensions, and they have no more to say to a
+matter-of-fact staring them in the face without a label in its mouth,
+than they would to a hippopotamus!--We may add, before we quit this
+point, that we cannot conceive of any two persons more different in
+colloquial talents, in which they both excel, than Sir James Mackintosh
+and Mr. Coleridge. They have nearly an equal range of reading and of
+topics of conversation: but in the mind of the one we see nothing but
+_fixtures_, in the other every thing is fluid. The ideas of the one
+are as formal and tangible, as those of the other are shadowy and
+evanescent. Sir James Mackintosh walks over the ground, Mr. Coleridge is
+always flying off from it. The first knows all that has been said upon
+a subject; the last has something to say that was never said before. If
+the one deals too much in learned _common-places_, the other teems with
+idle fancies. The one has a good deal of the _caput mortuum_ of genius,
+the other is all volatile salt. The conversation of Sir James Mackintosh
+has the effect of reading a well-written book, that of his friend
+is like hearing a bewildered dream. The one is an Encyclopedia of
+knowledge, the other is a succession of _Sybilline Leaves_!
+
+As an author, Sir James Mackintosh may claim the foremost rank among
+those who pride themselves on artificial ornaments and acquired
+learning, or who write what may be termed a _composite_ style. His
+_Vindciae Gallicae_ is a work of great labour, great ingenuity, great
+brilliancy, and great vigour. It is a little too antithetical in the
+structure of its periods, too dogmatical in the announcement of its
+opinions. Sir James has, we believe, rejected something of the
+_false brilliant_ of the one, as he has retracted some of the abrupt
+extravagance of the other. We apprehend, however, that our author is not
+one of those who draw from their own resources and accumulated feelings,
+or who improve with age. He belongs to a class (common in Scotland
+and elsewhere) who get up school-exercises on any given subject in
+a masterly manner at twenty, and who at forty are either where they
+were--or retrograde, if they are men of sense and modesty. The reason
+is, their vanity is weaned, after the first hey-day and animal spirits
+of youth are flown, from making an affected display of knowledge, which,
+however useful, is not their own, and may be much more simply stated;
+they are tired of repeating the same arguments over and over again,
+after having exhausted and rung the changes on their whole stock for a
+number of times. Sir James Mackintosh is understood to be a writer in
+the Edinburgh Review; and the articles attributed to him there are full
+of matter of great pith and moment. But they want the trim, pointed
+expression, the ambitious ornaments, the ostentatious display and rapid
+volubility of his early productions. We have heard it objected to his
+later compositions, that his style is good as far as single words and
+phrases are concerned, but that his sentences are clumsy and disjointed,
+and that these make up still more awkward and sprawling paragraphs. This
+is a nice criticism, and we cannot speak to its truth: but if the fact
+be so, we think we can account for it from the texture and obvious
+process of the author's mind. All his ideas may be said to be given
+preconceptions. They do not arise, as it were, out of the subject, or
+out of one another at the moment, and therefore do not flow naturally
+and gracefully from one another. They have been laid down beforehand in
+a sort of formal division or frame-work of the understanding; and the
+connexion between the premises and the conclusion, between one branch
+of a subject and another, is made out in a bungling and unsatisfactory
+manner. There is no principle of fusion in the work: he strikes after
+the iron is cold, and there is a want of malleability in the style. Sir
+James is at present said to be engaged in writing a _History of England_
+after the downfall of the house of Stuart. May it be worthy of the
+talents of the author, and of the principles of the period it is
+intended to illustrate!
+
+
+[Footnote A: The late Rev. Joseph Fawcett, of Walthamstow.]
+
+[Footnote B: At the time when the _Vindiciae Gallicae_ first made its
+appearance, as a reply to the _Reflections on the French Revolution_, it
+was cried up by the partisans of the new school, as a work superior in
+the charms of composition to its redoubted rival: in acuteness, depth,
+and soundness of reasoning, of course there was supposed to be no
+comparison.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+MR. WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+
+Mr. Wordsworth's genius is a pure emanation of the Spirit of the Age.
+Had he lived in any other period of the world, he would never have been
+heard of. As it is, he has some difficulty to contend with the hebetude
+of his intellect, and the meanness of his subject. With him "lowliness
+is young ambition's ladder:" but he finds it a toil to climb in this way
+the steep of Fame. His homely Muse can hardly raise her wing from the
+ground, nor spread her hidden glories to the sun. He has "no figures nor
+no fantasies, which busy _passion_ draws in the brains of men:" neither
+the gorgeous machinery of mythologic lore, nor the splendid colours of
+poetic diction. His style is vernacular: he delivers household truths.
+He sees nothing loftier than human hopes; nothing deeper than the human
+heart. This he probes, this he tampers with, this he poises, with all
+its incalculable weight of thought and feeling, in his hands; and at the
+same time calms the throbbing pulses of his own heart, by keeping his
+eye ever fixed on the face of nature. If he can make the life-blood flow
+from the wounded breast, this is the living colouring with which he
+paints his verse: if he can assuage the pain or close up the wound with
+the balm of solitary musing, or the healing power of plants and herbs
+and "skyey influences," this is the sole triumph of his art. He takes
+the simplest elements of nature and of the human mind, the mere abstract
+conditions inseparable from our being, and tries to compound a new
+system of poetry from them; and has perhaps succeeded as well as any one
+could. "_Nihil humani a me alienum puto_"--is the motto of his works. He
+thinks nothing low or indifferent of which this can be affirmed: every
+thing that professes to be more than this, that is not an absolute
+essence of truth and feeling, he holds to be vitiated, false, and
+spurious. In a word, his poetry is founded on setting up an opposition
+(and pushing it to the utmost length) between the natural and the
+artificial: between the spirit of humanity, and the spirit of fashion
+and of the world!
+
+It is one of the innovations of the time. It partakes of, and is carried
+along with, the revolutionary movement of our age: the political changes
+of the day were the model on which he formed and conducted his poetical
+experiments. His Muse (it cannot be denied, and without this we cannot
+explain its character at all) is a levelling one. It proceeds on a
+principle of equality, and strives to reduce all things to the same
+standard. It is distinguished by a proud humility. It relies upon its
+own resources, and disdains external shew and relief. It takes the
+commonest events and objects, as a test to prove that nature is always
+interesting from its inherent truth and beauty, without any of the
+ornaments of dress or pomp of circumstances to set it off. Hence the
+unaccountable mixture of seeming simplicity and real abstruseness in the
+_Lyrical Ballads_. Fools have laughed at, wise men scarcely understand
+them. He takes a subject or a story merely as pegs or loops to hang
+thought and feeling on; the incidents are trifling, in proportion to
+his contempt for imposing appearances; the reflections are profound,
+according to the gravity and the aspiring pretensions of his mind. His
+popular, inartificial style gets rid (at a blow) of all the trappings
+of verse, of all the high places of poetry: "the cloud-capt towers, the
+solemn temples, the gorgeous palaces," are swept to the ground, and
+"like the baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a wreck behind."
+All the traditions of learning, all the superstitions of age, are
+obliterated and effaced. We begin _de novo_, on a _tabula rasa_ of
+poetry. The purple pall, the nodding plume of tragedy are exploded as
+mere pantomime and trick, to return to the simplicity of truth and
+nature. Kings, queens, priests, nobles, the altar and the throne, the
+distinctions of rank, birth, wealth, power, "the judge's robe, the
+marshall's truncheon, the ceremony that to great ones 'longs," are not
+to be found here. The author tramples on the pride of art with greater
+pride. The Ode and Epode, the Strophe and the Antistrophe, he laughs to
+scorn. The harp of Homer, the trump of Pindar and of Alcaeus are still.
+The decencies of costume, the decorations of vanity are stripped off
+without mercy as barbarous, idle, and Gothic. The jewels in the crisped
+hair, the diadem on the polished brow are thought meretricious,
+theatrical, vulgar; and nothing contents his fastidious taste beyond
+a simple garland of flowers. Neither does he avail himself of the
+advantages which nature or accident holds out to him. He chooses to have
+his subject a foil to his invention, to owe nothing but to himself. He
+gathers manna in the wilderness, he strikes the barren rock for the
+gushing moisture. He elevates the mean by the strength of his own
+aspirations; he clothes the naked with beauty and grandeur from the
+store of his own recollections. No cypress-grove loads his verse with
+perfumes: but his imagination lends a sense of joy
+
+  "To the bare trees and mountains bare,
+  And grass in the green field."
+
+No storm, no shipwreck startles us by its horrors: but the rainbow lifts
+its head in the cloud, and the breeze sighs through the withered fern.
+No sad vicissitude of fate, no overwhelming catastrophe in nature
+deforms his page: but the dew-drop glitters on the bending flower, the
+tear collects in the glistening eye.
+
+  "Beneath the hills, along the flowery vales,
+  The generations are prepared; the pangs,
+  The internal pangs are ready; the dread strife
+  Of poor humanity's afflicted will,
+  Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny."
+
+As the lark ascends from its low bed on fluttering wing, and salutes the
+morning skies; so Mr. Wordsworth's unpretending Muse, in russet guise,
+scales the summits of reflection, while it makes the round earth its
+footstool, and its home!
+
+Possibly a good deal of this may be regarded as the effect of
+disappointed views and an inverted ambition. Prevented by native pride
+and indolence from climbing the ascent of learning or greatness, taught
+by political opinions to say to the vain pomp and glory of the world, "I
+hate ye," seeing the path of classical and artificial poetry blocked up
+by the cumbrous ornaments of style and turgid _common-places_, so
+that nothing more could be achieved in that direction but by the most
+ridiculous bombast or the tamest servility; he has turned back partly
+from the bias of his mind, partly perhaps from a judicious policy--has
+struck into the sequestered vale of humble life, sought out the Muse
+among sheep-cotes and hamlets and the peasant's mountain-haunts, has
+discarded all the tinsel pageantry of verse, and endeavoured (not in
+vain) to aggrandise the trivial and add the charm of novelty to the
+familiar. No one has shewn the same imagination in raising trifles into
+importance: no one has displayed the same pathos in treating of the
+simplest feelings of the heart. Reserved, yet haughty, having no unruly
+or violent passions, (or those passions having been early suppressed,)
+Mr. Wordsworth has passed his life in solitary musing, or in daily
+converse with the face of nature. He exemplifies in an eminent degree
+the power of _association_; for his poetry has no other source or
+character. He has dwelt among pastoral scenes, till each object has
+become connected with a thousand feelings, a link in the chain of
+thought, a fibre of his own heart. Every one is by habit and familiarity
+strongly attached to the place of his birth, or to objects that recal
+the most pleasing and eventful circumstances of his life. But to the
+author of the _Lyrical Ballads_, nature is a kind of home; and he may be
+said to take a personal interest in the universe. There is no image so
+insignificant that it has not in some mood or other found the way into
+his heart: no sound that does not awaken the memory of other years.--
+
+  "To him the meanest flower that blows can give
+  Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."
+
+The daisy looks up to him with sparkling eye as an old acquaintance:
+the cuckoo haunts him with sounds of early youth not to be expressed: a
+linnet's nest startles him with boyish delight: an old withered thorn is
+weighed down with a heap of recollections: a grey cloak, seen on some
+wild moor, torn by the wind, or drenched in the rain, afterwards becomes
+an object of imagination to him: even the lichens on the rock have a
+life and being in his thoughts. He has described all these objects in a
+way and with an intensity of feeling that no one else had done before
+him, and has given a new view or aspect of nature. He is in this sense
+the most original poet now living, and the one whose writings could the
+least be spared: for they have no substitute elsewhere. The vulgar do
+not read them, the learned, who see all things through books, do not
+understand them, the great despise, the fashionable may ridicule them:
+but the author has created himself an interest in the heart of the
+retired and lonely student of nature, which can never die. Persons
+of this class will still continue to feel what he has felt: he has
+expressed what they might in vain wish to express, except with
+glistening eye and faultering tongue! There is a lofty philosophic tone,
+a thoughtful humanity, infused into his pastoral vein. Remote from the
+passions and events of the great world, he has communicated interest and
+dignity to the primal movements of the heart of man, and ingrafted his
+own conscious reflections on the casual thoughts of hinds and shepherds.
+Nursed amidst the grandeur of mountain scenery, he has stooped to have
+a nearer view of the daisy under his feet, or plucked a branch of
+white-thorn from the spray: but in describing it, his mind seems imbued
+with the majesty and solemnity of the objects around him--the tall rock
+lifts its head in the erectness of his spirit; the cataract roars in the
+sound of his verse; and in its dim and mysterious meaning, the mists
+seem to gather in the hollows of Helvellyn, and the forked Skiddaw
+hovers in the distance. There is little mention of mountainous scenery
+in Mr. Wordsworth's poetry; but by internal evidence one might be almost
+sure that it was written in a mountainous country, from its bareness,
+its simplicity, its loftiness and its depth!
+
+His later philosophic productions have a somewhat different character.
+They are a departure from, a dereliction of his first principles. They
+are classical and courtly. They are polished in style, without being
+gaudy; dignified in subject, without affectation. They seem to have
+been composed not in a cottage at Grasmere, but among the half-inspired
+groves and stately recollections of Cole-Orton. We might allude in
+particular, for examples of what we mean, to the lines on a Picture by
+Claude Lorraine, and to the exquisite poem, entitled _Laodamia_. The
+last of these breathes the pure spirit of the finest fragments of
+antiquity--the sweetness, the gravity, the strength, the beauty and the
+langour of death--
+
+  "Calm contemplation and majestic pains."
+
+Its glossy brilliancy arises from the perfection of the finishing, like
+that of careful sculpture, not from gaudy colouring--the texture of the
+thoughts has the smoothness and solidity of marble. It is a poem that
+might be read aloud in Elysium, and the spirits of departed heroes and
+sages would gather round to listen to it! Mr. Wordsworth's philosophic
+poetry, with a less glowing aspect and less tumult in the veins than
+Lord Byron's on similar occasions, bends a calmer and keener eye
+on mortality; the impression, if less vivid, is more pleasing and
+permanent; and we confess it (perhaps it is a want of taste and proper
+feeling) that there are lines and poems of our author's, that we think
+of ten times for once that we recur to any of Lord Byron's. Or if there
+are any of the latter's writings, that we can dwell upon in the same
+way, that is, as lasting and heart-felt sentiments, it is when laying
+aside his usual pomp and pretension, he descends with Mr. Wordsworth to
+the common ground of a disinterested humanity. It may be considered
+as characteristic of our poet's writings, that they either make no
+impression on the mind at all, seem mere _nonsense-verses_, or that they
+leave a mark behind them that never wears out. They either
+
+  "Fall blunted from the indurated breast"--
+
+without any perceptible result, or they absorb it like a passion. To
+one class of readers he appears sublime, to another (and we fear the
+largest) ridiculous. He has probably realised Milton's wish,--"and fit
+audience found, though few:" but we suspect he is not reconciled to the
+alternative. There are delightful passages in the EXCURSION, both of
+natural description and of inspired reflection (passages of the latter
+kind that in the sound of the thoughts and of the swelling language
+resemble heavenly symphonies, mournful _requiems_ over the grave of
+human hopes); but we must add, in justice and in sincerity, that we
+think it impossible that this work should ever become popular, even in
+the same degree as the _Lyrical Ballads_. It affects a system without
+having any intelligible clue to one; and instead of unfolding a
+principle in various and striking lights, repeats the same conclusions
+till they become flat and insipid. Mr. Wordsworth's mind is obtuse,
+except as it is the organ and the receptacle of accumulated feelings:
+it is not analytic, but synthetic; it is reflecting, rather than
+theoretical. The EXCURSION, we believe, fell stillborn from the press.
+There was something abortive, and clumsy, and ill-judged in the attempt.
+It was long and laboured. The personages, for the most part, were low,
+the fare rustic: the plan raised expectations which were not fulfilled,
+and the effect was like being ushered into a stately hall and invited
+to sit down to a splendid banquet in the company of clowns, and with
+nothing but successive courses of apple-dumplings served up. It was not
+even _toujours perdrix_!
+
+Mr. Wordsworth, in his person, is above the middle size, with marked
+features, and an air somewhat stately and Quixotic. He reminds one of
+some of Holbein's heads, grave, saturnine, with a slight indication of
+sly humour, kept under by the manners of the age or by the pretensions
+of the person. He has a peculiar sweetness in his smile, and great depth
+and manliness and a rugged harmony, in the tones of his voice. His
+manner of reading his own poetry is particularly imposing; and in his
+favourite passages his eye beams with preternatural lustre, and the
+meaning labours slowly up from his swelling breast. No one who has seen
+him at these moments could go away with an impression that he was a "man
+of no mark or likelihood." Perhaps the comment of his face and voice is
+necessary to convey a full idea of his poetry. His language may not be
+intelligible, but his manner is not to be mistaken. It is clear that
+he is either mad or inspired. In company, even in a _tete-a-tete_, Mr.
+Wordsworth is often silent, indolent, and reserved. If he is become
+verbose and oracular of late years, he was not so in his better days.
+He threw out a bold or an indifferent remark without either effort or
+pretension, and relapsed into musing again. He shone most (because he
+seemed most roused and animated) in reciting his own poetry, or in
+talking about it. He sometimes gave striking views of his feelings and
+trains of association in composing certain passages; or if one did
+not always understand his distinctions, still there was no want of
+interest--there was a latent meaning worth inquiring into, like a vein
+of ore that one Cannot exactly hit upon at the moment, but of which
+there are sure indications. His standard of poetry is high and severe,
+almost to exclusiveness. He admits of nothing below, scarcely of any
+thing above himself. It is fine to hear him talk of the way in which
+certain subjects should have been treated by eminent poets, according to
+his notions of the art. Thus he finds fault with Dryden's description of
+Bacchus in the _Alexander's Feast_, as if he were a mere good-looking
+youth, or boon companion--
+
+  "Flushed with a purple grace,
+  He shews his honest face"--
+
+instead of representing the God returning from the conquest of India,
+crowned with vine-leaves, and drawn by panthers, and followed by troops
+of satyrs, of wild men and animals that he had tamed. You would thank,
+in hearing him speak on this subject, that you saw Titian's picture of
+the meeting of _Bacchus and Ariadne_--so classic were his conceptions,
+so glowing his style. Milton is his great idol, and he sometimes dares
+to compare himself with him. His Sonnets, indeed, have something of the
+same high-raised tone and prophetic spirit. Chaucer is another prime
+favourite of his, and he has been at the pains to modernise some of the
+Canterbury Tales. Those persons who look upon Mr. Wordsworth as a merely
+puerile writer, must be rather at a loss to account for his strong
+predilection for such geniuses as Dante and Michael Angelo. We do not
+think our author has any very cordial sympathy with Shakespear. How
+should he? Shakespear was the least of an egotist of any body in the
+world. He does not much relish the variety and scope of dramatic
+composition. "He hates those interlocutions between Lucius and Caius."
+Yet Mr. Wordsworth himself wrote a tragedy when he was young; and we
+have heard the following energetic lines quoted from it, as put into the
+mouth of a person smit with remorse for some rash crime:
+
+ ----"Action is momentary,
+  The motion of a muscle this way or that;
+  Suffering is long, obscure, and infinite!"
+
+Perhaps for want of light and shade, and the unshackled spirit of the
+drama, this performance was never brought forward. Our critic has a
+great dislike to Gray, and a fondness for Thomson and Collins. It is
+mortifying to hear him speak of Pope and Dryden, whom, because they have
+been supposed to have all the possible excellences of poetry, he will
+allow to have none. Nothing, however, can be fairer, or more amusing,
+than the way in which he sometimes exposes the unmeaning verbiage of
+modern poetry. Thus, in the beginning of Dr. Johnson's _Vanity of Human
+Wishes_--
+
+  "Let observation with extensive view
+  Survey mankind from China to Peru"--
+
+he says there is a total want of imagination accompanying the words,
+the same idea is repeated three times under the disguise of a different
+phraseology: it comes to this--"let _observation_, with extensive
+_observation, observe_ mankind;" or take away the first line, and the
+second,
+
+  "Survey mankind from China to Peru,"
+
+literally conveys the whole. Mr. Wordsworth is, we must say, a perfect
+Drawcansir as to prose writers. He complains of the dry reasoners and
+matter-of-fact people for their want of _passion_; and he is jealous of
+the rhetorical declaimers and rhapsodists as trenching on the province
+of poetry. He condemns all French writers (as well of poetry as prose)
+in the lump. His list in this way is indeed small. He approves of
+Walton's Angler, Paley, and some other writers of an inoffensive modesty
+of pretension. He also likes books of voyages and travels, and Robinson
+Crusoe. In art, he greatly esteems Bewick's wood-cuts, and Waterloo's
+sylvan etchings. But he sometimes takes a higher tone, and gives his
+mind fair play. We have known him enlarge with a noble intelligence and
+enthusiasm on Nicolas Poussin's fine landscape-compositions, pointing
+out the unity of design that pervades them, the superintending mind,
+the imaginative principle that brings all to bear on the same end;
+and declaring he would not give a rush for any landscape that did not
+express the time of day, the climate, the period of the world it was
+meant to illustrate, or had not this character of _wholeness_ in it. His
+eye also does justice to Rembrandt's fine and masterly effects. In the
+way in which that artist works something out of nothing, and transforms
+the stump of a tree, a common figure into an _ideal_ object, by the
+gorgeous light and shade thrown upon it, he perceives an analogy to his
+own mode of investing the minute details of nature with an atmosphere
+of sentiment; and in pronouncing Rembrandt to be a man of genius, feels
+that he strengthens his own claim to the title. It has been said of
+Mr. Wordsworth, that "he hates conchology, that he hates the Venus of
+Medicis." But these, we hope, are mere epigrams and _jeux-d'esprit_, as
+far from truth as they are free from malice; a sort of running satire or
+critical clenches--
+
+  "Where one for sense and one for rhyme
+  Is quite sufficient at one time."
+
+We think, however, that if Mr. Wordsworth had been a more liberal and
+candid critic, he would have been a more sterling writer. If a greater
+number of sources of pleasure had been open to him, he would have
+communicated pleasure to the world more frequently. Had he been less
+fastidious in pronouncing sentence on the works of others, his own would
+have been received more favourably, and treated more leniently.
+The current of his feelings is deep, but narrow; the range of his
+understanding is lofty and aspiring rather than discursive. The force,
+the originality, the absolute truth and identity with which he feels
+some things, makes him indifferent to so many others. The simplicity and
+enthusiasm of his feelings, with respect to nature, renders him bigotted
+and intolerant in his judgments of men and things. But it happens to
+him, as to others, that his strength lies in his weakness; and perhaps
+we have no right to complain. We might get rid of the cynic and the
+egotist, and find in his stead a common-place man. We should "take the
+good the Gods provide us:" a fine and original vein of poetry is not
+one of their most contemptible gifts, and the rest is scarcely worth
+thinking of, except as it may be a mortification to those who expect
+perfection from human nature; or who have been idle enough at some
+period of their lives, to deify men of genius as possessing claims above
+it. But this is a chord that jars, and we shall not dwell upon it.
+
+Lord Byron we have called, according to the old proverb, "the spoiled
+child of fortune:" Mr. Wordsworth might plead, in mitigation of some
+peculiarities, that he is "the spoiled child of disappointment." We are
+convinced, if he had been early a popular poet, he would have borne his
+honours meekly, and would have been a person of great _bonhommie_ and
+frankness of disposition. But the sense of injustice and of undeserved
+ridicule sours the temper and narrows the views. To have produced works
+of genius, and to find them neglected or treated with scorn, is one of
+the heaviest trials of human patience. We exaggerate our own merits when
+they are denied by others, and are apt to grudge and cavil at every
+particle of praise bestowed on those to whom we feel a conscious
+superiority. In mere self-defence we turn against the world, when it
+turns against us; brood over the undeserved slights we receive; and thus
+the genial current of the soul is stopped, or vents itself in effusions
+of petulance and self-conceit. Mr. Wordsworth has thought too much of
+contemporary critics and criticism; and less than he ought of the award
+of posterity, and of the opinion, we do not say of private friends, but
+of those who were made so by their admiration of his genius. He did not
+court popularity by a conformity to established models, and he ought
+not to have been surprised that his originality was not understood as a
+matter of course. He has _gnawed too much on the bridle_; and has often
+thrown out crusts to the critics, in mere defiance or as a point of
+honour when he was challenged, which otherwise his own good sense would
+have withheld. We suspect that Mr. Wordsworth's feelings are a little
+morbid in this respect, or that he resents censure more than he is
+gratified by praise. Otherwise, the tide has turned much in his favour
+of late years--he has a large body of determined partisans--and is at
+present sufficiently in request with the public to save or relieve him
+from the last necessity to which a man of genius can be reduced--that
+of becoming the God of his own idolatry!
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+MR. MALTHUS.
+
+
+
+Mr. Malthus may be considered as one of those rare and fortunate writers
+who have attained a _scientific_ reputation in questions of moral and
+political philosophy. His name undoubtedly stands very high in the
+present age, and will in all probability go down to posterity with more
+or less of renown or obloquy. It was said by a person well qualified
+to judge both from strength and candour of mind, that "it would take
+a thousand years at least to answer his work on Population." He has
+certainly thrown a new light on that question, and changed the aspect of
+political economy in a decided and material point of view--whether he
+has not also endeavoured to spread a gloom over the hopes and more
+sanguine speculations of man, and to cast a slur upon the face of
+nature, is another question. There is this to be said for Mr. Malthus,
+that in speaking of him, one knows what one is talking about. He is
+something beyond a mere name--one has not to _beat the bush_ about his
+talents, his attainments, his vast reputation, and leave off without
+knowing what it all amounts to--he is not one of those great men, who
+set themselves off and strut and fret an hour upon the stage, during a
+day-dream of popularity, with the ornaments and jewels borrowed from the
+common stock, to which nothing but their vanity and presumption gives
+them the least individual claim--he has dug into the mine of truth, and
+brought up ore mixed with dross! In weighing his merits we come at once
+to the question of what he has done or failed to do. It is a specific
+claim that he sets up. When we speak of Mr. Malthus, we mean the _Essay
+on Population_; and when we mention the Essay on Population, we mean
+a distinct leading proposition, that stands out intelligibly from all
+trashy pretence, and is a ground on which to fix the levers that may
+move the world, backwards or forwards. He has not left opinion where
+he found it; he has advanced or given it a wrong bias, or thrown a
+stumbling-block in its way. In a word, his name is not stuck, like so
+many others, in the firmament of reputation, nobody knows why, inscribed
+in great letters, and with a transparency of TALENTS, GENIUS, LEARNING
+blazing round it--it is tantamount to an idea, it is identified with
+a principle, it means that _the population cannot go on perpetually
+increasing without pressing on the limits of the means of subsistence,
+and that a check of some kind or other must, sooner or later, be opposed
+to it_. This is the essence of the doctrine which Mr. Malthus has been
+the first to bring into general notice, and as we think, to establish
+beyond the fear of contradiction. Admitting then as we do the prominence
+and the value of his claims to public attention, it yet remains a
+question, how far those claims are (as to the talent displayed in them)
+strictly original; how far (as to the logical accuracy with which he has
+treated the subject) he has introduced foreign and doubtful matter
+into it; and how far (as to the spirit in which he has conducted his
+inquiries, and applied a general principle to particular objects) he has
+only drawn fair and inevitable conclusions from it, or endeavoured to
+tamper with and wrest it to sinister and servile purposes. A writer who
+shrinks from following up a well-founded principle into its untoward
+consequences from timidity or false delicacy, is not worthy of the
+name of a philosopher: a writer who assumes the garb of candour and an
+inflexible love of truth to garble and pervert it, to crouch to power
+and pander to prejudice, deserves a worse title than that of a sophist!
+
+Mr. Malthus's first octavo volume on this subject (published in the year
+1798) was intended as an answer to Mr. Godwin's _Enquiry concerning
+Political Justice_. It was well got up for the purpose, and had an
+immediate effect. It was what in the language of the ring is called _a
+facer_. It made Mr. Godwin and the other advocates of Modern Philosophy
+look about them. It may be almost doubted whether Mr. Malthus was in the
+first instance serious in many things that he threw out, or whether he
+did not hazard the whole as an amusing and extreme paradox, which might
+puzzle the reader as it had done himself in an idle moment, but to which
+no practical consequence whatever could attach. This state of mind would
+probably continue till the irritation of enemies and the encouragement
+of friends convinced him that what he had at first exhibited as an idle
+fancy was in fact a very valuable discovery, or "like the toad ugly and
+venomous, had yet a precious jewel in its head." Such a supposition
+would at least account for some things in the original Essay, which
+scarcely any writer would venture upon, except as professed exercises of
+ingenuity, and which have been since in part retracted. But a wrong
+bias was thus given, and the author's theory was thus rendered warped,
+disjointed, and sophistical from the very outset.
+
+Nothing could in fact be more illogical (not to say absurd) than the
+whole of Mr. Malthus's reasoning applied as an answer (_par excellence_)
+to Mr. Godwin's book, or to the theories of other Utopian philosophers.
+Mr. Godwin was not singular, but was kept in countenance by many
+authorities, both ancient and modern, in supposing a state of society
+possible in which the passions and wills of individuals would be
+conformed to the general good, in which the knowledge of the best means
+of promoting human welfare and the desire of contributing to it
+would banish vice and misery from the world, and in which, the
+stumbling-blocks of ignorance, of selfishness, and the indulgence of
+gross appetite being removed, all things would move on by the mere
+impulse of wisdom and virtue, to still higher and higher degrees of
+perfection and happiness. Compared with the lamentable and gross
+deficiencies of existing institutions, such a view of futurity as barely
+possible could not fail to allure the gaze and tempt the aspiring
+thoughts of the philanthropist and the philosopher: the hopes and the
+imaginations of speculative men could not but rush forward into this
+ideal world as into a _vacuum_ of good; and from "the mighty stream of
+tendency" (as Mr. Wordsworth in the cant of the day calls it,) there was
+danger that the proud monuments of time-hallowed institutions, that the
+strong-holds of power and corruption, that "the Corinthian capitals of
+polished society," with the base and pediments, might be overthrown
+and swept away as by a hurricane. There were not wanting persons whose
+ignorance, whose fears, whose pride, or whose prejudices contemplated
+such an alternative with horror; and who would naturally feel no small
+obligation to the man who should relieve their apprehensions from the
+stunning roar of this mighty change of opinion that thundered at a
+distance, and should be able, by some logical apparatus or unexpected
+turn of the argument, to prevent the vessel of the state from being
+hurried forward with the progress of improvement, and dashed in pieces
+down the tremendous precipice of human perfectibility. Then comes Mr.
+Malthus forward with the geometrical and arithmetical ratios in his
+hands, and holds them out to his affrighted contemporaries as the only
+means of salvation. "For" (so argued the author of the Essay) "let the
+principles of Mr. Godwin's Enquiry and of other similar works be carried
+literally and completely into effect; let every corruption and abuse of
+power be entirely got rid of; let virtue, knowledge, and civilization
+be advanced to the greatest height that these visionary reformers would
+suppose; let the passions and appetites be subjected to the utmost
+control of reason and influence of public opinion: grant them, in
+a word, all that they ask, and the more completely their views are
+realized, the sooner will they be overthrown again, and the more
+inevitable and fatal will be the catastrophe. For the principle of
+population will still prevail, and from the comfort, ease, and plenty
+that will abound, will receive an increasing force and _impetus_; the
+number of mouths to be fed will have no limit, but the food that is to
+supply them cannot keep pace with the demand for it; we must come to a
+stop somewhere, even though each square yard, by extreme improvements in
+cultivation, could maintain its man: in this state of things there
+will be no remedy, the wholesome checks of vice and misery (which have
+hitherto kept this principle within bounds) will have been done away;
+the voice of reason will be unheard; the passions only will bear
+sway; famine, distress, havoc, and dismay will spread around; hatred,
+violence, war, and bloodshed will be the infallible consequence, and
+from the pinnacle of happiness, peace, refinement, and social advantage,
+we shall be hurled once more into a profounder abyss of misery, want,
+and barbarism than ever, by the sole operation of the principle of
+population!"--Such is a brief abstract of the argument of the Essay.
+Can any thing be less conclusive, a more complete fallacy and _petitio
+principii_? Mr. Malthus concedes, he assumes a state of perfectibility,
+such as his opponents imagined, in which the general good is to obtain
+the entire mastery of individual interests, and reason of gross
+appetites and passions; and then he argues that such a perfect structure
+of society will fall by its own weight, or rather be undermined by the
+principle of population, because in the highest possible state of the
+subjugation of the passions to reason, they will be absolutely lawless
+and unchecked, and because as men become enlightened, quick sighted
+and public-spirited, they will shew themselves utterly blind to the
+consequences of their actions, utterly indifferent to their own
+well-being and that of all succeeding generations, whose fate is placed
+in their hands. This we conceive to be the boldest paralogism that ever
+was offered to the world, or palmed upon willing credulity. Against
+whatever other scheme of reform this objection might be valid, the
+one it was brought expressly to overturn was impregnable against it,
+invulnerable to its slightest graze. Say that the Utopian reasoners are
+visionaries, unfounded; that the state of virtue and knowledge they
+suppose, in which reason shall have become all-in-all, can never take
+place, that it is inconsistent with the nature of man and with all
+experience, well and good--but to say that society will have attained
+this high and "palmy state," that reason will have become the master-
+key to all our motives, and that when arrived at its greatest power it
+will cease to act at all, but will fall down dead, inert, and senseless
+before the principle of population, is an opinion which one would
+think few people would choose to advance or assent to, without strong
+inducements for maintaining or believing it.
+
+The fact, however, is, that Mr. Malthus found this argument entire (the
+principle and the application of it) in an obscure and almost forgotten
+work published about the middle of the last century, entitled _Various
+Prospects of Mankind, Nature, and Providence_, by a Scotch gentleman
+of the name of Wallace. The chapter in this work on the Principle
+of Population, considered as a bar to all ultimate views of human
+improvement, was probably written to amuse an idle hour, or read as a
+paper to exercise the wits of some literary society in the Northern
+capital, and no farther responsibility or importance annexed to it. Mr.
+Malthus, by adopting and setting his name to it, has given it sufficient
+currency and effect. It sometimes happens that one writer is the first
+to discover a certain principle or lay down a given observation, and
+that another makes an application of, or draws a remote or an immediate
+inference from it, totally unforeseen by the first, and from which, in
+all probability, he might have widely dissented. But this is not so
+in the present instance. Mr. Malthus has borrowed (perhaps without
+consciousness, at any rate without acknowledgment) both the preliminary
+statement, that the increase in the supply of food "from a limited
+earth and a limited fertility" must have an end, while the tendency to
+increase in the principle of population has none, without some external
+and forcible restraint on it, and the subsequent use made of this
+statement as an insuperable bar to all schemes of Utopian or progressive
+improvement--both these he has borrowed (whole) from Wallace, with all
+their imperfections on their heads, and has added more and greater
+ones to them out of his own store. In order to produce something of a
+startling and dramatic effect, he has strained a point or two. In order
+to quell and frighten away the bugbear of Modern Philosophy, he was
+obliged to make a sort of monster of the principle of population, which
+was brought into the field against it, and which was to swallow it up
+quick. No half-measures, no middle course of reasoning would do. With a
+view to meet the highest possible power of reason in the new order of
+things, Mr. Malthus saw the necessity of giving the greatest possible
+physical weight to the antagonist principle, and he accordingly lays
+it down that its operation is mechanical and irresistible. He premises
+these two propositions as the basis of all his reasoning, 1. _That food
+is necessary to man_; 2. _That the desire to propagate the species is an
+equally indispensable law of our existence_:--thus making it appear
+that these two wants or impulses are equal and coordinate principles
+of action. If this double statement had been true, the whole scope and
+structure of his reasoning (as hostile to human hopes and sanguine
+speculations) would have been irrefragable; but as it is not true, the
+whole (in that view) falls to the ground. According to Mr. Malthus's
+octavo edition, the sexual passion is as necessary to be gratified as
+the appetite of hunger, and a man can no more exist without propagating
+his species than he can live without eating. Were it so, neither of
+these passions would admit of any excuses, any delay, any restraint from
+reason or foresight; and the only checks to the principle of population
+must be vice and misery. The argument would be triumphant and complete.
+But there is no analogy, no parity in the two cases, such as our author
+here assumes. No man can live for any length of time without food; many
+persons live all their lives without gratifying the other sense.
+The longer the craving after food is unsatisfied, the more violent,
+imperious, and uncontroulable the desire becomes; whereas the longer the
+gratification of the sexual passion is resisted, the greater force does
+habit and resolution acquire over it; and, generally speaking, it is
+a well-known fact, attested by all observation and history, that this
+latter passion is subject more or less to controul from personal
+feelings and character, from public opinions and the institutions of
+society, so as to lead either to a lawful and regulated indulgence, or
+to partial or total abstinence, according to the dictates of _moral
+restraint_, which latter check to the inordinate excesses and unheard-of
+consequences of the principle of population, our author, having no
+longer an extreme case to make out, admits and is willing to patronize
+in addition to the two former and exclusive ones of _vice and misery_,
+in the second and remaining editions of his work. Mr. Malthus has shewn
+some awkwardness or even reluctance in softening down the harshness of
+his first peremptory decision. He sometimes grants his grand exception
+cordially, proceeds to argue stoutly, and to try conclusions upon it;
+at other times he seems disposed to cavil about or retract it:--"the
+influence of moral restraint is very inconsiderable, or none at all." It
+is indeed difficult (more particularly for so formal and nice a reasoner
+as Mr. Malthus) to piece such contradictions plausibly or gracefully
+together. We wonder how _he_ manages it--how _any one_ should attempt
+it! The whole question, the _gist_ of the argument of his early volume
+turned upon this, "Whether vice and misery were the _only_ actual or
+possible checks to the principle of population?" He then said they were,
+and farewell to building castles in the air: he now says that _moral
+restraint_ is to be coupled with these, and that its influence depends
+greatly on the state of laws and manners--and Utopia stands where
+it did, a great way off indeed, but not turned _topsy-turvy_ by our
+magician's wand! Should we ever arrive there, that is, attain to a state
+of _perfect moral restraint_, we shall not be driven headlong back into
+Epicurus's stye for want of the only possible checks to population,
+_vice and misery_; and in proportion as we advance that way, that is, as
+the influence of moral restraint is extended, the necessity for vice and
+misery will be diminished, instead of being increased according to the
+first alarm given by the Essay. Again, the advance of civilization and
+of population in consequence with the same degree of moral restraint (as
+there exists in England at this present time, for instance) is a good,
+and not an evil--but this does not appear from the Essay. The Essay
+shews that population is not (as had been sometimes taken for granted)
+an abstract and unqualified good; but it led many persons to suppose
+that it was an abstract and unqualified evil, to be checked only by vice
+and misery, and producing, according to its encouragement a greater
+quantity of vice and misery; and this error the author has not been
+at sufficient pains to do away. Another thing, in which Mr. Malthus
+attempted to _clench_ Wallace's argument, was in giving to the
+disproportionate power of increase in the principle of population
+and the supply of food a mathematical form, or reducing it to the
+arithmetical and geometrical ratios, in which we believe Mr. Malthus is
+now generally admitted, even by his friends and admirers, to have been
+wrong. There is evidently no inherent difference in the principle of
+increase in food or population; since a grain of corn, for example, will
+propagate and multiply itself much faster even than the human species.
+A bushel of wheat will sow a field; that field will furnish seed for
+twenty others. So that the limit to the means of subsistence is only the
+want of room to raise it in, or, as Wallace expresses it, "a limited
+fertility and a limited earth." Up to the point where the earth or any
+given country is fully occupied or cultivated, the means of subsistence
+naturally increase in a geometrical ratio, and will more than keep pace
+with the natural and unrestrained progress of population; and beyond
+that point, they do not go on increasing even in Mr. Malthus's
+arithmetical ratio, but are stationary or nearly so. So far, then, is
+this proportion from being universally and mathematically true, that
+in no part of the world or state of society does it hold good. But our
+theorist, by laying down this double ratio as a law of nature, gains
+this advantage, that at all times it seems as if, whether in new or
+old-peopled countries, in fertile or barren soils, the population was
+pressing hard on the means of subsistence; and again, it seems as if the
+evil increased with the progress of improvement and civilization; for if
+you cast your eye at the scale which is supposed to be calculated upon
+true and infallible _data_, you find that when the population is at
+8, the means of subsistence are at 4; so that here there is only a
+_deficit_ of one half; but when it is at 32, they have only got to 6, so
+that here there is a difference of 26 in 32, and so on in proportion;
+the farther we proceed, the more enormous is the mass of vice and
+misery we must undergo, as a consequence of the natural excess of the
+population over the means of subsistence and as a salutary check to its
+farther desolating progress. The mathematical Table, placed at the front
+of the Essay, therefore leads to a secret suspicion or a bare-faced
+assumption, that we ought in mere kindness and compassion to give every
+sort of indirect and under-hand encouragement (to say the least) to the
+providential checks of vice and misery; as the sooner we arrest this
+formidable and paramount evil in its course, the less opportunity we
+leave it of doing incalculable mischief. Accordingly, whenever there is
+the least talk of colonizing new countries, of extending the population,
+or adding to social comforts and improvements, Mr. Malthus conjures up
+his double ratios, and insists on the alarming results of advancing
+them a single step forward in the series. By the same rule, it would
+be better to return at once to a state of barbarism; and to take the
+benefit of acorns and scuttle-fish, as a security against the luxuries
+and wants of civilized life. But it is not our ingenious author's wish
+to hint at or recommend any alterations in existing institutions; and he
+is therefore silent on that unpalatable part of the subject and natural
+inference from his principles.
+
+Mr. Malthus's "gospel is preached to the poor." He lectures them on
+economy, on morality, the regulation of their passions (which, he says,
+at other times, are amenable to no restraint) and on the ungracious
+topic, that "the laws of nature, which are the laws of God, have doomed
+them and their families to starve for want of a right to the smallest
+portion of food beyond what their labour will supply, or some charitable
+hand may hold out in compassion." This is illiberal, and it is not
+philosophical. The laws of nature or of God, to which the author
+appeals, are no other than a limited fertility and a limited earth.
+Within those bounds, the rest is regulated by the laws of man. The
+division of the produce of the soil, the price of labour, the relief
+afforded to the poor, are matters of human arrangement: while any
+charitable hand can extend relief, it is a proof that the means of
+subsistence are not exhausted in themselves, that "the tables are not
+full!" Mr. Malthus says that the laws of nature, which are the laws of
+God, have rendered that relief physically impossible; and yet he would
+abrogate the poor-laws by an act of the legislature, in order to take
+away that _impossible_ relief, which the laws of God deny, and which the
+laws of man _actually_ afford. We cannot think that this view of his
+subject, which is prominent and dwelt on at great length and with much
+pertinacity, is dictated either by rigid logic or melting charity! A
+labouring man is not allowed to knock down a hare or a partridge that
+spoils his garden: a country-squire keeps a pack of hounds: a lady of
+quality rides out with a footman behind her, on two sleek, well-fed
+horses. We have not a word to say against all this as exemplifying the
+spirit of the English Constitution, as a part of the law of the land, or
+as an artful distribution of light and shade in the social picture; but
+if any one insists at the same time that "the laws of nature, which are
+the laws of God, have doomed the poor and their families to starve,"
+because the principle of population has encroached upon and swallowed up
+the means of subsistence, so that not a mouthful of food is left _by the
+grinding law of necessity_ for the poor, we beg leave to deny both fact
+and inference--and we put it to Mr. Malthus whether we are not, in
+strictness, justified in doing so?
+
+We have, perhaps, said enough to explain our feeling on the subject of
+Mr. Malthus's merits and defects. We think he had the opportunity and
+the means in his hands of producing a great work on the principle of
+population; but we believe he has let it slip from his having an eye to
+other things besides that broad and unexplored question. He wished not
+merely to advance to the discovery of certain great and valuable truths,
+but at the same time to overthrow certain unfashionable paradoxes by
+exaggerated statements--to curry favour with existing prejudices and
+interests by garbled representations. He has, in a word, as it appears
+to us on a candid retrospect and without any feelings of controversial
+asperity rankling in our minds, sunk the philosopher and the friend of
+his species (a character to which he might have aspired) in the sophist
+and party-writer. The period at which Mr. Malthus came forward teemed
+with answers to Modern Philosophy, with antidotes to liberty and
+humanity, with abusive Histories of the Greek and Roman republics, with
+fulsome panegyrics on the Roman Emperors (at the very time when we were
+reviling Buonaparte for his strides to universal empire) with the slime
+and offal of desperate servility--and we cannot but consider the
+Essay as one of the poisonous ingredients thrown into the cauldron of
+Legitimacy "to make it thick and slab." Our author has, indeed, so
+far done service to the cause of truth, that he has counteracted
+many capital errors formerly prevailing as to the universal and
+indiscriminate encouragement of population under all circumstances; but
+he has countenanced opposite errors, which if adopted in theory and
+practice would be even more mischievous, and has left it to future
+philosophers to follow up the principle, that some check must be
+provided for the unrestrained progress of population, into a set of
+wiser and more humane consequences. Mr. Godwin has lately attempted an
+answer to the Essay (thus giving Mr. Malthus a _Roland for his Oliver_)
+but we think he has judged ill in endeavouring to invalidate the
+principle, instead of confining himself to point out the misapplication
+of it. There is one argument introduced in this Reply, which will,
+perhaps, amuse the reader as a sort of metaphysical puzzle.
+
+"It has sometimes occurred to me whether Mr. Malthus did not catch the
+first hint of his geometrical ratio from a curious passage of Judge
+Blackstone, on consanguinity, which is as follows:--
+
+"The doctrine of lineal consanguinity is sufficiently plain and obvious;
+but it is at the first view astonishing to consider the number of lineal
+ancestors which every man has within no very great number of degrees:
+and so many different bloods is a man said to contain in his veins, as
+he hath lineal ancestors. Of these he hath two in the first ascending
+degree, his own parents; he hath four in the second, the parents of his
+father and the parents of his mother; he hath eight in the third, the
+parents of his two grandfathers and two grandmothers; and by the same
+rule of progression, he hath an hundred and twenty-eight in the seventh;
+a thousand and twenty-four in the tenth; and at the twentieth degree, or
+the distance of twenty generations, every man hath above a million of
+ancestors, as common arithmetic will demonstrate.
+
+"This will seem surprising to those who are unacquainted with the
+increasing power of progressive numbers; but is palpably evident from
+the following table of a geometrical progression, in which the first
+term is 2, and the denominator also 2; or, to speak more intelligibly,
+it is evident, for that each of us has two ancestors in the first
+degree; the number of which is doubled at every remove, because each of
+our ancestors had also two ancestors of his own.
+
+  _Lineal Degrees._                        _Number of Ancestors_.
+
+  1        ..       ..        ..                    2
+  2        ..       ..        ..                    4
+  3        ..       ..        ..                    8
+  4        ..       ..        ..                   16
+  5        ..       ..        ..                   32
+  6        ..       ..        ..                   64
+  7        ..       ..        ..                  128
+  8        ..       ..        ..                  256
+  9        ..       ..        ..                  512
+  10        ..       ..        ..                 1024
+  11        ..       ..        ..                 2048
+  12        ..       ..        ..                 4096
+  13        ..       ..        ..                 8192
+  14        ..       ..        ..               16,384
+  15        ..       ..        ..               32,768
+  16        ..       ..        ..               65,536
+  17        ..       ..        ..              131,072
+  18        ..       ..        ..              262,144
+  19        ..       ..        ..              524,288
+  20        ..       ..        ..            1,048,576
+
+"This argument, however," (proceeds Mr. Godwin) "from Judge Blackstone
+of a geometrical progression would much more naturally apply to
+Montesquieu's hypothesis of the depopulation of the world, and prove
+that the human species is hastening fast to extinction, than to the
+purpose for which Mr. Malthus has employed it. An ingenious sophism
+might be raised upon it, to shew that the race of mankind will
+ultimately terminate in unity. Mr. Malthus, indeed, should have
+reflected, that it is much more certain that every man has had ancestors
+than that he will have posterity, and that it is still more doubtful,
+whether he will have posterity to twenty or to an indefinite number of
+generations."--ENQUIRY CONCERNING POPULATION, p. 100.
+
+Mr. Malthus's style is correct and elegant; his tone of controversy mild
+and gentlemanly; and the care with which he has brought his facts and
+documents together, deserves the highest praise. He has lately quitted
+his favourite subject of population, and broke a lance with Mr. Ricardo
+on the question of rent and value. The partisans of Mr. Ricardo, who are
+also the admirers of Mr. Malthus, say that the usual sagacity of the
+latter has here failed him, and that he has shewn himself to be a very
+illogical writer. To have said this of him formerly on another ground,
+was accounted a heresy and a piece of presumption not easily to be
+forgiven. Indeed Mr. Malthus has always been a sort of "darling in the
+public eye," whom it was unsafe to meddle with. He has contrived to
+make himself as many friends by his attacks on the schemes of _Human
+Perfectibility_ and on the _Poor-Laws_, as Mandeville formerly procured
+enemies by his attacks on _Human Perfections_ and on _Charity-Schools_;
+and among other instances that we might mention, _Plug_ Pulteney, the
+celebrated miser, of whom Mr. Burke said on his having a large
+estate left him, "that now it was to be hoped he would _set up a
+pocket-handkerchief_," was so enamoured with the saving schemes and
+humane economy of the Essay, that he desired a friend to find out the
+author and offer him a church living! This liberal intention was (by
+design or accident) unhappily frustrated.
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+MR. GIFFORD.
+
+
+
+Mr. Gifford was originally bred to some handicraft: he afterwards
+contrived to learn Latin, and was for some time an usher in a school,
+till he became a tutor in a nobleman's family. The low-bred, self-taught
+man, the pedant, and the dependant on the great contribute to form the
+Editor of the _Quarterly Review_. He is admirably qualified for this
+situation, which he has held for some years, by a happy combination of
+defects, natural and acquired; and in the event of his death, it will be
+difficult to provide him a suitable successor.
+
+Mr. Gifford has no pretensions to be thought a man of genius, of taste,
+or even of general knowledge. He merely understands the mechanical and
+instrumental part of learning. He is a critic of the last age, when
+the different editions of an author, or the dates of his several
+performances were all that occupied the inquiries of a profound scholar,
+and the spirit of the writer or the beauties of his style were left to
+shift for themselves, or exercise the fancy of the light and superficial
+reader. In studying an old author, he has no notion of any thing beyond
+adjusting a point, proposing a different reading, or correcting, by the
+collation of various copies, an error of the press. In appreciating a
+modern one, if it is an enemy, the first thing he thinks of is to charge
+him with bad grammar--he scans his sentences instead of weighing his
+sense; or if it is a friend, the highest compliment he conceives it
+possible to pay him is, that his thoughts and expressions are moulded
+on some hackneyed model. His standard of _ideal_ perfection is what he
+himself now is, a person of _mediocre_ literary attainments: his utmost
+contempt is shewn by reducing any one to what he himself once was, a
+person without the ordinary advantages of education and learning. It is
+accordingly assumed, with much complacency in his critical pages, that
+Tory writers are classical and courtly as a matter of course; as it is
+a standing jest and evident truism, that Whigs and Reformers must be
+persons of low birth and breeding--imputations from one of which he
+himself has narrowly escaped, and both of which he holds in suitable
+abhorrence. He stands over a contemporary performance with all the
+self-conceit and self-importance of a country schoolmaster, tries it by
+technical rules, affects not to understand the meaning, examines the
+hand-writing, the spelling, shrugs up his shoulders and chuckles over a
+slip of the pen, and keeps a sharp look-out for a false concord and--a
+flogging. There is nothing liberal, nothing humane in his style of
+judging: it is altogether petty, captious, and literal. The Editor's
+political subserviency adds the last finishing to his ridiculous
+pedantry and vanity. He has all his life been a follower in the train
+of wealth and power--strives to back his pretensions on Parnassus by a
+place at court, and to gild his reputation as a man of letters by the
+smile of greatness. He thinks his works are stamped with additional
+value by having his name in the _Red-Book_. He looks up to the
+distinctions of rank and station as he does to those of learning, with
+the gross and overweening adulation of his early origin. All his notions
+are low, upstart, servile. He thinks it the highest honour to a poet to
+be patronised by a peer or by some dowager of quality. He is prouder
+of a court-livery than of a laurel-wreath; and is only sure of having
+established his claims to respectability by having sacrificed those of
+independence. He is a retainer to the Muses; a door-keeper to learning;
+a lacquey in the state. He believes that modern literature should wear
+the fetters of classical antiquity; that truth is to be weighed in the
+scales of opinion and prejudice; that power is equivalent to right; that
+genius is dependent on rules; that taste and refinement of language
+consist in _word-catching_. Many persons suppose that Mr. Gifford knows
+better than he pretends; and that he is shrewd, artful, and designing.
+But perhaps it may be nearer the mark to suppose that his dulness is
+guarantee for his sincerity; or that before he is the tool of the
+profligacy of others, he is the dupe of his own jaundiced feelings, and
+narrow, hoodwinked perceptions.
+
+  "Destroy his fib or sophistry: in vain--
+  The creature's at his dirty work again!"
+
+But this is less from choice or perversity, than because he cannot help
+it and can do nothing else. He damns a beautiful expression less out
+of spite than because he really does not understand it: any novelty of
+thought or sentiment gives him a shock from which he cannot recover
+for some time, and he naturally takes his revenge for the alarm and
+uneasiness occasioned him, without referring to venal or party motives.
+He garbles an author's meaning, not so much wilfully, as because it is a
+pain to him to enlarge his microscopic view to take in the context, when
+a particular sentence or passage has struck him as quaint and out of the
+way: he fly-blows an author's style, and picks out detached words and
+phrases for cynical reprobation, simply because he feels himself at
+home, or takes a pride and pleasure in this sort of petty warfare. He is
+tetchy and impatient of contradiction; sore with wounded pride; angry
+at obvious faults, more angry at unforeseen beauties. He has the
+_chalk-stones_ in his understanding, and from being used to long
+confinement, cannot bear the slightest jostling or irregularity of
+motion. He may call out with the fellow in the _Tempest_--"I am not
+Stephano, but a cramp!" He would go back to the standard of opinions,
+style, the faded ornaments, and insipid formalities that came into
+fashion about forty years ago. Flashes of thought, flights of fancy,
+idiomatic expressions, he sets down among the signs of the times--the
+extraordinary occurrences of the age we live in. They are marks of a
+restless and revolutionary spirit: they disturb his composure of mind,
+and threaten (by implication) the safety of the state. His slow,
+snail-paced, bed-rid habits of reasoning cannot keep up with the
+whirling, eccentric motion, the rapid, perhaps extravagant combinations
+of modern literature. He has long been stationary himself, and is
+determined that others shall remain so. The hazarding a paradox is like
+letting off a pistol close to his ear: he is alarmed and offended. The
+using an elliptical mode of expression (such as he did not use to find
+in Guides to the English Tongue) jars him like coming suddenly to a
+step in a flight of stairs that you were not aware of. He _pishes_ and
+_pshaws_ at all this, exercises a sort of interjectional criticism on
+what excites his spleen, his envy, or his wonder, and hurls his meagre
+anathemas _ex cathedra_ at all those writers who are indifferent alike
+to his precepts and his example!
+
+Mr. Gifford, in short, is possessed of that sort of learning which is
+likely to result from an over-anxious desire to supply the want of the
+first rudiments of education; that sort of wit, which is the offspring
+of ill-humour or bodily pain; that sort of sense, which arises from a
+spirit of contradiction and a disposition to cavil at and dispute
+the opinions of others; and that sort of reputation, which is the
+consequence of bowing to established authority and ministerial
+influence. He dedicates to some great man, and receives his compliments
+in return. He appeals to some great name, and the Under-graduates of the
+two Universities look up to him as an oracle of wisdom. He throws the
+weight of his verbal criticism and puny discoveries in _black-letter_
+reading into the gap, that is supposed to be making in the Constitution
+by Whigs and Radicals, whom he qualifies without mercy as dunces and
+miscreants; and so entitles himself to the protection of Church and
+State. The character of his mind is an utter want of independence and
+magnanimity in all that he attempts. He cannot go alone, he must have
+crutches, a go-cart and trammels, or he is timid, fretful, and helpless
+as a child. He cannot conceive of any thing different from what he finds
+it, and hates those who pretend to a greater reach of intellect
+or boldness of spirit than himself. He inclines, by a natural and
+deliberate bias, to the traditional in laws and government; to
+the orthodox in religion; to the safe in opinion; to the trite in
+imagination; to the technical in style; to whatever implies a surrender
+of individual judgment into the hands of authority, and a subjection of
+individual feeling to mechanic rules. If he finds any one flying in the
+face of these, or straggling from the beaten path, he thinks he has them
+at a notable disadvantage, and falls foul of them without loss of time,
+partly to soothe his own sense of mortified self-consequence, and as an
+edifying spectacle to his legitimate friends. He takes none but unfair
+advantages. He _twits_ his adversaries (that is, those who are not
+in the leading-strings of his school or party) with some personal or
+accidental defect. If a writer has been punished for a political libel,
+he is sure to hear of it in a literary criticism. If a lady goes on
+crutches and is out of favour at court, she is reminded of it in Mr.
+Gilford's manly satire. He sneers at people of low birth or who have
+not had a college-education, partly to hide his own want of certain
+advantages, partly as well-timed flattery to those who possess them. He
+has a right to laugh at poor, unfriended, untitled genius from wearing
+the livery of rank and letters, as footmen behind a coronet-coach laugh
+at the rabble. He keeps good company, and forgets himself. He stands at
+the door of Mr. Murray's shop, and will not let any body pass but the
+well-dressed mob, or some followers of the court. To edge into the
+_Quarterly_ Temple of Fame the candidate must have a diploma from the
+Universities, a passport from the Treasury. Otherwise, it is a breach of
+etiquette to let him pass, an insult to the better sort who aspire to
+the love of letters--and may chance to drop in to the _Feast of the
+Poets_. Or, if he cannot manage it thus, or get rid of the claim on the
+bare ground of poverty or want of school-learning, he _trumps_ up an
+excuse for the occasion, such as that "a man was confined in Newgate a
+short time before"--it is not a _lie_ on the part of the critic, it is
+only an amiable subserviency to the will of his betters, like that of
+a menial who is ordered to deny his master, a sense of propriety, a
+knowledge of the world, a poetical and moral license. Such fellows
+(such is his cue from his employers) should at any rate be kept out of
+privileged places: persons who have been convicted of prose-libels ought
+not to be suffered to write poetry--if the fact was not exactly as it
+was stated, it was something of the kind, or it _ought_ to have been
+so, the assertion was a pious fraud,--the public, the court, the prince
+himself might read the work, but for this mark of opprobrium set upon
+it--it was not to be endured that an insolent plebeian should aspire to
+elegance, taste, fancy--it was throwing down the barriers which ought
+to separate the higher and the lower classes, the loyal and the
+disloyal--the paraphrase of the story of Dante was therefore to perform
+quarantine, it was to seem not yet recovered from the gaol infection,
+there was to be a taint upon it, as there was none in it--and all this
+was performed by a single slip of Mr. Gifford's pen! We would willingly
+believe (if we could) that in this case there was as much weakness and
+prejudice as there was malice and cunning.--Again, we do not think it
+possible that under any circumstances the writer of the _Verses to Anna_
+could enter into the spirit or delicacy of Mr. Keats's poetry. The fate
+of the latter somewhat resembled that of
+
+ --"a bud bit by an envious worm,
+  Ere it could spread its sweet leaves to the air,
+  Or dedicate its beauty to the sun."
+
+Mr. Keats's ostensible crime was that he had been praised in the
+_Examiner Newspaper_: a greater and more unpardonable offence probably
+was, that he was a true poet, with all the errors and beauties of
+youthful genius to answer for. Mr. Gifford was as insensible to the one
+as he was inexorable to the other. Let the reader judge from the two
+subjoined specimens how far the one writer could ever, without a
+presumption equalled only by a want of self-knowledge, set himself in
+judgment on the other.
+
+  "Out went the taper as she hurried in;
+  Its little smoke in pallid moonshine died:
+  She closed the door, she panted, all akin
+  To spirits of the air and visions wide:
+  No utter'd syllable, or woe betide!
+  But to her heart, her heart was voluble,
+  Paining with eloquence her balmy side;
+  As though a tongueless nightingale should swell
+  Her heart in vain, and die, heart-stifled, in her dell.
+
+  "A casement high and triple-arch'd there was,
+  All garlanded with carven imag'ries
+  Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,
+  And diamonded with panes of quaint device,
+  Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,
+  As are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings;
+  And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries,
+  And twilight saints and dim emblazonings,
+  A shielded scutcheon blush'd with blood of queens and kings.
+
+  "Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,
+  And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast,
+  As down she knelt for Heaven's grace and boon;
+  Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,
+  And on her silver cross soft amethyst,
+  And on her hair a glory, like a Saint:
+  She seem'd a splendid angel, newly drest,
+  Save wings, for heaven:--Porphyro grew faint:
+  She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint.
+
+  "Anon his heart revives: her vespers done,
+  Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees;
+  Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one;
+  Loosens her fragrant boddice; by degrees
+  Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees:
+  Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed,
+  Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees,
+  In fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed,
+  But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled.
+
+  "Soon trembling in her soft and chilly nest,
+  In sort of wakeful swoon, perplex'd she lay,
+  Until the poppied warmth of sleep oppress'd
+  Her soothed limbs, and soul fatigued away
+  Flown, like a thought, until the morrow-day:
+  Blissfully haven'd both from joy and pain;
+  Clasp'd like a missal where swart Paynims pray;
+  Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain,
+  As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again."
+  EVE OF ST. AGNES.
+
+With the rich beauties and the dim obscurities of lines like these, let
+us contrast the Verses addressed _To a Tuft of early Violets_ by the
+fastidious author of the Baviad and Maeviad.--
+
+  "Sweet flowers! that from your humble beds
+  Thus prematurely dare to rise,
+  And trust your unprotected heads
+  To cold Aquarius' watery skies.
+
+  "Retire, retire! _These_ tepid airs
+  Are not the genial brood of May;
+  _That_ sun with light malignant glares,
+  And flatters only to betray.
+
+  "Stern Winter's reign is not yet past--
+  Lo! while your buds prepare to blow,
+  On icy pinions comes the blast,
+  And nips your root, and lays you low.
+
+  "Alas, for such ungentle doom!
+  But I will shield you; and supply
+  A kindlier soil on which to bloom,
+  A nobler bed on which to die.
+
+  "Come then--'ere yet the morning ray
+  Has drunk the dew that gems your crest,
+  And drawn your balmiest sweets away;
+  O come and grace my Anna's breast.
+
+  "Ye droop, fond flowers! But did ye know
+  What worth, what goodness there reside,
+  Your cups with liveliest tints would glow;
+  And spread their leaves with conscious pride.
+
+  "For there has liberal Nature joined
+  Her riches to the stores of Art,
+  And added to the vigorous mind
+  The soft, the sympathising heart.
+
+  "Come, then--'ere yet the morning ray
+  Has drunk the dew that gems your crest,
+  And drawn your balmiest sweets away;
+  O come and grace my Anna's breast.
+
+  "O! I should think--_that fragrant bed_
+  _Might I but hope with you to share_--[A]
+  Years of anxiety repaid
+  By one short hour of transport there.
+
+  "More blest than me, thus shall ye live
+  Your little day; and when ye die,
+  Sweet flowers! the grateful Muse shall give
+  A verse; the sorrowing maid, a sigh.
+
+  "While I alas! no distant date,
+  Mix with the dust from whence I came,
+  Without a friend to weep my fate,
+  Without a stone to tell my name."
+
+We subjoin one more specimen of these "wild strains"[B] said to be
+"_Written two years after the preceding_." ECCE ITERUM CRISPINUS.
+
+
+  "I wish I was where Anna lies;
+  For I am sick of lingering here,
+  And every hour Affection cries,
+  Go, and partake her humble bier.
+
+  "I wish I could! for when she died
+  I lost my all; and life has prov'd
+  Since that sad hour a dreary void,
+  A waste unlovely and unlov'd.
+
+  "But who, when I am turn'd to clay,
+  Shall duly to her grave repair,
+  And pluck the ragged moss away,
+  And weeds that have "no business there?"
+
+  "And who, with pious hand, shall bring
+  The flowers she cherish'd, snow-drops cold,
+  And violets that unheeded spring,
+  To scatter o'er her hallow'd mould?
+
+  "And who, while Memory loves to dwell
+  Upon her name for ever dear,
+  Shall feel his heart with passion swell,
+  And pour the bitter, bitter tear?
+
+  "I did it; and would fate allow,
+  Should visit still, should still deplore--
+  But health and strength have left me now,
+  But I, alas! can weep no more.
+
+  "Take then, sweet maid! this simple strain,
+  The last I offer at thy shrine;
+  Thy grave must then undeck'd remain,
+  And all thy memory fade with mine.
+
+  "And can thy soft persuasive look,
+  That voice that might with music vie,
+  Thy air that every gazer took,
+  Thy matchless eloquence of eye,
+
+  "Thy spirits, frolicsome as good,
+  Thy courage, by no ills dismay'd,
+  Thy patience, by no wrongs subdued,
+  Thy gay good-humour--can they "fade?"
+
+  "Perhaps--but sorrow dims my eye:
+  Cold turf, which I no more must view,
+  Dear name, which I no more must sigh,
+  A long, a last, a sad adieu!"
+
+It may be said in extenuation of the low, mechanic vein of these
+impoverished lines, that they were written at an early age--they were
+the inspired production of a youthful lover! Mr. Gifford was thirty when
+he wrote them, Mr. Keats died when he was scarce twenty! Farther it may
+be said, that Mr. Gifford hazarded his first poetical attempts under all
+the disadvantages of a neglected education: but the same circumstance,
+together with a few unpruned redundancies of fancy and quaintnesses of
+expression, was made the plea on which Mr. Keats was hooted out of the
+world, and his fine talents and wounded sensibilities consigned to an
+early grave. In short, the treatment of this heedless candidate for
+poetical fame might serve as a warning, and was intended to serve as a
+warning to all unfledged tyros, how they venture upon any such doubtful
+experiments, except under the auspices of some lord of the bedchamber or
+Government Aristarchus, and how they imprudently associate themselves
+with men of mere popular talent or independence of feeling!--It is the
+same in prose works. The Editor scorns to enter the lists of argument
+with any proscribed writer of the opposite party. He does not refute,
+but denounces him. He makes no concessions to an adversary, lest they
+should in some way be turned against him. He only feels himself safe in
+the fancied insignificance of others: he only feels himself superior
+to those whom he stigmatizes as the lowest of mankind. All persons are
+without common-sense and honesty who do not believe implicitly (with
+him) in the immaculateness of Ministers and the divine origin of Kings.
+Thus he informed the world that the author of TABLE-TALK was a person
+who could not write a sentence of common English and could hardly spell
+his own name, because he was not a friend to the restoration of the
+Bourbons, and had the assurance to write _Characters of Shakespears
+Plays_ in a style of criticism somewhat different from Mr. Gifford's. He
+charged this writer with imposing on the public by a flowery style; and
+when the latter ventured to refer to a work of his, called _An Essay on
+the Principles of Human Action_, which has not a single ornament in it,
+as a specimen of his original studies and the proper bias of his mind,
+the learned critic, with a shrug of great self-satisfaction, said, "It
+was amusing to see this person, sitting like one of Brouwer's Dutch
+boors over his gin and tobacco-pipes, and fancying himself a Leibnitz!"
+The question was, whether the subject of Mr. Gifford's censure had ever
+written such a work or not; for if he had, he had amused himself with
+something besides gin and tobacco-pipes. But our Editor, by virtue
+of the situation he holds, is superior to facts or arguments: he is
+accountable neither to the public nor to authors for what he says of
+them, but owes it to his employers to prejudice the work and vilify the
+writer, if the latter is not avowedly ready to range himself on the
+stronger side.--The _Quarterly Review_, besides the political _tirades_
+and denunciations of suspected writers, intended for the guidance of the
+heads of families, is filled up with accounts of books of Voyages
+and Travels for the amusement of the younger branches. The poetical
+department is almost a sinecure, consisting of mere summary decisions
+and a list of quotations. Mr. Croker is understood to contribute the
+St. Helena articles and the liberality, Mr. Canning the practical good
+sense, Mr. D'Israeli the good-nature, Mr. Jacob the modesty, Mr. Southey
+the consistency, and the Editor himself the chivalrous spirit and the
+attacks on Lady Morgan. It is a double crime, and excites a double
+portion of spleen in the Editor, when female writers are not advocates
+of passive obedience and non-resistance. This Journal, then, is a
+depository for every species of political sophistry and personal
+calumny. There is no abuse or corruption that does not there find a
+jesuitical palliation or a bare-faced vindication. There we meet the
+slime of hypocrisy, the varnish of courts, the cant of pedantry, the
+cobwebs of the law, the iron hand of power. Its object is as mischievous
+as the means by which it is pursued are odious. The intention is to
+poison the sources of public opinion and of individual fame--to pervert
+literature, from being the natural ally of freedom and humanity, into an
+engine of priestcraft and despotism, and to undermine the spirit of the
+English Constitution and the independence of the English character.
+The Editor and his friends systematically explode every principle of
+liberty, laugh patriotism and public spirit to scorn, resent every
+pretence to integrity as a piece of singularity or insolence, and strike
+at the root of all free inquiry or discussion, by running down every
+writer as a vile scribbler and a bad member of society, who is not
+a hireling and a slave. No means are stuck at in accomplishing this
+laudable end. Strong in patronage, they trample on truth, justice, and
+decency. They claim the privilege of court-favourites. They keep as
+little faith with the public, as with their opponents. No statement in
+the _Quarterly Review_ is to be trusted: there is no fact that is not
+misrepresented in it, no quotation that is not garbled, no character
+that is not slandered, if it can answer the purposes of a party to do
+so. The weight of power, of wealth, of rank is thrown into the scale,
+gives its impulse to the machine; and the whole is under the guidance of
+Mr. Gifford's instinctive genius--of the inborn hatred of servility for
+independence, of dulness for talent, of cunning and impudence for truth
+and honesty. It costs him no effort to execute his disreputable task--in
+being the tool of a crooked policy, he but labours in his natural
+vocation. He patches up a rotten system as he would supply the chasms in
+a worm-eaten manuscript, from a grovelling incapacity to do any thing
+better; thinks that if a single iota in the claims of prerogative and
+power were lost, the whole fabric of society would fall upon his
+head and crush him; and calculates that his best chance for literary
+reputation is by _black-balling_ one half of the competitors as
+Jacobins and levellers, and securing the suffrages of the other half in
+his favour as a loyal subject and trusty partisan!
+
+Mr. Gifford, as a satirist, is violent and abrupt. He takes obvious or
+physical defects, and dwells upon them with much labour and harshness of
+invective, but with very little wit or spirit. He expresses a great deal
+of anger and contempt, but you cannot tell very well why--except that he
+seems to be sore and out of humour. His satire is mere peevishness and
+spleen, or something worse--personal antipathy and rancour. We are in
+quite as much pain for the writer, as for the object of his resentment.
+His address to Peter Pindar is laughable from its outrageousness. He
+denounces him as a wretch hateful to God and man, for some of the most
+harmless and amusing trifles that ever were written--and the very good-
+humour and pleasantry of which, we suspect, constituted their offence in
+the eyes of this Drawcansir.--His attacks on Mrs. Robinson were unmanly,
+and even those on Mr. Merry and the Della-Cruscan School were much
+more ferocious than the occasion warranted. A little affectation and
+quaintness of style did not merit such severity of castigation.[C] As a
+translator, Mr. Gifford's version of the Roman satirist is the baldest,
+and, in parts, the most offensive of all others. We do not know why
+he attempted it, unless he had got it in his head that he should thus
+follow in the steps of Dryden, as he had already done in those of Pope
+in the Baviad and Maeviad. As an editor of old authors, Mr. Gifford is
+entitled to considerable praise for the pains he has taken in revising
+the text, and for some improvements he has introduced into it. He had
+better have spared the notes, in which, though he has detected the
+blunders of previous commentators, he has exposed his own ill-temper and
+narrowness of feeling more. As a critic, he has thrown no light on the
+character and spirit of his authors. He has shewn no striking power of
+analysis nor of original illustration, though he has chosen to exercise
+his pen on writers most congenial to his own turn of mind, from their
+dry and caustic vein; Massinger, and Ben Jonson. What he will make of
+Marlowe, it is difficult to guess. He has none of "the fiery quality"
+of the poet. Mr. Gifford does not take for his motto on these
+occasions--_Spiritus precipitandus est!_--His most successful efforts in
+this way are barely respectable. In general, his observations are petty,
+ill-concocted, and discover as little _tact_, as they do a habit of
+connected reasoning. Thus, for instance, in attempting to add the name
+of Massinger to the list of Catholic poets, our minute critic insists
+on the profusion of crucifixes, glories, angelic visions, garlands of
+roses, and clouds of incense scattered through the _Virgin-Martyr,_ as
+evidence of the theological sentiments meant to be inculcated by the
+play, when the least reflection might have taught him, that they proved
+nothing but the author's poetical conception of the character and
+_costume_ of his subject. A writer might, with the same sinister,
+short-sighted shrewdness, be accused of Heathenism for talking of Flora
+and Ceres in a poem on the Seasons! What are produced as the exclusive
+badges and occult proofs of Catholic bigotry, are nothing but the
+adventitious ornaments and external symbols, the gross and sensible
+language, in a word, the _poetry_ of Christianity in general. What
+indeed shews the frivolousness of the whole inference is that Deckar,
+who is asserted by our critic to have contributed some of the most
+passionate and fantastic of these devotional scenes, is not even
+suspected of a leaning to Popery. In like manner, he excuses Massinger
+for the grossness of one of his plots (that of the _Unnatural Combat_)
+by saying that it was supposed to take place before the Christian era;
+by this shallow common-place persuading himself, or fancying he could
+persuade others, that the crime in question (which yet on the very face
+of the story is made the ground of a tragic catastrophe) was first made
+_statutory_ by the Christian religion.
+
+The foregoing is a harsh criticism, and may be thought illiberal. But as
+Mr. Gifford assumes a right to say what he pleases of others--they may
+be allowed to speak the truth of him!
+
+
+[Footnote A: What an awkward bed-fellow for a tuft of violets!]
+
+[Footnote B:
+
+  "How oft, O Dart! what time the faithful pair
+  Walk'd forth, the fragrant hour of eve to share,
+  On thy romantic banks, have my _wild strains_
+  (Not yet forgot amidst my native plains)
+  While thou hast sweetly gurgled down the vale.
+  Filled up the pause of love's delightful tale!
+  While, ever as she read, the conscious maid,
+  By faultering voice and downcast looks betray'd,
+  Would blushing on her lover's neck recline,
+  And with her finger--point the tenderest line!"
+
+
+  _Maeviad_, pp. 194, 202.
+
+Yet the author assures us just before, that in these "wild strains" "all
+was plain."
+
+  "Even then (admire, John Bell! my simple ways)
+  No heaven and hell danced madly through my lays,
+  No oaths, no execrations; _all was plain_;
+  Yet trust me, while thy ever jingling train
+  Chime their sonorous woes with frigid art,
+  And shock the reason and revolt the heart;
+  My hopes and fears, in nature's language drest,
+  Awakened love in many a gentle breast."
+
+  _Ibid._ v. 185-92.
+
+If any one else had composed these "wild strains," in which "all is
+plain," Mr. Gifford would have accused them of three things, "1.
+Downright nonsense. 2. Downright frigidity. 3. Downright doggrel;" and
+proceeded to anatomise them very cordially in his way. As it is, he is
+thrilled with a very pleasing horror at his former scenes of tenderness,
+and "gasps at the recollection" _of watery Aquarius_! _he! jam satis
+est!_ "Why rack a grub--a butterfly upon a wheel?"]
+
+[Footnote C: Mr. Merry was even with our author in personality of abuse.
+See his Lines on the Story of the Ape that was given in charge to the
+ex-tutor.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+MR. JEFFREY
+
+
+
+The _Quarterly Review_ arose out of the _Edinburgh_, not as a corollary,
+but in contradiction to it. An article had appeared in the latter on Don
+Pedro Cevallos, which stung the Tories to the quick by the free way in
+which it spoke of men and things, and something must be done to check
+these _escapades_ of the _Edinburgh_. It was not to be endured that the
+truth should _out_ in this manner, even occasionally and half in jest. A
+startling shock was thus given to established prejudices, the mask was
+taken off from grave hypocrisy, and the most serious consequences were
+to be apprehended. The persons who wrote in this Review seemed "to have
+their hands full of truths", and now and then, in a fit of spleen or
+gaiety, let some of them fly; and while this practice continued, it was
+impossible to say that the Monarchy or the Hierarchy was safe. Some of
+the arrows glanced, others might stick, and in the end prove fatal. It
+was not the principles of the _Edinburgh Review_, but the spirit that
+was looked at with jealousy and alarm. The principles were by no means
+decidedly hostile to existing institutions: but the spirit was that of
+fair and free discussion; a field was open to argument and wit; every
+question was tried upon its own ostensible merits, and there was no foul
+play. The tone was that of a studied impartiality (which many called
+_trimming_) or of a sceptical indifference. This tone of impartiality
+and indifference, however, did not at all suit those who profited or
+existed by abuses, who breathed the very air of corruption. They know
+well enough that "those who are not _for_ them are _against_ them."
+They wanted a publication impervious alike to truth and candour; that,
+hood-winked itself, should lead public opinion blindfold; that should
+stick at nothing to serve the turn of a party; that should be the
+exclusive organ of prejudice, the sordid tool of power; that should go
+the whole length of want of principle in palliating every dishonest
+measure, of want of decency in defaming every honest man; that should
+prejudge every question, traduce every opponent; that should give no
+quarter to fair inquiry or liberal sentiment; that should be "ugly
+all over with hypocrisy", and present one foul blotch of servility,
+intolerance, falsehood, spite, and ill-manners. The _Quarterly Review_
+was accordingly set up.
+
+  "Sithence no fairy lights, no quickning ray,
+  Nor stir of pulse, nor object to entice
+  Abroad the spirits; but the cloister'd heart
+  Sits squat at home, like Pagod in a niche
+  Obscure!"
+
+This event was accordingly hailed (and the omen has been fulfilled!) as
+a great relief to all those of his Majesty's subjects who are firmly
+convinced that the only way to have things remain exactly as they are is
+to put a stop to all inquiries whether they are right or wrong, and that
+if you cannot answer a man's arguments, you may at least try to take
+away his character.
+
+We do not implicitly bow to the political opinions, nor to the critical
+decisions of the _Edinburgh Review_; but we must do justice to the
+talent with which they are supported, and to the tone of manly
+explicitness in which they are delivered.[A] They are eminently
+characteristic of the Spirit of the Age; as it is the express object of
+the _Quarterly Review_ to discountenance and extinguish that spirit,
+both in theory and practice. The _Edinburgh Review_ stands upon
+the ground of opinion; it asserts the supremacy of intellect: the
+pre-eminence it claims is from an acknowledged superiority of talent and
+information and literary attainment, and it does not build one tittle
+of its influence on ignorance, or prejudice, or authority, or personal
+malevolence. It takes up a question, and argues it _pro_ and _con_ with
+great knowledge and boldness and skill; it points out an absurdity, and
+runs it down, fairly, and according to the evidence adduced. In the
+former case, its conclusions may be wrong, there may be a bias in the
+mind of the writer, but he states the arguments and circumstances on
+both sides, from which a judgment is to be formed--it is not his cue,
+he has neither the effrontery nor the meanness to falsify facts or to
+suppress objections. In the latter case, or where a vein of sarcasm or
+irony is resorted to, the ridicule is not barbed by some allusion (false
+or true) to private history; the object of it has brought the infliction
+on himself by some literary folly or political delinquency which is
+referred to as the understood and justifiable provocation, instead
+of being held up to scorn as a knave for not being a tool, or as a
+blockhead for thinking for himself. In the _Edinburgh Review_ the
+talents of those on the opposite side are always extolled _pleno
+ore_--in the _Quarterly Review_ they are denied altogether, and the
+justice that is in this way withheld from them is compensated by a
+proportionable supply of personal abuse. A man of genius who is a lord,
+and who publishes with Mr. Murray, may now and then stand as good a
+chance as a lord who is not a man of genius and who publishes with
+Messrs. Longman: but that is the utmost extent of the impartiality of
+the _Quarterly_. From its account you would take Lord Byron and Mr.
+Stuart Rose for two very pretty poets; but Mr. Moore's Magdalen Muse is
+sent to Bridewell without mercy, to beat hemp in silk-stockings. In
+the _Quarterly_ nothing is regarded but the political creed or external
+circumstances of a writer: in the _Edinburgh_ nothing is ever adverted
+to but his literary merits. Or if there is a bias of any kind, it arises
+from an affectation of magnanimity and candour in giving heaped measure
+to those on the aristocratic side in politics, and in being critically
+severe on others. Thus Sir Walter Scott is lauded to the skies for his
+romantic powers, without any allusion to his political demerits (as if
+this would be compromising the dignity of genius and of criticism by the
+introduction of party-spirit)--while Lord Byron is called to a grave
+moral reckoning. There is, however, little of the cant of morality in
+the _Edinburgh Review_--and it is quite free from that of religion. It
+keeps to its province, which is that of criticism--or to the discussion
+of debateable topics, and acquits itself in both with force and spirit.
+This is the natural consequence of the composition of the two Reviews.
+The one appeals with confidence to its own intellectual resources, to
+the variety of its topics, to its very character and existence as a
+literary journal, which depend on its setting up no pretensions but
+those which it can make good by the talent and ingenuity it can bring to
+bear upon them--it therefore meets every question, whether of a lighter
+or a graver cast, on its own grounds; the other _blinks_ every question,
+for it has no confidence but in _the powers that be_--shuts itself up in
+the impregnable fastnesses of authority, or makes some paltry, cowardly
+attack (under cover of anonymous criticism) on individuals, or dispenses
+its award of merit entirely according to the rank or party of the
+writer. The faults of the _Edinburgh Review_ arise out of the very
+consciousness of critical and logical power. In political questions it
+relies too little on the broad basis of liberty and humanity, enters too
+much into mere dry formalities, deals too often in _moot-points_, and
+descends too readily to a sort of special-pleading in defence of _home_
+truths and natural feelings: in matters of taste and criticism, its tone
+is sometimes apt to be supercilious and _cavalier_ from its habitual
+faculty of analysing defects and beauties according to given principles,
+from its quickness in deciding, from its facility in illustrating its
+views. In this latter department it has been guilty of some capital
+oversights. The chief was in its treatment of the _Lyrical Ballads_ at
+their first appearance--not in its ridicule of their puerilities, but in
+its denial of their beauties, because they were included in no school,
+because they were reducible to no previous standard or theory of
+poetical excellence. For this, however, considerable reparation has been
+made by the prompt and liberal spirit that has been shewn in bringing
+forward other examples of poetical genius. Its capital sin, in a
+doctrinal point of view, has been (we shrewdly suspect) in the uniform
+and unqualified encouragement it has bestowed on Mr. Malthus's system.
+We do not mean that the _Edinburgh Review_ was to join in the general
+_hue and cry_ that was raised against this writer; but while it asserted
+the soundness of many of his arguments, and yielded its assent to the
+truths he has divulged, it need not have screened his errors. On this
+subject alone we think the _Quarterly_ has the advantage of it. But as
+the _Quarterly Review_ is a mere mass and tissue of prejudices on
+all subjects, it is the foible of the _Edinburgh Review_ to affect a
+somewhat fastidious air of superiority over prejudices of all kinds, and
+a determination not to indulge in any of the amiable weaknesses of our
+nature, except as it can give a reason for the faith that is in it.
+Luckily, it is seldom reduced to this alternative: "reasons" are with it
+"as plenty as blackberries!"
+
+Mr. Jeffrey is the Editor of the _Edinburgh Review,_ and is understood
+to have contributed nearly a fourth part of the articles from its
+commencement. No man is better qualified for this situation; nor indeed
+so much so. He is certainly a person in advance of the age, and yet
+perfectly fitted both from knowledge and habits of mind to put a curb
+upon its rash and headlong spirit. He is thoroughly acquainted with the
+progress and pretensions of modern literature and philosophy; and to
+this he adds the natural acuteness and discrimination of the logician
+with the habitual caution and coolness of his profession. If the
+_Edinburgh Review_ may be considered as the organ of or at all pledged
+to a party, that party is at least a respectable one, and is placed in
+the middle between two extremes. The Editor is bound to lend a patient
+hearing to the most paradoxical opinions and extravagant theories which
+have resulted in our times from the "infinite agitation of wit", but
+he is disposed to qualify them by a number of practical objections,
+of speculative doubts, of checks and drawbacks, arising out of actual
+circumstances and prevailing opinions, or the frailties of human nature.
+He has a great range of knowledge, an incessant activity of mind; but
+the suspension of his judgment, the well-balanced moderation of his
+sentiments, is the consequence of the very discursiveness of his reason.
+What may be considered as _a commonplace_ conclusion is often the result
+of a comprehensive view of all the circumstances of a case. Paradox,
+violence, nay even originality of conception is not seldom owing to our
+dwelling long and pertinaciously on some one part of a subject, instead
+of attending to the whole. Mr. Jeffrey is neither a bigot nor an
+enthusiast. He is not the dupe of the prejudices of others, nor of his
+own. He is not wedded to any dogma, he is not long the sport of any
+whim; before he can settle in any fond or fantastic opinion, another
+starts up to match it, like beads on sparkling wine. A too restless
+display of talent, a too undisguised statement of all that can be said
+for and against a question, is perhaps the great fault that is to be
+attributed to him. Where there is so much power and prejudice to contend
+with in the opposite scale, it may be thought that the balance of truth
+can hardly be held with a slack or an even hand; and that the infusion
+of a little more visionary speculation, of a little more popular
+indignation into the great Whig Review would be an advantage both to
+itself and to the cause of freedom. Much of this effect is chargeable
+less on an Epicurean levity of feeling or on party-trammels, than on
+real sanguineness of disposition, and a certain fineness of professional
+tact. Our sprightly Scotchman is not of a desponding and gloomy turn of
+mind. He argues well for the future hopes of mankind from the smallest
+beginnings, watches the slow, gradual, reluctant growth of liberal
+views, and smiling sees the aloe of Reform blossom at the end of a
+hundred years; while the habitual subtlety of his mind makes him
+perceive decided advantages where vulgar ignorance or passion sees only
+doubts and difficulty; and a flaw in an adversary's argument stands him
+instead of the shout of a mob, the votes of a majority, or the fate of
+a pitched battle. The Editor is satisfied with his own conclusions, and
+does not make himself uneasy about the fate of mankind. The issue, he
+thinks, will verify his moderate and well-founded expectations.--We
+believe also that late events have given a more decided turn to Mr.
+Jeffrey's mind, and that he feels that as in the struggle between
+liberty and slavery, the views of the one party have been laid bare with
+their success, so the exertions on the other side should become more
+strenuous, and a more positive stand be made against the avowed and
+appalling encroachments of priestcraft and arbitrary power.
+
+The characteristics of Mr. Jeffrey's general style as a writer
+correspond, we think, with what we have here stated as the
+characteristics of his mind. He is a master of the foils; he makes an
+exulting display of the dazzling fence of wit and argument. His strength
+consists in great range of knowledge, an equal familiarity with the
+principles and the details of a subject, and in a glancing brilliancy
+and rapidity of style. Indeed, we doubt whether the brilliancy of his
+manner does not resolve itself into the rapidity, the variety and
+aptness of his illustrations. His pen is never at a loss, never stands
+still; and would dazzle for this reason alone, like an eye that is ever
+in motion. Mr. Jeffrey is far from a flowery or affected writer; he has
+few tropes or figures, still less any odd startling thoughts or quaint
+innovations in expression:--but he has a constant supply of ingenious
+solutions and pertinent examples; he never proses, never grows dull,
+never wears an argument to tatters; and by the number, the liveliness
+and facility of his transitions, keeps up that appearance of vivacity,
+of novel and sparkling effect, for which others are too often indebted
+to singularity of combination or tinsel ornaments.
+
+It may be discovered, by a nice observer, that Mr. Jeffrey's style of
+composition is that of a person accustomed to public speaking. There is
+no pause, no meagreness, no inanimateness, but a flow, a redundance and
+volubility like that of a stream or of a rolling-stone. The language is
+more copious than select, and sometimes two or three words perform the
+office of one. This copiousness and facility is perhaps an advantage
+in _extempore_ speaking, where no stop or break is allowed in the
+discourse, and where any word or any number of words almost is better
+than coming to a dead stand; but in written compositions it gives an
+air of either too much carelessness or too much labour. Mr. Jeffrey's
+excellence, as a public speaker, has betrayed him into this peculiarity.
+He makes fewer _blots_ in addressing an audience than any one we
+remember to have heard. There is not a hair's-breadth space between any
+two of his words, nor is there a single expression either ill-chosen or
+out of its place. He speaks without stopping to take breath, with ease,
+with point, with elegance, and without "spinning the thread of his
+verbosity finer than the staple of his argument." He may be said to
+weave words into any shapes he pleases for use or ornament, as the
+glass-blower moulds the vitreous fluid with his breath; and his
+sentences shine like glass from their polished smoothness, and are
+equally transparent. His style of eloquence, indeed, is remarkable for
+neatness, for correctness, and epigrammatic point; and he has applied
+this as a standard to his written compositions, where the very same
+degree of correctness and precision produces, from the contrast between
+writing and speaking, an agreeable diffuseness, freedom, and animation.
+Whenever the Scotch advocate has appeared at the bar of the English
+House of Lords, he has been admired by those who were in the habit of
+attending to speeches there, as having the greatest fluency of language
+and the greatest subtlety of distinction of any one of the profession.
+The law-reporters were as little able to follow him from the extreme
+rapidity of his utterance as from the tenuity and evanescent nature of
+his reasoning.
+
+Mr. Jeffrey's conversation is equally lively, various, and instructive.
+There is no subject on which he is not _au fait_: no company in which he
+is not ready to scatter his pearls for sport. Whether it be politics, or
+poetry, or science, or anecdote, or wit, or raillery, he takes up his
+cue without effort, without preparation, and appears equally incapable
+of tiring himself or his hearers. His only difficulty seems to be not
+to speak, but to be silent. There is a constitutional buoyancy and
+elasticity of mind about him that cannot subside into repose, much less
+sink into dulness. There may be more original talkers, persons who
+occasionally surprise or interest you more; few, if any, with a more
+uninterrupted flow of cheerfulness and animal spirits, with a greater
+fund of information, and with fewer specimens of the _bathos_ in their
+conversation. He is never absurd, nor has he any favourite points
+which he is always bringing forward. It cannot be denied that there is
+something bordering on petulance of manner, but it is of that least
+offensive kind which may be accounted for from merit and from success,
+and implies no exclusive pretensions nor the least particle of ill-will
+to others. On the contrary, Mr. Jeffrey is profuse of his encomiums and
+admiration of others, but still with a certain reservation of a right
+to differ or to blame. He cannot rest on one side of a question: he is
+obliged by a mercurial habit and disposition to vary his point of view.
+If he is ever tedious, it is from an excess of liveliness: he oppresses
+from a sense of airy lightness. He is always setting out on a fresh
+scent: there are always _relays_ of topics; the harness is put to, and
+he rattles away as delightfully and as briskly as ever. New causes are
+called; he holds a brief in his hand for every possible question.
+This is a fault. Mr. Jeffrey is not obtrusive, is not impatient of
+opposition, is not unwilling to be interrupted; but what is said by
+another, seems to make no impression on him; he is bound to dispute, to
+answer it, as if he was in Court, or as if it were in a paltry Debating
+Society, where young beginners were trying their hands. This is not to
+maintain a character, or for want of good-nature--it is a thoughtless
+habit. He cannot help cross-examining a witness, or stating the
+adverse view of the question. He listens not to judge, but to reply.
+In consequence of this, you can as little tell the impression your
+observations make on him as what weight to assign to his. Mr. Jeffrey
+shines in mixed company; he is not good in a _tete-a-tete_. You can only
+shew your wisdom or your wit in general society: but in private your
+follies or your weaknesses are not the least interesting topics; and our
+critic has neither any of his own to confess, nor does he take delight
+in hearing those of others. Indeed in Scotland generally, the display of
+personal character, the indulging your whims and humours in the presence
+of a friend, is not much encouraged--every one there is looked upon in
+the light of a machine or a collection of topics. They turn you round
+like a cylinder to see what use they can make of you, and drag you into
+a dispute with as little ceremony as they would drag out an article from
+an Encyclopedia. They criticise every thing, analyse every thing, argue
+upon every thing, dogmatise upon every thing; and the bundle of your
+habits, feelings, humours, follies and pursuits is regarded by them no
+more than a bundle of old clothes. They stop you in a sentiment by a
+question or a stare, and cut you short in a narrative by the time of
+night. The accomplished and ingenious person of whom we speak, has been
+a little infected by the tone of his countrymen--he is too didactic,
+too pugnacious, too full of electrical shocks, too much like a voltaic
+battery, and reposes too little on his own excellent good sense, his
+own love of ease, his cordial frankness of disposition and unaffected
+candour. He ought to have belonged to us!
+
+The severest of critics (as he has been sometimes termed) is the
+best-natured of men. Whatever there may be of wavering or indecision in
+Mr. Jeffrey's reasoning, or of harshness in his critical decisions, in
+his disposition there is nothing but simplicity and kindness. He is a
+person that no one knows without esteeming, and who both in his public
+connections and private friendships, shews the same manly uprightness
+and unbiassed independence of spirit. At a distance, in his writings, or
+even in his manner, there may be something to excite a little uneasiness
+and apprehension: in his conduct there is nothing to except against.
+He is a person of strict integrity himself, without pretence or
+affectation; and knows how to respect this quality in others, without
+prudery or intolerance. He can censure a friend or a stranger, and serve
+him effectually at the same time. He expresses his disapprobation, but
+not as an excuse for closing up the avenues of his liberality. He is a
+Scotchman without one particle of hypocrisy, of cant, of servility, or
+selfishness in his composition. He has not been spoiled by fortune--has
+not been tempted by power--is firm without violence, friendly without
+weakness--a critic and even-tempered, a casuist and an honest man--and
+amidst the toils of his profession and the distractions of the world,
+retains the gaiety, the unpretending carelessness and simplicity of
+youth. Mr. Jeffrey in his person is slight, with a countenance of much
+expression, and a voice of great flexibility and acuteness of tone.
+
+
+[Footnote A: The style of philosophical criticism, which has been the
+boast of the Edinburgh Review, was first introduced into the Monthly
+Review about the year 1796, in a series of articles by Mr. William
+Taylor, of Norwich.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+MR. BROUGHAM--SIR F. BURDETT.
+
+
+
+There is a class of eloquence which has been described and particularly
+insisted on, under the style and title of _Irish Eloquence_: there is
+another class which it is not absolutely unfair to oppose to this, and
+that is the Scotch. The first of these is entirely the offspring of
+_impulse_: the last of _mechanism_. The one is as full of fancy as it is
+bare of facts: the other excludes all fancy, and is weighed down with
+facts. The one is all fire, the other all ice: the one nothing but
+enthusiasm, extravagance, eccentricity; the other nothing but logical
+deductions, and the most approved postulates. The one without scruple,
+nay, with reckless zeal, throws the reins loose on the neck of the
+imagination: the other pulls up with a curbbridle, and starts at every
+casual object it meets in the way as a bug-bear. The genius of Irish
+oratory stands forth in the naked majesty of untutored nature, its eye
+glancing wildly round on all objects, its tongue darting forked fire:
+the genius of Scottish eloquence is armed in all the panoply of the
+schools; its drawling, ambiguous dialect seconds its circumspect
+dialectics; from behind the vizor that guards its mouth and shadows
+its pent-up brows, it sees no visions but its own set purpose, its own
+_data_, and its own dogmas. It "has no figures, nor no fantasies," but
+"those which busy care draws in the brains of men," or which set off its
+own superior acquirements and wisdom. It scorns to "tread the primrose
+path of dalliance"--it shrinks back from it as from a precipice, and
+keeps in the iron rail-way of the understanding. Irish oratory, on the
+contrary, is a sort of aeronaut: it is always going up in a balloon, and
+breaking its neck, or coming down in the parachute. It is filled
+full with gaseous matter, with whim and fancy, with alliteration and
+antithesis, with heated passion and bloated metaphors, that burst the
+slender, silken covering of sense; and the airy pageant, that glittered
+in empty space and rose in all the bliss of ignorance, flutters and
+sinks down to its native bogs! If the Irish orator riots in a studied
+neglect of his subject and a natural confusion of ideas, playing with
+words, ranging them into all sorts of fantastic combinations, because in
+the unlettered void or chaos of his mind there is no obstacle to their
+coalescing into any shapes they please, it must be confessed that the
+eloquence of the Scotch is encumbered with an excess of knowledge, that
+it cannot get on for a crowd of difficulties, that it staggers under
+a load of topics, that it is so environed in the forms of logic and
+rhetoric as to be equally precluded from originality or absurdity, from
+beauty or deformity:--the plea of humanity is lost by going through the
+process of law, the firm and manly tone of principle is exchanged for
+the wavering and pitiful cant of policy, the living bursts of passion
+are reduced to a defunct _common-place_, and all true imagination
+is buried under the dust and rubbish of learned models and imposing
+authorities. If the one is a bodiless phantom, the other is a lifeless
+skeleton: if the one in its feverish and hectic extravagance resembles a
+sick man's dream, the other is akin to the sleep of death--cold, stiff,
+unfeeling, monumental! Upon the whole, we despair less of the first than
+of the last, for the principle of life and motion is, after all, the
+primary condition of all genius. The luxuriant wildness of the one may
+be disciplined, and its excesses sobered down into reason; but the dry
+and rigid formality of the other can never burst the shell or husk of
+oratory. It is true that the one is disfigured by the puerilities and
+affectation of a Phillips; but then it is redeemed by the manly sense
+and fervour of a Plunket, the impassioned appeals and flashes of wit of
+a Curran, and by the golden tide of wisdom, eloquence, and fancy, that
+flowed from the lips of a Burke. In the other, we do not sink so low in
+the negative series; but we get no higher in the ascending scale than
+a Mackintosh or a Brougham.[A] It may be suggested that the late Lord
+Erskine enjoyed a higher reputation as an orator than either of these:
+but he owed it to a dashing and graceful manner, to presence of mind,
+and to great animation in delivering his sentiments. Stripped of these
+outward and personal advantages, the matter of his speeches, like that
+of his writings, is nothing, or perfectly inert and dead. Mr. Brougham
+is from the North of England, but he was educated in Edinburgh, and
+represents that school of politics and political economy in the House.
+He differs from Sir James Mackintosh in this, that he deals less in
+abstract principles, and more in individual details. He makes less use
+of general topics, and more of immediate facts. Sir James is better
+acquainted with the balance of an argument in old authors; Mr. Brougham
+with the balance of power in Europe. If the first is better versed in
+the progress of history, no man excels the last in a knowledge of the
+course of exchange. He is apprised of the exact state of our exports and
+imports, and scarce a ship clears out its cargo at Liverpool or
+Hull, but he has notice of the bill of lading. Our colonial policy,
+prison-discipline, the state of the Hulks, agricultural distress,
+commerce and manufactures, the Bullion question, the Catholic question,
+the Bourbons or the Inquisition, "domestic treason, foreign levy,"
+nothing can come amiss to him--he is at home in the crooked mazes of
+rotten boroughs, is not baffled by Scotch law, and can follow the
+meaning of one of Mr. Canning's speeches. With so many resources, with
+such variety and solidity of information, Mr. Brougham is rather a
+powerful and alarming, than an effectual debater. In so many details
+(which he himself goes through with unwearied and unshrinking
+resolution) the spirit of the question is lost to others who have not
+the same voluntary power of attention or the same interest in hearing
+that he has in speaking; the original impulse that urged him forward is
+forgotten in so wide a field, in so interminable a career. If he can,
+others _cannot_ carry all he knows in their heads at the same time; a
+rope of circumstantial evidence does not hold well together, nor drag
+the unwilling mind along with it (the willing mind hurries on before it,
+and grows impatient and absent)--he moves in an unmanageable procession
+of facts and proofs, instead of coming to the point at once--and his
+premises (so anxious is he to proceed on sure and ample grounds) overlay
+and block up his conclusion, so that you cannot arrive at it, or not
+till the first fury and shock of the onset is over. The ball, from
+the too great width of the _calibre_ from which it is sent, and from
+striking against such a number of hard, projecting points, is almost
+spent before it reaches its destination. He keeps a ledger or a
+debtor-and-creditor account between the Government and the Country,
+posts so much actual crime, corruption, and injustice against so much
+contingent advantage or sluggish prejudice, and at the bottom of the
+page brings in the balance of indignation and contempt, where it is due.
+But people are not to be _calculated into_ contempt or indignation on
+abstract grounds; for however they may submit to this process where
+their own interests are concerned, in what regards the public good we
+believe they must see and feel instinctively, or not at all. There is
+(it is to be lamented) a good deal of froth as well as strength in the
+popular spirit, which will not admit of being _decanted_ or served out
+in formal driblets; nor will spleen (the soul of Opposition) bear to be
+corked up in square patent bottles, and kept for future use! In a word,
+Mr. Brougham's is ticketed and labelled eloquence, registered and in
+numeros (like the successive parts of a Scotch Encyclopedia)--it
+is clever, knowing, imposing, masterly, an extraordinary display of
+clearness of head, of quickness and energy of thought, of application
+and industry; but it is not the eloquence of the imagination or the
+heart, and will never save a nation or an individual from perdition.
+
+Mr. Brougham has one considerable advantage in debate: he is overcome
+by no false modesty, no deference to others. But then, by a natural
+consequence or parity of reasoning, he has little sympathy with other
+people, and is liable to be mistaken in the effect his arguments will
+have upon them. He relies too much, among other things, on the patience
+of his hearers, and on his ability to turn every thing to his own
+advantage. He accordingly goes to the full length of _his tether_ (in
+vulgar phrase) and often overshoots the mark. _C'est dommage_. He has no
+reserve of discretion, no retentiveness of mind or check upon himself.
+He needs, with so much wit,
+
+  "As much again to govern it."
+
+He cannot keep a good thing or a shrewd piece of information in his
+possession, though the letting it out should mar a cause. It is not
+that he thinks too much of himself, too little of his cause: but he is
+absorbed in the pursuit of truth as an abstract inquiry, he is led away
+by the headstrong and over-mastering activity of his own mind. He is
+borne along, almost involuntarily, and not impossibly against his better
+judgment, by the throng and restlessness of his ideas as by a crowd
+of people in motion. His perceptions are literal, tenacious,
+_epileptic_--his understanding voracious of facts, and equally
+communicative of them--and he proceeds to
+
+  "--------Pour out all as plain
+  As downright Shippen or as old Montaigne"--
+
+without either the virulence of the one or the _bonhommie_ of the other.
+The repeated, smart, unforeseen discharges of the truth jar those
+that are next him. He does not dislike this state of irritation and
+collision, indulges his curiosity or his triumph, till by calling for
+more facts or hazarding some extreme inference, he urges a question to
+the verge of a precipice, his adversaries urge it _over_, and he himself
+shrinks back from the consequence--
+
+  "Scared at the sound himself has made!"
+
+Mr. Brougham has great fearlessness, but not equal firmness; and after
+going too far on the _forlorn hope_, turns short round without due
+warning to others or respect for himself. He is adventurous, but easily
+panic-struck; and sacrifices the vanity of self-opinion to the necessity
+of self-preservation. He is too improvident for a leader, too petulant
+for a partisan; and does not sufficiently consult those with whom he is
+supposed to act in concert. He sometimes leaves them in the lurch,
+and is sometimes left in the lurch by them. He wants the principle of
+co-operation. He frequently, in a fit of thoughtless levity, gives an
+unexpected turn to the political machine, which alarms older and more
+experienced heads: if he was not himself the first to get out of harm's
+way and escape from the danger, it would be well!--We hold, indeed, as
+a general rule, that no man born or bred in Scotland can be a great
+orator, unless he is a mere quack; or a great statesman unless he turns
+plain knave. The national gravity is against the first: the national
+caution is against the last. To a Scotchman if a thing _is, it is_;
+there is an end of the question with his opinion about it. He is
+positive and abrupt, and is not in the habit of conciliating the
+feelings or soothing the follies of others. His only way therefore to
+produce a popular effect is to sail with the stream of prejudice, and
+to vent common dogmas, "the total grist, unsifted, husks and all," from
+some evangelical pulpit. This may answer, and it has answered. On the
+other hand, if a Scotchman, born or bred, comes to think at all of the
+feelings of others, it is not as they regard them, but as their
+opinion reacts on his own interest and safety. He is therefore either
+pragmatical and offensive, or if he tries to please, he becomes cowardly
+and fawning. His public spirit wants pliancy; his selfish compliances
+go all lengths. He is as impracticable as a popular partisan, as he
+is mischievous as a tool of Government. We do not wish to press
+this argument farther, and must leave it involved in some degree of
+obscurity, rather than bring the armed intellect of a whole nation on
+our heads.
+
+Mr. Brougham speaks in a loud and unmitigated tone of voice, sometimes
+almost approaching to a scream. He is fluent, rapid, vehement, full of
+his subject, with evidently a great deal to say, and very regardless
+of the manner of saying it. As a lawyer, he has not hitherto been
+remarkably successful. He is not profound in cases and reports, nor does
+he take much interest in the peculiar features of a particular cause, or
+shew much adroitness in the management of it. He carries too much weight
+of metal for ordinary and petty occasions: he must have a pretty large
+question to discuss, and must make _thorough-stitch_ work of it. He,
+however, had an encounter with Mr. Phillips the other day, and shook all
+his tender blossoms, so that they fell to the ground, and withered in an
+hour; but they soon bloomed again! Mr. Brougham writes almost, if not
+quite, as well as he speaks. In the midst of an Election contest he
+comes out to address the populace, and goes back to his study to finish
+an article for the Edinburgh Review; sometimes indeed wedging three or
+four articles (in the shape of _refaccimentos_ of his own pamphlets
+or speeches in parliament) into a single number. Such indeed is the
+activity of his mind that it appears to require neither repose, nor any
+other stimulus than a delight in its own exercise. He can turn his
+hand to any thing, but he cannot be idle. There are few intellectual
+accomplishments which he does not possess, and possess in a very
+high degree. He speaks French (and, we believe, several other modern
+languages) fluently: is a capital mathematician, and obtained an
+introduction to the celebrated Carnot in this latter character, when the
+conversation turned on squaring the circle, and not on the propriety of
+confining France within the natural boundary of the Rhine. Mr. Brougham
+is, in fact, a striking instance of the versatility and strength of the
+human mind, and also in one sense of the length of human life, if we
+make a good use of our time. There is room enough to crowd almost every
+art and science into it. If we pass "no day without a line," visit no
+place without the company of a book, we may with ease fill libraries or
+empty them of their contents. Those who complain of the shortness of
+life, let it slide by them without wishing to seize and make the most of
+its golden minutes. The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we
+are, the more leisure we have. If any one possesses any advantage in a
+considerable degree, he may make himself master of nearly as many more
+as he pleases, by employing his spare time and cultivating the waste
+faculties of his mind. While one person is determining on the choice of
+a profession or study, another shall have made a fortune or gained a
+merited reputation. While one person is dreaming over the meaning of a
+word, another will have learnt several languages. It is not incapacity,
+but indolence, indecision, want of imagination, and a proneness to a
+sort of mental tautology, to repeat the same images and tread the same
+circle, that leaves us so poor, so dull, and inert as we are, so naked
+of acquirement, so barren of resources! While we are walking backwards
+and forwards between Charing-Cross and Temple-Bar, and sitting in the
+same coffee-house every day, we might make the grand tour of Europe, and
+visit the Vatican and the Louvre. Mr. Brougham, among other means of
+strengthening and enlarging his views, has visited, we believe, most of
+the courts, and turned his attention to most of the Constitutions of the
+continent. He is, no doubt, a very accomplished, active-minded, and
+admirable person.
+
+Sir Francis Burdett, in many respects, affords a contrast to the
+foregoing character. He is a plain, unaffected, unsophisticated English
+gentleman. He is a person of great reading too and considerable
+information, but he makes very little display of these, unless it be to
+quote Shakespear, which he does often with extreme aptness and felicity.
+Sir Francis is one of the most pleasing speakers in the House, and is a
+prodigious favourite of the English people. So he ought to be: for he is
+one of the few remaining examples of the old English understanding and
+old English character. All that he pretends to is common sense and
+common honesty; and a greater compliment cannot be paid to these than
+the attention with which he is listened to in the House of Commons. We
+cannot conceive a higher proof of courage than the saying things which
+he has been known to say there; and we have seen him blush and appear
+ashamed of the truths he has been obliged to utter, like a bashful
+novice. He could not have uttered what he often did there, if, besides
+his general respectability, he had not been a very honest, a very
+good-tempered, and a very good-looking man. But there was evidently no
+wish to shine, nor any desire to offend: it was painful to him to hurt
+the feelings of those who heard him, but it was a higher duty in him not
+to suppress his sincere and earnest convictions. It is wonderful how
+much virtue and plain-dealing a man may be guilty of with impunity, if
+he has no vanity, or ill-nature, or duplicity to provoke the contempt or
+resentment of others, and to make them impatient of the superiority he
+sets up over them. We do not recollect that Sir Francis ever endeavoured
+to atone for any occasional indiscretions or intemperance by giving
+the Duke of York credit for the battle of Waterloo, or congratulating
+Ministers on the confinement of Buonaparte at St. Helena. There is no
+honest cause which he dares not avow: no oppressed individual that he
+is not forward to succour. He has the firmness of manhood with the
+unimpaired enthusiasm of youthful feeling about him. His principles are
+mellowed and improved, without having become less sound with time: for
+at one period he sometimes appeared to come charged to the House with
+the petulance and caustic sententiousness he had imbibed at Wimbledon
+Common. He is never violent or in extremes, except when the people or
+the parliament happen to be out of their senses; and then he seems to
+regret the necessity of plainly telling them he thinks so, instead of
+pluming himself upon it or exulting over impending calamities. There
+is only one error he seems to labour under (which, we believe, he also
+borrowed from Mr. Horne Tooke or Major Cartwright), the wanting to go
+back to the early times of our Constitution and history in search of the
+principles of law and liberty. He might as well
+
+  "Hunt half a day for a forgotten dream."
+
+Liberty, in our opinion, is but a modern invention (the growth of books
+and printing)--and whether new or old, is not the less desirable. A man
+may be a patriot, without being an antiquary. This is the only point
+on which Sir Francis is at all inclined to a tincture of pedantry. In
+general, his love of liberty is pure, as it is warm and steady: his
+humanity is unconstrained and free. His heart does not ask leave of his
+head to feel; nor does prudence always keep a guard upon his tongue or
+his pen. No man writes a better letter to his Constituents than the
+member for Westminster; and his compositions of that kind ought to be
+good, for they have occasionally cost him dear. He is the idol of the
+people of Westminster: few persons have a greater number of friends
+and well-wishers; and he has still greater reason to be proud of his
+enemies, for his integrity and independence have made them so. Sir
+Francis Burdett has often been left in a Minority in the House of
+Commons, with only one or two on his side. We suspect, unfortunately for
+his country, that History will be found to enter its protest on the same
+side of the question!
+
+
+[Footnote A: Mr. Brougham is not a Scotchman literally, but by
+adoption.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+LORD ELDON AND MR. WILBERFORCE.
+
+
+
+Lord Eldon is an exceedingly good-natured man; but this does not prevent
+him, like other good-natured people, from consulting his own ease or
+interest. The character of _good-nature_, as it is called, has been a
+good deal mistaken; and the present Chancellor is not a bad illustration
+of the grounds of the prevailing error. When we happen to see an
+individual whose countenance is "all tranquillity and smiles;" who
+is full of good-humour and pleasantry; whose manners are gentle and
+conciliating; who is uniformly temperate in his expressions, and
+punctual and just in his every-day dealings; we are apt to conclude from
+so fair an outside, that
+
+  "All is conscience and tender heart"
+
+within also, and that such a one would not hurt a fly. And neither would
+he without a motive. But mere good-nature (or what passes in the world
+for such) is often no better than indolent selfishness. A person
+distinguished and praised for this quality will not needlessly offend
+others, because they may retaliate; and besides, it ruffles his own
+temper. He likes to enjoy a perfect calm, and to live in an interchange
+of kind offices. He suffers few things to irritate or annoy him. He has
+a fine oiliness in his disposition, which smooths the waves of passion
+as they rise. He does not enter into the quarrels or enmities of others;
+bears their calamities with patience; he listens to the din and clang of
+war, the earthquake and the hurricane of the political and moral world
+with the temper and spirit of a philosopher; no act of injustice puts
+him beside himself, the follies and absurdities of mankind never give
+him a moment's uneasiness, he has none of the ordinary causes of
+fretfulness or chagrin that torment others from the undue interest they
+take in the conduct of their neighbours or in the public good. None of
+these idle or frivolous sources of discontent, that make such havoc
+with the peace of human life, ever discompose his features or alter the
+serenity of his pulse. If a nation is robbed of its rights,
+
+  "If wretches hang that Ministers may dine,"--
+
+the laughing jest still collects in his eye, the cordial squeeze of the
+hand is still the same. But tread on the toe of one of these amiable and
+imperturbable mortals, or let a lump of soot fall down the chimney and
+spoil their dinners, and see how they will bear it. All their patience
+is confined to the accidents that befal others: all their good-humour
+is to be resolved into giving themselves no concern about any thing but
+their own ease and self-indulgence. Their charity begins and ends at
+home. Their being free from the common infirmities of temper is owing to
+their indifference to the common feelings of humanity; and if you touch
+the sore place, they betray more resentment, and break out (like spoiled
+children) into greater fractiousness than others, partly from a greater
+degree of selfishness, and partly because they are taken by surprise,
+and mad to think they have not guarded every point against annoyance or
+attack, by a habit of callous insensibility and pampered indolence.
+
+An instance of what we mean occurred but the other day. An allusion was
+made in the House of Commons to something in the proceedings in the
+Court of Chancery, and the Lord Chancellor comes to his place in the
+Court, with the statement in his hand, fire in his eyes, and a direct
+charge of falsehood in his mouth, without knowing any thing certain
+of the matter, without making any inquiry into it, without using any
+precaution or putting the least restraint upon himself, and all on no
+better authority than a common newspaper report. The thing was (not that
+we are imputing any strong blame in this case, we merely bring it as an
+illustration) it touched himself, his office, the inviolability of his
+jurisdiction, the unexceptionableness of his proceedings, and the wet
+blanket of the Chancellor's temper instantly took fire like tinder! All
+the fine balancing was at an end; all the doubts, all the delicacy, all
+the candour real or affected, all the chances that there might be a
+mistake in the report, all the decencies to be observed towards a Member
+of the House, are overlooked by the blindness of passion, and the wary
+Judge pounces upon the paragraph without mercy, without a moment's
+delay, or the smallest attention to forms! This was indeed serious
+business, there was to be no trifling here; every instant was an age
+till the Chancellor had discharged his sense of indignation on the head
+of the indiscreet interloper on his authority. Had it been another
+person's case, another person's dignity that had been compromised,
+another person's conduct that had been called in question, who doubts
+but that the matter might have stood over till the next term, that the
+Noble Lord would have taken the Newspaper home in his pocket, that he
+would have compared it carefully with other newspapers, that he would
+have written in the most mild and gentlemanly terms to the Honourable
+Member to inquire into the truth of the statement, that he would have
+watched a convenient opportunity good-humouredly to ask other Honourable
+Members what all this was about, that the greatest caution and fairness
+would have been observed, and that to this hour the lawyers' clerks and
+the junior counsel would have been in the greatest admiration of the
+Chancellor's nicety of discrimination, and the utter inefficacy of the
+heats, importunities, haste, and passions of others to influence his
+judgment? This would have been true; yet his readiness to decide and to
+condemn where he himself is concerned, shews that passion is not dead in
+him, nor subject to the controul of reason; but that self-love is the
+main-spring that moves it, though on all beyond that limit he looks with
+the most perfect calmness and philosophic indifference.
+
+  "Resistless passion sways us to the mood
+  Of what it likes or loaths."
+
+All people are passionate in what concerns themselves, or in what they
+take an interest in. The range of this last is different in different
+persons; but the want of passion is but another name for the want of
+sympathy and imagination.
+
+The Lord Chancellor's impartiality and conscientious exactness is
+proverbial; and is, we believe, as inflexible as it is delicate in
+all cases that occur in the stated routine of legal practice. The
+impatience, the irritation, the hopes, the fears, the confident tone of
+the applicants move him not a jot from his intended course, he looks at
+their claims with the "lack lustre eye" of prefessional indifference.
+Power and influence apart, his next strongest passion is to indulge in
+the exercise of professional learning and skill, to amuse himself with
+the dry details and intricate windings of the law of equity. He delights
+to balance a straw, to see a feather turn the scale, or make it even
+again; and divides and subdivides a scruple to the smallest fraction. He
+unravels the web of argument and pieces it together again; folds it up
+and lays it aside, that he may examine it more at his leisure. He hugs
+indecision to his breast, and takes home a modest doubt or a nice point
+to solace himself with it in protracted, luxurious dalliance. Delay
+seems, in his mind, to be of the very essence of justice. He no more
+hurries through a question than if no one was waiting for the result,
+and he was merely a _dilettanti_, fanciful judge, who played at my Lord
+Chancellor, and busied himself with quibbles and punctilios as an idle
+hobby and harmless illusion. The phlegm of the Chancellor's disposition
+gives one almost a surfeit of impartiality and candour: we are sick
+of the eternal poise of childish dilatoriness; and would wish law and
+justice to be decided at once by a cast of the dice (as they were in
+Rabelais) rather than be kept in frivolous and tormenting suspense. But
+there is a limit even to this extreme refinement and scrupulousness
+of the Chancellor. The understanding acts only in the absence of the
+passions. At the approach of the loadstone, the needle trembles, and
+points to it. The air of a political question has a wonderful tendency
+to brace and quicken the learned Lord's faculties. The breath of a court
+speedily oversets a thousand objections, and scatters the cobwebs of his
+brain. The secret wish of power is a thumping _make-weight,_ where all
+is so nicely-balanced beforehand. In the case of a celebrated beauty and
+heiress, and the brother of a Noble Lord, the Chancellor hesitated long,
+and went through the forms, as usual: but who ever doubted, where all
+this indecision would end? No man in his senses, for a single instant!
+We shall not press this point, which is rather a ticklish one. Some
+persons thought that from entertaining a fellow-feeling on the subject,
+the Chancellor would have been ready to favour the Poet-Laureat's
+application to the Court of Chancery for an injunction against Wat
+Tyler. His Lordship's sentiments on such points are not so variable, he
+has too much at stake. He recollected the year 1794, though Mr. Southey
+had forgotten it!--
+
+The personal always prevails over the intellectual, where the latter is
+not backed by strong feeling and principle. Where remote and speculative
+objects do not excite a predominant interest and passion, gross and
+immediate ones are sure to carry the day, even in ingenuous and
+well-disposed minds. The will yields necessarily to some motive or
+other; and where the public good or distant consequences excite no
+sympathy in the breast, either from short-sightedness or an easiness of
+temperament that shrinks from any violent effort or painful emotion,
+self-interest, indolence, the opinion of others, a desire to please, the
+sense of personal obligation, come in and fill up the void of public
+spirit, patriotism, and humanity. The best men in the world in their own
+natural dispositions or in private life (for this reason) often become
+the most dangerous public characters, from their pliancy to the unruly
+passions of others, and from their having no set-off in strong moral
+_stamina_ to the temptations that are held out to them, if, as is
+frequently the case, they are men of versatile talent or patient
+industry.--Lord Eldon has one of the best-natured faces in the world;
+it is pleasant to meet him in the street, plodding along with an
+umbrella under his arm, without one trace of pride, of spleen, or
+discontent in his whole demeanour, void of offence, with almost rustic
+simplicity and honesty of appearance--a man that makes friends at first
+sight, and could hardly make enemies, if he would; and whose only fault
+is that he cannot say _Nay_ to power, or subject himself to an unkind
+word or look from a King or a Minister. He is a thorough-bred Tory.
+Others boggle or are at fault in their career, or give back at a pinch,
+they split into different factions, have various objects to distract
+them, their private friendships or antipathies stand in their way; but
+he has never flinched, never gone back, never missed his way, he is an
+_out-and-outer_ in this respect, his allegiance has been without flaw,
+like "one entire and perfect chrysolite," his implicit understanding is
+a kind of taffeta-lining to the Crown, his servility has assumed an air
+of the most determined independence, and he has
+
+  "Read his history in a Prince's eyes!"--
+
+There has been no stretch of power attempted in his time that he has not
+seconded: no existing abuse, so odious or so absurd, that he has not
+sanctioned it. He has gone the whole length of the most unpopular
+designs of Ministers. When the heavy artillery of interest, power, and
+prejudice is brought into the field, the paper pellets of the brain go
+for nothing: his labyrinth of nice, lady-like doubts explodes like a
+mine of gun-powder. The Chancellor may weigh and palter--the courtier
+is decided, the politician is firm, and rivetted to his place in the
+Cabinet! On all the great questions that have divided party opinion or
+agitated the public mind, the Chancellor has been found uniformly and
+without a single exception on the side of prerogative and power,
+and against every proposal for the advancement of freedom. He was a
+strenuous supporter of the wars and coalitions against the principles of
+liberty abroad; he has been equally zealous in urging or defending every
+act and infringement of the Constitution, for abridging it at home: he
+at the same time opposes every amelioration of the penal laws, on the
+alleged ground of his abhorrence of even the shadow of innovation: he
+has studiously set his face against Catholic emancipation; he laboured
+hard in his vocation to prevent the abolition of the Slave Trade; he was
+Attorney General in the trials for High Treason in 1794; and the other
+day in giving his opinion on the Queen's Trial, shed tears and protested
+his innocence before God! This was natural and to be expected; but
+on all occasions he is to be found at his post, true to the call of
+prejudice, of power, to the will of others and to his own interest.
+In the whole of his public career, and with all the goodness of his
+disposition, he has not shewn "so small a drop of pity as a wren's eye."
+He seems to be on his guard against every thing liberal and humane as
+his weak side. Others relax in their obsequiousness either from satiety
+or disgust, or a hankering after popularity, or a wish to be thought
+above narrow prejudices. The Chancellor alone is fixed and immoveable.
+Is it want of understanding or of principle? No--it is want of
+imagination, a phlegmatic habit, an excess of false complaisance and
+good-nature ... Common humanity and justice are little better than vague
+terms to him: he acts upon his immediate feelings and least irksome
+impulses. The King's hand is velvet to the touch--the Woolsack is a
+seat of honour and profit! That is all he knows about the matter. As to
+abstract metaphysical calculations, the ox that stands staring at the
+corner of the street troubles his head as much about them as he does:
+yet this last is a very good sort of animal with no harm or malice in
+him, unless he is goaded on to mischief, and then it is necessary to
+keep out of his way, or warn others against him!
+
+Mr. Wilberforce is a less perfect character in his way. He acts from
+mixed motives. He would willingly serve two masters, God and Mammon. He
+is a person of many excellent and admirable qualifications, but he has
+made a mistake in wishing to reconcile those that are incompatible.
+He has a most winning eloquence, specious, persuasive, familiar,
+silver-tongued, is amiable, charitable, conscientious, pious, loyal,
+humane, tractable to power, accessible to popularity, honouring the
+king, and no less charmed with the homage of his fellow-citizens. "What
+lacks he then?" Nothing but an economy of good parts. By aiming at
+too much, he has spoiled all, and neutralised what might have been an
+estimable character, distinguished by signal services to mankind. A
+man must take his choice not only between virtue and vice, but between
+different virtues. Otherwise, he will not gain his own approbation, or
+secure the respect of others. The graces and accomplishments of private
+life mar the man of business and the statesman. There is a severity, a
+sternness, a self-denial, and a painful sense of duty required in
+the one, which ill befits the softness and sweetness which should
+characterise the other. Loyalty, patriotism, friendship, humanity, are
+all virtues; but may they not sometimes clash? By being unwilling to
+forego the praise due to any, we may forfeit the reputation of all; and
+instead of uniting the suffrages of the whole world in our favour, we
+may end in becoming a sort of bye-word for affectation, cant, hollow
+professions, trimming, fickleness, and effeminate imbecility. It is best
+to choose and act up to some one leading character, as it is best to
+have some settled profession or regular pursuit in life.
+
+We can readily believe that Mr. Wilberforce's first object and principle
+of action is to do what he thinks right: his next (and that we fear is
+of almost equal weight with the first) is to do what will be thought so
+by other people. He is always at a game of _hawk and buzzard_ between
+these two: his "conscience will not budge," unless the world goes with
+it. He does not seem greatly to dread the denunciation in Scripture,
+but rather to court it--"Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of
+you!" We suspect he is not quite easy in his mind, because West-India
+planters and Guinea traders do not join in his praise. His ears are not
+strongly enough tuned to drink in the execrations of the spoiler and the
+oppressor as the sweetest music. It is not enough that one half of the
+human species (the images of God carved in ebony, as old Fuller calls
+them) shout his name as a champion and a saviour through vast burning
+zones, and moisten their parched lips with the gush of gratitude for
+deliverance from chains--he must have a Prime-Minister drink his health
+at a Cabinet-dinner for aiding to rivet on those of his country and
+of Europe! He goes hand and heart along with Government in all their
+notions of legitimacy and political aggrandizement, in the hope that
+they will leave him a sort of _no-man's ground_ of humanity in the Great
+Desert, where his reputation for benevolence and public spirit may
+spring up and flourish, till its head touches the clouds, and it
+stretches out its branches to the farthest part of the earth. He has
+no mercy on those who claim a property in negro-slaves as so much
+live-stock on their estates; the country rings with the applause of
+his wit, his eloquence, and his indignant appeals to common sense and
+humanity on this subject--but not a word has he to say, not a whisper
+does he breathe against the claim set up by the Despots of the Earth
+over their Continental subjects, but does every thing in his power to
+confirm and sanction it! He must give no offence. Mr. Wilberforce's
+humanity will go all lengths that it can with safety and discretion: but
+it is not to be supposed that it should lose him his seat for Yorkshire,
+the smile of Majesty, or the countenance of the loyal and pious. He is
+anxious to do all the good he can without hurting himself or his fair
+fame. His conscience and his character compound matters very amicably.
+He rather patronises honesty than is a martyr to it. His patriotism, his
+philanthropy are not so ill-bred, as to quarrel with his loyalty or to
+banish him from the first circles. He preaches vital Christianity to
+untutored savages; and tolerates its worst abuses in civilized states.
+He thus shews his respect for religion without offending the clergy, or
+circumscribing the sphere of his usefulness. There is in all this an
+appearance of a good deal of cant and tricking. His patriotism may
+be accused of being servile; his humanity ostentatious; his loyalty
+conditional; his religion a mixture of fashion and fanaticism. "Out upon
+such half-faced fellowship!" Mr. Wilberforce has the pride of being
+familiar with the great; the vanity of being popular; the conceit of an
+approving conscience. He is coy in his approaches to power; his public
+spirit is, in a manner, _under the rose_. He thus reaps the credit
+of independence, without the obloquy; and secures the advantages of
+servility, without incurring any obligations. He has two strings to his
+bow:--he by no means neglects his worldly interests, while he expects
+a bright reversion in the skies. Mr. Wilberforce is far from being
+a hypocrite; but he is, we think, as fine a specimen of _moral
+equivocation_ as can well be conceived. A hypocrite is one who is the
+very reverse of, or who despises the character he pretends to be: Mr.
+Wilberforce would be all that he pretends to be, and he is it in fact,
+as far as words, plausible theories, good inclinations, and easy
+services go, but not in heart and soul, or so as to give up the
+appearance of any one of his pretensions to preserve the reality of any
+other. He carefully chooses his ground to fight the battles of
+loyalty, religion, and humanity, and it is such as is always safe and
+advantageous to himself! This is perhaps hardly fair, and it is of
+dangerous or doubtful tendency. Lord Eldon, for instance, is known to be
+a thorough-paced ministerialist: his opinion is only that of his party.
+But Mr. Wilberforce is not a party-man. He is the more looked up to
+on this account, but not with sufficient reason. By tampering with
+different temptations and personal projects, he has all the air of the
+most perfect independence, and gains a character for impartiality and
+candour, when he is only striking a balance in his mind between the
+_eclat_ of differing from a Minister on some 'vantage ground, and the
+risk or odium that may attend it. He carries all the weight of his
+artificial popularity over to the Government on vital points and
+hard-run questions; while they, in return, lend him a little of the
+gilding of court-favour to set off his disinterested philanthropy and
+tramontane enthusiasm. As a leader or a follower, he makes an odd jumble
+of interests. By virtue of religious sympathy, he has brought the Saints
+over to the side of the abolition of Negro slavery. This his adversaries
+think hard and stealing a march upon them. What have the SAINTS to do
+with freedom or reform of any kind?--Mr. Wilberforce's style of
+speaking is not quite _parliamentary_, it is halfway between that and
+_evangelical_. He is altogether a _double-entendre:_ the very tone of
+his voice is a _double-entendre._ It winds, and undulates, and glides
+up and down on texts of Scripture, and scraps from Paley, and trite
+sophistry, and pathetic appeals to his hearers in a faltering,
+inprogressive, sidelong way, like those birds of weak wing, that are
+borne from their strait-forward course
+
+  "By every little breath that under heaven is blown."
+
+Something of this fluctuating, time-serving principle was visible even
+in the great question of the Abolition of the Slave Trade. He was, at
+one time, half inclined to surrender it into Mr. Pitt's dilatory hands,
+and seemed to think the gloss of novelty was gone from it, and the gaudy
+colouring of popularity sunk into the _sable_ ground from which it rose!
+It was, however, persisted in and carried to a triumphant conclusion.
+Mr. Wilberforce said too little on this occasion of one, compared with
+whom he was but the frontispiece to that great chapter in the history of
+the world--the mask, the varnishing, and painting--the man that effected
+it by Herculean labours of body, and equally gigantic labours of mind
+was Clarkson, the true Apostle of human Redemption on that occasion, and
+who, it is remarkable, resembles in his person and lineaments more than
+one of the Apostles in the _Cartoons_ of Raphael. He deserves to be
+added to the Twelve![A]
+
+
+[Footnote A: After all, the best as well as most amusing comment on the
+character just described was that made by Sheridan, who being picked up
+in no very creditable plight by the watch, and asked rather roughly who
+he was, made answer--"I am Mr. Wilberforce!" The guardians of the night
+conducted him home with all the honours due to Grace and Nature.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+MR. SOUTHEY.
+
+
+Mr. Southey, as we formerly remember to have seen him, had a hectic
+flush upon his cheek, a roving fire in his eye, a falcon glance, a look
+at once aspiring and dejected--it was the look that had been impressed
+upon his face by the events that marked the outset of his life, it was
+the dawn of Liberty that still tinged his cheek, a smile betwixt hope
+and sadness that still played upon his quivering lip. Mr. Southey's mind
+is essentially sanguine, even to over-weeningness. It is prophetic of
+good; it cordially embraces it; it casts a longing, lingering look after
+it, even when it is gone for ever. He cannot bear to give up the thought
+of happiness, his confidence in his fellow-man, when all else despair.
+It is the very element, "where he must live or have no life at all."
+While he supposed it possible that a better form of society could be
+introduced than any that had hitherto existed, while the light of the
+French Revolution beamed into his soul (and long after, it was seen
+reflected on his brow, like the light of setting suns on the peak of
+some high mountain, or lonely range of clouds, floating in purer ether!)
+while he had this hope, this faith in man left, he cherished it with
+child-like simplicity, he clung to it with the fondness of a lover, he
+was an enthusiast, a fanatic, a leveller; he stuck at nothing that
+he thought would banish all pain and misery from the world--in his
+impatience of the smallest error or injustice, he would have sacrificed
+himself and the existing generation (a holocaust) to his devotion to the
+right cause. But when he once believed after many staggering doubts and
+painful struggles, that this was no longer possible, when his chimeras
+and golden dreams of human perfectibility vanished from him, he turned
+suddenly round, and maintained that "whatever _is_, is right." Mr.
+Southey has not fortitude of mind, has not patience to think that evil
+is inseparable from the nature of things. His irritable sense rejects
+the alternative altogether, as a weak stomach rejects the food that
+is distasteful to it. He hopes on against hope, he believes in all
+unbelief. He must either repose on actual or on imaginary good. He
+missed his way in _Utopia_, he has found it at Old Sarum--
+
+  "His generous _ardour_ no cold medium knows:"
+
+his eagerness admits of no doubt or delay. He is ever in extremes, and
+ever in the wrong!
+
+The reason is, that not truth, but self-opinion is the ruling principle
+of Mr. Southey's mind. The charm of novelty, the applause of the
+multitude, the sanction of power, the venerableness of antiquity, pique,
+resentment, the spirit of contradiction have a good deal to do with his
+preferences. His inquiries are partial and hasty: his conclusions raw
+and unconcocted, and with a considerable infusion of whim and humour and
+a monkish spleen. His opinions are like certain wines, warm and generous
+when new; but they will not keep, and soon turn flat or sour, for want
+of a stronger spirit of the understanding to give a body to them. He
+wooed Liberty as a youthful lover, but it was perhaps more as a mistress
+than a bride; and he has since wedded with an elderly and not very
+reputable lady, called Legitimacy. _A wilful man_, according to the
+Scotch proverb, _must have his way_. If it were the cause to which he
+was sincerely attached, he would adhere to it through good report and
+evil report; but it is himself to whom he does homage, and would have
+others do so; and he therefore changes sides, rather than submit to
+apparent defeat or temporary mortification. Abstract principle has
+no rule but the understood distinction between right and wrong; the
+indulgence of vanity, of caprice, or prejudice is regulated by the
+convenience or bias of the moment. The temperament of our politician's
+mind is poetical, not philosophical. He is more the creature of impulse,
+than he is of reflection. He invents the unreal, he embellishes the
+false with the glosses of fancy, but pays little attention to "the words
+of truth and soberness." His impressions are accidental, immediate,
+personal, instead of being permanent and universal. Of all mortals he is
+surely the most impatient of contradiction, even when he has completely
+turned the tables on himself. Is not this very inconsistency the reason?
+Is he not tenacious of his opinions, in proportion as they are brittle
+and hastily formed? Is he not jealous of the grounds of his belief,
+because he fears they will not bear inspection, or is conscious he
+has shifted them? Does he not confine others to the strict line of
+orthodoxy, because he has himself taken every liberty? Is he not afraid
+to look to the right or the left, lest he should see the ghosts of his
+former extravagances staring him in the face? Does he not refuse to
+tolerate the smallest shade of difference in others, because he feels
+that he wants the utmost latitude of construction for differing so
+widely from himself? Is he not captious, dogmatical, petulant in
+delivering his sentiments, according as he has been inconsistent,
+rash, and fanciful in adopting them? He maintains that there can be no
+possible ground for differing from him, because he looks only at his
+own side of the question! He sets up his own favourite notions as the
+standard of reason and honesty, because he has changed from one extreme
+to another! He treats his opponents with contempt, because he is himself
+afraid of meeting with disrespect! He says that "a Reformer is a worse
+character than a house-breaker," in order to stifle the recollection
+that he himself once was one!
+
+We must say that "we relish Mr. Southey more in the Reformer" than in
+his lately acquired, but by no means natural or becoming character of
+poet-laureat and courtier. He may rest assured that a garland of wild
+flowers suits him better than the laureat-wreath: that his pastoral odes
+and popular inscriptions were far more adapted to his genius than
+his presentation-poems. He is nothing akin to birth-day suits and
+drawing-room fopperies. "He is nothing, if not fantastical." In his
+figure, in his movements, in his sentiments, he is sharp and angular,
+quaint and eccentric. Mr. Southey is not of the court, courtly. Every
+thing of him and about him is from the people. He is not classical, he
+is not legitimate. He is not a man cast in the mould of other men's
+opinions: he is not shaped on any model: he bows to no authority: he
+yields only to his own wayward peculiarities. He is wild, irregular,
+singular, extreme. He is no formalist, not he! All is crude and chaotic,
+self-opinionated, vain. He wants proportion, keeping, system, standard
+rules. He is not _teres et rotundus_. Mr. Southey walks with his chin
+erect through the streets of London, and with an umbrella sticking out
+under his arm, in the finest weather. He has not sacrificed to the
+Graces, nor studied decorum. With him every thing is projecting,
+starting from its place, an episode, a digression, a poetic license. He
+does not move in any given orbit, but like a falling star, shoots from
+his sphere. He is pragmatical, restless, unfixed, full of experiments,
+beginning every thing a-new, wiser than his betters, judging for
+himself, dictating to others. He is decidedly _revolutionary_. He may
+have given up the reform of the State: but depend upon it, he has some
+other _hobby_ of the same kind. Does he not dedicate to his present
+Majesty that extraordinary poem on the death of his father, called _The
+Vision of Judgment_, as a specimen of what might be done in English
+hexameters? In a court-poem all should be trite and on an approved
+model. He might as well have presented himself at the levee in a fancy
+or masquerade dress. Mr. Southey was not _to try conclusions_ with
+Majesty--still less on such an occasion. The extreme freedoms with
+departed greatness, the party-petulance carried to the Throne of
+Grace, the unchecked indulgence of private humour, the assumption of
+infallibility and even of the voice of Heaven in this poem, are pointed
+instances of what we have said. They shew the singular state of
+over-excitement of Mr. Southey's mind, and the force of old habits of
+independent and unbridled thinking, which cannot be kept down even
+in addressing his Sovereign! Look at Mr. Southey's larger poems, his
+_Kehama_, his _Thalaba_, his _Madoc_, his _Roderic_. Who will deny the
+spirit, the scope, the splendid imagery, the hurried and startling
+interest that pervades them? Who will say that they are not sustained on
+fictions wilder than his own Glendoveer, that they are not the daring
+creations of a mind curbed by no law, tamed by no fear, that they are
+not rather like the trances than the waking dreams of genius, that
+they are not the very paradoxes of poetry? All this is very well, very
+intelligible, and very harmless, if we regard the rank excrescences of
+Mr. Southey's poetry, like the red and blue flowers in corn, as the
+unweeded growth of a luxuriant and wandering fancy; or if we allow
+the yeasty workings of an ardent spirit to ferment and boil over--the
+variety, the boldness, the lively stimulus given to the mind may then
+atone for the violation of rules and the offences to bed-rid authority;
+but not if our poetic libertine sets up for a law-giver and judge, or an
+apprehender of vagrants in the regions either of taste or opinion. Our
+motley gentleman deserves the strait-waistcoat, if he is for setting
+others in the stocks of servility, or condemning them to the pillory
+for a new mode of rhyme or reason. Or if a composer of sacred Dramas on
+classic models, or a translator of an old Latin author (that will hardly
+bear translation) or a vamper-up of vapid cantos and Odes set to music,
+were to turn pander to prescription and palliater of every dull,
+incorrigible abuse, it would not be much to be wondered at or even
+regretted. But in Mr. Southey it was a lamentable falling-off. It is
+indeed to be deplored, it is a stain on genius, a blow to humanity, that
+the author of _Joan of Arc_--that work in which the love of Liberty is
+exhaled like the breath of spring, mild, balmy, heaven-born, that is
+full of tears and virgin-sighs, and yearnings of affection after truth
+and good, gushing warm and crimsoned from the heart--should ever after
+turn to folly, or become the advocate of a rotten cause. After giving up
+his heart to that subject, he ought not (whatever others might do) ever
+to have set his foot within the threshold of a court. He might be sure
+that he would not gain forgiveness or favour by it, nor obtain a single
+cordial smile from greatness. All that Mr. Southey is or that he does
+best, is independent, spontaneous, free as the vital air he draws--when
+he affects the courtier or the sophist, he is obliged to put a
+constraint upon himself, to hold in his breath, he loses his genius,
+and offers a violence to his nature. His characteristic faults are the
+excess of a lively, unguarded temperament:--oh! let them not degenerate
+into cold-blooded, heartless vices! If we speak or have ever spoken of
+Mr. Southey with severity, it is with "the malice of old friends," for
+we count ourselves among his sincerest and heartiest well-wishers. But
+while he himself is anomalous, incalculable, eccentric, from youth to
+age (the _Wat Tyler_ and the _Vision of Judgment_ are the Alpha
+and Omega of his disjointed career) full of sallies of humour, of
+ebullitions of spleen, making _jets-d'eaux,_ cascades, fountains, and
+water-works of his idle opinions, he would shut up the wits of others in
+leaden cisterns, to stagnate and corrupt, or bury them under ground--
+
+  "Far from the sun and summer gale!"
+
+He would suppress the freedom of wit and humour, of which he has set the
+example, and claim a privilege for playing antics. He would introduce an
+uniformity of intellectual weights and measures, of irregular metres and
+settled opinions, and enforce it with a high hand. This has been judged
+hard by some, and has brought down a severity of recrimination, perhaps
+disproportioned to the injury done. "Because he is virtuous," (it has
+been asked,) "are there to be no more cakes and ale?" Because he is
+loyal, are we to take all our notions from the _Quarterly Review_?
+Because he is orthodox, are we to do nothing but read the _Book of the
+Church_? We declare we think his former poetical scepticism was not only
+more amiable, but had more of the spirit of religion in it, implied a
+more heartfelt trust in nature and providence than his present bigotry.
+We are at the same time free to declare that we think his articles in
+the _Quarterly Review,_ notwithstanding their virulence and the talent
+they display, have a tendency to qualify its most pernicious effects.
+They have redeeming traits in them. "A little leaven leaveneth the whole
+lump:" and the spirit of humanity (thanks to Mr. Southey) is not quite
+expelled from the _Quarterly Review_. At the corner of his pen, "there
+hangs a vapourous drop profound" of independence and liberality, which
+falls upon its pages, and oozes out through the pores of the public
+mind. There is a fortunate difference between writers whose hearts are
+naturally callous to truth, and whose understandings are hermetically
+sealed against all impressions but those of self-interest, and a man
+like Mr. Southey. _Once a philanthropist and always a philanthropist_.
+No man can entirely baulk his nature: it breaks out in spite of him.
+In all those questions, where the spirit of contradiction does not
+interfere, on which he is not sore from old bruises, or sick from the
+extravagance of youthful intoxication, as from a last night's debauch,
+our "laureate" is still bold, free, candid, open to conviction, a
+reformist without knowing it. He does not advocate the slave-trade, he
+does not arm Mr. Malthus's revolting ratios with his authority, he does
+not strain hard to deluge Ireland with blood. On such points, where
+humanity has not become obnoxious, where liberty has not passed into a
+by-word, Mr. Southey is still liberal and humane. The elasticity of his
+spirit is unbroken: the bow recoils to its old position. He still stands
+convicted of his early passion for inquiry and improvement. He was not
+regularly articled as a Government-tool!--Perhaps the most pleasing and
+striking of all Mr. Southey's poems are not his triumphant taunts hurled
+against oppression, are not his glowing effusions to Liberty, but
+those in which, with a mild melancholy, he seems conscious of his own
+infirmities of temper, and to feel a wish to correct by thought and
+time the precocity and sharpness of his disposition. May the quaint but
+affecting aspiration expressed in one of these be fulfilled, that as
+he mellows into maturer age, all such asperities may wear off, and he
+himself become
+
+  "Like the high leaves upon the holly-tree!"
+
+Mr. Southey's prose-style can scarcely be too much praised. It is plain,
+clear, pointed, familiar, perfectly modern in its texture, but with
+a grave and sparkling admixture of _archaisms_ in its ornaments and
+occasional phraseology. He is the best and most natural prose-writer of
+any poet of the day; we mean that he is far better than Lord Byron,
+Mr. Wordsworth, or Mr. Coleridge, for instance. The manner is perhaps
+superior to the matter, that is, in his Essays and Reviews. There is
+rather a want of originality and even of _impetus_: but there is no want
+of playful or biting satire, of ingenuity, of casuistry, of
+
+learning and of information. He is "full of wise saws and modern" (as
+well as ancient) "instances." Mr. Southey may not always convince his
+opponents; but he seldom fails to stagger, never to gall them. In a
+word, we may describe his style by saying that it has not the body or
+thickness of port wine, but is like clear sherry with kernels of
+old authors thrown into it!--He also excels as an historian and
+prose-translator. His histories abound in information, and exhibit
+proofs of the most indefatigable patience and industry. By no uncommon
+process of the mind, Mr. Southey seems willing to steady the extreme
+levity of his opinions and feelings by an appeal to facts. His
+translations of the Spanish and French romances are also executed _con
+amore_, and with the literal fidelity and care of a mere linguist. That
+of the _Cid_, in particular, is a masterpiece. Not a word could be
+altered for the better, in the old scriptural style which it adopts in
+conformity to the original. It is no less interesting in itself, or as a
+record of high and chivalrous feelings and manners, than it is worthy of
+perusal as a literary curiosity.
+
+Mr. Southey's conversation has a little resemblance to a common-place
+book; his habitual deportment to a piece of clock-work. He is not
+remarkable either as a reasoner or an observer: but he is quick,
+unaffected, replete with anecdote, various and retentive in his reading,
+and exceedingly happy in his play upon words, as most scholars are who
+give their minds this sportive turn. We have chiefly seen Mr. Southey
+in company where few people appear to advantage, we mean in that of Mr.
+Coleridge. He has not certainly the same range of speculation, nor
+the same flow of sounding words, but he makes up by the details of
+knowledge, and by a scrupulous correctness of statement for what he
+wants in originality of thought, or impetuous declamation. The tones of
+Mr. Coleridge's voice are eloquence: those of Mr. Southey are meagre,
+shrill, and dry. Mr. Coleridge's _forte_ is conversation, and he is
+conscious of this: Mr. Southey evidently considers writing as his
+strong-hold, and if gravelled in an argument, or at a loss for an
+explanation, refers to something he has written on the subject, or
+brings out his port-folio, doubled down in dog-ears, in confirmation of
+some fact. He is scholastic and professional in his ideas. He sets more
+value on what he writes than on what he says: he is perhaps prouder of
+his library than of his own productions--themselves a library! He is
+more simple in his manners than his friend Mr. Coleridge; but at the
+same time less cordial or conciliating. He is less vain, or has less
+hope of pleasing, and therefore lays himself less out to please. There
+is an air of condescension in his civility. With a tall, loose figure, a
+peaked austerity of countenance, and no inclination to _embonpoint_,
+you would say he has something puritanical, something ascetic in his
+appearance. He answers to Mandeville's description of Addison, "a parson
+in a tye-wig." He is not a boon companion, nor does he indulge in the
+pleasures of the table, nor in any other vice; nor are we aware that Mr.
+Southey is chargeable with any human frailty but--_want of charity_!
+Having fewer errors to plead guilty to, he is less lenient to those of
+others. He was born an age too late. Had he lived a century or two ago,
+he would have been a happy as well as blameless character. But the
+distraction of the time has unsettled him, and the multiplicity of his
+pretensions have jostled with each other. No man in our day (at least no
+man of genius) has led so uniformly and entirely the life of a scholar
+from boyhood to the present hour, devoting himself to learning with
+the enthusiasm of an early love, with the severity and constancy of a
+religious vow--and well would it have been for him if he had confined
+himself to this, and not undertaken to pull down or to patch up the
+State! However irregular in his opinions, Mr. Southey is constant,
+unremitting, mechanical in his studies, and the performance of his
+duties. There is nothing Pindaric or Shandean here. In all the relations
+and charities of private life, he is correct, exemplary, generous, just.
+We never heard a single impropriety laid to his charge; and if he has
+many enemies, few men can boast more numerous or stauncher friends.--The
+variety and piquancy of his writings form a striking contrast to the
+mode in which they are produced. He rises early, and writes or reads
+till breakfast-time. He writes or reads after breakfast till dinner,
+after dinner till tea, and from tea till bed-time--
+
+  "And follows so the ever-running year
+  With profitable labour to his grave--"
+
+on Derwent's banks, beneath the foot of Skiddaw. Study serves him for
+business, exercise, recreation. He passes from verse to prose, from
+history to poetry, from reading to writing, by a stop-watch. He writes a
+fair hand, without blots, sitting upright in his chair, leaves off when
+he comes to the bottom of the page, and changes the subject for another,
+as opposite as the Antipodes. His mind is after all rather the recipient
+and transmitter of knowledge, than the originator of it. He has hardly
+grasp of thought enough to arrive at any great leading truth. His
+passions do not amount to more than irritability. With some gall in his
+pen, and coldness in his manner, he has a great deal of kindness in his
+heart. Rash in his opinions, he is steady in his attachments--and is a
+man, in many particulars admirable, in all respectable--his political
+inconsistency alone excepted!
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+MR. T. MOORE.--MR. LEIGH HUNT.
+
+
+  "Or winglet of the fairy humming-bird,
+  Like atoms of the rainbow fluttering round."
+
+  CAMPBELL.
+
+The lines placed at the head of this sketch, from a contemporary writer,
+appear to us very descriptive of Mr. Moore's poetry. His verse is like
+a shower of beauty; a dance of images; a stream of music; or like the
+spray of the water-fall, tinged by the morning-beam with rosy light.
+The characteristic distinction of our author's style is this continuous
+and incessant flow of voluptuous thoughts and shining allusions. He
+ought to write with a crystal pen on silver paper. His subject is set
+off by a dazzling veil of poetic diction, like a wreath of flowers
+gemmed with innumerous dewdrops, that weep, tremble, and glitter in
+liquid softness and pearly light, while the song of birds ravishes
+the ear, and languid odours breathe around, and Aurora opens Heaven's
+smiling portals, Peris and nymphs peep through the golden glades, and an
+Angel's wing glances over the glossy scene.
+
+  "No dainty flower or herb that grows on ground,
+  No arboret with painted blossoms drest,
+  And smelling sweet, but there it might be found
+  To bud out fair, and its sweet smells throw all around.
+
+  No tree, whose branches did not bravely spring;
+  No branch, whereon a fine bird did not sit;
+  No bird, but did her shrill notes sweetly sing;
+  No song, but did contain a lovely dit:
+  Trees, branches, birds, and songs were framed fit
+  For to allure frail minds to careless ease."....
+
+Mr. Campbell's imagination is fastidious and select; and hence, though
+we meet with more exquisite beauties in his writings, we meet with
+them more rarely: there is comparatively a dearth of ornament. But Mr.
+Moore's strictest economy is "wasteful and superfluous excess:" he is
+always liberal, and never at a loss; for sooner than not stimulate and
+delight the reader, he is willing to be tawdry, or superficial, or
+common-place. His Muse must be fine at any rate, though she should
+paint, and wear cast-off decorations. Rather than have any lack of
+excitement, he repeats himself; and "Eden, and Eblis, and cherub-smiles"
+fill up the pauses of the sentiment with a sickly monotony.--It has been
+too much our author's object to pander to the artificial taste of the
+age; and his productions, however brilliant and agreeable, are in
+consequence somewhat meretricious and effeminate. It was thought
+formerly enough to have an occasionally fine passage in the progress of
+a story or a poem, and an occasionally striking image or expression in
+a fine passage or description. But this style, it seems, was to be
+exploded as rude, Gothic, meagre, and dry. Now all must be raised to
+the same tantalising and preposterous level. There must be no pause, no
+interval, no repose, no gradation. Simplicity and truth yield up the
+palm to affectation and grimace. The craving of the public mind after
+novelty and effect is a false and uneasy appetite that must be pampered
+with fine words at every step--we must be tickled with sound, startled
+with shew, and relieved by the importunate, uninterrupted display of
+fancy and verbal tinsel as much as possible from the fatigue of thought
+or shock of feeling. A poem is to resemble an exhibition of fireworks,
+with a continual explosion of quaint figures and devices, flash after
+flash, that surprise for the moment, and leave no trace of light or
+warmth behind them. Or modern poetry in its retrograde progress comes at
+last to be constructed on the principles of the modern OPERA, where an
+attempt is made to gratify every sense at every instant, and where the
+understanding alone is insulted and the heart mocked. It is in this
+view only that we can discover that Mr. Moore's poetry is vitiated or
+immoral,--it seduces the taste and enervates the imagination. It creates
+a false standard of reference, and inverts or decompounds the natural
+order of association, in which objects strike the thoughts and feelings.
+His is the poetry of the bath, of the toilette, of the saloon, of the
+fashionable world; not the poetry of nature, of the heart, or of human
+life. He stunts and enfeebles equally the growth of the imagination and
+the affections, by not taking the seed of poetry and sowing it in the
+ground of truth, and letting it expand in the dew and rain, and shoot up
+to heaven,
+
+  "And spread its sweet leaves to the air,
+  Or dedicate its beauty to the sun,"--
+
+instead of which he anticipates and defeats his own object, by plucking
+flowers and blossoms from the stem, and setting them in the ground of
+idleness and folly--or in the cap of his own vanity, where they soon
+wither and disappear, "dying or ere they sicken!" This is but a sort
+of child's play, a short-sighted ambition. In Milton we meet with many
+prosaic lines, either because the subject does not require raising or
+because they are necessary to connect the story, or serve as a relief to
+other passages--there is not such a thing to be found in all Mr. Moore's
+writings. His volumes present us with "a perpetual feast of nectar'd
+sweets"--but we cannot add,--"where no crude surfeit reigns." He indeed
+cloys with sweetness; he obscures with splendour; he fatigues with
+gaiety. We are stifled on beds of roses--we literally lie "on the rack
+of restless ecstacy." His flowery fancy "looks so fair and smells so
+sweet, that the sense aches at it." His verse droops and languishes
+under a load of beauty, like a bough laden with fruit. His gorgeous
+style is like "another morn risen on mid-noon." There is no passage
+that is not made up of blushing lines, no line that is not enriched with
+a sparkling metaphor, no image that is left unadorned with a double
+epithet--all his verbs, nouns, adjectives, are equally glossy, smooth,
+and beautiful. Every stanza is transparent with light, perfumed with
+odours, floating in liquid harmony, melting in luxurious, evanescent
+delights. His Muse is never contented with an offering from one sense
+alone, but brings another rifled charm to match it, and revels in
+a fairy round of pleasure. The interest is not dramatic, but
+melo-dramatic--it is a mixture of painting, poetry, and music, of the
+natural and preternatural, of obvious sentiment and romantic costume. A
+rose is a _Gul_, a nightingale a _Bulbul_. We might fancy ourselves in
+an eastern harem, amidst Ottomans, and otto of roses, and veils and
+spangles, and marble pillars, and cool fountains, and Arab maids and
+Genii, and magicians, and Peris, and cherubs, and what not? Mr. Moore
+has a little mistaken the art of poetry for the _cosmetic art_. He does
+not compose an historic group, or work out a single figure; but throws
+a variety of elementary sensations, of vivid impressions together, and
+calls it a description. He makes out an inventory of beauty--the smile
+on the lips, the dimple on the cheeks, _item_, golden locks, _item_, a
+pair of blue wings, _item_, a silver sound, with breathing fragrance and
+radiant light, and thinks it a character or a story. He gets together a
+number of fine things and fine names, and thinks that, flung on heaps,
+they make up a fine poem. This dissipated, fulsome, painted, patch-work
+style may succeed in the levity and languor of the _boudoir_, or might
+have been adapted to the Pavilions of royalty, but it is not the style
+of Parnassus, nor a passport to Immortality. It is not the taste of the
+ancients, "'tis not classical lore"--nor the fashion of Tibullus, or
+Theocritus, or Anacreon, or Virgil, or Ariosto, or Pope, or Byron, or
+any great writer among the living or the dead, but it is the style of
+our English Anacreon, and it is (or was) the fashion of the day! Let one
+example (and that an admired one) taken from _Lalla Rookh_, suffice to
+explain the mystery and soften the harshness of the foregoing criticism.
+
+  "Now upon Syria's land of roses
+  Softly the light of eve reposes,
+  And like a glory, the broad sun
+  Hangs over sainted Lebanon:
+  Whose head in wintry grandeur towers,
+  And whitens with eternal sleet,
+  While summer, in a vale of flowers,
+  Is sleeping rosy at his feet.
+  To one who look'd from upper air,
+  O'er all th' enchanted regions there,
+  How beauteous must have been the glow,
+  The life, the sparkling from below!
+  Fair gardens, shining streams, with ranks
+  Of golden melons on their banks,
+  More golden where the sun-light falls,--
+  Gay lizards, glittering on the walls
+  Of ruin'd shrines, busy and bright
+  As they were all alive with light;--
+  And yet more splendid, numerous flocks
+  Of pigeons, settling on the rocks,
+  With their rich, restless wings, that gleam
+  Variously in the crimson beam
+  Of the warm west, as if inlaid
+  With brilliants from the mine, or made
+  Of tearless rainbows, such as span
+  The unclouded skies of Peristan!
+  And then, the mingling sounds that come
+  Of shepherd's ancient reed, with hum
+  Of the wild bees of Palestine,
+  Banquetting through the flowery vales--
+  And, Jordan, those sweet banks of thine,
+  And woods, so full of nightingales."--
+
+The following lines are the very perfection of Della Cruscan sentiment,
+and affected orientalism of style. The Peri exclaims on finding that old
+talisman and hackneyed poetical machine, "a penitent tear"--
+
+  "Joy, joy forever! my task is done--
+  The gates are pass'd, and Heaven is won!
+  Oh! am I not happy? I am, I am--
+  To thee, sweet Eden! how dark and sad
+  Are the diamond turrets of Shadukiam,
+  And the fragrant bowers of Amberabad."
+
+There is in all this a play of fancy, a glitter of words, a shallowness
+of thought, and a want of truth and solidity that is wonderful, and
+that nothing but the heedless, rapid glide of the verse could render
+tolerable:----it seems that the poet, as well as the lover,
+
+  "May bestride the Gossamer,
+  That wantons in the idle, summer air,
+  And yet not fall, so light is vanity!"
+
+Mr. Moore ought not to contend with serious difficulties or with entire
+subjects. He can write verses, not a poem. There is no principle of
+massing or of continuity in his productions--neither height nor breadth
+nor depth of capacity. There is no truth of representation, no strong
+internal feeling--but a continual flutter and display of affected airs
+and graces, like a finished coquette, who hides the want of symmetry by
+extravagance of dress, and the want of passion by flippant forwardness
+and unmeaning sentimentality. All is flimsy, all is florid to excess.
+His imagination may dally with insect beauties, with Rosicrucian spells;
+may describe a butterfly's wing, a flower-pot, a fan: but it should not
+attempt to span the great outlines of nature, or keep pace with the
+sounding march of events, or grapple with the strong fibres of the human
+heart. The great becomes turgid in his hands, the pathetic insipid. If
+Mr. Moore were to describe the heights of Chimboraco, instead of the
+loneliness, the vastness and the shadowy might, he would only think
+of adorning it with roseate tints, like a strawberry-ice, and would
+transform a magician's fortress in the Himmalaya (stripped of its
+mysterious gloom and frowning horrors) into a jeweller's toy, to be set
+upon a lady's toilette. In proof of this, see above "the diamond turrets
+of Shadukiam," &c. The description of Mokanna in the fight, though
+it has spirit and grandeur of effect, has still a great alloy of the
+mock-heroic in it. The route of blood and death, which is otherwise well
+marked, is infested with a swarm of "fire-fly" fancies.
+
+  "In vain Mokanna, 'midst the general flight,
+  Stands, like the red moon, in some stormy night.
+  Among the fugitive clouds, that hurrying by,
+  Leave only her unshaken in the sky."
+
+This simile is fine, and would have been perfect, but that the moon is
+not red, and that she seems to hurry by the clouds, not they by her. The
+description of the warrior's youthful adversary,
+
+ ----"Whose coming seems
+  A light, a glory, such as breaks in dreams."--
+
+is fantastic and enervated--a field of battle has nothing to do with
+dreams:--and again, the two lines immediately after,
+
+  "And every sword, true as o'er billows dim
+  The needle tracks the load-star, following him"--
+
+are a mere piece of enigmatical ingenuity and scientific
+_mimminee-pimminee._
+
+We cannot except the _Irish Melodies_ from the same censure. If these
+national airs do indeed express the soul of impassioned feeling in his
+countrymen, the case of Ireland is hopeless. If these prettinesses pass
+for patriotism, if a country can heave from its heart's core only these
+vapid, varnished sentiments, lip-deep, and let its tears of blood
+evaporate in an empty conceit, let it be governed as it has been. There
+are here no tones to waken Liberty, to console Humanity. Mr. Moore
+converts the wild harp of Erin into a musical snuff-box[A]!--We _do_
+except from this censure the author's political squibs, and the "Two-
+penny Post-bag." These are essences, are "nests of spicery", bitter and
+sweet, honey and gall together. No one can so well describe the set
+speech of a dull formalist[B], or the flowing locks of a Dowager,
+
+  "In the manner of Ackermann's dresses for May."
+
+His light, agreeable, polished style pierces through the body of the
+court--hits off the faded graces of "an Adonis of fifty", weighs the
+vanity of fashion in tremulous scales, mimics the grimace of affectation
+and folly, shews up the littleness of the great, and spears a phalanx of
+statesmen with its glittering point as with a diamond broach.
+
+  "In choosing songs the Regent named
+  'Had I a heart for falsehood fram'd:'
+  While gentle Hertford begg'd and pray'd
+  For 'Young I am, and sore afraid.'"
+
+Nothing in Pope or Prior ever surpassed the delicate insinuation
+and adroit satire of these lines, and hundreds more of our author's
+composition. We wish he would not take pains to make us think of them
+with less pleasure than formerly.--The "Fudge Family" is in the same
+spirit, but with a little falling-off. There is too great a mixture of
+undisguised Jacobinism and fashionable _slang_. The "divine Fanny Bias"
+and "the mountains _a la Russe_" figure in somewhat quaintly with
+Buonaparte and the Bourbons. The poet also launches the lightning of
+political indignation; but it rather plays round and illumines his own
+pen than reaches the devoted heads at which it is aimed!
+
+Mr. Moore is in private life an amiable and estimable man. The
+embellished and voluptuous style of his poetry, his unpretending origin,
+and his _mignon_ figure soon introduced him to the notice of the
+great, and his gaiety, his wit, his good-humour, and many agreeable
+accomplishments fixed him there, the darling of his friends and the idol
+of fashion. If he is no longer familiar with Royalty as with his garter,
+the fault is not his--his adherence to his principles caused the
+separation--his love of his country was the cloud that intercepted the
+sunshine of court-favour. This is so far well. Mr. Moore vindicates his
+own dignity; but the sense of intrinsic worth, of wide-spread fame, and
+of the intimacy of the great makes him perhaps a little too fastidious
+and _exigeant_ as to the pretensions of others. He has been so long
+accustomed to the society of Whig Lords, and so enchanted by the smile
+of beauty and fashion, that he really fancies himself one of the _set_,
+to which he is admitted on sufferance, and tries very unnecessarily to
+keep others out of it. He talks familiarly of works that are or are
+not read "in _our_ circle;" and seated smiling and at his ease in a
+coronet-coach, enlivening the owner by his brisk sallies and Attic
+conceits, is shocked, as he passes, to see a Peer of the realm shake
+hands with a poet. There is a little indulgence of spleen and envy, a
+little servility and pandering to aristocratic pride in this proceeding.
+Is Mr. Moore bound to advise a Noble Poet to get as fast as possible out
+of a certain publication, lest he should not be able to give an
+account at Holland or at Lansdown House, how his friend Lord B----had
+associated himself with his friend L. H----? Is he afraid that the
+"Spirit of Monarchy" will eclipse the "Fables for the Holy Alliance" in
+virulence and plain speaking? Or are the members of the "Fudge Family"
+to secure a monopoly for the abuse of the Bourbons and the doctrine of
+Divine Right? Because he is genteel and sarcastic, may not others be
+paradoxical and argumentative? Or must no one bark at a Minister or
+General, unless they have been first dandled, like a little French
+pug-dog, in the lap of a lady of quality? Does Mr. Moore insist on the
+double claim of birth and genius as a title to respectability in all
+advocates of the popular side--but himself? Or is he anxious to keep the
+pretensions of his patrician and plebeian friends quite separate, so
+as to be himself the only point of union, a sort of _double meaning_,
+between the two? It is idle to think of setting bounds to the weakness
+and illusions of self-love as long as it is confined to a man's own
+breast; but it ought not to be made a plea for holding back the powerful
+hand that is stretched out to save another struggling with the tide
+of popular prejudice, who has suffered shipwreck of health, fame and
+fortune in a common cause, and who has deserved the aid and the good
+wishes of all who are (on principle) embarked in the same cause by equal
+zeal and honesty, if not by equal talents to support and to adorn it!
+
+We shall conclude the present article with a short notice of an
+individual who, in the cast of his mind and in political principle,
+bears no very remote resemblance to the patriot and wit just spoken
+of, and on whose merits we should descant at greater length, but that
+personal intimacy might be supposed to render us partial. It is well
+when personal intimacy produces this effect; and when the light, that
+dazzled us at a distance, does not on a closer inspection turn out an
+opaque substance. This is a charge that none of his friends will bring
+against Mr. Leigh Hunt. He improves upon acquaintance. The author
+translates admirably into the man. Indeed the very faults of his style
+are virtues in the individual. His natural gaiety and sprightliness of
+manner, his high animal spirits, and the _vinous_ quality of his mind,
+produce an immediate fascination and intoxication in those who come in
+contact with him, and carry off in society whatever in his writings may
+to some seem flat and impertinent. From great sanguineness of temper,
+from great quickness and unsuspecting simplicity, he runs on to the
+public as he does at his own fire-side, and talks about himself,
+forgetting that he is not always among friends. His look, his tone are
+required to point many things that he says: his frank, cordial manner
+reconciles you instantly to a little over-bearing, over-weening self-
+complacency. "To be admired, he needs but to be seen:" but perhaps he
+ought to be seen to be fully appreciated. No one ever sought his society
+who did not come away with a more favourable opinion of him: no one was
+ever disappointed, except those who had entertained idle prejudices
+against him. He sometimes trifles with his readers, or tires of
+a subject (from not being urged on by the stimulus of immediate
+sympathy)--but in conversation he is all life and animation, combining
+the vivacity of the school-boy with the resources of the wit and the
+taste of the scholar. The personal character, the spontaneous impulses,
+do not appear to excuse the author, unless you are acquainted with his
+situation and habits--like some proud beauty who gives herself what
+we think strange airs and graces under a mask, but who is instantly
+forgiven when she shews her face. We have said that Lord Byron is a
+sublime coxcomb: why should we not say that Mr. Hunt is a delightful
+one? There is certainly an exuberance of satisfaction in his manner
+which is more than the strict logical premises warrant, and which dull
+and phlegmatic constitutions know nothing of, and cannot understand till
+they see it. He is the only poet or literary man we ever knew who puts
+us in mind of Sir John Suckling or Killigrew or Carew; or who united
+rare intellectual acquirements with outward grace and natural gentility.
+Mr. Hunt ought to have been a gentleman born, and to have patronised men
+of letters. He might then have played, and sung, and laughed, and talked
+his life away; have written manly prose, elegant verse; and his _Story
+of Rimini_ would have been praised by Mr. Blackwood. As it is, there is
+no man now living who at the same time writes prose and verse so well,
+with the exception of Mr. Southey (an exception, we fear, that will be
+little palatable to either of these gentlemen). His prose writings,
+however, display more consistency of principle than the laureate's: his
+verses more taste. We will venture to oppose his Third Canto of the
+_Story of Rimini_ for classic elegance and natural feeling to any equal
+number of lines from Mr. Southey's Epics or from Mr. Moore's Lalla
+Rookh. In a more gay and conversational style of writing, we think his
+_Epistle to Lord Byron_ on his going abroad, is a masterpiece;--and the
+_Feast of the Poets_ has run through several editions. A light, familiar
+grace, and mild unpretending pathos are the characteristics of his more
+sportive or serious writings, whether in poetry or prose. A smile
+plays round the features of the one; a tear is ready to start from the
+thoughtful gaze of the other. He perhaps takes too little pains, and
+indulges in too much wayward caprice in both. A wit and a poet, Mr. Hunt
+is also distinguished by fineness of tact and sterling sense: he has
+only been a visionary in humanity, the fool of virtue. What then is the
+drawback to so many shining qualities, that has made them useless, or
+even hurtful to their owner? His crime is, to have been Editor of the
+_Examiner_ ten years ago, when some allusion was made in it to the age
+of the present king, and that, though his Majesty has grown older, our
+luckless politician is no wiser than he was then!
+
+
+[Footnote A: Compare his songs with Burns's.]
+
+[Footnote B:
+
+  "There was a little man, and he had a little soul,
+  And he said, Little soul, let us try," &c.--
+
+Parody on
+
+  "There was a little man, and he had a little gun."--
+
+One should think this exquisite ridicule of a pedantic effusion might
+have silenced for ever the automaton that delivered it: but the
+official personage in question at the close of the Session addressed an
+extra-official congratulation to the Prince Regent on a bill that had
+_not_ passed--as if to repeat and insist upon our errors were to justify
+them.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+ELIA, AND GEOFFREY CRAYON.
+
+
+
+So Mr. Charles Lamb and Mr. Washington Irvine choose to designate
+themselves; and as their lucubrations under one or other of these _noms
+de guerre_ have gained considerable notice from the public, we shall
+here attempt to discriminate their several styles and manner, and to
+point out the beauties and defects of each in treating of somewhat
+similar subjects.
+
+Mr. Irvine is, we take it, the more popular writer of the two, or a more
+general favourite: Mr. Lamb has more devoted, and perhaps more judicious
+partisans. Mr. Irvine is by birth an American, and has, as it were,
+_skimmed the cream_, and taken off patterns with great skill and
+cleverness, from our best known and happiest writers, so that their
+thoughts and almost their reputation are indirectly transferred to his
+page, and smile upon us from another hemisphere, like "the pale reflex
+of Cynthia's brow:" he succeeds to our admiration and our sympathy by a
+sort of prescriptive title and traditional privilege. Mr. Lamb, on the
+contrary, being "native to the manner here," though he too has borrowed
+from previous sources, instead of availing himself of the most popular
+and admired, has groped out his way, and made his most successful
+researches among the more obscure and intricate, though certainly not
+the least pithy or pleasant of our writers. Mr. Washington Irvine has
+culled and transplanted the flowers of modern literature, for the
+amusement of the general reader: Mr. Lamb has raked among the dust and
+cobwebs of a more remote period, has exhibited specimens of curious
+relics, and pored over moth-eaten, decayed manuscripts, for the benefit
+of the more inquisitive and discerning part of the public. Antiquity
+after a time has the grace of novelty, as old fashions revived are
+mistaken for new ones; and a certain quaintness and singularity of style
+is an agreeable relief to the smooth and insipid monotony of modern
+composition. Mr. Lamb has succeeded not by conforming to the _Spirit of
+the Age_, but in opposition to it. He does not march boldly along with
+the crowd, but steals off the pavement to pick his way in the contrary
+direction. He prefers _bye-ways_ to _highways_. When the full tide of
+human life pours along to some festive shew, to some pageant of a day,
+Elia would stand on one side to look over an old book-stall, or stroll
+down some deserted pathway in search of a pensive inscription over a
+tottering door-way, or some quaint device in architecture, illustrative
+of embryo art and ancient manners. Mr. Lamb has the very soul of an
+antiquarian, as this implies a reflecting humanity; the film of the past
+hovers for ever before him. He is shy, sensitive, the reverse of every
+thing coarse, vulgar, obtrusive, and _common-place_. He would fain
+"shuffle off this mortal coil", and his spirit clothes itself in the
+garb of elder time, homelier, but more durable. He is borne along with
+no pompous paradoxes, shines in no glittering tinsel of a fashionable
+phraseology; is neither fop nor sophist. He has none of the turbulence
+or froth of new-fangled opinions. His style runs pure and clear,
+though it may often take an underground course, or be conveyed through
+old-fashioned conduit-pipes. Mr. Lamb does not court popularity, nor
+strut in gaudy plumes, but shrinks from every kind of ostentatious and
+obvious pretension into the retirement of his own mind.
+
+  "The self-applauding bird, the peacock see:--
+  Mark what a sumptuous pharisee is he!
+  Meridian sun-beams tempt him to unfold
+  His radiant glories, azure, green, and gold:
+  He treads as if, some solemn music near,
+  His measured step were governed by his ear:
+  And seems to say--Ye meaner fowl, give place,
+  I am all splendour, dignity, and grace!
+  Not so the pheasant on his charms presumes,
+  Though he too has a glory in his plumes.
+  He, christian-like, retreats with modest mien
+  To the close copse or far sequestered green,
+  And shines without desiring to be seen."
+
+These lines well describe the modest and delicate beauties of Mr. Lamb's
+writings, contrasted with the lofty and vain-glorious pretensions of
+some of his contemporaries. This gentleman is not one of those who pay
+all their homage to the prevailing idol: he thinks that
+
+  "New-born gauds are made and moulded of things past."
+
+nor does he
+
+  "Give to dust that is a little gilt
+  More laud than gilt o'er-dusted."
+
+His convictions "do not in broad rumour lie," nor are they "set off to
+the world in the glistering foil" of fashion; but "live and breathe
+aloft in those pure eyes, and perfect judgment of all-seeing _time_."
+Mr. Lamb rather affects and is tenacious of the obscure and remote: of
+that which rests on its own intrinsic and silent merit; which scorns all
+alliance, or even the suspicion of owing any thing to noisy clamour, to
+the glare of circumstances. There is a fine tone of _chiaro-scuro_, a
+moral perspective in his writings. He delights to dwell on that which is
+fresh to the eye of memory; he yearns after and covets what soothes the
+frailty of human nature. That touches him most nearly which is withdrawn
+to a certain distance, which verges on the borders of oblivion:--that
+piques and provokes his fancy most, which is hid from a superficial
+glance. That which, though gone by, is still remembered, is in his view
+more genuine, and has given more "vital signs that it will live," than a
+thing of yesterday, that may be forgotten to-morrow. Death has in this
+sense the spirit of life in it; and the shadowy has to our author
+something substantial in it. Ideas savour most of reality in his mind;
+or rather his imagination loiters on the edge of each, and a page of his
+writings recals to our fancy the _stranger_ on the grate, fluttering in
+its dusky tensity, with its idle superstition and hospitable welcome!
+
+Mr. Lamb has a distaste to new faces, to new books, to new buildings, to
+new customs. He is shy of all imposing appearances, of all assumptions
+of self-importance, of all adventitious ornaments, of all mechanical
+advantages, even to a nervous excess. It is not merely that he does
+not rely upon, or ordinarily avail himself of them; he holds them in
+abhorrence, he utterly abjures and discards them, and places a great
+gulph between him and them. He disdains all the vulgar artifices of
+authorship, all the cant of criticism, and helps to notoriety. He has no
+grand swelling theories to attract the visionary and the enthusiast, no
+passing topics to allure the thoughtless and the vain. He evades the
+present, he mocks the future. His affections revert to, and settle on
+the past, but then, even this must have something personal and local in
+it to interest him deeply and thoroughly; he pitches his tent in the
+suburbs of existing manners; brings down the account of character to the
+few straggling remains of the last generation; seldom ventures beyond
+the bills of mortality, and occupies that nice point between egotism
+and disinterested humanity. No one makes the tour of our southern
+metropolis, or describes the manners of the last age, so well as Mr.
+Lamb--with so fine, and yet so formal an air--with such vivid obscurity,
+with such arch piquancy, such picturesque quaintness, such smiling
+pathos. How admirably he has sketched the former inmates of the South-
+Sea House; what "fine fretwork he makes of their double and single
+entries!" With what a firm, yet subtle pencil he has embodied _Mrs.
+Battle's Opinions on Whist_! How notably he embalms a battered _beau_;
+how delightfully an amour, that was cold forty years ago, revives in
+his pages! With what well-disguised humour he introduces us to his
+relations, and how freely he serves up his friends! Certainly, some of
+his portraits are _fixtures_, and will do to hang up as lasting and
+lively emblems of human infirmity. Then there is no one who has so sure
+an ear for "the chimes at midnight", not even excepting Mr. Justice
+Shallow; nor could Master Silence himself take his "cheese and pippins"
+with a more significant and satisfactory air. With what a gusto Mr. Lamb
+describes the inns and courts of law, the Temple and Gray's-Inn, as if
+he had been a student there for the last two hundred years, and had been
+as well acquainted with the person of Sir Francis Bacon as he is with
+his portrait or writings! It is hard to say whether St. John's Gate is
+connected with more intense and authentic associations in his mind, as
+a part of old London Wall, or as the frontispiece (time out of mind) of
+the Gentleman's Magazine. He haunts Watling-street like a gentle spirit;
+the avenues to the play-houses are thick with panting recollections,
+and Christ's-Hospital still breathes the balmy breath of infancy in his
+description of it! Whittington and his Cat are a fine hallucination for
+Mr. Lamb's historic Muse, and we believe he never heartily forgave a
+certain writer who took the subject of Guy Faux out of his hands. The
+streets of London are his fairy-land, teeming with wonder, with life
+and interest to his retrospective glance, as it did to the eager eye
+of childhood; he has contrived to weave its tritest traditions into a
+bright and endless romance!
+
+Mr. Lamb's taste in books is also fine, and it is peculiar. It is not
+the worse for a little _idiosyncrasy_. He does not go deep into the
+Scotch novels, but he is at home in Smollett and Fielding. He is little
+read in Junius or Gibbon, but no man can give a better account of
+Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, or Sir Thomas Brown's Urn-Burial,
+or Fuller's Worthies, or John Bunyan's Holy War. No one is more
+unimpressible to a specious declamation; no one relishes a recondite
+beauty more. His admiration of Shakespear and Milton does not make
+him despise Pope; and he can read Parnell with patience, and Gay
+with delight. His taste in French and German literature is somewhat
+defective: nor has he made much progress in the science of Political
+Economy or other abstruse studies, though he has read vast folios of
+controversial divinity, merely for the sake of the intricacy of style,
+and to save himself the pain of thinking. Mr. Lamb is a good judge of
+prints and pictures. His admiration of Hogarth does credit to both,
+particularly when it is considered that Leonardo da Vinci is his next
+greatest favourite, and that his love of the _actual_ does not
+proceed from a want of taste for the _ideal_. His worst fault is an
+over-eagerness of enthusiasm, which occasionally makes him take a
+surfeit of his highest favourites.--Mr. Lamb excels in familiar
+conversation almost as much as in writing, when his modesty does not
+overpower his self-possession. He is as little of a proser as possible;
+but he _blurts_ out the finest wit and sense in the world. He keeps
+a good deal in the back-ground at first, till some excellent conceit
+pushes him forward, and then he abounds in whim and pleasantry. There
+is a primitive simplicity and self-denial about his manners; and a
+Quakerism in his personal appearance, which is, however, relieved by
+a fine Titian head, full of dumb eloquence! Mr. Lamb is a general
+favourite with those who know him. His character is equally singular and
+amiable. He is endeared to his friends not less by his foibles than his
+virtues; he insures their esteem by the one, and does not wound their
+self-love by the other. He gains ground in the opinion of others,
+by making no advances in his own. We easily admire genius where the
+diffidence of the possessor makes our acknowledgment of merit seem like
+a sort of patronage, or act of condescension, as we willingly extend our
+good offices where they are not exacted as obligations, or repaid with
+sullen indifference.--The style of the Essays of Elia is liable to the
+charge of a certain _mannerism_. His sentences are cast in the mould of
+old authors; his expressions are borrowed from them; but his feelings
+and observations are genuine and original, taken from actual life, or
+from his own breast; and he may be said (if any one can) "to have
+coined his heart for _jests_," and to have split his brain for fine
+distinctions! Mr. Lamb, from the peculiarity of his exterior and address
+as an author, would probably never have made his way by detached and
+independent efforts; but, fortunately for himself and others, he has
+taken advantage of the Periodical Press, where he has been stuck into
+notice, and the texture of his compositions is assuredly fine enough to
+bear the broadest glare of popularity that has hitherto shone upon them.
+Mr. Lamb's literary efforts have procured him civic honours (a thing
+unheard of in our times), and he has been invited, in his character of
+ELIA, to dine at a select party with the Lord Mayor. We should prefer
+this distinction to that of being poet-laureat. We would recommend
+to Mr. Waithman's perusal (if Mr. Lamb has not anticipated us) the
+_Rosamond Gray_ and the _John Woodvil_ of the same author, as an
+agreeable relief to the noise of a city feast, and the heat of city
+elections. A friend, a short time ago, quoted some lines[A] from the
+last-mentioned of these works, which meeting Mr. Godwin's eye, he was
+so struck with the beauty of the passage, and with a consciousness of
+having seen it before, that he was uneasy till he could recollect where,
+and after hunting in vain for it in Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher,
+and other not unlikely places, sent to Mr. Lamb to know if he could help
+him to the author!
+
+Mr. Washington Irvine's acquaintance with English literature begins
+almost where Mr. Lamb's ends,--with the Spectator, Tom Brown's works,
+and the wits of Queen Anne. He is not bottomed in our elder writers, nor
+do we think he has tasked his own faculties much, at least on English
+ground. Of the merit of his _Knicker-bocker,_ and New York stories,
+we cannot pretend to judge. But in his _Sketch-book_ and
+_Bracebridge-Hall_ he gives us very good American copies of our British
+Essayists and Novelists, which may be very well on the other side of the
+water, and as proofs of the capabilities of the national genius, but
+which might be dispensed with here, where we have to boast of the
+originals. Not only Mr. Irvine's language is with great taste and
+felicity modelled on that of Addison, Sterne, Goldsmith, or Mackenzie;
+but the thoughts and sentiments are taken at the rebound, and as they
+are brought forward at the present period, want both freshness and
+probability. Mr. Irvine's writings are literary _anachronisms_. He comes
+to England for the first time; and being on the spot, fancies himself in
+the midst of those characters and manners which he had read of in the
+Spectator and other approved authors, and which were the only idea he
+had hitherto formed of the parent country. Instead of looking round
+to see what _we are_, he sets to work to describe us as _we were_--at
+second hand. He has Parson Adams, or Sir Roger de Coverley in his
+"_mind's eye_"; and he makes a village curate, or a country 'squire in
+Yorkshire or Hampshire sit to these admired models for their portraits
+in the beginning of the nineteenth century. Whatever the ingenious
+author has been most delighted with in the representations of books, he
+transfers to his port-folio, and swears that he has found it actually
+existing in the course of his observation and travels through Great
+Britain. Instead of tracing the changes that have taken place in society
+since Addison or Fielding wrote, he transcribes their account in a
+different hand-writing, and thus keeps us stationary, at least in our
+most attractive and praise-worthy qualities of simplicity, honesty,
+hospitality, modesty, and good-nature. This is a very flattering mode
+of turning fiction into history, or history into fiction; and we should
+scarcely know ourselves again in the softened and altered likeness,
+but that it bears the date of 1820, and issues from the press in
+Albemarle-street. This is one way of complimenting our national and
+Tory prejudices; and coupled with literal or exaggerated portraits of
+_Yankee_ peculiarities, could hardly fail to please. The first Essay in
+the _Sketch-book_, that on National Antipathies, is the best; but after
+that, the sterling ore of wit or feeling is gradually spun thinner and
+thinner, till it fades to the shadow of a shade. Mr. Irvine is himself,
+we believe, a most agreeable and deserving man, and has been led into
+the natural and pardonable error we speak of, by the tempting bait of
+European popularity, in which he thought there was no more likely method
+of succeeding than by imitating the style of our standard authors, and
+giving us credit for the virtues of our forefathers.
+
+
+[Footnote A: The description of sports in the forest:
+
+  "To see the sun to bed and to arise,
+  Like some hot amourist with glowing eyes," &c.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+We should not feel that we had discharged our obligations to truth or
+friendship, if we were to let this volume go without introducing into it
+the name of the author of _Virginius_. This is the more proper, inasmuch
+as he is a character by himself, and the only poet now living that is a
+mere poet. If we were asked what sort of a man Mr. Knowles is, we could
+only say, "he is the writer of Virginius." His most intimate friends see
+nothing in him, by which they could trace the work to the author. The
+seeds of dramatic genius are contained and fostered in the warmth of the
+blood that flows in his veins; his heart dictates to his head. The most
+unconscious, the most unpretending, the most artless of mortals, he
+instinctively obeys the impulses of natural feeling, and produces a
+perfect work of art. He has hardly read a poem or a play or seen any
+thing of the world, but he hears the anxious beatings of his own heart,
+and makes others feel them by the force of sympathy. Ignorant alike
+of rules, regardless of models, he follows the steps of truth and
+simplicity; and strength, proportion, and delicacy are the infallible
+results. By thinking of nothing but his subject, he rivets the attention
+of the audience to it. All his dialogue tends to action, all his
+situations form classic groups. There is no doubt that Virginius is the
+best acting tragedy that has been produced on the modern stage. Mr.
+Knowles himself was a player at one time, and this circumstance has
+probably enabled him to judge of the picturesque and dramatic effect of
+his lines, as we think it might have assisted Shakespear. There is
+no impertinent display, no flaunting poetry; the writer immediately
+conceives how a thought would tell if he had to speak it himself. Mr.
+Knowles is the first tragic writer of the age; in other respects he is
+a common man; and divides his time and his affections between his
+plots and his fishing-tackle, between the Muses' spring, and those
+mountain-streams which sparkle like his own eye, that gush out like his
+own voice at the sight of an old friend. We have known him almost from a
+child, and we must say he appears to us the same boy-poet that he ever
+was. He has been cradled in song, and rocked in it as in a dream,
+forgetful of himself and of the world!
+
+
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Spirit of the Age, by William Hazlitt
+
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