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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de
+Quincey--Vol. 1, by Thomas de Quincey
+
+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 Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey--Vol. 1
+       With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg
+
+Author: Thomas de Quincey
+
+Editor: James Hogg
+
+Release Date: July 18, 2006 [EBook #18862]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THOMAS DE QUINCEY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Connal, Paul Good and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at
+http://gallica.bnf.fr)
+
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's Notes: Text that was in italics in the original book is
+shown between _underscore characters_ and text that was in small caps
+is shown as ALL CAPS. Footnotes from the article titles are at the end
+of the first paragraph of the article; all others follow the paragraph
+in which they are referenced. The variation in the spelling of some
+words is maintained from the original.]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: (handwritten) Very truly yours,
+                                        Thomas de Quincey.]
+
+
+
+
+                           THE UNCOLLECTED WRITINGS
+                                      OF
+                              THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
+
+                                     WITH
+                           A PREFACE AND ANNOTATIONS
+                                      BY
+                                  JAMES HOGG.
+
+                            IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I.
+
+                                [Illustration]
+
+                                    LONDON:
+                           SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO.,
+                              PATERNOSTER SQUARE.
+
+                                     1890.
+
+
+
+
+                         RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
+
+                               LONDON & BUNGAY.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+'_The last fruit off an old tree!_' This, in the words of WALTER
+SAVAGE LANDOR, is what I have now the honour to set before the public
+in these hitherto 'UNCOLLECTED WRITINGS OF THOMAS DE QUINCEY.'
+
+It was my privilege to be associated intimately with the Author some
+thirty to forty years ago--from the beginning of 1850 until his death
+in 1859.[1] Throughout the whole period during which he was engaged in
+preparing for the Press his _Selections Grave and Gay_, I assisted in
+the task.
+
+[Footnote 1: DE QUINCEY, LEIGH HUNT, and MACAULAY all died in that
+year.]
+
+Of the singularly pleasant literary intercourse of that memorable time
+I have given some reminiscences in _Harper's Magazine_ for this month.
+I may yet combine in a Volume with these some amusing, scholarly
+letters in my possession, and a Selection of Papers from the original
+sources, which I feel warranted, by the Author's own estimate, in
+calling _De Quincey's Choice Works_. Meantime, in dealing with the
+various Essays and Stories here gathered together, I limit myself to
+such notes as are necessary to point out the special circumstances
+under which some of the papers were written; in others the nature of
+the evidence I have found as to the indisputable authorship.
+
+My special opportunities, derived from constant companionship and the
+continuous discussion with DE QUINCEY of matters concerning his
+writings, gave me the key to some of the admirable papers here
+reprinted. It also entitles me to say, that he would have included a
+number of them in his Collected Works alongside the _Suspiria de
+Profundis_ (Sighs from the Depths), had he lived to continue his
+labours.
+
+When we find that most part of the _Suspiria_--perhaps the highest
+reach of his intellect in impassioned power--did not appear in the
+_Selections_ at all, the reader will at once understand that, in the
+Author's own opinion, the Essays and Stories now first collected, were
+neither less dignified in purpose nor less finished in style than
+those which had passed under his hand in the fourteen volumes he
+nearly completed. Rather like the _Suspiria_, some of these papers
+were reserved as material upon the revision of which his energy might
+be fitly bestowed when health would permit.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The interesting papers which appeared in _Tait's Magazine_ are all
+duly vouched for in that periodical. I have not touched any of the
+autobiographical matter which appeared in _Tait_,--the Author having
+recast that as well as the _Sketches from Childhood_, published in
+_The Instructor_ in the 'Autobiographic Sketches' with which he
+opened the _Selections_. _The Casuistry of Duelling_, indeed, appeared
+in _Tait_ as part of the Autobiographic Series, but, practically, it
+stood as an independent paper. The touching personal passage in this
+article reveals the misery caused by the unbridled scurrility of
+certain notorious publications of the last generation.
+
+The paper on _The German Language_ appeared in _Tait_ in June 1836,
+and the _Brief Appraisal of Greek Literature_ in December 1838 and
+June 1839.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two long and valuable papers on _Education; Plans for the Instruction
+of Boys in Large Numbers_, which appeared in _The London Magazine_ for
+April and May, 1824, were duly authenticated by the following
+characteristic letter from DE QUINCEY to CHRISTOPHER NORTH. It appears
+in _Professor Wilson's Life_, written by his daughter, MRS. GORDON:--
+
+'_London, Thursday, February 24th, 1825._
+
+'MY DEAR WILSON,
+
+'I write to you on the following occasion:--Some time ago, perhaps
+nearly two years ago, Mr. Hill, a lawyer, published a book on
+Education, detailing a plan on which his brothers had established a
+school at Hazlewood, in Warwickshire. This book I reviewed in the
+_London Magazine_, and in consequence received a letter of thanks from
+the Author, who, on my coming to London about midsummer last year,
+called on me. I have since become intimate with him, and, excepting
+that he is a sad Jacobin (as I am obliged to tell him once or twice a
+month), I have no one fault to find with him, for he is a very clever,
+amiable, good creature as ever existed; and in particular directions
+his abilities strike me as really very great indeed. Well, his book
+has just been reviewed in the last _Edinburgh Review_ (of which some
+copies have been in town about a week). This service has been done
+him, I suppose, _through_ some of his political friends--(for he is
+connected with Brougham, Lord Lansdowne, old Bentham, etc.),--but I
+understand _by_ Mr. Jeffrey. Mr. Hill, in common with multitudes in
+this Babylon--who will not put their trust in Blackwood as in God
+(which, you know, he ought to do)--yet privately adores him as the
+Devil; and indeed publicly too, is a great _prôneur_ of Blackwood.
+For, in spite of his Jacobinism, he is liberal and inevitably just to
+real wit. His fear is--that Blackwood may come as Nemesis, and compel
+him to regorge any puffing and cramming which Tiff has put into his
+pocket, and is earnest to have a letter addressed in an influential
+quarter to prevent this. I alleged to him that I am not quite sure but
+it is an affront to a Professor to presume that he has any connection
+as contributor, or anything else, to any work which he does not
+publicly avow as his organ for communicating with the world of
+letters. He answers that it would be so in him,--but that an old
+friend may write _sub rosa_. I rejoin that I know not but you may have
+cut Blackwood--even as a subscriber--a whole lustrum ago. He rebuts,
+by urging a just compliment paid to you, as a supposed contributor, in
+the _News of Literature and Fashion_, but a moon or two ago.
+Seriously, I have told him that I know not what was the extent of your
+connection with Blackwood at _any_ time; and that I conceive the
+labours of your Chair in the University must now leave you little
+leisure for any but occasional contributions, and therefore for no
+regular cognizance of the work as director, etc. However, as all that
+he wishes--is simply an interference to save him from any very severe
+article, and not an article in his favour, I have ventured to ask of
+you if you hear of any such thing, to use such influence as must
+naturally belong to you in your general character (whether maintaining
+any connection with Blackwood or not) to get it softened. On the
+whole, I suppose no such article is likely to appear. But to oblige
+Hill I make the application. He has no _direct_ interest in the
+prosperity of Hazlewood; he is himself a barrister in considerable
+practice, and of some standing, I believe; but he takes a strong
+paternal interest in it, all his brothers (who are accomplished young
+men, I believe) being engaged in it. They have already had one shock
+to stand: a certain Mr. Place, a Jacobin friend of the School till
+just now, having taken the pet with it--and removed his sons. Now this
+Mr. Place, who was formerly a tailor--leather-breeches maker and
+habit-maker,--having made a fortune and finished his studies,--is
+become an immense authority as a political and reforming head with
+Bentham, etc., as also with the _Westminster Review_, in which quarter
+he is supposed to have the weight of nine times nine men; whence, by
+the way, in the "circles" of the booksellers, the Review has got the
+name of the _Breeches Review_.' ... [The writer then passes on to
+details of his own plans and prospects, and thus concludes.]
+
+'I beg my kind regards to Mrs. Wilson and my young friends, whom I
+remember with so much interest as I last saw them at Elleray.--I am,
+my dear Wilson,
+
+'Very affectionately yours,
+
+'THOMAS DE QUINCEY.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In approaching the consideration of other papers said, in various
+quarters (with some show of authority) to have been written by DE
+QUINCEY, it was necessary to act with extreme care. One was a
+painstaking list on the whole, but very inaccurate as regards certain
+contributions attributed to DE QUINCEY in _Blackwood_. I have had the
+kind aid of MESSRS. BLACKWOOD in examining the archives of _Maga_ to
+settle the points in question.
+
+I was puzzled by some papers in _The London Magazine_ set down as DE
+QUINCEY'S contributions in a memorandum said to have been furnished by
+MESSRS. TAYLOR and HESSEY, its Publishers. The _Blackwood_ blunders
+made me very sceptical. There was one story in particular--the long
+droll one of _Mr. Schnackenberger; or, Two Masters to one Dog_, about
+which I remained in doubt.
+
+I had a faint recollection that one day DE QUINCEY dwelt on the merits
+of 'JUNO,' and owned the story when he was discussing 'bull-dogs.'
+
+By the way, he was rather fond of 'bull-dogs,' and had some good
+anecdotes about them. It was a kind of pet-admiration-horror which he
+shared with SOUTHEY, on account of the difficulty in making a
+well-bred bull-dog relax his grip. Some member of the canine 'fancy'
+down at the Lakes had given them a so-called infallible 'tip' for
+making a bull-dog let go. I am sorry to say I have quite forgotten
+this admirable receipt. To be sure, one ought never to forget such
+valuable pieces of information. So I thought one day lately before the
+muzzling order came into force, when a bloodthirsty monster,--a big,
+white bull-dog, sprang suddenly at me in Cleveland Gardens. Instantly
+there flashed the thought--what was it that DE QUINCEY recommended? A
+lucky lunge which drove the ferule of my umbrella down the brute's
+throat fortunately created a diversion, and allowed a little more time
+for the study of the problem. Perhaps I will be pardoned this
+digression, as it affords an opportunity of recording the fact that DE
+QUINCEY and SOUTHEY both looked up to the bull-dog as an animal of
+very decided 'character.'
+
+I was loth to abandon _Mr. Schnackenberger_, but unwilling to lean
+too much on my somewhat hazy remembrance. It seemed almost hopeless to
+obtain the necessary evidence. MESSRS. TAYLOR and HESSEY were long
+dead, and after groping about like a detective, no one could tell me
+what had become of the records of _The London Magazine_. Suddenly
+there came light in October last. I ascertained that a son of one of
+the Publishers is the ARCHDEACON of MIDDLESEX, the Venerable J. A.
+HESSEY, D.C.L.
+
+I stated the case, and the worthy ARCHDEACON came most kindly and
+promptly to my assistance. As a boy he remembered DE QUINCEY at his
+father's house, and recollected very well reading _Mr. Schnackenberger_.
+He informed me, 'I was greatly interested in the [London] Magazine
+generally, so much so, that, at my father's request, I copied from his
+private list, and attached to the head of each paper the name of the
+Author.... This interesting set came to me at my father's death.'
+
+DR. HESSEY had subsequently presented the series to his old pupil, MR.
+WILLIAM CAREW HAZLITT (by whose courtesy I have been able to examine
+it)--'the grandson of WILLIAM HAZLITT, who was a frequent writer in
+the Magazine, and an old friend of my father. I thought he would like
+to possess it, and that it would thus be in fitting hands. I should
+not have parted with it in favour of any but a man like MR. HAZLITT,
+who was sure to value it.'
+
+As these valuable annotations of the ARCHDEACON ramify in various
+directions--touching as they do the contributions of many brilliant
+men of that period--it may not be amiss (as a possible help to others
+in the future) to add a few more decisive words by DR. HESSEY:--
+
+'If any papers are not marked (he refers only to those volumes
+actually published by MESSRS. TAYLOR and HESSEY) it was because they
+were anonymous, or because, from some inadvertency, they were not
+assigned in my father's list. _So far as the record goes, it may be
+depended upon._'
+
+By its help I was able to fix the authorship by DE QUINCEY of (1) _The
+Dog Story_--translated from the German, (2) _Moral Effects of
+Revolutions_, (3) _Prefigurations of Remote Events_, (4) _Abstract of
+Swedenborgianism by Immanuel Kant_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another perplexing element was the letter written by DE QUINCEY to his
+uncle, COLONEL PENSON, in 1819 (PAGE'S _Life_, vol. i. p. 207),
+wherein reference is made to certain contributions to _Blackwood's
+Magazine_ and _The Quarterly Review_.
+
+The archives of _Maga_ I find go back only as far as 1825. As to _The
+Quarterly Review_, I have MR. MURRAY'S authority for stating that DE
+QUINCEY never wrote a line in it. Whether any contributions were ever
+commissioned, paid for, and afterwards suppressed, I have been unable
+to ascertain. As a matter of fact, the _Schiller_ Series referred to
+in the letter to COLONEL PENSON was never reviewed in _The Quarterly_
+at all.
+
+DE QUINCEY as a Newspaper Editor forms the subject of a Chapter in
+PAGE'S _Life_. Some extracts are there given from cuttings out of _The
+Westmorland Gazette_ found amongst the Author's Papers. This
+editorship (1818-19) was of short duration, and pursued under hostile
+circumstances, such as distance from the Press, &c., which soon led to
+DE QUINCEY'S resignation. I had hoped to add some further specimens of
+the newspaper work, but have not, as yet, obtained access to a file of
+the period. In any future edition I may be able to add this in an
+Appendix.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_The Love-Charm._--In spite of the marvellous tenacity of DE QUINCEY'S
+memory, even as to the very words of a passage in an Author which he
+had, perhaps, only _once_ read, there were _blanks_ which confounded
+himself. One of these bore on his contributions to KNIGHT'S _Quarterly
+Magazine_. MR. FIELDS had been so generally careful in obtaining
+sufficient authority for what he published, in the original American
+edition, that DE QUINCEY good-humouredly gave the verdict against
+himself, and 'supposed he _must_ be wrong' in thinking that some of
+these special papers were not from his pen. Still,--he demurred, and
+before including them in _The Selections Grave and Gay_, it was
+resolved to institute an inquiry. Accordingly, about 1852, I was
+deputed to interview MR. CHARLES KNIGHT, and request his aid. My
+mission was to obtain, if possible, a correct list of the various
+contributions to the _Quarterly Magazine_, including this
+_Love-Charm_.
+
+MR. KNIGHT, MR. RAMSAY (his first lieutenant, as he called him), and
+myself all met at Fleet Street, where we had the archives of the old
+_Quarterly Magazine_ turned up, and a list checked. I lately found
+this particular story also referred to circumstantially in the annexed
+paragraph contained in CHARLES KNIGHT'S _Passages of a Working Life_
+(THORNE'S re-issue, vol. I. chap. x. p. 339).
+
+'DE QUINCEY had written to me in December 1824, in the belief that, as
+he expressed it, "many of your friends will rally about you, and urge
+you to some new undertaking of the same kind. If that should happen, I
+beg to say, that you may count upon me, as one of your men, for any
+extent of labour, to the best of my power, which you may choose to
+command." He wrote a translation of _The Love-Charm_ of TIECK, with a
+notice of the Author. This is not reprinted in his Collected Works,
+though perhaps it is the most interesting of his translations from the
+German. In this spring and summer DE QUINCEY and I were in intimate
+companionship. It was a pleasant time of intellectual intercourse for
+me.'
+
+There is no doubt _The Love-Charm_ would have been reprinted had the
+Author lived to carry the _Selections_ farther.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The curious little Essay _On Novels_,--written in a Lady's Album, had
+passed out of MR. DAVEY'S hands before I became aware of its
+existence. The _facsimile_, however, taken for _The Archivist_, by an
+expert like MR. NETHERCLIFT, shows that it is, unquestionably, in the
+handwriting of DE QUINCEY. I have been unable to trace the 'FAIR
+INCOGNITA' to whom it was addressed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The compositions which were written for me when I edited _Titan_, and
+which I now place before the public in volume form, after the lapse of
+a whole generation (thirty-three years, to speak 'by the card'),
+demand some special comment, particularly in their relation to the
+_Selections Grave and Gay_.
+
+_Titan_ was a half-crown monthly Magazine, a continuation in an
+enlarged form of _The Instructor_. I had become the acting Editor of
+its predecessor, _the New Series_ of _The Instructor_, working in
+concert with my Father, the proprietor. In this _New Series_ there
+appeared from DE QUINCEY'S pen _The Sphinx's Riddle_, _Judas
+Iscariot_, the Series of _Sketches from Childhood_, and other notable
+papers.
+
+At that time I was but a young editor--young and, perhaps, a little
+'curly,' as LORD BEACONSFIELD put it. DE QUINCEY, with a truly
+paternal solicitude, gave me much good advice and valuable help, both
+in the selection of subjects for the Magazine and in the mode of
+handling them. The notes on _The Lake Dialect_, _Shakspere's Text and
+Suetonius Unravelled_, were written to me in the form of Letters, and
+published in _Titan_.
+
+_Storms in English History_ was a consideration of part of MR.
+FROUDE'S well-known book, which on its publication made a great stir
+in the literary world, and profoundly impressed DE QUINCEY.
+
+_How to write English_ was the first of a series projected for _The
+Instructor_. It never got beyond this 'Introduction,' but the fragment
+contains some matter well worthy of preservation.
+
+The circumstances attending the composition of the four papers on _The
+English in India_ and _The English in China_, I have explained at some
+length in the introductory notices attached to them.
+
+And now for a confession! The 'gentle reader' may, perhaps, feel a
+momentary inclination to blame me when I reveal, that I rather stood
+in the way of some brilliant articles which were very seriously
+considered at this period.
+
+DE QUINCEY was eager to write them, and I should have been glad indeed
+to have had them for _Titan_, but for a fear of allowing the Author to
+wander too far from the ever-present and irksome _Works_. Any possible
+escape--even through other downright hard work, from this perplexing
+labour was joyfully hailed by him as a hopeful chance of obtaining a
+prosperous holiday.
+
+For a little I wavered under the temptation (Reader,--was it not
+great?)--the idea of having a little relaxation which would permit
+some, at least, of these well-planned papers to be written. But I was
+keenly alive to the danger which overtook us at last. We are daily
+reminded that 'art is long and life is short.' I had already saved the
+_Works_ from being strangled at their birth in a legal tussle with MR.
+JOHN TAYLOR.[2] My Father was at my elbow anxiously inquiring about
+the progress of the 'copy' for each succeeding volume. There were
+eager friends also, on both sides of the Atlantic, pressing resolutely
+for it. So--prudence prevailed, and we held as straightly on our way
+as the Author's uncertain health would permit.
+
+[Footnote 2: This incident was a complicated contention, concerning
+the copyright of _The Confessions_, in which DE QUINCEY had long
+allowed his rights to lie dormant. It was at last happily settled in
+an amicable manner.]
+
+Thus it came to pass, dear Public, that you lost some charming essays,
+while you gained the fourteen volumes of the _Selections_ which the
+Author all but completed.
+
+Wherefore, seeing that you may possibly expect it of me to make some
+use of my rare opportunities by doing whatever I can in these matters,
+'before the night cometh,'--I have prepared this book--_ohne hast,
+ohne rast_.
+
+I cannot close these few pages better than by quoting some strong,
+just, sympathetic words which appeared in two great reviews--one
+American, the other British.
+
+_The North American Review_ said:--
+
+'In DE QUINCEY we are struck at once by the exquisite refinement of
+mind, the subtleness of association, and the extreme tenuity of the
+threads of thought, the gossamer filaments yet finally weaving
+themselves together, and thickening imperceptibly into a strong and
+expanded web. Mingled with this, and perhaps springing from a similar
+mental habit, is an occasional dreaminess both in speculation and in
+narrative, when the mind seems to move vaguely round in vast returning
+circles. The thoughts catch hold of nothing, but are heaved and tossed
+like masses of cloud by the wind. An incident of trivial import is
+turned and turned to catch the light of every possible consequence,
+and so magnified as to become portentous and terrible.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+'A barren and trivial fact, under the power of that life-giving hand,
+shoots out on all sides into waving branches and green leaves, and
+odoriferous flowers. It is not the fact that interests us, but the
+mind working upon it, investing it with mock-heroic dignity, or
+rendering it illustrative of really serious principles; or, with the
+true insight of genius, discovering, in that which a vulgar eye would
+despise, the germs of grandeur and beauty; the passions of war in the
+contests of the rival factions of schoolboys, the tragedy in every
+peasant's death-bed.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+'DE QUINCEY constantly amazes us by the amount and diversity of his
+learning. Two or three of the minor papers in the collected volumes
+are absolutely loaded with the life spoils of their author's
+scholarship, yet carry their burden as lightly as our bodies sustain
+the weight of the circumambient atmosphere. So perfect is his tact in
+finding, or rather making a place for everything, that, while
+inviting, he eludes the charge of pedantry.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+'It is scarcely to be expected that one who tries his hand at so many
+kinds of pencraft should always excel; yet such is the force of DE
+QUINCEY'S intellect, the brilliancy of his imagination, and the charm
+of his style, that he throws a new and peculiar interest over every
+subject which he discusses, while his fictitious narratives in general
+rivet the attention of the reader with a power not easily resisted.'
+
+_The Quarterly Review_ said:--
+
+'DE QUINCEY'S style is superb, his powers of reasoning unsurpassed,
+his imagination is warm and brilliant, and his humour both masculine
+and delicate.'
+
+The writer continues:--
+
+'A great master of English composition, a critic of uncommon delicacy,
+an honest and unflinching investigator of received opinions, a
+philosophic inquirer--DE QUINCEY has departed from us full of years,
+and left no successor to his rank. The exquisite finish of his style,
+with the scholastic vigour of his logic, form a combination which
+centuries may never reproduce, but which every generation should study
+as one of the marvels of English Literature.'
+
+JAMES HOGG.
+
+_London, February, 1890_.
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+                                                  PAGE
+
+PREFACE                                              V
+
+A BRIEF APPRAISAL OF THE GREEK LITERATURE
+IN ITS FOREMOST-PRETENSIONS                         23
+
+THE GERMAN LANGUAGE, AND PHILOSOPHY OF KANT         91
+
+MORAL EFFECTS OF REVOLUTIONS                       130
+
+PREFIGURATIONS OF REMOTE EVENTS                    132
+
+MEASURE OF VALUE                                   134
+
+LETTER IN REPLY TO HAZLITT CONCERNING THE
+MALTHUSIAN DOCTRINE OF POPULATION                  141
+
+THE SERVICES OF MR. RICARDO TO THE SCIENCE
+OF POLITICAL ECONOMY                               154
+
+EDUCATION, AND CASE OF APPEAL                      160
+
+ABSTRACT OF SWEDENBORGIANISM                       215
+
+SKETCH OF PROFESSOR WILSON                         225
+
+THE LAKE DIALECT                                   265
+
+STORMS IN ENGLISH HISTORY                          275
+
+THE ENGLISH IN INDIA                               298
+
+ON NOVELS (WRITTEN IN A LADY'S ALBUM)              354
+
+DE QUINCEY'S PORTRAIT                              357
+
+
+
+
+A BRIEF APPRAISAL OF THE GREEK LITERATURE IN ITS FOREMOST PRETENSIONS:
+
+     _By way of Counsel to Adults who are hesitating as to the
+     Propriety of Studying the Greek Language with a view to the
+     Literature; and by way of consolation to those whom
+     circumstances have obliged to lay aside that plan._
+
+
+No. I.
+
+No question has been coming up at intervals for reconsideration more
+frequently than that which respects the comparative pretensions of
+Pagan (viz. Greek and Roman) Literature on the one side, and Modern
+(that is, the Literature of Christendom) on the other. Being brought
+uniformly before unjust tribunals--that is, tribunals corrupted and
+bribed by their own vanity--it is not wonderful that this great
+question should have been stifled and overlaid with peremptory
+decrees, dogmatically cutting the knot rather than skilfully untying
+it, as often as it has been moved afresh, and put upon the roll for a
+re-hearing. It is no mystery to those who are in the secret, and who
+can lay A and B together, why it should have happened that the most
+interesting of all literary questions, and the most comprehensive
+(for it includes most others, and some special to itself), has, in
+the first place, never been pleaded in a style of dignity, of
+philosophic precision, of feeling, or of research, proportioned to its
+own merits, and to the numerous 'issues' (forensically speaking)
+depending upon it; nor, in the second place, has ever received such an
+adjudication as was satisfactory _even at the moment_. For, be it
+remembered, after all, that any provisional adjudication--one growing
+out of the fashion or taste of a single era--could not, at any rate,
+be binding for a different era. A judgment which met the approbation
+of Spenser could hardly have satisfied Dryden; nor another which
+satisfied Pope, have been recognised as authentic by us of the year
+1838. It is the normal or exemplary condition of the human mind, its
+ideal condition, not its abnormal condition, as seen in the transitory
+modes and fashions of its taste or its opinions, which only
+
+    'Can lay great bases for eternity,'
+
+or give even a colourable permanence to any decision in a matter so
+large, so perplexed, so profound, as this great pending suit between
+antiquity and ourselves--between the junior men of this earth and
+ourselves, the seniors, as Lord Bacon reasonably calls us. Appeals
+will be brought _ad infinitum_--we ourselves shall bring appeals, to
+set aside any judgment that may be given, until something more is
+consulted than individual taste; better evidence brought forward than
+the result of individual reading; something higher laid down as the
+_grounds_ of judgment, as the very principles of the jurisprudence
+which controls the court, than those vague _responsa prudentum_,
+countersigned by the great name, perhaps, of Aristotle, but still too
+often mere products of local convenience, of inexperience, of
+experience too limited and exclusively Grecian, or of absolute
+caprice--rules, in short, which are themselves not less truly _sub
+judice_ and liable to appeal than that very appeal cause to which they
+are applied as decisive.
+
+We have remarked, that it is no mystery why the decision should have
+gone pretty uniformly in favour of the ancients; for here is the
+dilemma:--A man, attempting this problem, _is_ or _is not_ a classical
+scholar. If he _is_, then he has already received a bias in his
+judgment; he is a bribed man, bribed by his vanity; and is liable to
+be challenged as one of the judges. If he is _not_, then he is but
+imperfectly qualified--imperfectly as respects his knowledge and
+powers; whilst, even as respects his will and affections, it may be
+alleged that he also is under a bias and a corrupt influence; his
+interest being no less obvious to undervalue a literature, which, as
+to _him_, is tabooed and under lock and key, than his opponent's is to
+put a preposterous value upon that knowledge which very probably is
+the one sole advantageous distinction between him and his neighbours.
+
+We might cite an illustration from the French literary history on this
+very point. Every nation in turn has had its rows in this great
+quarrel, which is, in fact, co-extensive with the controversies upon
+human nature itself. The French, of course, have had _theirs_--solemn
+tournaments, single duels, casual 'turn-ups,' and regular 'stand-up'
+fights. The most celebrated of these was in the beginning of the last
+century, when, amongst others who acted as bottle-holders, umpires,
+&c., two champions in particular 'peeled' and fought a considerable
+number of rounds, mutually administering severe punishment, and both
+coming out of the ring disfigured: these were M. la Motte and Madame
+Dacier. But Motte was the favourite at first, and once he got Dacier
+'into chancery,' and 'fibbed' her twice round the ropes, so that she
+became a truly pitiable and delightful spectacle to the connoisseurs
+in fibbing and bloodshed. But here lay the difference: Motte was a
+hard hitter; he was a clever man, and (which all clever men are not) a
+man of sense; but, like Shakspeare, he had no Greek. On the other
+hand, Dacier had nothing _but_ Greek. A certain abbé, at that time,
+amused all Paris with his caricatures of this Madame Dacier, 'who,'
+said he, 'ought to be cooking her husband's dinner, and darning his
+stockings, instead of skirmishing and tilting with Grecian spears;
+for, be it known that, after all her _not cooking_ and her _not
+darning_, she is as poor a scholar as her injured husband is a good
+one.' And _there_ the abbé was right; witness the husband's _Horace_,
+in 9 vols., against the wife's _Homer_. However, this was not
+generally understood. The lady, it was believed, waded petticoat-deep
+in Greek clover; and in any Grecian field of dispute, naturally she
+must be in the right, as against one who barely knew his own language
+and a little Latin. Motte was, therefore, thought by most people to
+have come off second best. For, as soon as ever he opened
+thus--'Madame, it seems to me that, agreeably to all common sense or
+common decorum, the Greek poet should here'----instantly, without
+listening to his argument, the intrepid Amazon replied ([Greek:
+hypodra idousa]), 'You foolish man! you remarkably silly man!--_that_
+is because you know no better; and the reason you know no better, is
+because you do not understand _ton d'apameibomenos_ as I do.' _Ton
+d'apameibomenos_ fell like a hand-grenade amongst Motte's papers, and
+blew him up effectually in the opinion of the multitude. No matter
+what he might say in reply--no matter how reasonable, how
+unanswerable--that one spell of 'No Greek! no Greek!' availed as a
+talisman to the lady both for offence and defence; and refuted all
+syllogisms and all eloquence as effectually as the cry of _À la
+lanterne!_ in the same country some fourscore years after.
+
+So it will always be. Those who (like Madame Dacier) possess no
+accomplishment _but_ Greek, will, of necessity, set a superhuman value
+upon that literature in all its parts, to which their own narrow skill
+becomes an available key. Besides that, over and above this coarse and
+conscious motive for overrating that which reacts with an equal and
+answerable overrating upon their own little philological attainments,
+there is another agency at work, and quite unconsciously to the
+subjects of that agency, in disturbing the sanity of any estimate they
+may make of a foreign literature. It is the habit (well known to
+psychologists) of transferring to anything created by our own skill,
+or which reflects our own skill, as if it lay causatively and
+objectively[3] in the reflecting thing itself, that pleasurable power
+which in very truth belongs subjectively[3] to the mind of him who
+surveys it, from conscious success in the exercise of his own
+energies. Hence it is that we see daily without surprise, young ladies
+hanging enamoured over the pages of an Italian author, and calling
+attention to trivial commonplaces, such as, clothed in plain mother
+English, would have been more repulsive to them than the distinctions
+of a theologian, or the counsels of a great-grandmother. They mistake
+for a pleasure yielded by the author, what is in fact the pleasure
+attending their own success in mastering what was lately an
+insuperable difficulty.
+
+[Footnote 3: _Objectively_ and _subjectively_ are terms somewhat too
+metaphysical; but they are so indispensable to accurate thinking that
+we are inclined to show them some indulgence; and, the more so, in
+cases where the mere position and connection of the words are half
+sufficient to explain their application.]
+
+It is indeed a pitiable spectacle to any man of sense and feeling, who
+happens to be really familiar with the golden treasures of his own
+ancestral literature, and a spectacle which moves alternately scorn
+and sorrow, to see young people squandering their time and painful
+study upon writers not fit to unloose the shoes' latchets of many
+amongst their own compatriots; making painful and remote voyages after
+the drossy refuse, when the pure gold lies neglected at their feet.
+Too often he is reminded of a case, which is still sometimes to be
+witnessed in London. Now and then it will happen that a lover of art,
+modern or antique alike, according to its excellence, will find
+himself honoured by an invitation from some millionnaire, or some
+towering grandee, to 'assist,' as the phrase is, at the opening of a
+case newly landed from the Tiber or the Arno, and fraught (as he is
+assured) with the very gems of Italian art, inter-mingled besides
+with many genuine antiques. He goes: the cases are solemnly disgorged;
+adulatory hangers on, calling themselves artists, and, at all events,
+so much so as to appreciate the solemn farce enacted, stand by
+uttering hollow applauses of my Lord's taste, and endeavouring to play
+upon the tinkling cymbals of spurious enthusiasm: whilst every man of
+real discernment perceives at a glance the mere refuse and sweeping of
+a third-rate _studio_, such as many a native artist would disdain to
+turn out of his hands; and antiques such as could be produced, with a
+month's notice, by cart-loads, in many an obscure corner of London.
+Yet for this rubbish has the great man taken a painful tour; compassed
+land and sea; paid away in exchange a king's ransom; and claims now on
+their behalf, the very humblest homage of artists who are taxed with
+the basest envy if they refuse it, and who, meantime, cannot in
+sincerity look upon the trumpery with other feelings than such as the
+potter's wheel, if (like Ezekiel's wheels) it were instinct with
+spirit, would entertain for the vilest of its own creations;--culinary
+or 'post-culinary' mugs and jugs. We, the writers of this paper, are
+not artists, are not connected with artists. And yet, upon the general
+principle of sympathy with native merit, and of disgust towards all
+affectation, we cannot but recall such anecdotes with scorn; and often
+we recollect the stories recorded by poor Benvenuto Cellini, that
+dissolute but brilliant vagabond, who (like our own British artists)
+was sometimes upbraided with the degeneracy of modern art, and, upon
+his humbly requesting some evidence, received, by way of practical
+answer, a sculptured gem or vase, perhaps with a scornful demand
+of--when would he be able to produce anything like that--'eh, Master
+Ben? Fancy we must wait a few centuries or so, before you'll be ready
+with the fellow of this.' And, lo! on looking into some hidden angle
+of the beautiful production, poor Cellini discovered his own private
+mark, the supposed antique having been a pure forgery of his own. Such
+cases remind one too forcibly of the pretty Horatian tale, where, in a
+contest between two men who undertake to mimic a pig's grunting, he
+who happens to be the favourite of the audience is applauded to the
+echo for his felicitous execution, and repeatedly encored, whilst the
+other man is hissed off the stage, and well kicked by a band of
+amateurs and cognoscenti, as a poor miserable copyist and impostor;
+but, unfortunately for the credit of his exploders, he has just time,
+before they have quite kicked him off, for exposing to view the real
+pig concealed under his cloak, which pig it was, and not himself, that
+had been the artist--forced by pinches into 'mimicry' of his own
+porcine music. Of all baffled connoisseurs, surely, these Roman
+pig-fanciers must have looked the most confounded. Yet there is no
+knowing: and we ourselves have a clever friend, but rather too given
+to subtilising, who contends, upon some argument not perfectly
+intelligible to us, that Horace was not so conclusive in his logic as
+he fancied; that the real pig might not have an 'ideal' or normal
+squeak, but a peculiar and non-representative squeak; and that, after
+all, the man might deserve the 'threshing' he got. Well, it may be so;
+but, however, the Roman audience, wrong or not, for once fancied
+themselves in the wrong; and we cannot but regret that our own
+ungenerous disparagers of native merit, and _exclusive_ eulogisers of
+the dead or the alien--of those only '_quos Libitina sacravit_,' or
+whom oceans divide from us--are not now and then open to the same
+_palpable_ refutation, as they are certainly guilty of the same mean
+error, in prejudging the whole question, and refusing to listen even
+to the plain evidence of their own feelings, or, in some cases, to the
+voice of their own senses.
+
+From this preface it is already abundantly clear what side _we_ take
+in this dispute about modern literature and the antique.[4] And we now
+propose to justify our leaning by a general review of the Pagan
+authors, in their elder section--that is, the Grecians. These will be
+enough in all conscience, for one essay; and even for them we meditate
+a very cursory inquest; not such as would suffice in a grand
+ceremonial day of battle--a _justum proelium_, as a Roman would
+call it--but in a mere perfunctory skirmish, or (if the reader objects
+to that word as pedantic, though, really, it is a highly-favoured word
+amongst ancient divines, and with many a
+
+                         'philosopher,
+    Who has read Alexander Ross over,')
+
+why, in that case, let us indulge his fastidious taste by calling it
+an autoschediastic combat, to which, surely, there can be no such
+objection. And as the manner of the combat is autoschediastic or
+extemporaneous, and to meet a hurried occasion, so is the reader to
+understand that the object of our disputation is not the learned, but
+the unlearned student; and our purpose, not so much to discontent the
+one with his painful acquisitions, as to console the other under what,
+upon the old principle of _omne ignotum pro magnifico_, he is too apt
+to imagine his irreparable disadvantages. We set before us, as our
+especial auditor, the reasonable man of plain sense but strong
+feeling, who wishes to know how much he has lost, and what injury the
+gods did him, when, though making him, perhaps, poetical, they cut
+short his allowance of Latin, and, as to Greek, gave him not a jot
+more than a cow has in her side pocket.
+
+[Footnote 4: In general usage, '_The antique_' is a phrase limited to
+the expression of art; but improperly so. It is quite as legitimately
+used to denote the _literature_ of ancient times, in contradistinction
+to the modern. As to the term _classical_, though generally employed
+as equivalent to Greek and Roman, the reader must not forget this is
+quite a false limitation, contradicting the very reason for applying
+the word in _any_ sense to literature. For the application arose thus:
+The social body of Rome being divided into six classes, of which the
+lowest was the sixth, it followed that the highest was the first.
+Thence, by a natural process common to most languages, those who
+belonged to this highest had no number at all assigned to them. The
+very absence of a number, the calling them _classici_, implied that
+they belonged to _the_ class emphatically, or _par excellence_. _The
+classics_ meant, therefore, the grandees in social consideration; and
+thence by analogy in literature. But if this analogy be transferred
+from Rome to Greece, where it had no corresponding root in civic
+arrangement--then, by parity of reason, to all nations.]
+
+Let us begin at the beginning--and that, as everybody knows, is Homer.
+He is, indeed, so much at the beginning that, for that very reason (if
+even there were no other), he is, and will be ever more, supremely
+interesting. Is the unlearned reader aware of his age? Upon that point
+there are more hypotheses than one or even two. Some there are among
+the chronologers who make him eleven hundred years anterior to Christ.
+But those who allow him least, place him more than nine--that is,
+about two centuries before the establishment of the Grecian Olympiads,
+and (which is pretty nearly the same thing as regards time) before
+Romulus and Remus. Such an antiquity as this, even on its own account,
+is a reasonable object of interest. A poet to whom the great-grandfather
+of old Ancus Martius (his grandfather, did we say--that is, avus?--nay,
+his _abavus_, his _atavus_, his _tritavus_) looked back as to one in a
+line with his remote ancestor--a poet who, if he travelled about as
+extensively as some have supposed him to do, or even as his own
+countryman Herodotus most certainly did five or six hundred years
+afterwards, might have conversed with the very workmen who laid the
+foundations of the first temple at Jerusalem--might have bent the knee
+before Solomon in all his glory:--Such a poet, were he no better than
+the worst of our own old metrical romancers, would--merely for his
+antiquity, merely for the sublime fact of having been coeval with the
+eldest of those whom the eldest of histories presents to our knowledge;
+coeval with the earliest kings of Judah, older than the greatest of the
+Judean prophets, older than the separation of the two Jewish crowns and
+the revolt of Israel, and, even with regard to Moses and to Joshua, not
+in any larger sense junior than as we ourselves are junior to
+Chaucer--purely and exclusively with regard to these pretensions, backed
+and supported by an antique form of an antique language--the most
+comprehensive and the most melodious in the world, would--could--should--ought
+to merit a filial attention; and, perhaps with those who had
+waggon-loads of time to spare, might plead the benefit, beyond most of
+those in whose favour it was enacted, of that Horatian rule--
+
+                  'vos exemplaria Græca,
+    Nocturnâ versate manu, versate diurna.'
+
+In fact, when we recollect that, in round numbers, we ourselves may be
+considered as two thousand years in advance of Christ, and that (by
+assuming less even than a mean between the different dates assigned to
+Homer) he stands a thousand years before Christ, we find between Homer
+and ourselves a gulf of three thousand years, or about one clear half
+of the total extent which we grant to the present duration of our
+planet. This in itself is so sublime a circumstance in the relations
+of Homer to our era, and the sense of power is so delightfully
+titillated to that man's feeling, who, by means of Greek, and a very
+moderate skill in this fine language, is able to grasp the awful span,
+the vast arch of which one foot rest upon 1838, and the other almost
+upon the war of Troy--the mighty rainbow which, like the archangel in
+the Revelation, plants its western limb amongst the carnage and the
+magnificence of Waterloo, and the other amidst the vanishing gleams
+and the dusty clouds of Agamemnon's rearguard--that we may pardon a
+little exultation to the man who can actually mutter to himself, as he
+rides home of a summer evening, the very words and vocal music of the
+old blind man at whose command
+
+      '----------the Iliad and the Odyssey
+    Rose to the murmurs of the voiceful sea.'
+
+But pleasures in this world fortunately are without end. And every
+man, after all, has many pleasures peculiar to himself--pleasures
+which no man shares with him, even as he is shut out from many of
+other men. To renounce one in particular, is no subject for sorrow, so
+long as many remain in that very class equal or superior. Elwood the
+Quaker had a luxury which none of us will ever have, in hearing the
+very voice and utterance of a poet quite as blind as Homer, and by
+many a thousand times more sublime. And yet Elwood was not perhaps
+much happier for _that_. For now, to proceed, reader--abstract from
+his _sublime_ antiquity, and his being the very earliest of authors,
+allowance made for one or two Hebrew writers (who, being inspired, are
+scarcely to be viewed as human competitors), how much is there in
+Homer, _intrinsically_ in Homer, stripped of his fine draperies of
+time and circumstance, in the naked Homer, disapparelled of the pride,
+pomp, and circumstance of glorious antiquity, to remunerate a man for
+his labour in acquiring Greek? Men think very differently about what
+_will_ remunerate any given labour. A fool (professional _fool_) in
+Shakspeare ascertains, by a natural process of logic, that a
+'remuneration' means a _testern_, which is just sixpence; and two
+remunerations, therefore, a testoon, or one shilling. But many men
+will consider the same service ill paid by a thousand pounds. So, of
+the reimbursement for learning a language. Lord Camden is said to have
+learned Spanish, merely to enjoy Don Quixote more racily. Cato, the
+elder Cato, after abusing Greek throughout his life, sat down in
+extreme old age to study it: and wherefore? Mr. Coleridge mentions an
+author, in whom, upon opening his pages with other expectations, he
+stumbled upon the following fragrant passage--'But from this frivolous
+digression upon philosophy and the fine arts, let us return to a
+subject too little understood or appreciated in these sceptical
+days--the subject of _dung_.' Now, _that_ was precisely the course of
+thought with this old censorious Cato: So long as Greek offered, or
+seemed to offer, nothing but philosophy or poetry, he was clamorous
+against Greek; but he began to thaw and melt a little upon the charms
+of Greek--he 'owned the soft impeachment,' when he heard of some
+Grecian treatises upon _beans_ and _turnips_; and, finally, he sank
+under its voluptuous seductions, when he heard of others upon DUNG.
+There are, therefore, as different notions about a 'remuneration' in
+this case, as the poor fool had met with it in _his_ case. We,
+however, unappalled by the bad names of 'Goth,' 'Vandal,' and so
+forth, shall honestly lay before the reader _our_ notions.
+
+When Dryden wrote his famous, indeed matchless, epigram upon the three
+great masters (or reputed masters) of the Epopee, he found himself at
+no loss to characterize the last of the triad--no matter what
+qualities he imputed to the first and the second, he knew himself safe
+in imputing them all to the third. The mighty modern had everything
+that his predecessors were ever _thought_ to have, as well as
+something beside.[5] So he expressed the surpassing grandeur of
+Milton, by saying that in him nature had embodied, by concentration as
+in one focus, whatever excellencies she had scattered separately
+amongst her earlier favourites. But, in strict regard to the facts,
+this is far from being a faithful statement of the relations between
+Milton and his elder brothers of the _Epos_: in sublimity, if that is
+what Dryden meant by 'loftiness of thought,' it is not so fair to
+class Milton with the greatest of poets, as to class him apart,
+retired from all others, sequestered, 'sole-sitting by the shores of
+old romance.' In other poets, in Dante for example, there may be rays,
+gleams, sudden coruscations, casual scintillations, of the sublime;
+but for any continuous and sustained blaze of the sublime, it is in
+vain to look for it, _except_ in Milton, making allowances (as before)
+for the inspired sublimities of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and of the great
+Evangelist's Revelations. As to Homer, no critic who writes from
+personal and _direct_ knowledge on the one hand, or who understands
+the value of words on the other, ever contended in any critical sense
+for sublimity, as a quality to which he had the slightest pretensions.
+What! not Longinus? If he did, it would have been of little
+consequence; for he had no field of comparison, as we, knowing no
+literature but one--whereas we have a range of seven or eight. But he
+did not: [Greek: To hypsêlon],[6] or the elevated, in the Longinian
+sense, expressed all, no matter of what origin, of what tendency,
+which gives a character of life and animation to composition--whatever
+raises it above the dead level of flat prosaic style. Emphasis, or
+what in an artist's sense gives _relief_ to a passage, causing it to
+stand forward, and in advance of what surrounds it--that is the
+predominating idea in the 'sublime' of Longinus. And this explains
+what otherwise has perplexed his modern interpreters--viz. that
+amongst the elements of his sublime, he ranks even the pathetic, _i. e._
+(say they) what by connecting itself with the depressing passion
+of grief is the very counter-agent to the elevating affection of the
+sublime. True, most sapient sirs, my very worthy and approved good
+masters: but that very consideration should have taught you to look
+back, and reconsider your translation of the capital word [Greek:
+hypsos]. It was rather too late in the day, when you had waded
+half-seas over in your translation, to find out either that you
+yourselves were ignoramuses, or that your principal was an ass.
+'Returning were as tedious as go o'er.' And any man might guess how
+you would settle such a dilemma. It is, according to you, a little
+oversight of your principal: '_humanum aliquid passus est._' We, on
+the other hand, affirm that, if an error at all on the part of
+Longinus, it is too monstrous for any man to have 'overlooked.' As
+long as he could see a pike-staff, he must have seen that. And,
+therefore, we revert to _our_ view of the case--viz. that it is
+yourselves who have committed the blunder, in translating by the Latin
+word _sublimis_[7] at all, but still more after it had received new
+determinations under modern usage.
+
+[Footnote 5: The beauty of this famous epigram lies in the _form_ of
+the conception. The first had A; the second had B; and when nature, to
+furnish out a third, should have given him C, she found that A and B
+had already exhausted her cycle; and that she could distinguish her
+third great favourite only by giving him both A and B in combination.
+But the filling up of this outline is imperfect: for the A
+(_loftiness_) and the B (_majesty_) are one and the same quality,
+under different names.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Because the Latin word _sublimis_ is applied to objects
+soaring upwards, or floating aloft, or at an aerial altitude, and
+because the word does _sometimes_ correspond to our idea of the
+sublime (in which the notion of height is united with the notion of
+moral grandeur), and because, in the excessive vagueness and lawless
+latitudinarianism of our common Greek Lexicons, the word [Greek:
+hypsos] is translated, _inter alia_, by [Greek: to] _sublime_,
+_sublimitas_, &c. Hence it has happened that the title of the little
+essay ascribed to Longinus, [Greek: Peri hypsous], is usually rendered
+into English, _Concerning the sublime_. But the idea of the Sublime,
+as defined, circumscribed, and circumstantiated, in English
+literature--an idea altogether of English growth--the _sublime byway
+of polar antithesis to the Beautiful_, had no existence amongst
+ancient critics; consequently it could have no expression. It is a
+great thought, a true thought, a demonstrable thought, that the
+Sublime, as thus ascertained, and in contraposition to the Beautiful,
+grew up on the basis of _sexual_ distinctions, the Sublime
+corresponding to the male, the Beautiful, its anti-pole, corresponding
+to the female. Behold! we show you a mystery.]
+
+[Footnote 7: No word has ever given so much trouble to modern critics
+as this very word (now under discussion) of the _sublime_. To those
+who have little Greek and _no_ Latin, it is necessary in the first
+place that we should state what are the most obvious elements of the
+word. According to the noble army of etymologists, they are these two
+Latin words--_sub_, under, and _limus_, mud. Oh! gemini! who would
+have thought of groping for the sublime in such a situation as
+that?--unless, indeed, it were that writer cited by Mr. Coleridge, and
+just now referred to by ourselves, who complains of frivolous modern
+readers, as not being able to raise and sequester their thoughts to
+the abstract consideration of dung. Hence it has followed, that most
+people have quarrelled with the etymology. "Whereupon the late Dr.
+Parr, of pedantic memory, wrote a huge letter to Mr. Dugald Stewart,
+but the marrow of which lies in a nutshell, especially being rather
+hollow within. The learned doctor, in the first folio, grapples with
+the word _sub_, which, says he, comes from the Greek--so much is
+clear--but from what Greek, Bezonian? The thoughtless world, says he,
+trace it to [Greek: hypo] (hypo), sub, _i. e._ under; but I, Ego,
+Samuel Parr, the Birmingham doctor, trace it to [Greek: hyper]
+(hyper), super, _i. e._ above; between which the difference is not
+less than between a chestnut horse and a horse-chestnut. To this
+learned Parrian dissertation on mud, there cannot be much reasonably
+to object, except its length in the first place; and, secondly, that
+we ourselves exceedingly doubt the common interpretation of _limus_.
+Most unquestionably, if the sublime is to be brought into any relation
+at all to mud, we shall all be of one mind--that it must be found
+_above_. But to us it appears--that when the true modern idea of mud
+was in view, _limus_ was not the word used. Cicero, for instance, when
+he wishes to call Piso 'filth, mud,' &c. calls him _Cænum_: and, in
+general, _limus_ seems to have involved the notion of something
+adhesive, and rather to express _plaister_, or artificially prepared
+cement, &c., than that of filth or impure depositions. Accordingly,
+our own definition differs from the Parrian, or Birmingham definition;
+and may, nevertheless, be a Birmingham definition also. Not having
+room to defend it, for the present we forbear to state it.]
+
+Now, therefore, after this explanation, recurring to the Longinian
+critiques upon Homer, it will avail any idolator of Homer but little,
+it will affect us not much, to mention that Longinus makes frequent
+reference to the _Iliad_, as the great source of the sublime--
+
+          'A quo, ceu fonte perenni,
+    Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis';
+
+for, as respected Grecian poets, and as respected _his_ sense of the
+word, it cannot be denied that Homer was such. He was the great
+well-head of inspiration to the Pagan poets of after times, who,
+however (_as a body_), moved in the narrowest circle that has ever yet
+confined the natural freedom of the poetic mind. But, in conceding
+this, let it not be forgotten how much we concede--we concede as much
+as Longinus demanded; that is, that Homer furnished an ideal or model
+of fluent narration, picturesque description, and the first outlines
+of what could be called characteristic delineations of persons.
+Accordingly, uninventive Greece--for we maintain loudly that Greece,
+in her poets, _was_ uninventive and sterile beyond the example of
+other nations--received, as a traditional inheritance, the characters
+of the Paladins of the Troad.[8] Achilles is always the
+all-accomplished and supreme amongst these Paladins, the Orlando of
+ancient romance; Agamemnon, for ever the Charlemagne; Ajax, for ever
+the sullen, imperturbable, columnar champion, the Mandricardo, the
+_Bergen-op-Zoom_ of his faction, and corresponding to our modern
+'Chicken' in the pugilistic ring, who was so called (as the books of
+the Fancy say) because he was a 'glutton'; and a 'glutton' in this
+sense--that he would take any amount of cramming (_i. e._ any possible
+quantum of 'milling,' or 'punishment'). Ulysses, again, is uniformly,
+no matter whether in the solemnities of the tragic scene, or the
+festivities of the Ovidian romance, the same shy cock, but also sly
+cock, with the least thought of a white feather in his plumage; Diomed
+is the same unmeaning double of every other hero, just as Rinaldo is
+with respect to his greater cousin, Orlando; and so of Teucer,
+Meriones, Idomeneus, and the other less-marked characters. The Greek
+drama took up these traditional characters, and sometimes deepened,
+saddened, exalted the features--as Sophocles, for instance, does with
+his 'Ajax Flagellifer'--Ajax the knouter of sheep--where, by the way,
+the remorse and penitential grief of Ajax for his own self-degradation,
+and the depth of his affliction for the triumph which he had afforded to
+his enemies--taken in connection with the tender fears of his wife,
+Tecmessa, for the fate to which his gloomy despair was too manifestly
+driving him; her own conscious desolation, and the orphan weakness of
+her son, in the event which she too fearfully anticipates--the final
+suicide of Ajax; the brotherly affection of Teucer to the widow and the
+young son of the hero, together with the unlooked-for sympathy of
+Ulysses, who, instead of exulting in the ruin of his antagonist, mourns
+over it with generous tears--compose a situation, and a succession of
+situations, not equalled in the Greek tragedy; and, in that instance, we
+see an effort, rare in Grecian poetry, of conquest achieved by
+idealisation over a mean incident--viz. the hallucination of brain in
+Ajax, by which he mistakes the sheep for his Grecian enemies, ties them
+up for flagellation, and scourges them as periodically as if he were a
+critical reviewer. But really, in one extremity of this madness, where
+he fixes upon an old ram for Agamemnon, as the leader of the flock, the
+[Greek: anax andrôn Agamemnôn], there is an extravagance of the
+ludicrous against which, though not exhibited scenically, but simply
+narrated, no solemnity of pathos could avail; even in narration, the
+violation of tragical dignity is insufferable, and is as much worse than
+the hyper-tragic horrors of _Titus Andronicus_ (a play which is usually
+printed, without reason, amongst those of Shakspeare) as absolute farce
+or contradiction of all pathos must inevitably be a worse indecorum than
+physical horrors which simply outrage it by excess. Let us not,
+therefore, hear of the judgment displayed upon the Grecian stage, when
+even Sophocles, the chief master of dramatic economy and scenical
+propriety, could thus err by an aberration so far transcending the most
+memorable violation of stage decorum which has ever been charged upon
+the English drama.
+
+[Footnote 8: There is a difficulty in assigning any term as
+comprehensive enough to describe the Grecian heroes and their
+antagonists, who fought at Troy. The seven chieftains against Thebes
+are described sufficiently as Theban captains; but, to say _Trojan_
+chieftains, would express only the heroes of one side; _Grecian_,
+again, would be liable to that fault equally, and to another far
+greater, of being under no limitation as to time. This difficulty must
+explain and (if it can) justify our collective phrase of the Paladins
+of the Troad.]
+
+From Homer, therefore, were left, as a bequest to all future poets,
+the romantic adventures which grow, as so many collateral
+dependencies,
+
+    'From the tale of Troy divine';
+
+and from Homer was derived also the discrimination of the leading
+characters, which, after all, were but coarsely and rudely
+discriminated; at least, for the majority. In one instance only we
+acknowledge an exception. We have heard a great modern poet dwelling
+with real and not counterfeit enthusiasm upon the character (or rather
+upon the general picture, as made up both of character and position),
+which the course of the _Iliad_ assigns gradually to Achilles. The
+view which he took of this impersonation of human grandeur, combining
+all gifts of intellect and of body, matchless speed, strength,
+inevitable eye, courage, and the immortal beauty of a god, being also,
+by his birth-right, half-divine, and consecrated to the imagination by
+his fatal interweaving with the destinies of Troy, and to the heart by
+the early death which to _his own knowledge_[9] impended over his
+magnificent career, and so abruptly shut up its vista--the view, we
+say, which our friend took of the presiding character throughout the
+_Iliad_, who is introduced to us in the very first line, and who is
+only eclipsed for seventeen books, to emerge upon us with more awful
+lustre;--the view which he took was--that Achilles, and Achilles only,
+in the Grecian poetry, was a great idea--an idealised creation; and we
+remember that in this respect he compared the Homeric Achilles with
+the Angelica of Ariosto. Her only he regarded as an idealisation in
+the _Orlando Furioso_. And certainly in the luxury and excess of her
+all-conquering beauty, which drew after her from 'ultimate Cathay' to
+the camps of the baptised in France, and back again, from the palace
+of Charlemagne, drew half the Paladins, and 'half Spain militant,' to
+the portals of the rising sun; that sovereign beauty which (to say
+nothing of kings and princes withered by her frowns) ruined for a time
+the most princely of all the Paladins, the supreme Orlando, crazed him
+with scorn,
+
+    'And robbed him of his noble wits outright'--
+
+in all this, we must acknowledge a glorification of power not unlike
+that of Achilles:--
+
+    'Irresistible Pelides, whom, unarm'd,
+    No strength of man or wild beast could withstand;
+    Who tore the lion as the lion tears the kid;
+    Ran on embattl'd armies clad in iron;
+    And, weaponless himself,
+    Made arms ridiculous, useless the forgery
+    Of brazen shield and spear, the hammer'd cuirass,
+    Chalybean temper'd steel, and frock of mail,
+    Adamantéan proof;
+    But safest he who stood aloof,
+    When insupportably his foot advanced
+    Spurned them to death by troops. The bold Priamides
+    Fled from his lion ramp; old warriors turn'd
+    Their plated backs under his heel,
+    Or, groveling, soil'd their crested helmets in the dust.'
+
+These are the words of Milton in describing that 'heroic Nazarete,'
+'God's champion'--
+
+    'Promis'd by heavenly message twice descending';
+
+heralded, like Pelides,
+
+    'By an angel of his birth,
+    Who from his father's field
+    Rode up in flames after his message told';
+
+these are the celestial words which describe the celestial prowess of
+the Hebrew monomachist, the irresistible Sampson; and are hardly less
+applicable to the 'champion paramount' of Greece confederate.
+
+[Footnote 9: 'To his own knowledge'--see, for proof of this, the
+gloomy serenity of his answer to his dying victim, when, predicting
+his approaching end:--
+
+    'Enough; I know my fate: to die--to see no more
+    My much-lov'd parents, and my native shore,' &c. &c.]
+
+This, therefore, this unique conception, with what power they might,
+later Greek poets adopted; and the other Homeric characters they
+transplanted somewhat monotonously, but at times, we are willing to
+admit, and have already admitted, improving and solemnizing the
+original epic portraits when brought upon the stage. But all this
+extent of obligation amongst later poets of Greece to Homer serves
+less to argue his opulence than their penury. And if, quitting the one
+great blazing jewel, the Urim and Thummim of the _Iliad_, you descend
+to individual passages of poetic effect; and if amongst these a fancy
+should seize you of asking for a specimen of the _Sublime_ in
+particular, what is it that you are offered by the critics? Nothing
+that we remember beyond one single passage, in which the god Neptune
+is described in a steeple chase, and 'making play' at a terrific
+pace. And certainly enough is exhibited of the old boy's hoofs, and
+their spanking qualities, to warrant our backing him against a
+railroad for a rump and dozen; but, after all, there is nothing to
+grow frisky about, as Longinus does, who gets up the steam of a
+blue-stocking enthusiasm, and boils us a regular gallop of ranting, in
+which, like the conceited snipe[10] upon the Liverpool railroad, he
+thinks himself to run a match with Sampson; and, whilst affecting to
+admire Homer, is manifestly squinting at the reader to see how far he
+admires his own flourish of admiration; and, in the very agony of his
+frosty raptures, is quite at leisure to look out for a little private
+traffic of rapture on his own account. But it won't do; this old
+critical posture-master (whom, if Aurelian hanged, surely he knew what
+he was about) may as well put up his rapture pipes, and (as Lear says)
+'not squiny' at us; for let us ask Master Longinus, in what earthly
+respect do these great strides of Neptune exceed Jack with his
+seven-league boots? Let him answer that, if he can. We hold that Jack
+has the advantage. Or, again look at the Koran: does any man but a
+foolish Oriental think that passage sublime where Mahomet describes
+the divine pen? It is, says he, made of mother-of-pearl; so much for
+the 'raw material,' as the economists say. But now for the size: it
+can hardly be called a 'portable' pen at all events, for we are told
+that it is so tall of its age, that an Arabian 'thoroughbred horse
+would require 500 years for galloping down the slit to the nib. Now
+this Arabic sublime is _in this instance_ quite a kin brother to the
+Homeric.
+
+[Footnote 10: On the memorable inaugural day of the Liverpool
+railroad, when Mr. Huskisson met with so sad a fate, a snipe or a
+plover tried a race with Sampson, one of the engines. The race
+continued neck and neck for about six miles, after which, the snipe
+finding itself likely to come off second best, found it convenient to
+wheel off, at a turn of the road, into the solitudes of Chat Moss.]
+
+However, it is likely that we shall here be reminded of our own
+challenge to the Longinian word [Greek: hypsêlon] as not at all
+corresponding, or even alluding to the modern word sublime. But in
+this instance, the distinction will not much avail that critic--for no
+matter by what particular _word_ he may convey his sense of its
+quality, clear it is, by his way of illustrating its peculiar merit,
+that, in his opinion, these huge strides of Neptune's have something
+supernaturally grand about them. But, waiving this solitary instance
+in Homer of the sublime, according to his idolatrous critics--of the
+pseudo sublime according to ourselves--in all other cases where
+Longinus, or any other Greek writer has cited Homer as the great
+exemplary model of [Greek: hypsos] in composition, we are to
+understand him according to the Grecian sense of that word. He must
+then be supposed to praise Homer, not so much for any ideal grandeur
+either of thought, image, or situation, as in a general sense for his
+animated style of narration, for the variety and spirited effect with
+which he relieves the direct formal narration in his own person by
+dialogue between the subjects of his narration, thus ventriloquising
+and throwing his own voice as often as he can into the surrounding
+objects--or again for the similes and allusive pictures by which he
+points emphasis to a situation or interest to a person.
+
+Now then we have it: when you describe Homer, or when you hear him
+described as a lively picturesque old boy [by the way, why does
+everybody speak of Homer as old?], full of life, and animation, and
+movement, then you say (or you hear say) what is true, and not much
+more than what is true. Only about that word picturesque we demur a
+little: as a chirurgeon, he certainly _is_ picturesque; for Howship
+upon gunshot wounds is a joke to him when he lectures upon _traumacy_,
+if we may presume to coin that word, or upon traumatic philosophy (as
+Mr. M'Culloch says so grandly, Economic Science). But, apart from
+this, we cannot allow that simply to say [Greek: Zakunthos nemoessa],
+woody Zacynthus, is any better argument of picturesqueness than Stony
+Stratford, or Harrow on the Hill. Be assured, reader, that the Homeric
+age was not ripe for the picturesque. _Price on the Picturesque_, or,
+_Gilpin on Forest Scenery_, would both have been sent post-haste to
+Bedlam in those days; or perhaps Homer himself would have tied a
+millstone about their necks, and have sunk them as public nuisances by
+woody Zante. Besides, it puts almost an extinguisher on any little
+twinkling of the picturesque that might have flared up at times from
+this or that suggestion, when each individual had his own regular
+epithet stereotyped to his name like a brass plate upon a door:
+Hector, the tamer of horses; Achilles, the swift of foot; the ox-eyed,
+respectable Juno. Some of the 'big uns,' it is true, had a dress and
+an undress suit of epithets: as for instance, Hector was also [Greek:
+korythaiolos], Hector with the tossing or the variegated plumes.
+Achilles again was [Greek: dios] or divine. But still the range was
+small, and the monotony was dire.
+
+And now, if you come in good earnest to picturesqueness, let us
+mention a poet in sober truth worth five hundred of Homer, and that is
+Chaucer. Show us a piece of Homer's handywork that comes within a
+hundred leagues of that divine prologue to the _Canterbury Tales_, or
+of 'The Knight's Tale,' of the 'Man of Law's Tale,' or of the 'Tale of
+the Patient Griseldis,' or, for intense life of narration and festive
+wit, to the 'Wife of Bath's Tale.' Or, passing out of the _Canterbury
+Tales_ for the picturesque in human manner and gesture, and play of
+countenance, never equalled as yet by Pagan or Christian, go to the
+_Troilus and Cresseid_, and, for instance, to the conversation between
+Troilus and Pandarus, or, again, between Pandarus and Cresseid.
+Rightly did a critic of the 17th century pronounce Chaucer a miracle
+of natural genius, as having 'taken into the compass of his
+_Canterbury Tales_, the various manners and humours of the whole
+English nation in his age; not a single character has escaped him.'
+And this critic then proceeds thus--'The matter and manner of these
+tales, and of their telling, are so suited to their different
+educations, humours, and calling, that each of them would be improper
+in any other mouth. Even the grave and serious characters are
+distinguished by their several sorts of gravity. Even the ribaldry of
+the low characters is different. But there is such a variety of game
+springing up before me, that I am distracted in my choice, and know
+not which to follow. It is sufficient to say, according to the
+proverb, that here is God's plenty.' And soon after he goes on to
+assert (though Heaven knows in terms far below the whole truth), the
+superiority of Chaucer to Boccaccio. And, in the meantime, who was
+this eulogist of Chaucer? Why, the man who himself was never equalled
+upon this earth, unless by Chaucer, in the art of fine narration: it
+is John Dryden whom we have been quoting.
+
+Between Chaucer and Homer--as to the main art of narration, as to the
+picturesque life of the manners, and as to the exquisite delineation
+of character--the interval is as wide as between Shakespeare, in
+dramatic power, and Nic. Rowe.
+
+And we might wind up this main chapter, of the comparison between
+Grecian and English literature--viz. the chapter on Homer, by this
+tight dilemma. You do or you do not use the Longinian word [Greek:
+hypsos] in the modern sense of the sublime. If you do not, then of
+course you translate it in the Grecian sense, as explained above; and
+in that sense, we engage to produce many scores of passages from
+Chaucer, not exceeding 50 to 80 lines, which contain more of
+picturesque simplicity, more tenderness, more fidelity to nature, more
+felicity of sentiment, more animation of narrative, and more truth of
+character, than can be matched in all the _Iliad_ or the _Odyssey_. On
+the other hand, if by [Greek: hypsos] you choose absurdly to mean
+sublimity in the modern sense, then it will suffice for us that we
+challenge _you_ to the production of one instance which truly and
+incontestably embodies that quality.[11] The burthen of proof rests
+upon you who affirm, not upon us who deny. Meantime, as a kind of
+choke-pear, we leave with the Homeric adorer this one brace of
+portraits, or hints for such a brace, which we commend to his
+comparison, as Hamlet did the portraits of the two brothers to his
+besotted mother. We are talking of the sublime: that is our thesis.
+Now observe: there is a catalogue in the _Iliad_--there is a catalogue
+in the _Paradise Lost_. And, like a river of Macedon and of Monmouth,
+the two catalogues agree in that one fact--viz. that they _are_ such.
+But as to the rest, we are willing to abide by the issue of that one
+comparison, left to the very dullest sensibility, for the decision of
+the total question at issue. And what is that? Not, Heaven preserve
+us! as to the comparative claims of Milton and Homer in this point of
+sublimity--for surely it would be absurd to compare him who has most
+with him whom we affirm to have none at all--but whether Homer has the
+very smallest pretensions in that point. The result, as we state it,
+is this:--The catalogue of the ruined angels in Milton, is, in itself
+taken separately, a perfect poem, with the beauty, and the felicity,
+and the glory of a dream. The Homeric catalogue of ships is exactly on
+a level with the muster-roll of a regiment, the register of a
+tax-gatherer, the catalogue of an auctioneer. Nay, some catalogues are
+far more interesting, and more alive with meaning. 'But him followed
+fifty black ships!'--'But him follow seventy black ships!' Faugh! We
+could make a more readable poem out of an Insolvent's Balance Sheet.
+
+[Footnote 11: The description of Apollo in wrath as [Greek: nukti
+eoikô], like night, is a doubtful case. With respect to the shield of
+Achilles, it cannot be denied that the general conception has, in
+common with all abstractions (as _e. g._ the abstractions of dreams,
+of prophetic visions, such as that in the 6th Æneid, that to Macbeth,
+that shown by the angel Michael to Adam), something fine and, in its
+own nature, let the execution be what it may, sublime. But this part
+of the _Iliad_, we firmly believe to be an interpolation of times long
+posterior to that of Homer.]
+
+One other little suggestion we could wish to offer. Those who would
+contend against the vast superiority of Chaucer (and him we mention
+chiefly because he really has in excess those very qualities of life,
+motion, and picturesque simplicity, to which the Homeric
+characteristics chiefly tend), ought to bear in mind one startling
+fact evidently at war with the _degree_ of what is claimed for Homer.
+It is this: Chaucer is carried naturally by the very course of his
+tales into the heart of domestic life, and of the scenery most
+favourable to the movements of human sensibility. Homer, on the other
+hand, is kept out of that sphere, and is imprisoned in the monotonies
+of a camp or a battle-field, equally by the necessities of his story,
+and by the proprieties of Grecian life (which in fact are pretty
+nearly those of Turkish life at this day). Men and women meet only
+under rare, hurried, and exclusive circumstances. Hence it is, that
+throughout the entire _Iliad_, we have but one scene in which the
+finest affections of the human heart can find an opening for display;
+of course, everybody knows at once that we are speaking of the scene
+between Hector, Andromache, and the young Astyanax. No need for
+question here; it is Hobson's choice in Greek literature, when you are
+seeking for the poetry of human sensibilities. One such scene there
+is, and no more; which, of itself, is some reason for suspecting its
+authenticity. And, by the way, at this point, it is worth while
+remarking, that a late excellent critic always pronounced the words
+applied to Andromache [Greek: dakryoen gelasasa] (_tearfully smiling_,
+or, _smiling through_ _her tears_), a mere Alexandrian interpolation.
+And why? Now mark the reason. Was it because the circumstance is in
+itself vicious, or out of nature? Not at all: nothing more probable or
+more interesting under the general situation of peril combined with
+the little incident of the infant's alarm at the plumed helmet. But
+any just taste feels it to be out of the Homeric key; the barbarism of
+the age, not mitigated (as in Chaucer's far less barbarous age) by the
+tenderness of Christian sentiment, turned a deaf ear and a repulsive
+aspect to such beautiful traits of domestic feeling; to Homer himself
+the whole circumstance would have been one of pure effeminacy. Now, we
+recommend it to the reader's reflection--and let him weigh well the
+condition under which that poetry moves that cannot indulge a tender
+sentiment without being justly suspected of adulterous commerce with
+some after age. This remark, however, is by the by; having grown out
+of the [Greek: dakryoen gelasasa], itself a digression. But, returning
+from that to our previous theme, we desire every candid reader to ask
+himself what must be the character, what the circumscription, of that
+poetry which is limited, by its very subject,[12] to a scene of such
+intense uniformity as a battle or a camp; and by the prevailing spirit
+of manners to the exclusive society of men. To make bricks without
+straw, was the excess even of Egyptian bondage; Homer could not fight
+up against the necessities of his age, and the defects of its
+manners. And the very apologies which will be urged for him, drawn as
+they must be from the spirit of manners prevalent in his era, are
+reciprocally but so many reasons for not seeking in him the kind of
+poetry which has been ascribed to him by ignorance, or by defective
+sensibility, or by the mere self-interest of pedantry.
+
+[Footnote 12: But the _Odyssey_, at least, it will be said, is not
+thus limited: no, not by its subject; because it carries us amongst
+cities and princes in a state of peace; but it is equally limited by
+the spirit of manners; we are never admitted amongst women, except by
+accident (Nausicaa)--by necessity (Penelope)--or by romance (Circe).]
+
+From Homer, the route stretches thus:--The Grecian drama lies about
+six hundred years nearer to the Christian era, and Pindar lies in the
+interval. These--_i. e._ the Dramatic and Lyric--are the important
+chapters of the Greek poetry; for as to Pastoral poetry, having only
+Theocritus surviving, and a very little of Bion and Moschus, and of
+these one only being of the least separate importance--we cannot hold
+that department entitled to any notice in so cursory a review of the
+literature, else we have much to say on this also. Besides that,
+Theocritus was not a natural poet, indigenous to Sicily, but an
+artificial blue-stocking; as was Callimachus in a different class.
+
+The drama we may place loosely in the generation next before that of
+Alexander the Great. And his era may be best remembered by noting it
+as 333 years B. C. Add thirty years to this era--that will be the era
+of the Drama. Add a little more than a century, and that will be the
+era of Pindar. Him, therefore, we will notice first.
+
+Now, the chief thing to say as to Pindar is--to show cause, good and
+reasonable, why no man of sense should trouble his head about him.
+There was in the seventeenth century a notion prevalent about Pindar,
+the very contradiction to the truth. It was imagined that he 'had a
+demon'; that he was under a burthen of prophetic inspiration; that he
+was possessed, like a Hebrew prophet or a Delphic priestess, with
+divine fury. Why was this thought?--simply because no mortal read him.
+Laughable it is to mention, that Pope, when a very young man, and
+writing his _Temple of Fame_ (partly on the model of Chaucer's), when
+he came to the great columns and their bas-reliefs in that temple,
+each of which is sacred to one honoured name, having but room in all
+for six, chose Pindar for one[13] of the six. And the first bas-relief
+on Pindar's column is so pretty, that we shall quote it; especially as
+it suggested Gray's car for Dryden's 'less presumptuous flight!'
+
+    'Four swans sustain a car of silver bright,
+    With heads advanc'd, and pinions stretch'd for flight:
+    Here, _like some furious prophet_, Pindar rode,
+    And seem'd to _labour with th' inspiring god_.'
+
+[Footnote 13: The other five were Homer, Virgil, Horace, Aristotle,
+Cicero.]
+
+Then follow eight lines describing other bas-reliefs, containing 'the
+figured games of Greece' (Olympic, Nemean, &c.). But what we spoke of
+as laughable in the whole affair is, that Master Pope neither had then
+read one line of Pindar, nor ever read one line of Pindar: and reason
+good; for at that time he could not read the simple Homeric Greek;
+while the Greek of Pindar exceeds all other Greek in difficulty,
+excepting, perhaps, a few amongst the tragic choruses, which are
+difficult for the very same reason--lyric abruptness, lyric
+involution, and lyric obscurity of transition. Not having read Homer,
+no wonder that Pope should place, amongst the bas-reliefs illustrating
+the _Iliad_, an incident which does not exist in the _Iliad_.[14] Not
+having read Pindar, no wonder that Pope should ascribe to Pindar
+qualities which are not only imaginary, but in absolute contradiction
+to his true ones. A more sober old gentleman does not exist: his
+demoniac possession is a mere fable. But there are two sufficient
+arguments for not reading him, so long as innumerable books of greater
+interest remain unread. First, he writes upon subjects that, to us,
+are mean and extinct--race-horses that have been defunct for
+twenty-five centuries, chariots that were crazy in his own day, and
+contests with which it is impossible for us to sympathise. Then his
+digressions about old genealogies are no whit better than his main
+theme, nor more amusing than a Welshman's pedigree. The best
+translator of any age, Mr. Carey, who translated Dante, has done what
+human skill could effect to make the old Theban readable; but, after
+all, the man is yet to come who _has_ read Pindar, _will_ read Pindar,
+or _can_ read Pindar, except, indeed, a translator in the way of duty.
+And the son of Philip himself, though he bade 'spare the house of
+Pindarus,' we vehemently suspect, never read the works of Pindarus;
+that labour he left to some future Hercules. So much for his subjects:
+but a second objection is--his metre: The hexameter, or heroic metre
+of the ancient Greeks, is delightful to our modern ears; so is the
+Iambic metre fortunately of the stage: but the Lyric metres generally,
+and those of Pindar without one exception, are as utterly without
+meaning to us, as merely chaotic labyrinths of sound, as Chinese music
+or Dutch concertos. Need we say more?
+
+[Footnote 14: Viz. the supposed dragging of Hector three times round
+Troy by Achilles--a mere post-Homeric fable. But it is ludicrous to
+add, that, in after years--nay, when nearly at the end of his
+translation of the _Iliad_, in 1718--Pope took part in a discussion
+upon Homer's reasons for ascribing such conduct to his hero, seriously
+arguing the _pro_ and _con_ upon a pure fiction.]
+
+Next comes the drama. But this is too weighty a theme to be discussed
+slightly; and the more so because here only we willingly concede a
+strong motive for learning Greek; here, only, we hold the want of a
+ready introduction to be a serious misfortune. Our general argument,
+therefore, which had for its drift to depreciate Greek, dispenses, in
+this case, with our saying anything; since every word we _could_ say
+would be hostile to our own purpose. However, we shall, even upon this
+field of the Greek literature, deliver one oracular sentence, tending
+neither to praise nor dispraise it, but simply to state its relations
+to the modern, or, at least, the English drama. In the ancient drama,
+to represent it justly, the unlearned reader must imagine grand
+situations, impressive groups; in the modern tumultuous movement, a
+grand stream of action. In the Greek drama, he must conceive the
+presiding power to be _Death_; in the English, _Life_. What
+Death?--What Life? That sort of death or of life locked up and frozen
+into everlasting slumber, which we see in sculpture; that sort of
+life, of tumult, of agitation, of tendency to something beyond, which
+we see in painting. The picturesque, in short, domineers over English
+tragedy; the sculpturesque, or the statuesque, over the Grecian.
+
+The moralists, such as Theogins, the miscellaneous or didactic poets,
+such as Hesiod, are all alike below any notice in a sketch like this.
+The Epigrammatists, or writers of monumental inscriptions, &c.,
+remain; and they, next after the dramatic poets, present the most
+interesting field by far in the Greek literature; but these are too
+various to be treated otherwise than _viritim_ and in detail.
+
+There remains the prose literature; and, with the exception of those
+critical writers who have written on rhetoric (such as Hermogenes,
+Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Demetrius Phalerius, &c. &c., some of whom
+are the best writers extant, on the mere art of constructing
+sentences, but could not interest the general reader), the prose
+writers may be thus distributed: 1st, the orators; 2nd, the
+historians; 3rd, the philosophers; 4th, the literateurs (such as
+Plutarch, Lucian, &c.).
+
+As to the philosophers, of course there are only two who can present
+any general interest--Plato and Aristotle; for Xenophon is no more a
+philosophic writer than our own Addison. Now, in this department, it
+is evident that the matter altogether transcends the manner. No man
+will wish to study a profound philosopher, but for some previous
+interest in his doctrines; and, if by any means a man has obtained
+this, he may pursue this study sufficiently through translations. It
+is true that neither Sydenham nor Taylor has done justice to Plato,
+for example, as respects the colloquial graces of his style; but, when
+the object is purely to pursue a certain course of principles and
+inferences, the student cannot complain much that he has lost the
+dramatic beauties of the dialogue, or the luxuriance of the style.
+These he was not then seeking, by the supposition--what he _did_ seek,
+is still left; whereas in poetry, if the golden apparel is lost, if
+the music has melted away from the thoughts, all, in fact, is lost.
+Old Hobbes, or Ogilbie, is no more Homer than the score of Mozart's
+_Don Giovanni_ is Mozart's _Don Giovanni_.
+
+If, however, Grecian philosophy presents no absolute temptations to
+the attainment of Greek, far less does Grecian history. If you except
+later historians--such as Diodorus, Plutarch, and those (like Appian,
+Dionysius, Dion Cassius) who wrote of Roman things and Roman persons
+in Greek, and Polybius, who comes under the same class, at a much
+earlier period--and none of whom have any interest of style, excepting
+only Plutarch: these dismissed, there are but three who can rank as
+classical Greek historians; _three who can lose by translation_. Of
+these the eldest, Herodotus, is perhaps of real value. Some call him
+the father of history; some call him the father of lies. Time and
+Major Rennel have done him ample justice. Yet here, again, see how
+little need of Greek for the amplest use of a Greek author. Twenty-two
+centuries and more have passed since the fine old man read his history
+at the Grecian games of Olympia. One man only has done him right, and
+put his enemies under his footstool; _and yet this man had no Greek_.
+Major Rennel read Herodotus only in the translation of Beloe. He has
+told us so himself. Here, then, is a little fact, my Grecian boys,
+that you won't easily get over. The father of history, the eldest of
+prose writers, has been first explained, illustrated, justified,
+liberated from scandal and disgrace, first had his geography set to
+rights, first translated from the region of fabulous romance, and
+installed in his cathedral chair, as Dean (or eldest) of historians,
+by a military man, who had no more Greek than Shakspeare, or than we
+(perhaps you, reader) of the Kalmuck.
+
+Next comes Thucydides. He is the second in order of time amongst the
+Grecian historians who survive, and the first of those (a class which
+Mr. Southey, the laureate, always speaks of as the corruptors of
+genuine history) who affect to treat it philosophically. If the
+philosophic historians are not always so faithless as Mr. Southey
+alleges, they are, however, always guilty of dulness. Commend us to
+one picturesque, garrulous old fellow, like Froissart, or Philip de
+Comines, or Bishop Burnet, before all the philosophic prosers that
+ever prosed. These picturesque men will lie a little now and then, for
+the sake of effect--but so will the philosophers. Even Bishop Burnet,
+who, by the way, was hardly so much a picturesque as an anecdotal
+historian, was famous for his gift of lying; so diligently had he
+cultivated it. And the Duchess of Portsmouth told a noble lord, when
+inquiring into the truth of a particular fact stated by the very
+reverend historian, that he was notorious in Charles the Second's
+court, and that no man believed a word he said. But now Thucydides,
+though writing about his own time, and doubtless embellishing by
+fictions not less than his more amusing brethren, is as dull as if he
+prided himself on veracity. Nay, he tells us no secret anecdotes of
+the times--surely there must have been many; and this proves to us,
+that he was a low fellow without political connections, and that he
+never had been behind the curtain. Now, what business had such a man
+to set himself up for a writer of history and a speculator on
+politics? Besides, his history is imperfect; and, suppose it were
+not, what is its subject? Why simply one single war; a war which
+lasted twenty-seven years; but which, after all, through its whole
+course was enlivened by only two events worthy to enter into general
+history--viz. the plague of Athens, and the miserable licking which
+the Athenian invaders received in Sicily. This dire overthrow dished
+Athens out and out; for one generation to come, there was an end of
+Athenian domination; and that arrogant state, under the yoke of their
+still baser enemies of Sparta, learned experimentally what were the
+evils of a foreign conquest. There was therefore, in the domination of
+the Thirty Tyrants, something to 'point a moral' in the Peloponnesian
+war: it was the judicial reaction of martial tyranny and foreign
+oppression, such as we of this generation have beheld in the double
+conquest of Paris by insulted and outraged Christendom. But nothing of
+all this will be found in Thucydides--he is as cool as a cucumber upon
+every act of atrocity; whether it be the bloody abuse of power, or the
+bloody retribution from the worm that, being trampled on too long,
+turns at last to sting and to exterminate--all alike he enters in his
+daybook and his ledger, posts them up to the account of brutal Spartan
+or polished Athenian, with no more expression of his feelings (if he
+had any) than a merchant making out an invoice of puncheons that are
+to steal away men's wits, or of frankincense and myrrh that are to
+ascend in devotion to the saints. Herodotus is a fine, old, genial
+boy, that, like Froissart or some of the crusading historians, kept
+himself in health and jovial spirits by travelling about; nor did he
+confine himself to Greece or the Grecian islands; but he went to
+Egypt, got bousy in the Pyramid of Cheops, ate a beef-steak in the
+hanging-gardens of Babylon, and listened to no sailors' yarns at the
+Piræus, which doubtless, before his time, had been the sole authority
+for Grecian legends concerning foreign lands. But, as to Thucydides,
+our own belief is, that he lived like a monk shut up in his _museum_
+or study; and that, at the very utmost, he may have gone in the
+steamboat[15] to Corfu (_i. e._ Corcyra), because _that_ was the
+island which occasioned the row of the Peloponnesian war.
+
+[Footnote 15: 'In the steamboat!' Yes, reader, the steamboat. It is
+clear that there _was_ one in Homer's time. See the art. _Phæacian_ in
+the _Odyssey_: if it paid then, _à fortiori_ six hundred years after.
+The only point unknown about it, is the captain's name and the
+state-cabin fares.]
+
+Xenophon now is quite another sort of man; he could use his pen; but
+also he could use his sword; and (when need was) his heels, in running
+away. His Grecian history of course is a mere fraction of the general
+history; and, moreover, our own belief, founded upon the differences
+of the style, is, that the work now received for his must be spurious.
+But in this place the question is not worth discussing. Two works
+remain, professedly historical, which, beyond a doubt, _are_ his; and
+one of them the most interesting prose work by much which Athens has
+bequeathed us; though, by the way, Xenophon was living in a sort of
+elegant exile at a chateau in Thessaly, and not under Athenian
+protection, when he wrote it. Both of his great works relate to a
+Persian Cyrus, but to a Cyrus of different centuries. The _Cyropædia_
+is a romance, pretty much on the plan of Fenelon's _Telemaque_, only
+(Heaven be praised!) not so furiously apoplectic. It pursues the
+great Cyrus, the founder of the Persian empire, the Cyrus of the
+Jewish prophets, from his infancy to his death-bed; and describes
+evidently not any real prince, according to any authentic record of
+his life, but, upon some basis of hints and vague traditions, improves
+the actual Cyrus into an ideal fiction of a sovereign and a military
+conqueror, as he _ought_ to be. One thing only we shall say of this
+work, though no admirers ourselves of the twaddle which Xenophon
+elsewhere gives us as philosophic memorabilia, that the episode of
+Abradates and Panthea (especially the behaviour of Panthea after the
+death of her beloved hero, and the incident of the dead man's hand
+coming away on Cyrus grasping it) exceeds for pathos everything in
+Grecian literature, always excepting the Greek drama, and comes
+nearest of anything, throughout Pagan literature, to the impassioned
+simplicity of Scripture, in its tale of Joseph and his brethren. The
+other historical work of Xenophon is the _Anabasis_. The meaning of
+the title is _the going-up_ or _ascent_--viz. of Cyrus the younger.
+This prince was the younger brother of the reigning king Artaxerxes,
+nearly two centuries from Cyrus the Great; and, from opportunity
+rather than a better title, and because his mother and his vast
+provincial government furnished him with royal treasures able to hire
+an army, most of all, because he was richly endowed by nature with
+personal gifts--took it into his head that he would dethrone his
+brother; and the more so, because he was only his half-brother. His
+chance was a good one: he had a Grecian army, and one from the very
+_élite_ of Greece; whilst the Persian king had but a small corps of
+Grecian auxiliaries, long enfeebled by Persian effeminacy and Persian
+intermarriages. Xenophon was personally present in this expedition.
+And the catastrophe was most singular, such as does not occur once in
+a thousand years. The cavalry of the great King retreated before the
+Greeks continually, no doubt from policy and secret orders; so that,
+when a pitched battle became inevitable, the foreign invaders found
+themselves in the very heart of the land, and close upon the
+Euphrates. The battle was fought: the foreigners were victorious: they
+were actually singing _Te Deum_ or _Io Pæan_ for their victory, when
+it was discovered that their leader, the native prince in whose behalf
+they had conquered, was missing; and soon after, that he was dead.
+What was to be done? The man who should have improved their victory,
+and placed them at his own right hand when on the throne of Persia,
+was no more; key they had none to unlock the great fortresses of the
+empire, none to unloose the enthusiasm of the native population. Yet
+such was the desperation of their circumstances, that a _coup-de-main_
+on the capital seemed their best chance. The whole army was and felt
+itself a forlorn hope. To go forward was desperate, but to go back
+much more so; for they had a thousand rivers without bridges in their
+rear; and, if they set their faces in that direction, they would have
+300,000 light cavalry upon their flanks, besides nations innumerable--
+
+    'Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreath'd';
+
+fierce fellows who understood no Greek, and, what was worse, no
+joking, but well understood the use of the scymitar. Bad as things
+were, they soon became worse; for the chiefs of the Grecian army,
+being foolish enough to accept a dinner invitation from the Persian
+commander-in-chief, were assassinated; and the words of Milton became
+intelligible--that in the lowest deep a lower deep had opened to
+destroy them. In this dilemma, Xenophon, the historian of the
+expedition, was raised to a principal command; and by admirable skill
+he led back the army by a different route to the Black Sea, on the
+coast of which he knew that there were Grecian colonies: and from one
+of these he obtained shipping, in which he coasted along (when he did
+not march by land) to the mouth of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles.
+This was the famous retreat of the ten thousand; and it shows how much
+defect of literary skill there was in those days amongst Grecian
+authors, that the title of the book, _The Going Up_, does not apply to
+the latter and more interesting seven-eighths of the account. The
+Going Up is but the preparation or preface to the Going Down, the
+_Anabasis_ to the _Katabasis_, in which latter part it is that
+Xenophon plays any conspicuous part. A great political interest,
+however, over and above the personal interest, attaches to this
+expedition: for there can be no doubt, that to this proof of weakness
+in the Persian empire, and perhaps to this, _as recorded by Xenophon_,
+was due the expedition of Alexander in the next generation, which
+changed the face of the world.
+
+The literateurs, as we have styled Plutarch and Lucian, though far
+removed from the true classical era, being both posterior to
+Christianity, are truly interesting. And, for Lucian in particular,
+though he is known by reputation only as a humorous and sneering
+writer, we can say, upon our personal knowledge, that there are
+passages of more terrific effect, more German, and approaching to the
+sublime, than anywhere else in Greek literature, out of the tragic
+poets. Of Plutarch we need hardly speak; one part of his voluminous
+works--viz. his biographies of Greek and Roman leaders in arts[16] and
+arms--being so familiar to all nations; and having been selected by
+Rousseau as the book for him who should be limited (or, like Collins
+the poet, should limit himself) to one book only--a foolish choice
+undoubtedly, but still arguing great range of resources in Plutarch,
+that he should be thought of after so many myriads of modern books had
+widened the range of selection. Meantime, the reader is not to forget
+that, whatever may be his powers of amusement, a more inaccurate or
+faithless author as to dates, and, indeed, in all matters of research,
+does not exist than Plutarch. We make it a rule, whenever we see
+_Plut._ at the bottom of a dictionary article, as the authority on
+which it rests, to put the better half down as a bouncer. And, in
+fact, Joe Miller is quite as good authority for English history as
+Plutarch for Roman.
+
+[Footnote 16: 'In arts,' we say, because great orators are amongst his
+heroes; but, after all, it is very questionable whether, simply as
+orators, Plutarch would have noticed them. They were also statesmen;
+and Mitford always treats Demosthenes as first lord of the treasury
+and premier. Plutarch records no poet, no artist, however brilliant.]
+
+Now remain the orators; and of these we have a right to speak, for we
+have read them; and, believe us, reader, not above one or two men in a
+generation have. If the Editor would allow us room, we would gladly
+contrast them with modern orators; and we could easily show how
+prodigious are the advantages of modern orators in every point which
+can enter into a comparison. But to what purpose? Even modern orators,
+with all the benefit of modern interest, and of allusions everywhere
+intelligible, are not read in any generation after their own, pulpit
+orators only being excepted. So that, if the gods _had_ made our
+reader a Grecian, surely he would never so far misspend his precious
+time, and squander his precious intellect upon old dusty quarrels,
+never of more value to a philosopher than a tempest in a wash-hand
+bason, but now stuffed with obscurities which no man can explain, and
+with lies to which no man can bring the counter-statement. But this
+would furnish matter for a separate paper.
+
+
+No. II.--THE GREEK ORATORS.
+
+Now, let us come to the orators. Isocrates, the eldest of those who
+have survived, is a mere scholastic rhetorician: for he was a timid
+man, and did not dare to confront the terrors of a stormy political
+audience; and hence, though he lived about an entire century, he never
+once addressed the Athenian citizens. It is true, that, although no
+_bonâ fide_ orator--for he never _spoke_ in any usual acceptation of
+that word, and, as a consequence, never had an opportunity of
+replying, which only can bring forward a man's talents as a
+_debater_--still he employed his pen upon real and upon existing
+questions of public policy; and did not, as so many generations of
+chamber rhetoricians continued to do in Greece, confine his powers to
+imaginary cases of political difficulty, or (what were tantamount to
+imaginary) cases fetched up from the long-past era of King Priam, or
+the still earlier era of the Seven Chiefs warring against the
+Seven-gated Thebes of Boeotia, or the half-fabulous era of the
+Argonauts. Isocrates was a man of sense--a patriot in a temperate
+way--and with something of a feeling for Greece generally, not merely
+a champion of Athens. His heart was given to politics: and, in an age
+when heavy clouds were gathering over the independence and the civil
+grandeur of his country, he had a disinterested anxiety for drawing
+off the lightning of the approaching storms by pacific counsels.
+Compared, therefore, with the common mercenary orators of the Athenian
+forum--who made a regular trade of promoting mischief, by inflaming
+the pride, jealousy, vengeance, or the martial instincts of a 'fierce
+democracy,' and, generally speaking, with no views, high or low, sound
+or unsound, that looked beyond the momentary profit to themselves from
+thus pandering to the thoughtless nationality of a most sensitive
+people--Isocrates is entitled to our respect. His writings have also a
+separate value, as memorials of political transactions from which the
+historian has gathered many useful hints; and, perhaps, to a diligent
+search, they might yield more. But, considered as an orator--if that
+title can be, with any propriety, allowed to one who declaimed only in
+his closet--one who, in relation to public affairs, was what, in
+England, when speaking of practical jurisprudence, we call a Chamber
+Counsel--Isocrates is languid, and with little of anything
+characteristic in his manner to justify a separate consideration. It
+is remarkable that he, beyond all other rhetoricians of that era,
+cultivated the _rhythmus_ of his periods. And to this object he
+sacrificed not only an enormity of time, but, I have no doubt, in many
+cases, the freedom and natural movement of the thoughts. My reason,
+however, for noticing this peculiarity in Isocrates, is by way of
+fixing the attention upon the superiority, even artificial ornaments,
+of downright practical business and the realities of political strife,
+over the torpid atmosphere of a study or a school. Cicero, long after,
+had the same passion for _numerositas_, and the full, pompous
+rotundity of cadence. But in Cicero, all habits and all faculties were
+nursed by the daily practice of life and its impassioned realities, in
+the forum or in the senate. What is the consequence? Why this--that,
+whereas in the most laboured performance of Isocrates (which cost him,
+I think, one whole _decennium_, or period of ten years), few modern
+ears are sensible of any striking art, or any great result of harmony;
+in Cicero, on the other hand, the fine, sonorous modulations of his
+periodic style, are delightful to the dullest ear of any European.
+Such are the advantages from real campaigns, from the unsimulated
+strife of actual stormy life, over the torpid dreams of what the
+Romans called an _umbratic_[17] experience.
+
+[Footnote 17: 'Umbratic.' I have perhaps elsewhere drawn the attention
+of readers to the peculiar effects of climate, in shaping the modes of
+our thinking and imaging. A life of _inertia_, which retreats from the
+dust and toil of actual experience, we (who represent the idea of
+effeminacy more naturally by the image of shrinking from cold) call a
+chimney-corner of a fireside experience; but the Romans, to whom the
+same effeminacy more easily fell under the idea of shrinking from the
+heat of the sun, called it an experience won in the shade; and a mere
+scholastic student, they called an _umbraticus doctor_.]
+
+_Isocrates_ I have noticed as the oldest of the surviving Greek
+orators: _Demosthenes_, of course, claims a notice more emphatically,
+as, by universal consent of Athens, and afterwards of Rhodes, of Rome,
+and other impartial judges, the greatest, or, at least, the most
+comprehensively great. For, by the way, it must not be forgotten--though
+modern critics _do_ forget this rather important fact in weighing the
+reputation of Demosthenes--he was not esteemed, in his own day, as the
+greatest in that particular quality of energy and demoniac power
+([Greek: deinotês]) which is generally assumed to have been his leading
+characteristic and his _forte_; not only by comparison with his own
+compatriots, but even with Cicero and the greatest men of the Roman bar.
+It was not of Demosthenes that the Athenians were accustomed to say, 'he
+thunders and lightens,' but of Pericles, an elder orator; and even
+amongst the written oratory of Greece, which still survives (for as to
+the speeches ascribed to Pericles by Thucydides, I take it for granted
+that, as usual, these were mere forgeries of the historian), there is a
+portion which perhaps exceeds Demosthenes in the naked quality of
+vehemence. But this, I admit, will not impeach his supremacy; for it is
+probable, that wherever an orator is characterised exclusively by
+turbulent power, or at least remembered chiefly for that quality, all
+the other numerous graces of eloquence were wanting to that man, or
+existed only in a degree which made no equipoise to his insulated gift
+of Jovian terror. The Gracchi, amongst the Roman orators, were probably
+more properly 'sons of thunder' than Crassus or Cicero, or even than
+Cæsar himself, whose oratory, by the way, was, in this respect, like his
+own character and infinite accomplishments; so that even by Cicero it is
+rarely cited without the epithet of splendid, magnificent, &c. We must
+suppose, therefore, that neither Cicero nor Demosthenes was held to be
+at the head of their respective fields in Rome and Athens, in right of
+any absolute pre-eminence in the one leading power of an orator--viz.
+native and fervent vigour--but in right of a large comprehensive harmony
+of gifts, leaving possibly to some other orators, elder or rival to
+themselves, a superiority in each of an orator's talents taken apart,
+but claiming the supremacy, nevertheless, upon the whole, by the
+systematic union of many qualities tending to one result: pleasing the
+taste by the harmonious _coup d'oeil_ from the total assemblage, and
+also adapting itself to a far larger variety of situations; for, after
+all, the _mere_ son of thunder is disarmed, and apt to become
+ridiculous, if you strip him of a passionate cause, of a theme saturated
+with human strife, and of an excitable or tempestuous audience.
+
+Such an audience, however, it will be said that Demosthenes had, and
+sometimes (but not very often in those orations which survive) such a
+theme. As to his audience, certainly it was all that could be wished
+in point of violence and combustible passion; but also it was
+something more. A mighty advantage it is, doubtless, to an orator,
+when he sees and hears his own kindling passions instantaneously
+reflected in the blazing eyes and fiery shouts (the _fremitus_) of
+his audience--when he sees a whole people, personally or by
+deputation, swayed backwards and forwards, like a field of corn in a
+breeze, by the movements of his own appeals. But, unfortunately, in
+the Athenian audience, the ignorance, the headstrong violence of
+prejudice, the arrogance, and, above all, the levity of the national
+mind--presented, to an orator the most favourite, a scene like that of
+an ocean always rocking with storms; like a wasp always angry; like a
+lunatic, always coming out of a passion or preparing to go into one.
+Well might Demosthenes prepare himself by sea-shore practice; in which
+I conceive that his purpose must have been, not so much (according to
+the common notion) to overcrow the noise of the forum, as to _stand
+fire_ (if I may so express it) against the uproarious demonstrations
+of mob fury.
+
+This quality of an Athenian audience must very seriously have
+interfered with the intellectual display of an orator. Not a word
+could he venture to say in the way of censure towards the public
+will--not even hypothetically to insinuate a fault; not a syllable
+could he utter even in the way of dissent from the favourite
+speculations of the moment. If he did, instantly a roar of menaces
+recalled him to a sense even of personal danger. And, again, the mere
+vivacity of his audience, requiring perpetual amusement and variety,
+compelled a man, as great even as Demosthenes, to curtail his
+arguments, and rarely, indeed, to pursue a theme with the requisite
+fulness of development or illustration; a point in which the superior
+dignity and the far less fluctuating mobility of the Roman mind gave
+an immense advantage to Cicero.
+
+Demosthenes, in spite of all the weaknesses which have been arrayed
+against his memory by the hatred of his contemporaries, or by the
+anti-republican feelings of such men as Mitford, was a great man and
+an honest man. He rose above his countrymen. He despised, in some
+measure, his audience; and, at length, in the palmy days of his
+influence, he would insist on being heard; he would insist on telling
+the truth, however unacceptable; he would not, like the great rout of
+venal haranguers, lay any flattering unction to the capital distempers
+of the public mind; he would point out their errors, and warn them of
+their perils. But this upright character of the man, victorious over
+his constitutional timidity, does but the more brightly illustrate the
+local law and the tyranny of the public feeling. How often do we find
+him, when on the brink of uttering 'odious truth,' obliged to pause,
+and to propitiate his audience with deprecatory phrases, entreating
+them to give him time for utterance, not to yell him down before they
+had heard his sentence to the end. [Greek: Mê thoryzeite]--'Gentlemen
+of Athens! for the love of God, do not make an uproar at what I am
+going to say! Gentlemen of Athens! humbly I beseech you to let me
+finish my sentence!' Such are his continual appeals to the better
+feelings of his audience. Now, it is very evident that, in such
+circumstances, no man could do justice to any subject. At least, when
+speaking not before a tribunal of justice, but before the people in
+council assembled--that is, in effect, on his greatest stage of
+all--Demosthenes (however bold at times, and restive in a matter which
+he held to be paramount) was required to bend, and did bend, to the
+local genius of democracy, reinforced by a most mercurial
+temperament. The very air of Attica, combined with great political
+power, kept its natives in a state of habitual intoxication; and even
+wise men would have had some difficulty in mastering, as it affected
+themselves, the permanent bias towards caprice and insolence.
+
+Is this state of things at all taken into account in our modern
+critiques upon Demosthenes? The upshot of what I can find in most
+modern lecturers upon rhetoric and style, French or English, when
+speaking of Demosthenes, is this notable simile, by way of
+representing the final effect of his eloquence--'that, like a mountain
+torrent, swollen by melting snow, or by rain, it carries all things
+before it.' Prodigiously original! and exceedingly discriminative! As
+if such an illustration would not equally represent the effect of a
+lyrical poem, of Mozart's music, of a stormy chorus, or any other form
+whatever of impassioned vehemence. Meantime, I suspect grievously that
+not one of these critics has ever read a paragraph of Demosthenes.
+Nothing do you ever find quoted but a few notorious passages about
+Philip of Macedon, and the too-famous oath, by the manes of those that
+died at Marathon. I call it too famous, because (like Addison's
+comparison of Marlborough, at Blenheim, to the angel in the storm--of
+which a schoolmaster then living said, that nine out of every ten boys
+would have hit upon it in a school exercise) it has no peculiar
+boldness, and must have occurred to every Athenian, of any
+sensibility, every day of his life. Hear, on the other hand, a modern
+oath, and (what is most remarkable) an oath sworn in the pulpit. A
+dissenting clergyman (I believe, a Baptist), preaching at Cambridge,
+and having occasion to affirm or to deny something or other, upon his
+general confidence in the grandeur of man's nature, the magnificence
+of his conceptions, the immensity of his aspirations, &c., delivered
+himself thus:--'By the greatness of human ideals--by the greatness of
+human aspirations--by the immortality of human creations--_by the
+Iliad_--_by the Odyssey_'--Now, that _was_ bold, startling, sublime.
+But, in the other case, neither was the oath invested with any great
+pomp of imagery or expression; nor, if it had--which is more to the
+purpose--was such an oath at all representative of the peculiar manner
+belonging to Demosthenes. It is always a rude and inartificial style
+of criticism to cite from an author that which, whether fine or not in
+itself, is no fair specimen of his ordinary style.
+
+What then _is_ the characteristic style of Demosthenes?--It is one
+which grew naturally, as did his defects (by which I mean faults of
+_omission_, in contradiction to such as are positive), from the
+composition of his audience. His audience, comprehending so much
+ignorance, and, above all, so much high-spirited impatience, being, in
+fact, always on the fret, kept the orator always on the fret. Hence
+arose short sentences; hence, the impossibility of the long,
+voluminous sweeps of beautiful rhythmus which we find in Cicero;
+hence, the animated form of apostrophe and crowded interrogations
+addressed to the audience. This gives, undoubtedly, a spirited and
+animated character to the style of Demosthenes; but it robs him of a
+large variety of structure applied to the logic, or the embellishment,
+or the music of his composition. His style is full of life, but not
+(like Cicero's) full of pomp and continuous grandeur. On the contrary,
+as the necessity of rousing attention, or of sustaining it, obliged
+the Attic orator to rely too much on the _personality_ of direct
+question to the audience, and to use brief sentences, so also the same
+impatient and fretful irritability forbade him to linger much upon an
+idea--to theorise, to speculate, or, generally, to quit the direct
+business path of the question then under consideration--no matter for
+what purpose of beauty, dignity, instruction, or even of _ultimate_
+effect. In all things, the _immediate_--the instant--the _præsens
+præsentissimum_, was kept steadily before the eye of the Athenian
+orator, by the mere coercion of self-interest.
+
+And hence, by the way, arises one most important feature of
+distinction between Grecian oratory (political oratory at least) on
+the one hand, and Roman (to which, in this point, we may add British)
+on the other. A Roman lawyer, senator, or demagogue, even, under
+proper restrictions--a British member of parliament--or even a
+candidate from the hustings--but, most assuredly, and by the evidence
+of many a splendid example, an advocate addressing a jury--may
+embellish his oration with a wide circuit of historical, or of
+antiquarian, nay, even speculative discussion. Every Latin scholar
+will remember the leisurely and most facetious, the good-natured and
+respectful, yet keenly satiric, picture which the great Roman
+barrister draws of the Stoic philosophy, by way of _rowing_ old Cato,
+who professed that philosophy with too little indulgence for venial
+human errors. The _judices_--that is, in effect, the jury--were
+tickled to the soul by seeing the grave Marcus Cato badgered with
+this fine razor-like raillery; and there can be no doubt that, by
+flattering the self-respect of the jury, in presuming them susceptible
+of so much wit from a liberal kind of knowledge, and by really
+delighting them with such a display of adroit teasing applied to a man
+of scenical gravity, this whole scene, though quite extrajudicial and
+travelling out of the record, was highly useful in conciliating the
+good-will of Cicero's audience. The same style of liberal _excursus_
+from the more thorny path of the absolute business before the court,
+has been often and memorably practised by great English
+barristers--as, in the trial of Sacheverel, by many of the managers
+for the Commons; by 'the fluent Murray,' on various occasions; in the
+great cause of impeachment against our English Verres (or, at least,
+our Verres as to the situation, though not the guilt), Mr. Hastings;
+in many of Mr. Erskine's addresses to juries, where political rights
+were at stake; in Sir James Mackintosh's defence of Peltier for a
+libel upon Napoleon, when he went into a history of the press as
+applied to politics--(a liberal inquiry, but which, except in the
+remotest manner, could not possibly bear upon the mere question of
+fact before the jury); and in many other splendid instances, which
+have really made _our_ trials and the annals of _our_ criminal
+jurisprudence one great fund of information and authority to the
+historian. In the senate, I need not say how much farther, and more
+frequently, this habit of large generalisation, and of liberal
+excursion from perhaps a lifeless theme, has been carried by great
+masters; in particular, by Edmund Burke, who carried it, in fact, to
+such excess, and to a point which threatened so much to disturb the
+movement of public business, that, from that cause more perhaps than
+from rude insensibility to the value of his speculations, he put his
+audience sometimes in motion for dinner, and acquired (as is
+well-known) the surname of the Dinner Bell.[18]
+
+[Footnote 18: Yet this story has been exaggerated; and, I believe, in
+strict truth, the whole case arose out of some fretful expressions of
+ill-temper on the part of Burke, and that the name was a retort from a
+man of wit, who had been personally stung by a sarcasm of the offended
+orator.]
+
+Now, in the Athenian audience, all this was impossible: neither in
+political nor in forensic harangues was there any license by rule, or
+any indulgence by usage, or any special privilege by personal favour,
+to the least effort at improving an individual case of law or politics
+into general views of jurisprudence, of statesmanship, of diplomacy;
+no collateral discussions were tolerated--no illustrative details--no
+historical parallelisms--still less any philosophical moralisations.
+The slightest show of any tendency in these directions was summarily
+nipped in the bud: the Athenian gentlemen began to [Greek: thoryzein]
+in good earnest if a man showed symptoms of entering upon any
+discussion whatever that was not intensely needful and pertinent in
+the first place--or which, in the second place, was not of a nature to
+be wound up in two sentences when a summons should arise either to
+dinner, or to the theatre, or to the succession of some variety
+anticipated from another orator.
+
+Hence, therefore, finally arises one great peculiarity of Greek
+eloquence; and a most unfortunate one for its chance of ever
+influencing a remote posterity, or, in any substantial sense, of its
+ever surviving in the real unaffected admiration of us moderns--that
+it embodies no alien, no collateral information as to manners, usages,
+modes of feeling--no extrinsic ornament, no side glimpses into Grecian
+life, no casual historical details. The cause, and nothing but the
+cause--the political question, and nothing but the question--- pealed
+for ever in the ears of the terrified orator, always on sufferance,
+always on his good behaviour, always afraid, for the sake of his party
+or of his client, lest his auditors should become angry, or become
+impatient, or become weary. And from that intense fear, trammeling the
+freedom of his steps at every turn, and overruling every motion to the
+right or to the left, in pure servile anxiety for the mood and
+disposition of his tyrannical master, arose the very opposite result
+for us of this day--that we, by the very means adopted to prevent
+weariness in the immediate auditors, find nothing surviving in Grecian
+orations but what _does_ weary us insupportably through its want of
+all general interest; and, even amongst private or instant details of
+politics or law, presenting us with none that throw light upon the
+spirit of manners, or the Grecian peculiarities of feeling. Probably
+an Athenian mob would not have cared much at the prospect of such a
+result to posterity; and, at any rate, would not have sacrificed one
+atom of their ease or pleasure to obviate such a result: but, to an
+Athenian orator, this result would have been a sad one to contemplate.
+The final consequence is, that whilst all men find, or may find,
+infinite amusement, and instruction of the most liberal kind, in that
+most accomplished of statesmen and orators, the Roman Cicero--nay,
+would doubtless, from the causes assigned, have found, in their
+proportion, the same attractions in the speeches of the elder Antony,
+of Hortensius, of Crassus, and other contemporaries or immediate
+predecessors of Cicero--no person ever reads Demosthenes, still less
+any other Athenian orator, with the slightest interest beyond that
+which inevitably attaches to the words of one who wrote his own divine
+language with probably very superior skill.
+
+But, from all this, results a further inference--viz. the dire
+affectation of those who pretend an enthusiasm in the oratory of
+Demosthenes; and also a plenary consolation to all who are obliged,
+from ignorance of Greek, to dispense with that novelty. If it be a
+luxury at all, it is and can be one for those only who cultivate
+verbal researches and the pleasures of philology.
+
+Even in the oratory of our own times, which oftentimes discusses
+questions to the whole growth and motion of which we have been
+ourselves parties present, or even accessary--questions which we have
+followed in their first emersion and separation from the clouds of
+general politics; their advance, slow or rapid, towards a domineering
+interest in the public passions; their meridian altitude; and perhaps
+their precipitous descent downwards, whether from the consummation of
+their objects (as in the questions of the Slave Trade, of Catholic
+Emancipation, of East India Monopoly), or from a partial victory and
+compromise with the abuse (as in the purification of that Augean
+stable, prisons, and, still more, private houses for the insane), or
+from the accomplishment of one stage or so in a progress which, by its
+nature, is infinite (as in the various steps taken towards the
+improvement, and towards the extension of education): even in cases
+like these, when the primary and ostensible object of the speaker
+already, on its own account, possesses a commanding attraction, yet
+will it often happen that the secondary questions, growing out of the
+leading one, the great elementary themes suggested to the speaker by
+the concrete case before him--as, for instance, the general question
+of Test Laws, or the still higher and transcendent question of
+Religious Toleration, and the relations between the State and
+religious opinions, or the general history of Slavery and the commerce
+in the human species, the general principles of economy as applied to
+monopolies, the past usages of mankind in their treatment of prisoners
+or of lunatics--these comprehensive and transcendent themes are
+continually allowed to absorb and throw into the shade, for a time,
+the minor but more urgent question of the moment through which they
+have gained their interest. The capital and primary interest gives way
+for a time to the derivative interest; and it does so by a silent
+understanding between the orator and his audience. The orator is well
+assured that he will not be taxed with wandering; the audience are
+satisfied that, eventually, they will not have lost their time: and
+the final result is, to elevate and liberalise the province of
+oratory, by exalting mere business (growing originally, perhaps, out
+of contingencies of finance, or trade, or local police) into a field
+for the higher understanding; and giving to the mere necessities of
+our position as a nation the dignity of great problems for civilising
+wisdom or philosophic philanthropy. Look back to the superb orations
+of Edmund Burke on questions limited enough in themselves, sometimes
+merely personal; for instance, that on American Taxation, on the
+Reforms in our Household or Official Expenditure, or at that from the
+Bristol hustings (by its _primâ facie_ subject, therefore, a mere
+electioneering harangue to a mob). With what marvellous skill does he
+enrich what is meagre, elevate what is humble, intellectualise what is
+purely technical, delocalise what is local, generalise what is
+personal! And with what result? Doubtless to the absolute
+contemporaries of those speeches, steeped to the very lips in the
+passions besetting their topics, even to those whose attention was
+sufficiently secured by the domineering interest, friendly or hostile,
+to the views of the speaker--even to these I say, that, in so far as
+they were at all capable of an intellectual pleasure, those parts
+would be most attractive which were least occupied with the present
+business and the momentary details. This order of precedency in the
+interests of the speech held even for them; but to us, removing at
+every annual step we take in the century, to a greater distance from
+the mere business and partisan interests of the several cases, this
+secondary attraction is not merely the greater of the two--to us it
+has become pretty nearly the sole one, pretty nearly the exclusive
+attraction.
+
+As to religious oratory, _that_ stands upon a different footing--the
+questions afloat in that province of human speculation being eternal,
+or at least essentially the same under new forms, receives a strong
+illustration from the annals of the English senate, to which also it
+gives a strong and useful illustration. Up to the era of James I., the
+eloquence of either House could not, for political reasons, be very
+striking, on the very principle which we have been enforcing.
+Parliament met only for dispatch of business; and that business was
+purely fiscal, or (as at times it happened) judicial. The
+constitutional functions of Parliament were narrow; and they were
+narrowed still more severely by the jealousy of the executive
+government. With the expansion, or rather first growth and development
+of a gentry, or third estate, expanded, _pari passu_, the political
+field of their jurisdiction and their deliberative functions. This
+widening field, as a birth out of new existences, unknown to former
+laws or usages, was, of course, not contemplated by those laws or
+usages. Constitutional law could not provide for the exercise of
+rights by a body of citizens, when, as yet, that body had itself no
+existence. A gentry, as the depository of a vast overbalance of
+property, real as well as personal, had not matured itself till the
+latter years of James I. Consequently the new functions, which the
+instinct of their new situation prompted them to assume, were looked
+upon by the Crown, most sincerely, as unlawful usurpations. This led,
+as we know, to a most fervent and impassioned struggle, the most so of
+any struggle which has ever armed the hands of men with the sword. For
+the passions take a far profounder sweep when they are supported by
+deep thought and high principles.
+
+This element of fervid strife was already, for itself, an atmosphere
+most favourable to political eloquence. Accordingly, the speeches of
+that day, though generally too short to attain that large compass and
+sweep of movement without which it is difficult to kindle or to
+sustain any conscious enthusiasm in an audience, were of a high
+quality as to thought and energy of expression, as high as their
+circumstantial disadvantages allowed. Lord Strafford's great effort is
+deservedly admired to this day, and the latter part of it has been
+often pronounced a _chef-d'oeuvre_. A few years before that era, all
+the orators of note were, and must have been, judicial orators; and,
+amongst these, Lord Bacon, to whom every reader's thoughts will point
+as the most memorable, attained the chief object of all oratory, if
+what Ben Jonson reports of him be true, that he had his audience
+passive to the motions of his will. But Jonson was, perhaps, too
+scholastic a judge to be a fair representative judge; and, whatever he
+might choose to say or to think, Lord Bacon was certainly too
+weighty--too massy with the bullion of original thought--ever to have
+realized the idea of a great popular orator--one who
+
+    'Wielded at will a fierce democracy,'
+
+and ploughed up the great deeps of sentiment, or party strife, or
+national animosities, like a Levanter or a monsoon. In the schools of
+Plato, in the _palæstra Stoicorum_, such an orator might be potent;
+not _in fæce Romuli_. If he had laboured with no other defect, had he
+the gift of tautology? Could he say the same thing three times over in
+direct sequence? For, without this talent of iteration--of repeating
+the same thought in diversified forms--a man may utter good heads of
+an oration, but not an oration. Just as the same illustrious man's
+essays are good hints--useful topics--for essays; but no approximation
+to what we, in modern days, understand by _essays_: they are, as an
+eminent author once happily expressed it to myself, '_seeds, not
+plants or shrubs; acorns, that is, oaks in embryo, but not oaks_.'
+
+Reverting, however, to the oratory of the Senate, from the era of its
+proper birth, which we may date from the opening of that our memorable
+Long Parliament, brought together in November of 1642,[19] our
+Parliamentary eloquence has now, within four years, travelled through
+a period of two centuries. A most admirable subject for an essay, or a
+Magazine article, as it strikes me, would be a bird's-eye view--or
+rather a bird's-wing flight--pursuing rapidly the revolutions of that
+memorable oracle (for such it really was to the rest of civilised
+Europe), which, through so long a course of years, like the Delphic
+oracle to the nations of old, delivered counsels of civil prudence and
+of national grandeur, that kept alive for Christendom the
+recollections of freedom, and refreshed to the enslaved Continent the
+old ideas of Roman patriotism, which, but for our Parliament, would
+have uttered themselves by no voices on earth. That this account of
+the position occupied by our British Parliament, in relation to the
+rest of Europe, at least after the publication of the Debates had been
+commenced by Cave, with the aid of Dr. Johnson, is, in no respect,
+romantic or overcharged, may be learned from the German novels of the
+last century, in which we find the British debates as uniformly the
+morning accompaniment of breakfast, at the houses of the rural gentry,
+&c., as in any English or Scottish county. Such a sketch would, of
+course, collect the characteristics of each age, show in what
+connection these characteristics stood with the political aspects of
+the time, or with the modes of managing public business (a fatal rock
+to our public eloquence in England!), and illustrate the whole by
+interesting specimens from the leading orators in each generation:
+from Hampden to Pulteney, amongst oppositionists or patriots; from
+Pulteney to O'Connell; or, again, amongst Ministers, from Hyde to
+Somers, from Lord Sunderland to Lords Oxford and Bolingbroke; and from
+the plain, downright Sir Robert Walpole, to the plain, downright Sir
+Robert Peel.
+
+[Footnote 19: There was another Parliament of this same year 1642,
+which met in the spring (April, I think), but was summarily dissolved.
+A small quarto volume, of not unfrequent occurrence, I believe,
+contains some good specimens of the eloquence then prevalent--it was
+rich in thought, never wordy--in fact, too parsimonious in words and
+illustrations; and it breathed a high tone of religious principle as
+well as of pure-minded patriotism; but, for the reason stated
+above--its narrow circuit and very limited duration--the general
+character of the Parliamentary eloquence was ineffective.]
+
+Throughout the whole of this review, the same 'moral,' if one might so
+call it, would be apparent--viz. that in proportion as the oratory was
+high and intellectual, did it travel out into the collateral questions
+of less instant necessity, but more durable interest; and that, in
+proportion as the Grecian necessity _was_ or was _not_ enforced by the
+temper of the House, or by the pressure of public business--the
+necessity which cripples the orator, by confining him within the
+severe limits of the case before him--in that proportion had or had
+not the oratory of past generations a surviving interest for modern
+posterity. Nothing, in fact, so utterly effete--not even old law, or
+old pharmacy, or old erroneous chemistry--nothing so insufferably dull
+as political orations, unless when powerfully animated by that spirit
+of generalisation which only gives the breath of life and the salt
+which preserves from decay, through every age alike. The very
+strongest proof, as well as exemplification of all which has been said
+on Grecian oratory, may thus be found in the records of the British
+senate.
+
+And this, by the way, brings us round to an aspect of Grecian oratory
+which has been rendered memorable, and forced upon our notice, in the
+shape of a problem, by the most popular of our native historians--the
+aspect, I mean, of Greek oratory in comparison with English. Hume has
+an essay upon the subject; and the true answer to that essay will open
+a wide field of truth to us. In this little paper, Hume assumes the
+superiority of Grecian eloquence, as a thing admitted on all hands,
+and requiring no proof. Not the proof of this point did he propose to
+himself as his object; not even the illustration of it. No. All that,
+Hume held to be superfluous. His object was, to investigate the causes
+of this Grecian superiority; or, if _investigate_ is too pompous a
+word for so slight a discussion, more properly, he inquired for the
+cause as something that must naturally lie upon the surface.
+
+What is the answer? First of all, before looking for causes, a man
+should be sure of his facts. Now, as to the main fact at issue, I
+utterly deny the superiority of Grecian eloquence. And, first of all,
+I change the whole field of inquiry by shifting the comparison. The
+Greek oratory is all political or judicial: we have those also; but
+the best of our eloquence, by immeasurable degrees, the noblest and
+richest, is our religious eloquence. Here, of course, all comparison
+ceases; for classical Grecian religious eloquence, in Grecian attire,
+there is none until three centuries after the Christian era, when we
+have three great orators, Gregory Nazianzen, Basil--of which two I
+have a very fixed opinion, having read large portions of both--and a
+third of whom I know nothing. To our Jeremy Taylor, to our Sir Thomas
+Browne, there is no approach made in the Greek eloquence. The
+inaugural chapter of the _Holy Dying_, to say nothing of many another
+golden passage; or the famous passage in the _Urn Buriall_,
+beginning--'Now, since these bones have rested under the drums and
+tramplings of three conquests'--have no parallel in literature. The
+winding up of the former is more, in its effect, like a great
+tempestuous chorus from the _Judas Maccabeus_, or from Spohr's _St.
+Paul_, than like human eloquence.
+
+But, grant that this transfer of the comparison is unfair--still, it
+is no less unfair to confine the comparison on our part to the weakest
+part of our oratory; but no matter--let issue be joined even here.
+Then we may say, at once, that, for the intellectual qualities of
+eloquence, in fineness of understanding, in depth and in large compass
+of thought, Burke far surpasses any orator, ancient or modern. But, if
+the comparison were pushed more widely, very certain I am, that, apart
+from classical prejudice, no qualities of just thinking, or fine
+expression, or even of artificial ornament, could have been assigned
+by Hume, in which the great body of our deliberative and forensic
+orators fall short of Grecian models; though I will admit, that, by
+comparison with the Roman model of Cicero, there is seldom the same
+artful prefiguration of the oration throughout its future course, or
+the same sustained rhythmus and oratorial tone. The qualities of art
+are nowhere so prominently expressed, nowhere aid the effect so much,
+as in the great Roman master.
+
+But, as to Greece, let us now, in one word, unveil the sole advantage
+which the eloquence of the Athenian _assembly_ has over that of the
+English senate. It is this--_the public business of Athens was as yet
+simple and unencumbered by details_; the dignity of the occasion was
+scenically sustained. But, in England, the vast intricacy and complex
+interweaving of property, of commerce, of commercial interests, of
+details infinite in number, and infinite in littleness, break down and
+fritter away into fractions and petty minutiæ, the whole huge
+labyrinth of our public affairs. It is scarcely necessary to explain
+my meaning. In Athens, the question before the public assembly was,
+peace or war--before our House of Commons, perhaps the Exchequer
+Bills' Bill; at Athens, a league or no league--in England, the Tithe
+of Agistment Commutation-Bills' Renewal Bill; in Athens--shall we
+forgive a ruined enemy? in England--shall we cancel the tax on
+farthing rushlights? In short, with us, the infinity of details
+overlays the simplicity and grandeur of our public deliberations.
+
+Such was the advantage--a mighty advantage--for Greece. Now, finally,
+for the use made of this advantage. To that point I have already
+spoken. By the clamorous and undeliberative qualities of the Athenian
+political audience, by its fitful impatience, and vehement arrogance,
+and fervid partisanship, all wide and general discussion was barred
+_in limine_. And thus occurred this singular inversion of
+positions--the greatest of Greek orators was obliged to treat these
+Catholic questions as mere Athenian questions of business. On the
+other hand, the least eloquent of British senators, whether from the
+immense advance in knowledge, or from the custom and usage of
+Parliament, seldom fails, more or less, to elevate his intense details
+of pure technical business into something dignified, either by the
+necessities of pursuing the _historical_ relations of the matter in
+discussion, or of arguing its merits as a case of general finance, or
+as connected with general political economy, or, perhaps, in its
+bearings on peace or war. The Grecian was forced, by the composition
+of his headstrong auditory, to degrade and personalise his grand
+themes; the Englishman is forced, by the difference of his audience,
+by old prescription, and by the opposition of a well-informed, hostile
+party, into elevating his merely technical and petty themes into great
+national questions, involving honour and benefit to tens of millions.
+
+
+
+
+THE GERMAN LANGUAGE, AND PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
+
+
+Using a New Testament, of which (in the narrative parts at least) any
+one word being given will suggest most of what is immediately
+consecutive, you evade the most irksome of the penalties annexed to
+the first breaking ground in a new language: you evade the necessity
+of hunting up and down a dictionary. Your own memory, and the
+inevitable suggestions of the context, furnish a dictionary _pro hac
+vice_. And afterwards, upon advancing to other books, where you are
+obliged to forego such aids, and to swim without corks, you find
+yourself already in possession of the particles for expressing
+addition, succession, exception, inference--in short, of all the forms
+by which transition or connection is effected (_if_, _but_, _and_,
+_therefore_, _however_, _notwithstanding_), together with all those
+adverbs for modifying or restraining the extent of a subject or a
+predicate, which in all languages alike compose the essential
+frame-work or _extra-linear_ machinery of human thought. The
+filling-up--the _matter_ (in a scholastic sense)--may differ
+infinitely; but the _form_, the periphery, the determining moulds
+into which this matter is fused--all this is the same for ever: and so
+wonderfully limited in its extent is this frame-work, so narrow and
+rapidly revolving is the clock-work of connections among human
+thoughts, that a dozen pages of almost any book suffice to exhaust all
+the [Greek: epea pteroenta][20] which express them. To have mastered
+these [Greek: epea pteroenta] is in effect to have mastered
+seven-tenths, at the least, of any language; and the benefit of using
+a New Testament, or the familiar parts of an Old Testament, in this
+preliminary drill, is, that your own memory is thus made to operate as
+a perpetual dictionary or nomenclator. I have heard Mr. Southey say
+that, by carrying in his pocket a Dutch, Swedish, or other Testament,
+on occasion of a long journey performed in '_muggy_' weather, and in
+the inside of some venerable 'old heavy'--such as used to bestow their
+tediousness upon our respectable fathers some thirty or forty years
+ago--he had more than once turned to so valuable an account the
+doziness or the dulness of his fellow-travellers, that whereas he had
+'booked' himself at the coach-office utterly [Greek: analphabêtos],
+unacquainted with the first rudiments of the given language, he had
+made his parting bows to his coach brethren (secretly returning thanks
+to them for their stupidity), in a condition for grappling with any
+common book in that dialect. One of the polyglot Old or New Testaments
+published by Bagster, would be a perfect Encyclopædia, or
+_Panorganon_, for such a scheme of coach discipline, upon dull roads
+and in dull company. As respects the German language in particular, I
+shall give one caution from my own experience, to the self-instructor:
+it is a caution which applies to the German language exclusively, or
+to that more than to any other, because the embarrassment which it is
+meant to meet, grows out of a defect of taste characteristic of the
+German mind. It is this: elsewhere, you would naturally, as a
+beginner, resort to _prose_ authors, since the license and audacity of
+poetic thinking, and the large freedom of a poetic treatment, cannot
+fail to superadd difficulties of individual creation to the general
+difficulties of a strange dialect. But this rule, good for every other
+case, is _not_ good for the literature of Germany. Difficulties there
+certainly are, and perhaps in more than the usual proportion, from the
+German peculiarities of poetic treatment; but even these are
+overbalanced in the result, by the single advantage of being limited
+in the extent by the metre, or (as it may happen) by the particular
+stanza. To German poetry there is a known, fixed, calculable limit.
+Infinity, absolute infinity, is impracticable in any German metre.
+Not so with German prose. Style, in any sense, is an inconceivable
+idea to a German intellect. Take the word in the limited sense of what
+the Greeks called [Greek: Synthesis onomatôn]--_i. e._ the
+construction of sentences--I affirm that a German (unless it were here
+and there a Lessing) cannot admit such an idea. Books there are in
+German, and, in other respects, very good books too, which consist of
+one or two enormous sentences. A German sentence describes an arch
+between the rising and the setting sun. Take Kant for illustration: he
+has actually been complimented by the cloud-spinner, Frederic
+Schlegel, who is now in Hades, as a most original artist in the matter
+of style. 'Original' Heaven knows he was! His idea of a sentence was
+as follows:--We have all seen, or read of, an old family coach, and
+the process of packing it for a journey to London some seventy or
+eighty years ago. Night and day, for a week at least, sate the
+housekeeper, the lady's maid, the butler, the gentleman's gentleman,
+&c., packing the huge ark in all its recesses, its 'imperials,' its
+'wills,' its 'Salisbury boots,' its 'sword-cases,' its front pockets,
+side pockets, rear pockets, its 'hammer-cloth cellars' (which a lady
+explains to me as a corruption from _hamper-cloth_, as originally a
+cloth for hiding a hamper, stored with _viaticum_), until all the uses
+and needs of man, and of human life, savage or civilised, were met
+with separate provision by the infinite chaos. Pretty nearly upon the
+model of such an old family coach packing, did Kant institute and
+pursue the packing and stuffing of one of his regular sentences.
+Everything that could ever be needed in the way of explanation,
+illustration, restraint, inference, by-clause, or indirect comment,
+was to be crammed, according to this German philosopher's taste, into
+the front pockets, side pockets, or rear pockets, of the one original
+sentence. Hence it is that a sentence will last in reading whilst a
+man
+
+    'Might reap an acre of his neighbour's corn.'
+
+Nor is this any peculiarity of Kant's. It is common to the whole
+family of prose writers of Germany, unless when they happen to have
+studied French models, who cultivate the opposite extreme. As a
+caution, therefore, practically applied to this particular anomaly in
+German prose-writing, I advise all beginners to choose between two
+classes of composition--ballad poetry, or comedy--as their earliest
+school of exercise; ballad poetry, because the form of the stanza
+(usually a quatrain) prescribes a very narrow range to the sentences;
+comedy, because the form of dialogue, and the imitation of daily life
+in its ordinary tone of conversation, and the spirit of comedy
+naturally suggesting a brisk interchange of speech, all tend to short
+sentences. These rules I soon drew from my own experience and
+observation. And the one sole purpose towards which I either sought or
+wished for aid, respected the pronunciation; not so much for attaining
+a just one (which I was satisfied could not be realised out of
+Germany, or, at least, out of a daily intercourse with Germans) as for
+preventing the formation, unawares, of a radically false one. The
+guttural and palatine sounds of the _ch_, and some other German
+peculiarities, cannot be acquired without constant practice. But the
+false Westphalian or Jewish pronunciation of the vowels, diphthongs,
+&c., may easily be forestalled, though the true delicacy of Meissen
+should happen to be missed. Thus much guidance I purchased, with a
+very few guineas, from my young Dresden tutor, who was most anxious
+for permission to extend his assistance; but this I would not hear of:
+and, in the spirit of fierce (perhaps foolish) independence, which
+governed most of my actions at that time of life, I did all the rest
+for myself.
+
+    'It was a banner broad unfurl'd,
+    The picture of that western world.'
+
+These, or words like these, in which Wordsworth conveys the sudden
+apocalypse, as by an apparition, to an ardent and sympathising spirit,
+of the stupendous world of America, rising, at once, like an
+exhalation, with all its shadowy forests, its endless savannas, and
+its pomp of solitary waters--well and truly might I have applied to my
+first launching upon that vast billowy ocean of the German literature.
+As a past literature, as a literature of inheritance and tradition,
+the German was nothing. Ancestral titles it had none; or none
+comparable to those of England, Spain, or even Italy; and there, also,
+it resembled America, as contrasted with the ancient world of Asia,
+Europe, and North Africa.[21] But, if its inheritance were nothing,
+its prospects, and the scale of its present development, were in the
+amplest style of American grandeur. _Ten thousand_ new books, we are
+assured by Menzel, an author of high reputation--a _literal
+myriad_--is considerably below the number annually poured from all
+quarters of Germany, into the vast reservoir of Leipsic; spawn
+infinite, no doubt, of crazy dotage, of dreaming imbecility, of
+wickedness, of frenzy, through every phasis of Babylonian confusion;
+yet, also, teeming and heaving with life and the instincts of
+truth--of truth hunting and chasing in the broad daylight, or of truth
+groping in the chambers of darkness; sometimes seen as it displays its
+cornucopia of tropical fruitage; sometimes heard dimly, and in
+promise, working its way through diamond mines. Not the tropics, not
+the ocean, not life itself, is such a type of variety, of infinite
+forms, or of creative power, as the German literature, in its recent
+motions (say for the last twenty years), gathering, like the Danube, a
+fresh volume of power at every stage of its advance. A banner it was,
+indeed, to me of miraculous promise, and suddenly unfurled. It seemed,
+in those days, an El Dorado as true and undeceiving as it was
+evidently inexhaustible. And the central object in this interminable
+wilderness of what then seemed imperishable bloom and verdure--the
+very tree of knowledge in the midst of this Eden--was the new or
+transcendental philosophy of Immanuel Kant.
+
+[Footnote 20: [Greek: Epea pteroenta], literally _winged words_. To
+explain the use and origin of this phrase to non-classical readers, it
+must be understood that, originally, it was used by Homer to express
+the few, rapid, and significant words which conveyed some hasty order,
+counsel, or notice, suited to any sudden occasion or emergency: _e.
+g._ 'To him flying from the field the hero addressed these winged
+words--"Stop, coward, or I will transfix thee with my spear."' But by
+Horne Tooke, the phrase was adopted on the title-page of his
+_Diversions of Purley_, as a pleasant symbolic expression for all the
+non-significant particles, the _articuli_ or joints of language, which
+in his well-known theory are resolved into abbreviations or
+compendious forms (and therefore rapid, flying, _winged_ forms),
+substituted for significant forms of greater length. Thus, _if_ is a
+non-significant particle, but it is an abbreviated form of an
+imperative in the second person--substituted for gif, or give, or
+grant the case--put the case that. All other particles are shown by
+Horne Tooke to be equally shorthand (or _winged_) substitutions.]
+
+[Footnote 21: It has been rather too much forgotten, that Africa, from
+the northern margin of Bilidulgerid and the Great Desert,
+southwards--everywhere, in short, beyond Egypt, Cyrene, and the modern
+Barbary States--belongs, as much as America, to the New World--the
+world unknown to the ancients.]
+
+I have described the gorgeousness of my expectations in those early
+days of my prelusive acquaintance with German literature. I have a
+little lingered in painting that glad aurora of my first pilgrimage to
+the fountains of the Rhine and of the Danube, in order adequately to
+shadow out the gloom and blight which soon afterwards settled upon the
+hopes of that golden dawn. In Kant, I had been taught to believe,
+were the keys of a new and a creative philosophy. Either '_ejus
+ductu_,' or '_ejus auspiciis_'--that is, either directly under his
+guidance, or indirectly under any influence remotely derived from his
+principles--I looked confidingly to see the great vistas and avenues
+of truth laid open to the philosophic inquirer. Alas! all was a dream.
+Six weeks' study was sufficient to close my hopes in that quarter for
+ever. The philosophy of Kant--so famous, so commanding in Germany,
+from about the period of the French Revolution--already, in 1805, I
+had found to be a philosophy of destruction, and scarcely, in any one
+chapter, so much as _tending_ to a philosophy of reconstruction. It
+destroys by wholesale, and it substitutes nothing. Perhaps, in the
+whole history of man, it is an unexampled case, that such a scheme of
+speculation--which offers nothing seducing to human aspirations,
+nothing splendid to the human imagination, nothing even positive and
+affirmative to the human understanding--should have been able to found
+an interest so broad and deep among thirty-five millions of cultivated
+men. The English reader who supposes this interest to have been
+confined to academic bowers, or the halls of philosophic societies, is
+most inadequately alive to the case. Sects, heresies, schisms, by
+hundreds, have arisen out of this philosophy--many thousands of books
+have been written by way of teaching it, discussing it, extending it,
+opposing it. And yet it is a fact, that all its doctrines are
+negative--teaching, in no case, what we _are_, but simply what we are
+_not_ to believe--and that all its truths are barren. Such being its
+unpopular character, I cannot but imagine that the German people have
+received it with so much ardour, from profound incomprehension of its
+meaning, and utter blindness to its drift--a solution which may seem
+extravagant, but is not so; for, even amongst those who have expressly
+commented on this philosophy, not one of the many hundreds whom I have
+myself read, but has retracted from every attempt to explain its dark
+places. In these dark places lies, indeed, the secret of its
+attraction. Were light poured into them, it would be seen that they
+are _culs-de-sac_, passages that lead to nothing; but, so long as they
+continue dark, it is not known whither they lead, how far, in what
+direction, and whether, in fact, they may not issue into paths
+connected directly with the positive and the infinite. Were it known
+that upon every path a barrier faces you insurmountable to human
+steps--like the barriers which fence in the Abyssinian valley of
+Rasselas--the popularity of this philosophy would expire at once; for
+no popular interest can long be sustained by speculations which, in
+every aspect, are known to be essentially negative and essentially
+finite. Man's nature has something of infinity within itself, which
+requires a corresponding infinity in its objects. We are told, indeed,
+by Mr. Bulwer, that the Kantian system has ceased to be of any
+authority in Germany--that it is defunct, in fact--and that we have
+first begun to import it into England, after its root had withered, or
+begun to wither, in its native soil. But Mr. Bulwer is mistaken. The
+philosophy has never withered in Germany. It cannot even be said that
+its fortunes have retrograded: they have oscillated: accidents of
+taste and ability in particular professors, or caprices of fashion,
+have given a momentary fluctuation to this or that new form of
+Kantianism,--an ascendency, for a period, to various, and, in some
+respects, conflicting, modifications of the transcendental system; but
+all alike have derived their power mediately from Kant. No weapons,
+even if employed as hostile weapons, are now forged in any armoury but
+that of Kant; and, to repeat a Roman figure which I used above, all
+the modern polemic tactics of what is called metaphysics, are trained
+and made to move either _ejus ductu_ or _ejus auspiciis_. Not one of
+the new systems affects to call back the Leibnitzian philosophy, the
+Cartesian, or any other of earlier or later date, as adequate to the
+purposes of the intellect in this day, or as capable of yielding even
+a sufficient terminology. Let this last fact decide the question of
+Kant's vitality. _Qui bene distinguit bene docet._ This is an old
+adage. Now, he who imposes new names upon all the acts, the functions,
+and the objects of the philosophic understanding, must be presumed to
+have distinguished most sharply, and to have ascertained with most
+precision, their general relations--_so long as his terminology
+continues to be adopted_. This test, applied to Kant, will show that
+his spirit yet survives in Germany. Frederic Schlegel, it is true,
+twenty years ago, in his lectures upon literature, assures us that
+even the disciples of the great philosopher have agreed to abandon his
+philosophic nomenclature. But the German philosophic literature, since
+that date, tells another tale. Mr. Bulwer is, therefore, wrong; and,
+without going to Germany, looking only to France, he will see cause to
+revise his sentence. Cousin--the philosophic Cousin, the only great
+name in philosophy for modern France--familiar as he is with North
+Germany, can hardly be presumed unacquainted with a fact so striking,
+if it _were_ a fact, as the extinction of a system once so
+triumphantly supreme as that of Kant; and yet Mr. Bulwer, admiring
+Cousin as he does, cannot but have noticed his efforts to naturalise
+Kant in France. Meantime, if it were even true that transcendentalism
+had lost its hold of the public mind in Germany, _primâ facie_, this
+would prove little more than the fickleness of that public which must
+have been wrong in one of the two cases--either when adopting the
+system, or when rejecting it. Whatever there may be of truth and value
+in the system, will remain unimpeached by such caprices, whether of an
+individual or of a great nation; and England would still be in the
+right to import the philosophy, however late in the day, if it were
+true even (which I doubt greatly) that she _is_ importing it.
+
+Both truth and value there certainly _is_ in one part of the Kantian
+philosophy; and that part is its foundation. I had intended, at this
+point, to introduce an outline of the transcendental philosophy--not,
+perhaps, as entering by logical claim of right into any biographical
+sketch, but as a very allowable digression in the record of that man's
+life to whom, in the way of hope and of profound disappointment, it
+had been so memorable an object. For two or three years before I
+mastered the language of Kant,[22] it had been a pole-star to my
+hopes, and _in hypothesi_ agreeably to the uncertain plans of
+uncertain knowledge, the luminous guide to my future life--as a life
+dedicated and set apart to philosophy. Such it was some years _before_
+I knew it: for, at least ten long years _after_ I came into a
+condition of valueing its true pretensions and measuring its
+capacities, this same philosophy shed the gloom of something like
+misanthropy upon my views and estimates of human nature; for man was
+an abject animal, if the limitations which Kant assigned to the
+motions of his speculative reason were as absolute and hopeless as,
+under _his_ scheme of the understanding and _his_ genesis of its
+powers, too evidently they were. I belonged to a reptile race, if the
+wings by which we had sometimes _seemed_ to mount, and the buoyancy
+which had _seemed_ to support our flight, were indeed the fantastic
+delusions which he represented them. Such, and so deep and so abiding
+in its influence upon my life, having been the influence of this
+German philosophy, according to all logic of proportions, in selecting
+the objects of my notice, I might be excused for setting before the
+reader, in its full array, the analysis of its capital sections.
+However, in any memorial of a life which professes to keep in view
+(though but as a secondary purpose) any regard to popular taste, the
+logic of proportions must bend, after all, to the law of the
+occasion--to the proprieties of time and place. For the present,
+therefore, I shall restrict myself to the few sentences in which it
+may be proper to gratify the curiosity of _some_ readers, the two or
+three in a hundred, as to the peculiar distinctions of this
+philosophy. Even to these two or three out of each hundred, I shall
+not venture to ascribe a larger curiosity than with respect to the
+most general 'whereabouts' of its position--from what point it
+starts--whence and from what aspect it surveys the ground--and by what
+links from this starting-point it contrives to connect itself with the
+main objects of philosophic inquiry.
+
+[Footnote 22: I might have mastered the philosophy of Kant, without
+waiting for the German language, in which all his capital works are
+written; for there is a Latin version of the whole, by Born, and a
+most admirable digest of the cardinal work (admirable for its fidelity
+and the skill by which that fidelity is attained), in the same
+language, by Rhiseldek, a Danish professor. But this fact, such was
+the slight knowledge of all things connected with Kant in England, I
+did not learn for some years.]
+
+Immanuel Kant was originally a dogmatist in the school of Leibnitz and
+Wolf; that is, according to his trisection of all philosophy into
+dogmatic, sceptical, and critical, he was, upon all questions,
+disposed to a strong _affirmative_ creed, without courting any
+particular examination into the grounds of this creed, or into its
+assailable points. From this slumber, as it is called by himself, he
+was suddenly aroused by the Humian doctrine of cause and effect. This
+celebrated essay on the nature of necessary connection--so thoroughly
+misapprehended at the date of its first publication to the world by
+its _soi-disant_ opponents, Oswald, Beattie, &c., and so imperfectly
+comprehended since then by various _soi-disant_ defenders--became in
+effect the 'occasional cause' (in the phrase of the logicians) of the
+entire subsequent philosophic scheme of Kant--every section of which
+arose upon the accidental opening made to analogical trains of
+thought, by this memorable effort of scepticism, applied by Hume to
+one capital phenomenon among the necessities of the human
+understanding. What is the nature of Hume's scepticism as applied to
+this phenomenon? What is the main thesis of his celebrated essay on
+cause and effect? For few, indeed, are they who really know anything
+about it. If a man really understands it, a very few words will avail
+to explain the _nodus_. Let us try. It is a necessity of the _human_
+understanding (very probably not a necessity of a higher order of
+intelligences) to connect its experiences by means of the idea of
+_cause_ and its correlate, _effect_: and when Beattie, Oswald, Reid,
+&c. were exhausting themselves in proofs of the indispensableness of
+this idea, they were fighting with shadows; for no man had ever
+questioned the practical necessity for such an idea to the coherency
+of human thinking. Not the practical necessity, but the internal
+consistency of this notion, and the original right to such a notion,
+was the point of inquisition. For, attend, courteous reader, and three
+separate propositions will set before your eyes the difficulty. _First
+Prop._, which, for the sake of greater precision, permit me to throw
+into Latin:--_Non datur aliquid_ [A] _quo posito ponitur aliud_ [B] _à
+priori_; that is, in other words, You cannot lay your hands upon that
+one object or phenomenon [A] in the whole circle of natural
+existences, which, being assumed, will entitle you to assume _à
+priori_, any other object whatsoever [B] as succeeding it. You could
+not, I say, of any object or phenomenon whatever, assume this
+succession _à priori_--that is, _previously to experience_. _Second
+Prop._ But, if the succession of B to A be made known to you, not _à
+priori_ (by the involution of B in the idea of A), but by experience,
+then you cannot ascribe _necessity_ to the succession: the connection
+between them is not necessary but contingent. For the very widest
+experience--an experience which should stretch over all ages, from
+the beginning to the end of time--can never establish a _nexus_ having
+the least approximation to necessity; no more than a rope of sand
+could gain the cohesion of adamant, by repeating its links through a
+billion of successions. _Prop. Third._ Hence (_i. e._ from the two
+preceding propositions), it appears that no instance or case of
+_nexus_ that ever can have been offered to the notice of any human
+understanding, has in it, or, by possibility, could have had anything
+of necessity. Had the _nexus_ been necessary, you would have seen it
+beforehand; whereas, by Prop. I. _Non datur aliquid, quo posito
+ponitur aliud à priori._ This being so, now comes the startling fact,
+that the notion of a _cause_ includes the notion of necessity. For, if
+A (the cause) be connected with B (the effect) only in a casual or
+accidental way, you do not feel warranted in calling it a cause. If
+heat applied to ice (A) were sometimes followed by a tendency to
+liquefaction (B) and sometimes not, you would not consider A connected
+with B as a cause, but only as some variable accompaniment of the true
+and unknown cause, which might allowably be present or be absent.
+This, then, is the startling and mysterious phenomenon of the human
+understanding--that, in a certain notion, which is indispensable to
+the coherency of our whole experience, indispensable to the
+establishing any _nexus_ between the different parts and successions
+of our whole train of notices, we include an accessary notion of
+necessity, which yet has no justification or warrant, no assignable
+derivation from any known or possible case of human experience. We
+have one idea at least--viz. the idea of causation--which transcends
+our possible experience by one important element, the element of
+_necessity_, that never can have been derived from the only source of
+ideas recognised by the philosophy of this day. A Lockian never can
+find his way out of this dilemma. The experience (whether it be the
+experience of sensation or the experience of reflection) which he
+adopts for his master-key, never will unlock this case; for the sum
+total of human experience, collected from all ages, can avail only to
+tell us what _is_, but never what _must be_. The idea of necessity is
+absolutely transcendant to experience, _per se_, and must be derived
+from some other source. From what source? Could Hume tell us? No: he,
+who had started the game so acutely (for with every allowance for the
+detection made in Thomas Aquinas, of the original suggestion, as
+recorded in the _Biographia Literaria_ of Coleridge, we must still
+allow great merit of a secondary kind to Hume for his modern revival
+and restatement of the doctrine), this same acute philosopher broke
+down confessedly in his attempt to hunt the game down. His solution is
+worthless.
+
+Kant, however, having caught the original scent from Hume, was more
+fortunate. He saw, at a glance, that here was a test applied to the
+Lockian philosophy, which showed, at the very least, its
+_insufficiency_. If it were good even for so much as it
+explained--which Burke is disposed to receive as a sufficient warrant
+for the favourable reception of a new hypothesis--at any rate, it now
+appeared that there was something which it could _not_ explain. But
+next, Kant took a large step in advance _proprio morte_. Reflecting
+upon the one idea adduced by Hume, as transcending the ordinary
+source of ideas, he began to ask himself, whether it were likely that
+this idea should stand alone? Were there not other ideas in the same
+predicament; other ideas including the same element of necessity, and,
+therefore, equally disowning the parentage assigned by Locke? Upon
+investigation, he found that there were: he found that there were
+eleven others in exactly the same circumstances. The entire twelve he
+denominated categories; and the mode by which he ascertained their
+number--that there were so many and no more--is of itself so
+remarkable as to merit notice in the most superficial sketch. But, in
+fact, this one explanation will put the reader in possession of Kant's
+system, so far as he could understand it without an express and
+toilsome study. With this explanation, therefore, of the famous
+categories, I shall close my slight sketch of the system. Has the
+reader ever considered the meaning of the term _Category_--a term so
+ancient and so venerable from its connection with the most domineering
+philosophy that has yet appeared amongst men? The doctrine of the
+Categories (or, in its Roman appellation, of the _Predicaments_), is
+one of the few wrecks from the Peripatetic philosophy which still
+survives as a doctrine taught by public authority in the most ancient
+academic institutions of Europe. It continues to form a section in the
+code of public instruction; and perhaps under favour of a pure
+accident. For though, strictly speaking, a _metaphysical_ speculation,
+it has always been prefixed as a sort of preface to the _Organon_ (or
+_logical_ treatises) of Aristotle, and has thus accidentally shared in
+the immortality conceded to that most perfect of human works. Far
+enough were the Categories from meriting such distinction. Kant was
+well aware of this: he was aware that the Aristotelian Categories were
+a useless piece of scholastic lumber: unsound in their first
+conception; and, though illustrated through long centuries by the
+schoolmen, and by still earlier Grecian philosophers, never in any one
+known instance turned to a profitable account. Why, then, being aware
+that even in idea they were false, besides being practically
+unsuitable, did Kant adopt or borrow a name laden with this
+superfetation of reproach--all that is false in theory superadded to
+all that is useless in practice? He did so for a remarkable reason: he
+felt, according to his own explanation, that Aristotle had been
+_groping_ [the German word expressive of his blind procedure is
+_herumtappen_]--groping in the dark, but under a semi-conscious
+instinct of truth. Here is a most remarkable case or situation of the
+human intellect, happening alike to individuals and to entire
+generations--in the situation of yearning or craving, as it were, for
+a great idea as yet unknown, but dimly and uneasily prefigured.
+Sometimes the very brink, as it may be called, of such an idea is
+approached; sometimes it is even imperfectly discovered; but with
+marks in the very midst of its imperfections, which serve as
+indications to a person coming better armed for ascertaining the
+sub-conscious thought which had governed their tentative motions. As
+it stands in Aristotle's scheme, the idea of a category is a mere
+lifeless abstraction. Rising through a succession of species to
+genera, and from these to still higher genera, you arrive finally at a
+highest genus--a naked abstraction, beyond which no further regress is
+possible. This highest genus, this _genus generalissimum_, is, in
+peripatetic language, a category; and no purpose or use has ever been
+assigned to any one of these categories, of which ten were enumerated
+at first, beyond that of classification--_i. e._ a purpose of mere
+convenience. Even for as trivial a purpose as this, it gave room for
+suspecting a failure, when it was afterwards found that the original
+ten categories did not exhaust the possibilities of the case; that
+other supplementary categories (_post-prædicamenti_) became necessary.
+And, perhaps, 'more last words' might even yet be added, supplementary
+supplements, and so forth, by a hair-splitting intellect. Failures as
+gross as these, revisals still open to revision, and amendments
+calling for amendments, were at once a broad confession that here
+there was no falling in with any great law of nature. The paths of
+nature may sometimes be arrived at in a tentative way; but they are
+broad and determinate; and, when found, vindicate themselves. Still,
+in all this erroneous subtilisation, and these abortive efforts, Kant
+perceived a grasping at some real idea--fugitive indeed and coy, which
+had for the present absolutely escaped; but he caught glimpses of it
+continually in the rear; he felt its necessity to any account of the
+human understanding that could be satisfactory to one who had
+meditated on Locke's theory as probed and searched by Leibnitz. And in
+this uneasy state--half sceptical, half creative, rejecting and
+substituting, pulling down and building up--what was in sum and
+finally the course which he took for bringing his trials and essays to
+a crisis? He states this himself, somewhere in the Introduction to his
+_Critik der reinen Vernunft_; and the passage is a memorable one.
+Fifteen years at the least have passed since I read it; and,
+therefore, I cannot pretend to produce the words; but the substance I
+shall give; and I appeal to the candour of all his readers, whether
+they have been able to apprehend his meaning. I certainly did not for
+years. But, now that I do, the passage places his procedure in a most
+striking and edifying light. Astronomers, says Kant, had gone on for
+ages, assuming that the earth was the central body of our system; and
+insuperable were the difficulties which attended that assumption. At
+length, it occurred to try what would result from inverting the
+assumption. Let the earth, instead of offering a fixed centre for the
+revolving motions of other heavenly bodies, be supposed itself to
+revolve about some one of these, as the sun. That supposition was
+tried, and gradually all the phenomena which, before, had been
+incoherent, anomalous, or contradictory, began to express themselves
+as parts of a most harmonious system. 'Something,' he goes on to say,
+'analogous to this I have practised with regard to the subject of my
+inquiry--the human understanding. All others had sought their central
+principle of the intellectual phenomena out of the understanding, in
+something external to the mind. I first turned my inquiries upon the
+mind itself. I first applied my examination to the very analysis of
+the understanding.' In words, not precisely these, but pretty nearly
+equivalent to them, does Kant state, by contradistinction, the value
+and the nature of his own procedure. He first, according to his own
+representation, thought of applying his investigation to the mind
+itself. Here was a passage which for years (I may say) continued to
+stagger and confound me. What! he, Kant, in the latter end of the 18th
+century, about the year 1787--he the first who had investigated the
+mind! This was not arrogance so much as it was insanity. Had he
+said--I, first, upon just principles, or with a fortunate result,
+investigated the human understanding, he would have said no more than
+every fresh theorist is bound to suppose, as his preliminary apology
+for claiming the attention of a busy world. Indeed, if a writer, on
+any part of knowledge, does _not_ hold himself superior to all his
+predecessors, we are entitled to say--Then, why do you presume to
+trouble us? It may _look_ like modesty, but _is_, in effect, downright
+effrontery for you to think yourself no better than other critics; you
+were at liberty to think so whilst no claimant of public notice--as
+being so, it is most arrogant in you to be modest. This would be the
+criticism applied justly to a man who, in Kant's situation, as the
+author of a new system, should use a language of unseasonable modesty
+or deprecation. To have spoken boldly of himself was a duty; we could
+not tolerate his doing otherwise. But to speak of himself in the
+exclusive terms I have described, does certainly seem, and for years
+did seem to myself, little short of insanity. Of this I am sure that
+no student of Kant, having the passage before him, can have known
+heretofore what consistent, what rational interpretation to give it;
+and, in candour, he ought to own himself my debtor for the light he
+will now receive. Yet, so easy is it to imagine, after a meaning is
+once pointed out, and the station given from which it shows itself
+_as_ the meaning--so easy, under these circumstances, is it to
+imagine that one has, or that one could have, found it for one's
+self--that I have little expectation of reaping much gratitude for my
+explanation. I say this, not as of much importance one way or the
+other in a single case of the kind, but because a general
+consideration of this nature has sometimes operated to make me more
+indifferent or careless as to the publication of commentaries on
+difficult systems, when I had found myself able to throw much light on
+the difficulties. The very success with which I should have
+accomplished the task--the perfect removal of the obstacles in the
+student's path--were the very grounds of my assurance-that the service
+would be little valued. For I have found what it was occasionally, in
+conversation, to be too luminous--to have explained, for instance, too
+clearly a dark place in Ricardo. In such a case, I have known a man of
+the very greatest powers, mistake the intellectual effort he had put
+forth to apprehend my elucidation, and to meet it half way, for his
+own unassisted conquest over the difficulties; and, within an hour or
+two after, I have had, perhaps, to stand, as an attack upon myself,
+arguments entirely and recently furnished by myself. No case is more
+possible: even to apprehend a complex explanation, a man cannot be
+passive; he must exert considerable energy of mind; and, in the fresh
+consciousness of this energy, it is the most natural mistake in the
+world for him to feel the argument which he has, by considerable
+effort, appropriated to be an argument which he has originated. Kant
+is the most unhappy champion of his own doctrines, the most
+infelicitous expounder of his own meaning, that has ever existed.
+Neither has any other commentator succeeded in throwing a moonlight
+radiance upon his philosophy. Yet certain I am, that, were I, or any
+man, to disperse all his darkness, exactly in that proportion in which
+we did so--exactly in the proportion in which we smoothed all
+hindrances--exactly in that proportion would it cease to be known or
+felt that there had ever been any hindrances to be smoothed. This,
+however, is digression, to which I have been tempted by the
+interesting nature of the grievance. In a jesting way, this grievance
+is obliquely noticed in the celebrated couplet--
+
+    'Had you seen but these roads before they were made,
+    You'd lift up your hands and bless Marshal Wade.'
+
+The pleasant bull here committed conceals a most melancholy truth, and
+one of large extent. Innumerable are the services to truth, to
+justice, or society, which never _can_ be adequately valued by those
+who reap their benefits, simply because the transition from the early
+and bad state to the final or improved state cannot be retraced or
+kept alive before the eyes. The record perishes. The last point gained
+is seen; but the starting-point, the points _from_ which it was
+gained, is forgotten. And the traveller never _can_ know the true
+amount of his obligations to Marshal Wade, because, though seeing the
+roads which the Marshal has created, he can only guess at those which
+he superseded. Now, returning to this impenetrable passage of Kant, I
+will briefly inform the reader that he may read it into sense by
+connecting it with a part of Kant's system, from which it is in his
+own delivery entirely dislocated. Going forwards some thirty or forty
+pages, he will find Kant's development of his own categories. And, by
+placing in juxtaposition with that development this blind sentence, he
+will find a reciprocal light arising. All philosophers, worthy of that
+name, have found it necessary to allow of some great cardinal ideas
+that transcended all the Lockian origination--ideas that were larger
+in their compass than any possible notices of sense or any reflex
+notices of the understanding; and those who have denied such ideas,
+will be found invariably to have supported their denial by a _vitium
+subreptionis_, and to have deduced their pretended genealogies of such
+ideas by means of a _petitio principii_--silently and stealthily
+putting _into_ some step of their _leger-de-main_ process everything
+that they would pretend to have extracted _from_ it. But, previously
+to Kant, it is certain that all philosophers had left the origin of
+these higher or transcendent ideas unexplained. Whence came they? In
+the systems to which, Locke replies, they had been called _innate_ or
+_connate_. These were the Cartesian systems. Cudworth, again, who
+maintained certain '_immutable ideas_' of morality, had said nothing
+about their origin; and Plato had supposed them to be reminiscences
+from some higher mode of existence. Kant first attempted to assign
+them an origin within the mind itself, though not in any Lockian
+fashion of reflection upon sensible impressions. And this is doubtless
+what he means by saying that he first had investigated the mind--that
+is, he first for such a purpose.
+
+Where, then, is it, in what act or function of the mind, that Kant
+finds the matrix of these transcendent ideas? Simply in the logical
+forms of the understanding. Every power exerts its agency under some
+_laws_--that is, in the language of Kant, by certain _forms_. We leap
+by certain laws--viz. of equilibrium, of muscular motion, of
+gravitation. We dance by certain laws. So also we reason by certain
+laws. These laws, or _formal_ principles, under a particular
+condition, become the categories.
+
+Here, then, is a short derivation, in a very few words, of those ideas
+transcending sense, which all philosophy, the earliest, has been
+unable to dispense with, and yet none could account for. Thus, for
+example, every act of reasoning must, in the first place, express
+itself in distinct propositions; that is, in such as contain a subject
+(or that concerning which you affirm or deny something), a predicate
+(that which you affirm or deny), and a copula, which connects them.
+These propositions must have what is technically called, in logic, a
+certain _quantity_, or compass (viz. must be universal, particular, or
+singular); and again they must have what is called _quality_ (that is,
+must be affirmative, or negative, or infinite): and thus arises a
+ground for certain corresponding ideas, which are Kant's categories of
+quantity and quality.
+
+But, to take an illustration more appropriately from the very idea
+which first aroused Kant to the sense of a vast hiatus in the received
+philosophies--the idea of _cause_, which had been thrown as an apple
+of discord amongst the schools, by Hume. How did Kant deduce this?
+Simply thus: it is a doctrine of universal logic, that there are three
+varieties of syllogism--viz. 1st, Categoric, or directly declarative
+[_A is B_]; 2nd, Hypothetic, or conditionally declarative [_If C is D,
+then A is B_]; 3rd, Disjunctive, or declarative, by means of a choice
+which exhausts the possible cases [_A is either B, or C, or D; but
+not C or D; ergo B_]. Now, the idea of _causation_, or, in Kant's
+language, the category of Cause and Effect, is deduced immediately,
+and most naturally, as the reader will acknowledge on examination,
+from the 2nd or hypothetic form of syllogism, when the relation of
+dependency is the same as in the idea of causation, and the
+_necessary_ connection a direct type of that which takes place between
+a cause and its effect.
+
+Thus, then, without going one step further, the reader will find
+grounds enough for reflection and for reverence towards Kant in these
+two great results: 1st, That an order of ideas has been established,
+which all deep philosophy has demanded, even when it could not make
+good its claim. This postulate is fulfilled. 2ndly, The postulate is
+fulfilled without mysticism or Platonic reveries. Ideas, however
+indispensable to human needs, and even to the connection of our
+thoughts, which came to us from nobody knew whence, must for ever have
+been suspicious; and, as in the memorable instance cited from Hume,
+must have been liable for ever to a question of validity. But, deduced
+as they now are from a matrix within our own minds, they cannot
+reasonably fear any assaults of scepticism.
+
+Here I shall stop. A reader new to these inquiries may think all this
+a trifle. But he who reflects a little, will see that, even thus far,
+and going no step beyond this point, the Kantian doctrine of the
+Categories answers a standing question hanging aloof as a challenge to
+human philosophy, fills up a _lacuna_ pointed out from the era of
+Plato. It solves a problem which has startled and perplexed every age:
+viz. this--that man is in possession, nay, in the hourly exercise, of
+ideas larger than he can show any title to. And in another way, the
+reader may measure the extent of this doctrine, by reflecting that,
+even so far as now stated, it is precisely coextensive with the famous
+scheme of Locke. For what is the capital thesis of that scheme? Simply
+this--that all necessity for supposing immediate impressions made upon
+our understandings by God, or other supernatural, or antenatal, or
+connatal, agencies, is idle and romantic; for that, upon examining the
+furniture of our minds, nothing will be found there which cannot
+adequately be explained out of our daily experience; and, until we
+find something that cannot be solved by this explanation, it is
+childish to go in quest of higher causes. Thus says Locke: and his
+whole work, upon its first plan, is no more than a continual pleading
+of this single thesis, pursuing it through all the plausible
+objections. Being, therefore, as large in its extent as Locke, the
+reader must not complain of the transcendental scheme as too narrow,
+even in that limited section of it here brought under his notice.
+
+For the purpose of repelling it, he must do one of two things: either
+he must show that these categories or transcendent notions are not
+susceptible of the derivation and genesis here assigned to them--that
+is, from the forms of the _logos_ or formal understanding; or, if
+content to abide by that derivation, he must allege that there are
+other categories besides those enumerated, and unprovided with any
+similar parentage.
+
+Thus much in reply to him who complains of the doctrine here stated;
+as, 1st, Too narrow; or, 2nd, As insufficiently established. But, 3rd,
+in reply to him who wishes to see it further pursued or applied, I
+say that the possible applications are perhaps infinite. With respect
+to those made by Kant himself, they are chiefly contained in his main
+and elementary work, the _Critik der reinen Vernunft_; and they are of
+a nature to make any man melancholy. Indeed, let a man consider merely
+this one notion of _causation_; let him reflect on its origin; let him
+remember that, agreeably to this origin, it follows that we have no
+right to view anything _in rerum naturâ_ as objectively, or in itself
+a cause; that when, upon the fullest philosophic proof, we call A the
+cause of B, we do in fact only subsume A under the notion of a cause;
+we invest it with that function under that relation, that the whole
+proceeding is merely with respect to a _human_ understanding, and by
+way of indispensable _nexus_ to the several parts of our experience;
+finally, that there is the greatest reason to doubt, whether the idea
+of _causation_ is at all applicable to any other world than this, or
+any other than a human experience. Let a man meditate but a little on
+this or other aspects of this transcendental philosophy, and he will
+find the steadfast earth itself rocking as it were beneath his feet; a
+world about him, which is in some sense a world of deception; and a
+world before him, which seems to promise a world of confusion, or '_a
+world not realised_.' All this he might deduce for himself without
+further aid from Kant. However, the particular purposes to which Kant
+applies his philosophy, from the difficulties which beset them, are
+unfitted for anything below a regular treatise. Suffice it to say
+here, that, difficult as these speculations are from one or two
+embarrassing doctrines on the Transcendental Consciousness, and
+depressing as they are from their general tendency, they are yet
+painfully irritating to the curiosity, and especially so from a sort
+of _experimentum crucis_, which they yield in the progress of their
+development on behalf of the entire doctrine of Kant--a test which, up
+to this hour, has offered defiance to any hostile hand. The test or
+defiance which I speak of, takes the shape of certain _antinomies_ (so
+they are termed), severe adamantine arguments, affirmative and
+negative, on two or three celebrated problems, with no appeal to any
+possible decision, but one, which involves the Kantian doctrines. A
+_quæstio vexata_ is proposed--for instance, the _infinite divisibility
+of matter_; each side of this question, _thesis_ and _antithesis_, is
+argued; the logic is irresistible, the links are perfect, and for each
+side alternately there is a verdict, thus terminating in the most
+triumphant _reductio ad absurdum_--viz. that A, at one and the same
+time and in the same sense, is and is not B, from which no escape is
+available, but through a Kantian solution. On any other philosophy, it
+is demonstrated that this opprobrium of the human understanding, this
+scandal of logic, cannot be removed. This celebrated chapter of
+_antinomies_ has been of great service to the mere polemics of the
+transcendental philosophy: it is a glove or gage of defiance,
+constantly lying on the ground, challenging the rights of victory and
+supremacy so long as it is _not_ taken up by any antagonist, and
+bringing matters to a short decision when it _is_.
+
+One section, and that the introductory section, of the transcendental
+philosophy, I have purposely omitted, though in strictness not to be
+insulated or dislocated from the faithful exposition even of that
+which I have given. It is the doctrine of Space and Time. These
+profound themes, so confounding to the human understanding, are
+treated by Kant under two aspects--1st, as Anchauungen, or
+_Intuitions_ (so the German word is usually translated for want of a
+better); 2ndly, as forms, _à priori_, of all our other intuitions.
+Often have I laughed internally at the characteristic exposure of
+Kant's style of thinking--that he, a man of so much worldly sagacity,
+could think of offering, and of the German scholastic habits, that any
+modern nation could think of accepting such cabalistical phrases, such
+a true and very '_Ignotium per Ignotius_,' in part payment of an
+explanatory account of Time and Space. Kant repeats these words--as a
+charm before which all darkness flies; and he supposes continually the
+case of a man denying his explanations or demanding proofs of them,
+never once the sole imaginable case--viz. of all men demanding an
+explanation of these explanations. Deny them! Combat them! How should
+a man deny, why should he combat, what might, for anything to the
+contrary appearing, contain a promissory note at two months after date
+for 100 guineas? No; it will cost a little preliminary work before
+_such_ explanations will much avail any scheme of philosophy, either
+for the _pro_ or the _con_. And yet I do myself really profess to
+understand the dark words; and a great service it would be to sound
+philosophy amongst us, if this one word _anschauung_ were adequately
+unfolded and naturalised (as naturalised it might be) in the English
+philosophic dictionary, by some full Grecian equivalent. Strange that
+no man acquainted with German philosophy, should yet have been struck
+by the fact--or, being struck, should not have felt it important to
+call public attention to the fact of our inevitable feebleness in a
+branch of study for which as yet we want the indispensable words. Our
+feebleness is at once argued by this want, and partly caused.
+Meantime, as respects the Kantian way of viewing space, by much the
+most important innovation which it makes upon the old doctrines
+is--that it considers space as a _subjective_ not an _objective_
+aliquid; that is, as having its whole available foundation lying
+ultimately in ourselves, not in any external or alien tenure. This one
+distinction, as applied to space, for ever secures (what nothing else
+_can_ secure or explain) the cogency of geometrical evidence. Whatever
+is true for any determinations of a space originally included in
+ourselves, must be true for such determinations for ever, since they
+cannot become objects of consciousness to us but in and by that very
+mode of conceiving space, that very form of schematism which
+originally presented us with these determinations of space, or any
+whatever. In the uniformity of our own space-conceiving faculty, we
+have a pledge of the absolute and _necessary_ uniformity (or internal
+agreement among themselves) of all future or possible determinations
+of space; because they could not otherwise become to us conceivable
+forms of space, than by adapting themselves to the known conditions of
+our conceiving faculty. Here we have the _necessity_ which is
+indispensable to all geometrical demonstration: it is a necessity
+founded in our human organ, which cannot admit or conceive a space,
+unless as preconforming to these original forms or schematisms.
+Whereas, on the contrary, if space were something _objective_, and
+consequently being a separate existence, independent of a human organ,
+then it is altogether impossible to find any intelligible source of
+_obligation_ or cogency in the evidence--such as is indispensable to
+the very nature of geometrical demonstration. Thus we will suppose
+that a regular demonstration has gradually, from step to step
+downwards, through a series of propositions--No. 8 resting upon 7,
+that upon 5, 5 upon 3--at length reduced you to the elementary axiom,
+that Two straight lines cannot enclose a space. Now, if space be
+_subjective_ originally--that is to say, founded (as respects us and
+our geometry) in ourselves--then it is impossible that two such lines
+can enclose a space, because the possibility of anything whatever
+relating to the determinations of space is exactly co-extensive with
+(and exactly expressed by) our power to conceive it. Being thus able
+to affirm its impossibility universally, we can build a demonstration
+upon it. But, on the other hypothesis, of space being _objective_, it
+is impossible to guess whence we are to draw our proof of the alleged
+inaptitude in two straight lines for enclosing a space. The most we
+could say is, that hitherto no instance has been found of an enclosed
+space circumscribed by two straight lines. It would not do to allege
+our human inability to conceive, or in imagination to draw, such a
+circumscription. For, besides that such a mode of argument is exactly
+the one supposed to have been rejected, it is liable to this
+unanswerable objection, so long as space is assumed to have an
+_objective_ existence, viz. that the human inability to conceive such
+a possibility, only argues (what in fact is often found in other
+cases) that the _objective_ existence of space--_i. e._ the existence
+of space in itself, and in its absolute nature--is far larger than its
+subjective existence--_i. e._ than its mode of existing _quoad_ some
+particular subject. A being more limited than man might be so framed
+as to be unable to conceive curve lines; but this subjective
+inaptitude for those determinations of space would not affect the
+objective reality of curves, or even their subjective reality for a
+higher intelligence. Thus, on the hypothesis of an objective existence
+for space, we should be thrown upon an ocean of possibilities, without
+a test for saying what was--what was not possible. But, on the other
+hypothesis, having always in the last resort what is _subjectively_
+possible or impossible (_i. e._ what is conceivable or not by us, what
+can or cannot be drawn or circumscribed by a human imagination), we
+have the means of demonstration in our power, by having the ultimate
+appeals in our power to a known uniform test--viz. a known human
+faculty.
+
+This is no trifling matter, and therefore no trifling advantage on the
+side of Kant and his philosophy, to all who are acquainted with the
+disagreeable controversies of late years among French geometricians of
+the first rank, and sometimes among British ones, on the question of
+mathematical evidence. Legendre and Professor Leslie took part in one
+such a dispute; and the temper in which it was managed was worthy of
+admiration, as contrasted with the angry controversies of elder days,
+if, indeed, it did not err in an opposite spirit, by too elaborate and
+too calculating a tone of reciprocal flattery. But think as we may of
+the discussion in this respect, most assuredly it was painful to
+witness so infirm a philosophy applied to an interest so mighty. The
+whole aerial superstructure--the heaven-aspiring pyramid of
+geometrical synthesis--all tottered under the palsying logic of
+evidence, to which these celebrated mathematicians appealed. And
+wherefore?--From the want of any philosophic account of space, to
+which they might have made a common appeal, and which might have so
+far discharged its debt to truth, as at least to reconcile its theory
+with the great outstanding phenomena in the most absolute of sciences.
+Geometry is the _science_ of space: therefore, in any _philosophy_ of
+space, geometry is entitled to be peculiarly considered, and used as a
+court of appeal. Geometry has these two further claims to
+distinction--that, 1st, It is the most perfect of the sciences, so far
+as it has gone; and, 2ndly, That it has gone the farthest. A
+philosophy of space, which does not consider and does not reconcile to
+its own doctrines the facts of geometry, which, in the two points of
+beauty and of vast extent, is more like a work of nature than of man,
+is, _primâ facie_, of no value. A philosophy of space _might_ be
+false, which should harmonise with the facts of geometry--it _must_ be
+false, if it contradict them. Of Kant's philosophy it is a capital
+praise, that its very opening section--that section which treats the
+question of space, not only quadrates with the facts of geometry, but
+also, by the _subjective_ character which it attributes to space, is
+the very first philosophic scheme which explains and accounts for the
+cogency of geometrical evidence.
+
+These are the two primary merits of the transcendental theory--1st,
+Its harmony with mathematics, and the fact of having first, by its
+doctrine of space, applied philosophy to the nature of geometrical
+evidence; 2ndly, That it has filled up, by means of its doctrine of
+categories, the great _hiatus_ in all schemes of the human
+understanding from Plato downwards. All the rest, with a reserve as to
+the part which concerns the _practical_ reason (or will), is of more
+questionable value, and leads to manifold disputes. But I contend,
+that, had transcendentalism done no other service than that of laying
+a foundation, sought but not found for ages, to the human
+understanding--namely, by showing an intelligible genesis to certain
+large and indispensable ideas--it would have claimed the gratitude of
+all profound inquiries. To a reader still disposed to undervalue
+Kant's service in this respect, I put one parting question--Wherefore
+he values Locke? What has _he_ done, even if value is allowed in full
+to his pretensions? Has the reader asked himself _that_? He gave a
+_negative_ solution at the most. He told his reader that certain
+disputed ideas were _not_ deduced thus and thus. Kant, on the other
+hand, has given him at the least a _positive_ solution. He teaches
+him, in the profoundest revelation, by a discovery in the most
+absolute sense on record, and the most entirely a single act--without
+parts, or contributions, or stages, or preparations from other
+quarters--that these long disputed ideas could not be derived from the
+experience assigned by Locke, inasmuch as they are themselves
+_previous conditions under which any experience at all is possible_:
+he teaches him that these ideas are not mystically originated, but
+are, in fact, but another phasis of the functions, or, forms of his
+own understanding; and, finally, he gives consistency, validity, and
+a charter of authority, to certain modes of _nexus_, without which the
+sum total of human experience would be a rope of sand.
+
+In terminating this slight account of the Kantian philosophy, I may
+mention that in or about the year 1818-19, Lord Grenville, when
+visiting the lakes of England, observed to Professor Wilson that,
+after five years' study of this philosophy, he had not gathered from
+it one clear idea. Wilberforce, about the same time, made the same
+confession to another friend of my own.
+
+It is not usual for men to meet with their capital disappointments in
+early life, at least not in youth. For, as to disappointments in love,
+which are doubtless the most bitter and incapable of comfort, though
+otherwise likely to arise in youth, they are in this way made
+impossible at a very early age, that no man can be in love to the
+whole extent of his capacity, until he is in full possession of all
+his faculties, and with the sense of dignified maturity. A perfect
+love, such as is necessary to the anguish of a perfect disappointment,
+presumes also for its object not a mere girl, but woman, mature both
+in person and character, and womanly dignity. This sort of
+disappointment, in a degree which could carry its impression through
+life, I cannot therefore suppose occurring earlier than at twenty-five
+or twenty-seven. My disappointment--the profound shock with which I
+was repelled from German philosophy, and which thenceforwards tinged
+with cynical disgust towards man in certain aspects, a temper which,
+originally, I will presume to consider the most benign that can ever
+have been created--occurred when I was yet in my twentieth year. In a
+poem under the title of _Saul_, written many years ago by Mr. Sotheby,
+and perhaps now forgotten, having never been popular, there occurs a
+passage of some pathos, in which Saul is described as keeping amongst
+the splendid equipments of a royal wardrobe, that particular pastoral
+habit which he had worn in his days of earliest manhood, whilst yet
+humble and undistinguished by honour, but also yet innocent and happy.
+There, also, with the same care, he preserved his shepherd's crook,
+which, in hands of youthful vigour, had been connected with
+remembrances of heroic prowess. These memorials, in after times of
+trouble or perplexity, when the burthen of royalty, its cares, or its
+feverish temptations, pointed his thoughts backwards, for a moment's
+relief, to scenes of pastoral gaiety and peace, the heart-wearied
+prince would sometimes draw from their repository, and in solitude
+would apostrophise them separately, or commune with the bitter-sweet
+remembrances which they recalled. In something of the same spirit--but
+with a hatred to the German philosopher such as men are represented as
+feeling towards the gloomy enchanter, Zamiel or whomsoever, by whose
+hateful seductions they have been placed within a circle of malign
+influences--did I at times revert to Kant: though for me his power had
+been of the very opposite kind; not an enchanter's, but the power of a
+disenchanter--and a disenchanter the most profound. As often as I
+looked into his works, I exclaimed in my heart, with the widowed queen
+of Carthage, using her words in an altered application--
+
+    'Quæsivit lucem--_ingemuitque repertâ_.'
+
+Had the transcendental philosophy corresponded to my expectations,
+and had it left important openings for further pursuit, my purpose
+then was, to have retired, after a few years spent in Oxford, to the
+woods of Lower Canada. I had even marked out the situation for a
+cottage and a considerable library, about seventeen miles from Quebec.
+I planned nothing so ambitious as a scheme of _Pantisocracy_. My
+object was simply profound solitude, such as cannot now be had in any
+part of Great Britain--with two accessary advantages, also peculiar to
+countries situated in the circumstances and under the climate of
+Canada: viz. the exalting presence in an under-consciousness of
+forests endless and silent, the everlasting sense of living amongst
+forms so ennobling and impressive, together with the pleasure attached
+to natural agencies, such as frost, more powerfully manifested than in
+English latitudes, and for a much longer period. I hope there is
+nothing fanciful in all this. It is certain that, in England, and in
+all moderate climates, we are too slightly reminded of nature or the
+focus of nature. Great heats, or great colds (and in Canada there are
+both), or great hurricanes, as in the West Indian latitudes, recall us
+continually to the sense of a powerful presence, investing our paths
+on every side; whereas, in England, it is possible to forget that we
+live amongst greater agencies than those of men and human
+institutions. Man, in fact, 'too much man,' as Timon complained most
+reasonably in Athens, was then, and is now, our greatest grievance in
+England. Man is a weed everywhere too rank. A strange place must that
+be with us, from which the sight of a hundred men is not before us, or
+the sound of a thousand about us.
+
+Nevertheless, being in this hotbed of man inevitably for some years,
+no sooner had I dismissed my German philosophy than I relaxed a little
+that spirit of German abstraction which it had prompted; and, though
+never mixing freely with society, I began to look a little abroad. It
+may interest the reader, more than anything else which I can record of
+this period, to recall what I saw within the ten first years of the
+century, that was at all noticeable or worthy of remembrance amongst
+the literati, the philosophers, or the poets of the time. For, though
+I am not in my academic period from 1804 to 1808, my knowledge of
+literary men--or men distinguished in some way or other, either by
+their opinions, their accomplishments, or their position and the
+accidents of their lives--began from the first year of the century,
+or, more accurately, from the year 1800; which, with some difficulty
+and demurs, and with some arguments from the Laureate Pye, the world
+was at length persuaded to consider the last year of the eighteenth
+century.[23]
+
+[Footnote 23: Those who look back to the newspapers of 1799 and 1800,
+will see that considerable discussion went on at that time upon the
+question, whether the year 1800 was entitled to open the 19th century,
+or to close the 18th. Mr. Laureate Pye wrote a poem, with a long and
+argumentative preface on the point.]
+
+
+
+
+MORAL EFFECTS OF REVOLUTIONS.
+
+(_May, 1822._)
+
+
+In revolutionary times, as when a civil war prevails in a country, men
+are much worse, as moral beings, than in quiet and untroubled states
+of peace. So much is matter of history. The English, under Charles
+II., after twenty years' agitation and civil tumults; the Romans after
+Sylla and Marius, and the still more bloody proscriptions of the
+Triumvirates; the French, after the Wars of the League and the storms
+of the Revolution--were much changed for the worse, and exhibited
+strange relaxations of the moral principle. But why? What is the
+philosophy of the case? Some will think it sufficiently explained by
+the necessity of witnessing so much bloodshed--the hearths and the
+very graves of their fathers polluted by the slaughter of their
+countrymen--the _acharnement_ which characterises civil contests (as
+always the quarrels of friends are the fiercest)--and the license of
+wrong which is bred by war and the majesties of armies. Doubtless this
+is part of the explanation. But is this all? Mr. Coleridge has
+referred to this subject in _The friend_; but, to the best of my
+remembrance, only noticing it as a fact. Fichte, the celebrated German
+philosopher, has given us his view of it (_Idea of War_); and it is
+so ingenious, that it deserves mention. It is this--'Times of
+revolution force men's minds inwards: hence they are led amongst other
+things to meditate on morals with reference to their own conduct. But
+to subtilise too much upon this subject must always be ruinous to
+morality, with all understandings that are not very powerful, _i. e._
+with the majority, because it terminates naturally in a body of maxims
+a specious and covert self-interest. Whereas, when men meditate less,
+they are apt to act more from natural feeling, in which the natural
+goodness of the heart often interferes to neutralise or even to
+overbalance its errors.'
+
+
+
+
+PREFIGURATIONS OF REMOTE EVENTS.[24]
+
+(_April, 1823._)
+
+
+With a total disbelief in all the vulgar legends of supernatural
+agency, and _that_ upon firmer principles than I fear most people
+could assign for their incredulity, I must yet believe that the 'soul
+of the world' has in some instances sent forth mysterious types of the
+cardinal events, in the great historic drama of our planet. One has
+been noticed by a German author, and it is placed beyond the limits of
+any rational scepticism; I mean the coincidence between the augury
+derived from the flight of the twelve vultures as types of the
+duration of the Roman empire, _i. e._ Western Empire, for twelve
+centuries, and the actual event. This augury we know to have been
+recorded many centuries before its consummation; so that no juggling
+or collusion between the prophets and the witnesses to the final event
+can be suspected. Some others might be added. At present I shall
+notice a coincidence from our own history, which, though not so
+important as to come within the class of prefigurations I have been
+alluding to, is yet curious enough to deserve mention. The oak of
+Boscobel and its history are matter of household knowledge. It is not
+equally well known, that in a medal, struck to commemorate the
+installation (about 1636) of Charles II., then Prince of Wales, as a
+Knight of the Garter, amongst the decorations was introduced an
+oak-tree with the legend--'Seris factura nepotibus umbram.'
+
+[Footnote 24: This is only signed Z in _The London Magazine_, but is
+clearly labelled 'DE QUINCEY' in ARCHDEACON HESSEY'S marked copy.--H.]
+
+
+
+
+MEASURE OF VALUE.[25]
+
+(_December, 1823._)
+
+To the reader.--This article was written and printed before the author
+heard of the lamented death of Mr. Ricardo.
+
+
+It is remarkable at first sight that Mr. Malthus, to whom Political
+Economy is so much indebted in one chapter (viz. the chapter of
+Population), should in every other chapter have stumbled at every
+step. On a nearer view, however, the wonder ceases. His failures and
+his errors have arisen in all cases from the illogical structure of
+his understanding; his success was in a path which required no logic.
+What is the brief abstract of his success? It is this: _he took an
+obvious and familiar truth, which until his time had been a barren
+truism, and showed that it teemed with consequences_. Out of this
+position--_That in the ground which limited human food lay the ground
+which limited human increase_--united with this other position--_That
+there is a perpetual nisus in the principle of population to pass
+that limit_, he unfolded a body of most important corollaries. I have
+remarked in another article on this subject--how entirely these
+corollaries had escaped all Mr. Malthus's[26] predecessors in the same
+track. Perhaps the most striking instance of this, which I could have
+alleged, is that of the celebrated French work--_L'Ami des Hommes, ou
+Traité de la Population_ (written about the middle of the last
+century), which sets out deliberately from this principle, expressed
+almost in the very words of Mr. Malthus,--'_Que la mésure de la
+Subsistance est celle de la Population_;'--beats the bushes in every
+direction about it; and yet (with the exception of one corollary on
+the supposed depopulating tendency of war and famine) deduces from it
+none but erroneous and Anti-Malthusian doctrines. That from a truth
+apparently so barren any corollaries were deducible--was reserved for
+Mr. Malthus to show. _As_ corollaries, it may be supposed that they
+imply a logical act of the understanding. In some small degree, no
+doubt; but no more than necessarily accompanies every exercise of
+reason. Though inferences, they are not remote inferences, but
+immediate and proximate; and not dependent upon each other, but
+collateral. Not logic but a judicious choice of his ground placed Mr.
+Malthus at once in a station from which he commanded the whole truth
+at a glance--with a lucky dispensation from all necessity of
+continuous logical processes. But such a dispensation is a privilege
+indulged to few other parts of Political Economy, and least of all to
+that which is the foundation of all Political Economy, viz. the
+doctrine of value. Having therefore repeatedly chosen to tamper with
+this difficult subject, Mr. Malthus has just made so many exposures of
+his intellectual infirmities--which, but for this volunteer display,
+we might never have known. Of all the men of talents, whose writings I
+have read up to this hour, Mr. Malthus has the most perplexed
+understanding. He is not only confused himself, but is the cause that
+confusion is in other men. Logical perplexity is shockingly
+contagious: and he, who takes Mr. Malthus for his guide through any
+tangled question, ought to be able to box the compass very well; or
+before he has read ten pages he will find himself (as the Westmorland
+guides express it) 'maffled,'--and disposed to sit down and fall a
+crying with his guide at the sad bewilderment into which they have
+both strayed. It tends much to heighten the sense of Mr. Malthus's
+helplessness in this particular point--that of late years he has given
+himself the air too much of teasing Mr. Ricardo, one of the 'ugliest
+customers' in point of logic that ever entered the ring. Mr. Ricardo
+is a most 'dangerous' man; and Mr. Malthus would do well not to meddle
+with so 'vicious' a subject, whose arm (like Neate's) gives a blow
+like the kick of a horse. He has hitherto contented himself very
+good-naturedly with gently laying Mr. Malthus on his back; but, if he
+should once turn round with a serious determination to 'take the
+conceit' out of him, Mr. Malthus would assuredly be 'put into
+chancery,' and suffer a 'punishment' that must distress his
+friends.--Amongst those whom Mr. Malthus has perplexed by his logic, I
+am not one: in matter of logic, I hold myself impeccable; and, to say
+nothing of my sober days, I defy the devil and all the powers of
+darkness to get any advantage over me, even on those days when I am
+drunk, in relation to 'Barbara, Celarent, Darii, or Ferio.'
+
+[Footnote 25: MR. JOHN STUART MILL in his _Principles of Political
+Economy,_ Book III chaps, i. and ii., makes some interesting and
+appreciative remarks on De Quincey's settlement of 'the phraseology of
+value;' also, concerning his illustrations of 'demand and supply, in
+their relation to value.']
+
+[Footnote 26: In a slight article on Mr. Malthus, lately published, I
+omitted to take any notice of the recent controversy between this
+gentleman--Mr. Godwin--and Mr. Booth; my reason for which was--that I
+have not yet found time to read it. But, if Mr. Lowe has rightly
+represented this principle of Mr. Booth's argument in his late work on
+the Statistics of England, it is a most erroneous one: for Mr. Booth
+is there described as alleging against Mr. Malthus that, in his view
+of the tendencies of the principle of population, he has relied too
+much on the case of the United States--which Mr. Booth will have to be
+an extreme case, and not according to the general rule. But of what
+consequence is this to Mr. Malthus? And how is he interested in
+relying on the case of America rather than that of the oldest European
+country? Because he assumes a perpetual nisus in the principle of
+human increase to pass a certain limit, he does not therefore hold
+that this limit ever _is_ passed either in the new countries or in old
+(or only for a moment, and inevitably to be thrown back within it).
+Let this limit be placed where it may, it can no more be passed in
+America than in Europe; and America is not at all more favourable to
+Mr. Malthus's theory than Europe. Births, it must be remembered, are
+more in excess in Europe than in America: though they do not make so
+much positive addition to the population.]
+
+'Avoid, old Satanas!' I exclaim, if any man attempts to fling dust in
+my eyes by false syllogism, or any mode of dialectic sophism. And in
+relation to this particular subject of value, I flatter myself that in
+a paper expressly applied to the exposure of Mr. Malthus's blunders in
+his Political Economy, I have made it impossible for Mr. Malthus, even
+though he should take to his assistance seven worse logicians than
+himself, to put down my light with their darkness. Meantime, as a
+labour of shorter compass, I will call the reader's attention to the
+following blunder, in a later work of Mr. Malthus's--viz. a pamphlet
+of eighty pages, entitled, _The Measure of Value, stated and applied_
+(published in the spring of the present year). The question proposed
+in this work is the same as that already discussed in his Political
+Economy--viz. What is the measure of value? But the answer to it is
+different: in the Political Economy, the measure of value was
+determined to be a mean between corn and labour; in this pamphlet, Mr.
+Malthus retracts that opinion, and (finally, let us hope) settles it
+to his own satisfaction that the true measure is labour; not the
+quantity of labour, observe, which will produce X, but the quantity
+which X will command. Upon these two answers, and the delusions which
+lie at their root, I shall here forbear to comment; because I am now
+chasing Mr. Malthus's _logical_ blunders; and these delusions are not
+so much logical as economic: what I now wish the reader to attend
+to--is the blunder involved in the question itself; because that
+blunder is not economic, but logical. The question is--what is the
+measure of value? I say then that the phrase--'measure of value' is an
+equivocal phrase; and, in Mr. Malthus's use of it, means indifferently
+that which determines value, in relation to the _principium essendi_,
+and that which determines value, in relation to the _principium
+cognoscendi_. Here, perhaps, the reader will exclaim--'Avoid,
+Satanas!' to me, falsely supposing that I have some design upon his
+eyes, and wish to blind them with learned dust. But, if he thinks
+_that_, he is in the wrong box: I must and will express scholastic
+phrases; but, having once done this, I am then ready to descend into
+the arena with no other weapons than plain English can furnish. Let us
+therefore translate '_measure of value_' into '_that which determines
+value_:' and, in this shape, we shall detect the ambiguity of which I
+complain. For I say, that the word _determines_ may be taken
+subjectively for what determines X in relation to our knowledge, or
+objectively for what determines X in relation to itself. Thus, if I
+were to ask--'What determined the length of the racecourse?' and the
+answer were--'The convenience of the spectators who could not have
+seen the horses at a greater distance,' or 'The choice of the
+subscribers,' then it is plain that by the word 'determined,' I was
+understood to mean 'determined objectively,' _i. e._ in relation to
+the existence of the object; in other words, what _caused_ the
+racecourse to be this length rather than another length: but, if the
+answer were--'An actual admeasurement,' it would then be plain that by
+the word 'determined,' I had been understood to mean 'determined
+subjectively,' _i. e._ in relation to our knowledge;--what ascertained
+it?--Now, in the objective sense of the phrase, 'determiner of value,'
+the measure of value will mean _the ground of value_: in the
+subjective sense, it will mean _the criterion of value_. Mr. Malthus
+will allege that he is at liberty to use it in which sense he pleases.
+Grant that he is, but not therefore in both. Has he then used it in
+both? He will, perhaps, deny that he has, and will contend that he has
+used it in the latter sense as equivalent to the _ascertainer_ or
+_criterion of value_. I answer--No: for, omitting a more particular
+examination of his use in this place, I say that his use of any word
+is peremptorily and in defiance of his private explanation to be
+extorted from the use of the corresponding term in him whom he is
+opposing. Now he is opposing Mr. Ricardo: his _labour which X
+commands_--is opposed to Mr. Ricardo's _quantity of labour which will
+produce X_. Call the first A, the last B. Now, in making B the
+determiner of value, Mr. Ricardo means that B is the ground of value:
+_i. e._ that B is the answer to the question--what makes this hat of
+more value than this pair of shoes? But, if Mr. Malthus means by A the
+same thing, when by his own confession he has used the term _measure
+of value_ in two senses: on the other hand, if he does not mean the
+same thing, but simply the _criterion_ of value, then he has not used
+the word in my sense which opposes him to Mr. Ricardo. And yet he
+advances the whole on that footing. On either ground, therefore, he is
+guilty of a logical error, which implies that, so far from answering
+his own question, he did not know what his own question was.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER IN REPLY TO HAZLITT CONCERNING THE MALTHUSIAN DOCTRINE OF
+POPULATION.
+
+
+THE LION'S HEAD.[27]
+
+_To the Editor of the London Magazine._
+
+_Westmoreland, November 4, 1823_.
+
+My dear Sir,--This morning I received your parcel, containing amongst
+other inclosures, the two last numbers of your journal. In the first
+of these is printed a little paper of mine on Mr. Malthus; and in the
+second I observe a letter from Mr. Hazlitt--alleging two passages from
+the 403rd and 421st pages of his _Political Essays_ as substantially
+anticipating all that I had said. I believe that he _has_ anticipated
+me: in the passage relating to the geometric and arithmetic ratios, it
+is clear that he has: in the other passage, which objects to Mr.
+Malthus's use of the term _perfection_, that he has represented it
+under contradictory predicates, it is not equally clear; for I do not
+find my own meaning so rigorously expressed as to exclude another[28]
+interpretation even now when I know what to look for; and, without
+knowing what to look for, I should certainly not have found it: on
+the whole, however, I am disposed to think that Mr. Hazlitt's meaning
+is the same as my own. So much for the _matter_ of Mr. Hazlitt's
+communication: as to the _manner_, I am sorry that it is liable to a
+construction which perhaps was not intended. Mr. Hazlitt says--'I do
+not wish to bring any charge of plagiarism in this case;' words which
+are better fitted to express his own forbearance, than to exonerate me
+from the dishonour of such an act. But I am unwilling to suppose that
+Mr. Hazlitt has designedly given this negative form to his words. He
+says also--'as I have been a good deal abused for my scepticism on
+that subject, I do not feel quite disposed that any one else should
+run away with the credit of it.' Here again I cannot allow myself to
+think that Mr. Hazlitt meant deliberately to bring me before the
+reader's mind under the odious image of a person who was 'running
+away' with the credit of another. As to 'credit,' Mr. Hazlitt must
+permit me to smile when I read that word used in that sense: I can
+assure him that not any abstract consideration of credit, but the
+abstract idea of a credi_tor_ (often putting on a concrete shape, and
+sometimes the odious concrete of a dun) has for some time past been
+the animating principle of my labours. Credit therefore, except in the
+sense of twelve months' credit where now alas! I have only six, is no
+object of my search: in fact I abhor it: for to be a 'noted' man is
+the next bad thing to being a 'protested' man. Seriously, however, I
+sent you this as the first of four notes which I had written on the
+logical blunders of Mr. Malthus (the other three being taken not from
+his Essay on Population, but from works more expressly within the
+field of Political Economy): not having met with it elsewhere, I
+supposed it my own and sent it to complete the series: but the very
+first sentence, which parodies the words of Chancellor Oxenstiern--('Go
+and see--how _little_ logic is required,' &c.), sufficiently shows that,
+so far from arrogating any great merit to myself for this discovery, I
+thought it next to miraculous that it should have escaped any previous
+reviewer of Mr. Malthus.--I must doubt, by the way, whether Mr. Hazlitt
+has been 'a good deal abused' for these specific arguments against Mr.
+Malthus; and my reason for doubting is this: about ten or twelve years
+ago, happening to be on a visit to Mr. Southey, I remember to have met
+with a work of Mr. Hazlitt's on this subject--_not_ that which he
+quotes, but another (_Reply to Malthus_) which he refers to as
+containing the same opinions (either _totidem verbis_, or in substance).
+In Mr. Southey's library, and in competition with Mr. Southey's
+conversation, a man may be pardoned for not studying any one book
+exclusively: consequently, though I read a good deal of Mr. Hazlitt's
+_Reply_, I read it cursorily: but, in all that I _did_ read, I remember
+that the arguments were very different from those which he now alleges;
+indeed it must be evident that the two logical objections in question
+are by no means fitted to fill an octavo volume. My inference therefore
+is--that any 'abuse,' which Mr. Hazlitt may have met with, must have
+been directed to something else in his _Reply_; and in fact it has
+happened to myself on several occasions to hear this book of Mr.
+Hazlitt's treated as unworthy of his talents; but never on account of
+the two arguments which he now claims. I would not be supposed, in
+saying this, to insinuate any doubt that these arguments are really to
+be found in the _Reply_; but simply to suggest that they do not come
+forward prominently or constitute the main argument of that book: and
+consequently, instead of being opposed, have been overlooked by those
+who have opposed him as much as they were by myself.
+
+[Footnote 27: This was the heading under which correspondence appeared
+in _The London Magazine_ at that date.--H.]
+
+[Footnote 28: What other interpretation? An interpretation which makes
+Mr. Hazlitt's argument coincide with one frequently urged against Mr.
+Malthus--viz. 'that in fact he himself relies practically upon _moral
+restraint_ as one great check to Population, though denying that any
+great revolution in the moral nature of man is practicable.' But so
+long as Mr. Malthus means, by a _great revolution_, a revolution in
+the sense which he imputes to Mr. Godwin--to Condorcet, &c. viz. a
+revolution amounting to absolute perfection, so long there is no
+logical error in all this: Mr. Malthus may consistently rely upon
+moral restraint for getting rid, suppose, of ninety cases out of every
+hundred which at present tend to produce an excessive population, and
+yet maintain that even this tenth of the former excess would be
+sufficient, at a certain stage of population, to reproduce famines,
+&c., _i. e._ to reproduce as much misery and vice as had been got rid
+of. Here there is an absolute increase of moral restraint, but still
+insufficient for the purpose of preventing misery, &c. For, as soon as
+the maximum of population is attained, even one single birth in excess
+(_i. e._ which does more than replace the existing numbers)--_à
+fortiori_, then, one-tenth of the present excess (though implying that
+the other nine-tenths had been got rid of by moral restraint) would
+yet be sufficient to prevent the attainment of a state of perfection.
+And, if Mr. Malthus had so shaped his argument, whether wrong or
+right--he would not have offended in point of _logic_: his logical
+error lies in supposing a state of perfection already existing and yet
+as brought to nothing by this excess of births: whereas it is clear
+that such an excess may operate to prevent, but cannot operate to
+destroy a state of perfection; because in such a state no excess could
+ever arise; for, though an excess may co-exist with a vast increase of
+moral restraint, it cannot co-exist with entire and perfect moral
+restraint; and nothing less than _that_ is involved in the term
+'perfection.' A perfect state, which allows the possibility of the
+excess here spoken of, is already an imperfect state. Now, if Mr.
+Hazlitt says that this is exactly what he means, I answer that I
+believe it is; because I can in no other way explain his sixth
+sentence--from the words 'but it is shifting the question' to the end
+of that sentence. Yet again the seventh sentence (the last) is so
+expressed as to be unintelligible to me. And all that precedes the
+sixth sentence, though very intelligible, yet seems the precise
+objection which I have stated above, and which I think untenable. Nay,
+it is still less tenable in Mr. Hazlitt's way of putting it than as
+usually put: for to represent Mr. Malthus as saying that, 'if reason
+should ever get the mastery over all our actions, we shall then be
+governed _entirely_ by our physical appetites' (which are Mr.
+Hazlitt's words), would be objected to even by an opponent of Mr.
+Malthus: why '_entirely_?' why more than we are at present? The utmost
+amount of the objection is this:--That, relying so much upon moral
+restraint _practically_, Mr. Malthus was bound to have allowed it more
+weight _speculatively_, but it is unreasonable to say that in his
+ideal case of perfection Mr. Malthus has allowed no weight at all to
+moral restraint: even he, who supposes an increased force to be
+inconsistent with Mr. Malthus's theory, has no reason to insist upon
+his meaning a diminished force.]
+
+Finally, Mr. Hazlitt calls the coincidence of my objections with his
+own 'striking:' and thus (though unintentionally, I dare say) throws
+the reader's attention upon it as a very surprising case. Now in this
+there is a misconception which, apart from any personal question
+between Mr. Hazlitt and myself, is worth a few words on its own
+account for the sake of placing it in a proper light. I affirm then
+that, considering its nature, the coincidence is _not_ a striking one,
+if by 'striking' be meant surprising: and I affirm also that it would
+not have been the more striking if, instead of two, it had extended to
+two hundred similar cases. Supposing that a thousand persons were
+required severally to propose a riddle, no conditions or limitations
+being expressed as to the terms of the riddle, it would be surprising
+if any two in the whole thousand should agree: suppose again that the
+same thousand persons were required to solve a riddle, it would now be
+surprising if any two in the whole thousand should differ. Why?
+Because, in the first case, the act of the mind is an act of
+synthesis; and there we may readily conceive a thousand different
+roads for any one mind; but, in the second case, it is an analytic
+act; and there we cannot conceive of more than one road for a thousand
+minds. In the case between Mr. Hazlitt and myself there was a double
+ground of coincidence for any possible number of writers: first the
+object was given; _i. e._ we were not left to an unlimited choice of
+the propositions we were to attack; but Mr. Malthus had himself, by
+insisting on two in particular (however erroneously) as the capital
+propositions of his system, determined our attention to these two as
+the assailable points: secondly, not only was the object given--_i. e._
+not only was it predetermined for us where[29] the error must lie,
+if there were an error; but the nature of that error, which happened
+to be logical, predetermined for us the nature of the solution. Errors
+which are such _materialiter_, _i. e._ which offend against our
+_knowing_, may admit of many answers--involving more and less of
+truth. But errors, which are such logically, _i. e._ which offend
+against the form (or internal law) of our _thinking_, admit of only
+one answer. Except by failing of any answer at all, Mr. Hazlitt and I
+could not _but_ coincide: as long as we had the same propositions to
+examine (which were not of our own choice, but pointed out to us _ab
+extra_), and as long as we understood those propositions in the same
+sense, no variety was possible except in the expression and manner of
+our answers; and to that extent a variety exists. Any other must have
+arisen from our understanding that proposition in a different sense.
+
+[Footnote 29: 'Where the error must lie'--_i. e._ to furnish a
+sufficient answer _ad hominem_: otherwise it will be seen that I do
+not regard either of the two propositions as essential to Mr.
+Malthus's theory: and therefore to overthrow those propositions is not
+to answer that theory. But still, if an author will insist on
+representing something as essential to his theory which is not so, and
+challenges opposition to it,--it is allowable to meet him on his own
+ground.]
+
+My answer to Mr. Hazlitt therefore is--that in substance I think his
+claim valid; and though it is most true that I was not aware of any
+claim prior to my own, I now formally forego any claim on my own part
+to the credit of whatsoever kind which shall ever arise from the two
+objections to Mr. Malthus's logic in his _Essay on Population_. In
+saying this, however, and acknowledging therefore a coincidence with
+Mr. Hazlitt in those two arguments, I must be understood to mean a
+coincidence only in what really belongs to them; meantime Mr. Hazlitt
+has used two expressions in his letter to yourself which seem to
+connect with those propositions other opinions from which I dissent:
+that I may not therefore be supposed to extend my acquiescence in Mr.
+Hazlitt's views to these points, I add two short notes upon them:
+which however I have detached from this letter--as forming no proper
+part of its business.--Believe me, my dear Sir, your faithful humble
+servant. X.Y.Z.
+
+1. Mr. Hazlitt represents Mr. Malthus's error in regard to the
+different ratios of progression as a _mathematical_ error; but the
+other error he calls _logical_. This may seem to lead to nothing
+important: it is however not for any purpose of verbal cavil that I
+object to this distinction, and contend that both errors are logical.
+For a little consideration will convince the reader that he, who
+thinks the first error mathematical, will inevitably miss the true
+point where the error of Mr. Malthus arises; and the consequence of
+that will be--that he will never understand the Malthusians, nor ever
+make himself understood by them. Mr. Hazlitt says, 'a bushel of wheat
+will sow a whole field: the produce of that will sow twenty fields.'
+Yes: but this is not the point which Mr. Malthus denies: this he will
+willingly grant: neither will he deny that such a progression goes on
+by geometrical ratios. If he did, then it is true that his error would
+be a mathematical one. But all this he will concede. Where then lies
+his error? Simply in this--that he assumes (I do not mean in words,
+but it is manifestly latent in all that he says) that the wheat shall
+be continually resown on the same area of land: he will not allow of
+Mr. Hazlitt's 'twenty fields:' keep to your original field, he will
+say. In this lies his error: and the nature of that error is--that he
+insists upon shaping the case for the wheat in a way which makes it no
+fair analogy to the case which he has shaped for man. That it is
+unfair is evident: for Mr. Malthus does not mean to contend that his
+men will go on by geometrical progression; or even by arithmetical,
+upon the _same_ quantity of food: no! he will himself say the positive
+principle of increase must concur with the same sort of increase in
+the external (negative) condition, which is food. Upon what sort of
+logic therefore does he demand that his wheat shall be thrown upon the
+naked power of its positive principle, _not_ concurring with the same
+sort of increase in the negative condition, which in this case is
+land? It is true that at length we shall come to the end of the land,
+because that is limited: but this has nothing to do with the race
+between man and his food, so long as the race is possible. The race is
+imagined for the sake of trying their several powers: and the terms of
+the match must be made equal. But there is no equality in the terms as
+they are supposed by Mr. Malthus. The amount therefore is--that the
+case which Mr. Malthus everywhere supposes and reasons upon, is a case
+of false analogy: that is, it is a logical error. But, setting aside
+the unfairness of the case, Mr. Malthus is perfectly right in his
+mathematics. If it were fair to demand that the wheat should be
+constantly confined to the same space of land, it is undeniable that
+it could never yield a produce advancing by a geometrical progression,
+but at the utmost by a very slow arithmetical progression.
+Consequently, taking the case as Mr. Malthus puts it, he is right in
+calling it a case of arithmetical progression: and his error is in
+putting that case as a logical counterpart to his other case.
+
+2. Mr. Hazlitt says--'This, Mr. Editor, is the writer whom "our full
+senate call all-in-all sufficient."'--And why not? I ask. Mr.
+Hazlitt's inference is--that, because two propositions in Mr.
+Malthus's Essay are overthrown, and because these two are propositions
+to which Mr. Malthus ascribes a false importance, in relation to his
+theory, therefore that theory is overthrown. But, if an architect,
+under some fancied weakness of a bridge which is really strong and
+self-supported, chooses to apply needless props, I shall not injure
+the bridge by showing these to be rotten props and knocking them away.
+What is the real strength and the real use of Mr. Malthus's theory of
+population, cannot well be shown, except in treating of Political
+Economy. But as to the influence of his logical errors upon that
+theory, I contend that it is none at all. It is one error to affirm a
+different law of increase for man and for his food: it is a second
+error to affirm of a perfect state an attribute of imperfection: but
+in my judgment it is a third error, as great as either of the others,
+to suppose that these two errors can at all affect the Malthusian
+doctrine of Population. Let Mr. Malthus say what he will, the first of
+those errors is not the true foundation of that doctrine; the second
+of those errors does not contain its true application.
+
+Two private communications on the paper which refuted Mr. Malthus,
+both expressed in terms of personal courtesy, for which I am bound to
+make my best acknowledgments, have reached me through the Editor of
+the _London Magazine_. One of them refers me 'to the number of the
+_New Monthly Magazine_ for March or April, 1821, for an article on
+Malthus, in which the view' taken by myself 'of his doctrine, as an
+answer to Godwin, seems to have been anticipated.' In reply to this I
+have only to express my regret that my present situation, which is at
+a great distance from any town, has not yet allowed me an opportunity
+for making the reference pointed out.--The other letter disputes the
+soundness of my arguments--not so much in themselves, as in their
+application to Mr. Malthus: 'I know not that I am authorised to speak
+of the author by name: his arguments I presume that I am at liberty to
+publish: they are as follows:--The first objection appears untenable
+for this reason: Mr. Malthus treats of the abstract tendency to
+increase in Man, and in the Food of Man, relatively. Whereas you do
+not discuss the abstract tendency to increase, but only the _measure_
+of that increase, which is food. To the second objection I thus
+answer: Mr. Godwin contends not (I presume) for abstract, essential
+perfection; but for perfection relating to, and commensurate with, the
+capabilities of an earthly nature and habitation. All this Mr. Malthus
+admits _argumenti gratiâ_: and at the same time asserts that Mr.
+Godwin's estimate in his own terms is incompatible with our state. 8th
+October, 1823.'--To these answers my rejoinder is this:--The first
+argument I am not sure that I perfectly understand; and therefore I
+will not perplex myself or its author by discussing it. To the second
+argument I reply thus: I am aware that whatsoever Mr. Malthus admits
+from Mr. Godwin, he admits only _argumenti gratiâ._ But for whatsoever
+purpose he admits it, he is bound to remember, that he _has_ admitted
+it. Now what is it that he has admitted? A state of perfection. This
+term, under any explanation of it, betrays him into the following
+dilemma: Either he means _absolute_ perfection, perfection which
+allows of no degrees; or he means (in the sense which my friendly
+antagonist has supposed) _relative_ perfection, _quoad_ our present
+state--_i. e._ a continual approximation to the ideal of absolute
+perfection, without ever reaching it. If he means the first, then he
+is exposed to the objection (which I have already insisted on
+sufficiently) of bringing the idea of perfection under an inconsistent
+and destructory predicate. If he means the second, then how has he
+overthrown the doctrine of human perfectibility as he professes to
+have done? At this moment, though the earth is far from exhausted (and
+still less its powers), many countries are, according to Mr. Malthus,
+suffering all the evils which they could suffer if population had
+reached its maximum: innumerable children are born which the poverty
+of their parents (no less fatal to them than the limitation of the
+earth) causes to be thrown back prematurely into the grave. Now this
+is the precise _kind_ of evil which Mr. Malthus anticipates for the
+human species when it shall have reached its numerical maximum. But in
+_degree_ the evil may then be much less--even upon Mr. Malthus's own
+showing: for he does not fix any limit to the increase of moral
+restraint, but only denies that it will ever become absolute and
+universal. When the principle of population therefore has done its
+worst, we may be suffering the same kind of evil--but, in proportion
+to an indefinitely _in_creasing moral restraint, an indefinitely
+_de_creasing degree of that evil: _i. e._ we may continually
+approximate to the ideal of perfection: _i. e._ if the second sense
+of perfection be Mr. Godwin's sense, then Mr. Malthus has not
+overthrown Mr. Godwin.
+
+X. Y. Z.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The following admirable letter[30] seems to refer to the observations
+on Kant, contained in the Opium Eater's Letters. Perhaps that acute
+logician may be able to discover its meaning: or if not, he may think
+it worth preserving as an illustration of Shakspeare's profound
+knowledge of character displayed in Ancient Pistol.
+
+[Footnote 30: This is attached by the Editor of _The London
+Magazine_.--H.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Can Neptune sleep?--Is Willich dead?--Him who wielded the trident of
+Albion! Is it thus you trample on the ashes of my friend? All the
+dreadful energies of thought--all the sophistry of fiction and the
+triumphs of the human intellect are waving o'er his peaceful grave.
+'He understood not Kant.' Peace then to the harmless invincible. I
+have long been thinking of presenting the world with a Metaphysical
+Dictionary--of elucidating Locke's romance.--I await with impatience
+Kant in English. Give me that! Your letter has awakened me to a sense
+of your merits. Beware of squabbles; I know the literary infirmities
+of man. Scott rammed his nose against mortals--he grasped at death for
+fame to chaunt the victory.
+
+THINE.
+
+How is the Opium Eater?
+
+
+
+
+THE SERVICES OF MR. RICARDO TO THE SCIENCE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY,
+BRIEFLY AND PLAINLY STATED.[31]
+
+(_March, 1824._)
+
+
+I do not remember that any public event of our own times has touched
+me so nearly, or so much with the feelings belonging to a private
+affliction, as the death of Mr. Ricardo. To me in some sense it _was_
+a private affliction--and no doubt to all others who knew and honoured
+his extraordinary talents. For great intellectual merit, wherever it
+has been steadily contemplated, cannot but conciliate some personal
+regard: and for my own part I acknowledge that, abstracting altogether
+from the use to which a man of splendid endowments may apply them--or
+even supposing the case that he should deliberately apply them to a
+bad one, I could no more on that account withhold my good wishes and
+affection from his person--than, under any consideration of their
+terrific attributes, I could forbear to admire the power and the
+beauty of the serpent or the panther. Simply on its own account, and
+without further question, a great intellect challenges, as of right,
+not merely an interest of admiration--in common with all other
+exhibitions of power and magnificence--but also an interest of human
+love, and (where that is necessary) a spirit of tenderness to its
+aberrations. Mr. Ricardo however stood in no need of a partial or
+indulgent privilege: his privilege of intellect had a comprehensive
+sanction from all the purposes to which he applied it in the course of
+his public life: in or out of parliament, as a senator--or as an
+author, he was known and honoured as a public benefactor. Though
+connected myself by private friendship with persons of the political
+party hostile to his, I heard amongst them all but one language of
+respect for his public conduct. Those, who stood neutral to all
+parties, remarked that Mr. Ricardo's voice--though heard too seldom
+for the wishes of the enlightened part of the nation--was never raised
+with emphasis upon any question lying out of the province in which he
+reigned as the paramount authority, except upon such as seemed to
+affect some great interest of liberty or religious toleration. And,
+wherever a discussion arose which transcended the level of temporary
+and local politics (as that for example upon corporal punishments),
+the weight of authority--which mere blank ability had obtained for
+him in the House of Commons--was sure to be thrown into that view of
+the case which upheld the dignity of human nature. Participating most
+cordially in these feelings of reverence for Mr. Ricardo's political
+character, I had besides a sorrow not unmixed with self-reproach
+arising out of some considerations more immediately relating to
+myself. In August and September 1821 I wrote _The Confessions of an
+English Opium-Eater_: and in the course of this little work I took
+occasion to express my obligations, as a student of Political Economy,
+to Mr. Ricardo's 'Principles' of that science. For this as for some
+other passages I was justly[32] attacked by an able and liberal critic
+in the _New Edinburgh Review_--as for so many absurd irrelevancies: in
+that situation no doubt they were so; and of this, in spite of the
+haste in which I had written the greater part of the book, I was fully
+aware. However, as they said no more than was true, I was glad to take
+that or any occasion which I could invent for offering my public
+testimony of gratitude to Mr. Ricardo. The truth is--I thought that
+something might occur to intercept any more appropriate mode of
+conveying my homage to Mr. Ricardo's ear, which should else more
+naturally have been expressed in a direct work on Political Economy.
+This fear was at length realised--not in the way I had apprehended,
+viz. by my own death--but by Mr. Ricardo's. And now therefore I felt
+happy that, at whatever price of good taste, I had in some imperfect
+way made known my sense of his high pretensions--although
+unfortunately I had given him no means of judging whether my applause
+were of any value. For during the interval between Sept. 1821 and Mr.
+Ricardo's death in Sept. 1823 I had found no leisure for completing my
+work on Political Economy: on that account I had forborne to use the
+means of introduction to Mr. Ricardo which I commanded through my
+private connections or simply as a man of letters: and in some measure
+therefore I owed it to my own neglect--that I had for ever lost the
+opportunity of benefiting by Mr. Ricardo's conversation or bringing
+under his review such new speculations of mine in Political Economy as
+in any point modified his own doctrines--whether as corrections of
+supposed oversights, as derivations of the same truth from a higher
+principle, as further illustrations or proofs of anything which he
+might have insufficiently developed, or simply in the way of
+supplement to his known and voluntary omissions. All this I should
+have done with the utmost fearlessness of giving offence, and not for
+a moment believing that Mr. Ricardo would have regarded anything in
+the light of an undue liberty, which in the remotest degree might
+seem to affect the interests of a science so eminently indebted to
+himself. In reality candour may be presumed in a man of first-rate
+understanding--not merely as a moral quality--but almost as a part of
+his intellectual constitution _per se_; a spacious and commanding
+intellect being magnanimous in a manner _suo jure_, even though it
+should have the misfortune to be allied with a perverse or irritable
+temper. On this consideration I would gladly have submitted to the
+review of Mr. Ricardo, as indisputably the first of critics in this
+department, rather than to any other person, my own review of himself.
+That I have forfeited the opportunity of doing this--is a source of
+some self-reproach to myself. I regret also that I have forfeited the
+opportunity of perhaps giving pleasure to Mr. Ricardo by liberating
+him from a few misrepresentations, and placing his vindication upon a
+firmer basis even than that which he has chosen. In one respect I
+enjoy an advantage for such a service, and in general for the polemic
+part of Political Economy, which Mr. Ricardo did not. The course of my
+studies has led me to cultivate the scholastic logic. Mr. Ricardo has
+obviously neglected it. Confiding in his own conscious strength, and
+no doubt participating in the common error of modern times as to the
+value of artificial logic, he has taken for granted that the
+Aristotelian forms and the exquisite science of distinctions matured
+by the subtilty of the schoolmen can achieve nothing in substance
+which is beyond the power of mere sound good sense and robust
+faculties of reasoning; or at most can only attain the same end with a
+little more speed and adroitness. But this is a great error: and it
+was an ill day for the human understanding when Lord Bacon gave his
+countenance to a notion, which his own exclusive study of one
+department in philosophy could alone have suggested. Distinctions
+previously examined--probed--and accurately bounded, together with a
+terminology previously established, are the crutches on which all
+minds--the weakest and the strongest--must alike depend in many cases
+of perplexity: from pure neglect of such aids, which are to the
+unassisted understanding what weapons are to the unarmed human
+strength or tools and machinery to the naked hand of art, do many
+branches of knowledge at this day languish amongst those which are
+independent of experiment.
+
+[Footnote 31: MR. J. R. MCCULLOCH in his _Literature of Political
+Economy_ makes the following observations concerning DE QUINCEY'S
+'Dialogues of Three Templars on Political Economy':--They are
+unequalled, perhaps, for brevity, pungency, and force. They not only
+bring the Ricardian theory of value into strong relief, but
+triumphantly repel, or rather annihilate, the objections urged against
+it by Malthus, in the pamphlet now referred to and his Political
+Economy, and by Say, and others. They may, indeed, be said to have
+exhausted the subject.]
+
+[Footnote 32: Not so however, let me say in passing, for three
+supposed instances of affected doubt; in all of which my doubts were,
+and are at this moment, very sincere and unaffected; and, in one of
+them at least, I am assured by those of whom I have since inquired
+that my reviewer is undoubtedly mistaken. As another point which, if
+left unnoticed, might affect something more important to myself than
+the credit of my taste or judgment,--let me inform my reviewer that,
+when he traces an incident which I have recorded most faithfully about
+a Malay--to a tale of Mr. Hogg's, he makes me indebted to a book which
+I never saw. In saying this I mean no disrespect to Mr. Hogg; on the
+contrary, I am sorry that I have never seen it: for I have a great
+admiration of Mr. Hogg's genius; and have had the honour of his
+personal acquaintance for the last ten years.]
+
+As the best consolation to myself for the lost opportunities with
+which I have here reproached myself,--and as the best means of doing
+honour to the memory of Mr. Ricardo,--I shall now endeavour to spread
+the knowledge of what he has performed in Political Economy. To do
+this in the plainest and most effectual manner, I shall abstain from
+introducing any opinions peculiar to myself, excepting only when they
+may be necessary for the defence of Mr. Ricardo against objections
+which have obtained currency from the celebrity of their authors--or
+in the few cases where they may be called for by the errors (as I
+suppose them to be) even of Mr. Ricardo.--In using this language, I do
+not fear to be taxed with arrogance: we of this day stand upon the
+shoulders of our predecessors; and that I am able to detect any errors
+in Mr. Ricardo--I owe, in most instances, to Mr. Ricardo himself.
+
+X. Y. Z.
+
+
+
+
+EDUCATION.
+
+PLANS FOR THE INSTRUCTION OF BOYS IN LARGE NUMBERS.[33]
+
+(_April and May, 1824._)
+
+
+This is the work of a very ingenious man, and records the most
+original experiment in Education which in this country at least has
+been attempted since the date of those communicated by the Edgeworths.
+We say designedly 'in this country;' because to compare it with some
+continental schemes which have been only recently made known to the
+English public (and not fully made known even yet) would impose upon
+us a minute review of those schemes, which would be, _first_,
+disproportionate to our limits--_secondly_, out of its best situation,
+because it would be desirable to examine those schemes separately for
+the direct purpose of determining their own absolute value, and not
+indirectly and incidentally for the purpose of a comparison. The
+Madras system, again, is excluded from the comparison--not so much for
+the reason alleged (pp. 123-5), by the author before us--as though
+that system were _essentially_ different from his own in its purpose
+and application: the _purpose_ of the Madras system is not exclusively
+economy of expense, but in combination with that purpose a far greater
+accuracy (and therefore reality) in the knowledge communicated than
+could be obtained on the old systems; on this account therefore the
+possible _application_ of the Madras system is not simply to the
+education of the poor, though as yet the actual application of it may
+have been chiefly to them, but also to the education of the rich; and
+in fact it is well known that the Madras system (so far from being
+_essentially_ a system for the poor) has been adopted in some of the
+great classical schools of the kingdom.[34] The difference is more
+logically stated thus--that the Madras system regards singly the
+quality of the knowledge given, and (with a view to _that_) the mode
+of giving it: whereas the system, which we are going to review, does
+not confine its view to _man as a being capable of knowledge_, but
+extends it to _man as a being capable of action, moral or prudential_:
+it is therefore a much more comprehensive system. The system before us
+does not exclude the final purpose of the Madras system: on the
+contrary, it is laudably solicitous for the fullest and most accurate
+communication of knowledge, and suggests many hints for the attainment
+of that end as just and as useful as they are enlightened. But it does
+not stop here: it goes further, and contemplates the whole man with a
+reference to his total means of usefulness and happiness in life. And
+hence, by the way, it seems to us essential--that the whole child
+should on this system be surrendered to the school; _i. e._ that there
+should be no day-scholars; and this principle we shall further on
+endeavour to establish on the evidence of a case related by the author
+himself.[35] On the whole therefore we have designedly stated our
+general estimate of the author's system with a reference to that of
+the Edgeworths; not only because it has the same comprehensiveness of
+object, and is in some degree a further expansion of their method and
+their principles; but also because the author himself strikingly
+resembles the Edgeworths in style and composition of mind; with this
+single difference perhaps, that the good sense and perception of
+propriety (of what in French would be called _les convenances_), which
+in both is the characteristic merit (and, when it comes into conflict
+with any higher quality, the characteristic defect),--in him is less
+coloured by sarcastic and contemptuous feelings; which in all cases
+are unamiable feelings, and argue some defect of wisdom and
+magnanimity; but, when directed (as in the Edgeworths they sometimes
+are) against principles in human nature which lie far beyond the field
+of their limited philosophy, recoil with their whole strength upon
+those who utter them. It is upon this consideration of his
+intellectual affinity with the Edgeworths that we are the less
+disposed to marvel at his estimate of their labours: that, for
+instance, at p. 192 he styles their work on education 'inestimable,'
+and that at p. 122, though he stops short of proposing 'divine
+honours' to Miss Edgeworth, the course of his logic nevertheless binds
+him to mean that on Grecian principles such honours are 'due to her.'
+So much for the general classification and merits of the author, of
+whom we know nothing more than--that, from his use of the
+Scotticisms--'succumb,'--'compete,'--and 'in place of' for 'instead
+of' he ought to be a Scotchman: now then for his system.
+
+[Footnote 33: _Plans for the Government and Liberal Instruction of
+Boys in large Numbers; Drawn from Experience._ London: 1822. 8vo.]
+
+[Footnote 34: The distinguishing excellence of the Madras system is
+not that it lodges in the pupils themselves the functions which on the
+old systems belong to the masters, and thus at the same blow by which
+it secures greater accuracy of knowledge gets rid of a great expense
+in masters: for this, though a great merit, is a derivative merit: the
+condition of the possibility of this advantage lies in a still
+greater--viz. in the artificial _mechanism_ of the system by which,
+when once established, the system works itself, and thus neutralises
+and sets at defiance all difference of ability in the teachers--which
+previously determined the whole success of the school. Hence is
+obtained this prodigious result--that henceforward the blessing of
+education in its elementary parts is made independent of accident, and
+as much carried out of the empire of _luck_ as the manufacture of
+woollens or cottons. That it is _mechanic_, is no conditional praise
+(as alleged by the author before us), but the absolute praise of the
+Madras system: neither is there any just ground of fear, as he and
+many others have insinuated, that it should injure the freedom of the
+human intellect.]
+
+[Footnote 35: We have since found that we have not room for it; the
+case is stated and argued in the Appendix (pp. 220-227); but in our
+opinion not fairly argued. The appellant's plea was sound, and ought
+not to have been set aside. [At the end of the Paper I have restored
+this 'CASE OF APPEAL' from the original work.--H.]]
+
+Of this we may judge by two criteria--experimentally by its result, or
+_à priori_ by its internal aptitude for attaining its ends. Now as to
+the result, it must be remembered that--even if the author of any
+system could be relied on as an impartial witness to its result--yet,
+because the result of a system of education cannot express itself in
+any one insulated fact, it will demand as much judgment to abstract
+from any limited experience what really _is_ the result as would have
+sufficed to determine its merits _à priori_ without waiting for any
+result. Consequently, as it would be impossible to exonerate
+ourselves from the necessity of an elaborate act of judgment by any
+appeal to the practical test of the result--seeing that this result
+would again require an act of judgment hardly less elaborate for its
+satisfactory settlement than the _à priori_ examination which it had
+been meant to supersede,--we may as well do that at first which we
+must do in the end; and, relying upon our own understandings, say
+boldly that the system is good or bad because on this argument it is
+evidently calculated to do good or on that argument to do evil, than
+blindly pronounce--it is good or it is bad, because it has
+produced--or has failed of producing--such and such effects; even if
+those effects were easy to collect. In fact, for any conclusive
+purpose of a practical test, the experience is only now beginning to
+accumulate: and here we may take occasion to mention that we had
+ourselves been misinformed as to the duration of the experiment; for a
+period of four years, we were told, a school had existed under the
+system here developed: but this must be a mistake, founded perhaps on
+a footnote at p. 83 which says--'The plan has now been in operation
+more than four years:' but the plan there spoken of is not the general
+system, but a single feature of it--viz. the abolition of corporal
+punishment: in the text this plan had been represented as an immature
+experiment, having then 'had a trial of nine months' only: and
+therefore, as more than three years nine months had elapsed from that
+time to the publication of the book, a note is properly added
+declaring that the experiment had succeeded, and that the author could
+'not imagine any motive strong enough to force him back to the old
+practice.' The system generally however must have existed now (_i. e._
+November 1823) for nearly eight years at the least: so much is evident
+from a note at p. 79, where a main regulation of the system is said to
+have been established 'early in 1816.' Now a period of seven or eight
+years must have been sufficient to carry many of the senior pupils
+into active life, and to carry many of the juniors even into
+situations where they would be brought into close comparison with the
+pupils of other systems. Consequently, so much experience as is
+involved in the fact of the systems outliving such a comparison--and
+in the continued approbation of its founder, who is manifestly a very
+able and a conscientious man,--so much experience, we say, may be
+premised for the satisfaction of those who demand practical tests. For
+ourselves, we shall abide rather in our valuation of the system by the
+internal evidence of its composition as stated and interpreted by its
+author. An abstract of all that is essential in this statement we
+shall now lay before our readers.
+
+What is the characteristic difference, in the fewest possible words,
+of this system as opposed to all others? We nowhere find this stated
+in a pointed manner: the author has left it rather to be collected
+from his general exposition; and therefore we conceive that we shall
+be entitled to his thanks by placing it in a logical, if possible in
+an antithetic, shape. In order to this, we ask--what is a school? A
+school is a body of young persons more or less perfectly
+organised--which, by means of a certain constitution or system of
+arrangements (A), aims at attaining a certain object (B). Now in all
+former schemes of education this A stood to B the positive quantity
+sought in the relation of a logical negative (_i. e._ of a _negation_
+of quantity = _0_), or even of a mathematic negative (_i. e._
+of-_x_):--but on this new system of the author before us (whom, for
+the want of a better name, we shall call the Experimentalist) A for
+the first time bears to B the relation of a positive quantity. The
+terms _positive_ and _negative_ are sufficiently opposed to each other
+to confer upon our contradistinction of this system from all others a
+very marked and antithetic shape; and the only question upon it, which
+arises, is this--are these terms justified in their application to
+this case? That they are, will appear thus:--Amongst the positive
+objects (or B) of every school, even the very worst, we must suppose
+the culture of morals to be one: a mere day-school may perhaps
+reasonably confine its pretensions to the disallowance of anything
+positively bad; because here the presumption is that the parents
+undertake the management of their children excepting in what regards
+their intellectual education: but, wherever the heads of a school step
+into the full duties of a child's natural guardians, they cannot
+absolve themselves from a responsibility for his morals. Accordingly,
+this must be assumed of course to exist amongst the positive objects
+of every boarding-school. Yet so far are the laws and arrangements of
+existing schools from at all aiding and promoting this object, that
+their very utmost pretension is--that they do not injure it. Much
+injustice and oppression, for example, take place in the intercourse
+of all boys with each other; and in most schools 'the stern edict
+against _bearing tales_,' causes this to go unredressed (p. 78): on
+the other hand, in a school where a system of nursery-like
+_surveillance_ was adopted, and 'every trifling injury was the subject
+of immediate appeal to the supreme power' (p. 80), the case was still
+worse. 'The indulgence of this querulousness increased it beyond all
+endurance. Before the master had time to examine the justice of one
+complaint, his attention was called away to redress another; until,
+wearied with investigation into offences which were either too
+trifling or too justly provoked for punishment, he treated all
+complainants with harshness, heard their accusations with incredulity,
+and thus tended, by a first example, to the re-establishment of the
+old system.' The issue in any case was--that, apart from what nature
+and the education of real life did for the child's morals, the school
+education did nothing at all except by the positive moral instruction
+which the child might draw from his lessons--_i. e._ from B. But as to
+A, _i. e._ the school arrangements, either at best their effect was =
+0; or possibly, by capricious interference for the regulation of what
+was beyond their power to regulate, they actually disturbed the moral
+sense (_i. e._ their effect was =-_x_). Now, on the new system of our
+Experimentalist, the very laws and regulations, which are in any case
+necessary to the going on of a school, have such an origin and are so
+administered as to cultivate the sense of justice and materially to
+enlarge the knowledge of justice. These laws emanate from the boys
+themselves, and are administered by the boys. That is to say, A (which
+on the old system is at best a mere blank, or negation, and sometimes
+even an absolute negative with regard to B) thus becomes a positive
+agent in relation to B--_i. e._ to one of the main purposes of the
+school. Again, to descend to an illustration of a lower order, in most
+schools arithmetic is one part of B: now on the new system it is so
+contrived that what is technically termed _calling over_, which on any
+system is a necessary arrangement for the prevention of mischief, and
+which usually terminates there (_i. e._ in an effect = 0), becomes a
+positive means of cultivating an elementary rule of arithmetic in the
+junior students--and an attention to accuracy in all: _i. e._ here
+again, from being simply = 0, A becomes = + _x_ in relation to B. A
+school in short, on this system, burns its own smoke: The mere
+negative conditions of its daily goings on, the mere waste products of
+its machinery, being converted into the positive pabulum of its life
+and motion. Such then, we affirm, is the brief abstract--antithetically
+expressed--of the characteristic principle by which the system under
+review is distinguished from all former systems. In relation to B (which
+suppose 20 _x_) A, which heretofore was =-_x_, or at best = 0, now
+becomes = + _x_, or + 2 _x_, or 3 _x_, as it may happen. In this lies
+the merit of the conception: what remains to be inquired--is in what
+degree, and upon what parts of B, it attains this conversion of A into a
+positive quantity: and this will determine the merit of the execution.
+Let us now therefore turn to the details of the book.
+
+The book may be properly distributed into two parts: the first of
+which from page 1 to page 125 inclusively (comprehending the three
+first chapters) unfolds and reviews the system: all that remains from
+page 126 to page 218 inclusively (_i. e._ to the end)--comprehending
+four chapters--may be considered as a second or miscellaneous part,
+treating of some general topics in the business of education, but with
+a continual reference to the principles laid down in the first part.
+An appendix, of twenty pages, contains a body of illustrative
+documents. The first of the three chapters, composing what we have
+called the first part, is entitled _Outline of the System_: and, as it
+is very brief, we shall extract it nearly entire.
+
+     'A schoolmaster being a governor as well as a teacher, we
+     must consider the boys both as a community and as a body of
+     pupils. The principle of our government is to leave, as much
+     as possible, all power in the hands of the boys themselves:
+     To this end we permit them to elect a committee, which
+     enacts the laws of the school, subject however to the _veto_
+     of the head master. We have also courts of justice for the
+     trial of both civil and criminal causes, and a vigorous
+     police for the preservation of order. Our rewards consist of
+     a few prizes given at the end of each half year to those
+     whose exertions have obtained for them the highest rank in
+     the school; and certain marks which are gained from time to
+     time by exertions of talent and industry. These marks are of
+     two kinds: the most valuable, called premial[36] marks, will
+     purchase a holiday; the others are received in liquidation
+     of forfeits. Our punishments[37] are fine and imprisonment.
+     Impositions, public disgrace, and corporeal pain, have been
+     for some years discarded among us. To obtain rank is an
+     object of great ambition among the boys; with us it is
+     entirely dependent on the state of their acquirements; and
+     our arrangements according to excellence are so
+     frequent--that no one is safe, without constant exertion,
+     from losing his place. The boys learn almost every branch of
+     study in classes, that the master may have time for copious
+     explanations; it being an object of great anxiety with us,
+     that the pupil should be led to reason upon all his
+     operations. Economy of time is a matter of importance with
+     us: we look upon all restraint as an evil, and to young
+     persons as a very serious evil: we are therefore constantly
+     in search of means for ensuring the effective employment of
+     every minute which is spent in the school-room, that the
+     boys may have ample time for exercise in the open air. The
+     middle state between work and play is extremely unfavourable
+     to the habits[38] of the pupil: we have succeeded, by great
+     attention to order and regularity, in reducing it almost to
+     nothing. We avoid much confusion by accustoming the boys to
+     march; which they do with great precision, headed by a band
+     of young performers[39] from their own body.'
+
+[Footnote 36: '_Premial_ marks:' this designation is vicious in point
+of logic: how is it thus distinguished from the less valuable?]
+
+[Footnote 37: 'Our punishments,' &c. This is inaccurate: by p. 83
+'disability to fill certain offices' is one of the punishments.]
+
+[Footnote 38: 'Habits!' habits of what?]
+
+[Footnote 39: 'Performers!' _Musical_ performers, we presume.]
+
+Such is the outline of the system as sketched by the author himself:
+to us however it appears an insufficient outline even for 'the general
+reader' to whom it is addressed: without having 'any intention of
+reducing the system to practice,' the most general reader, if he asks
+for any information at all, will ask for more than this. We shall
+endeavour therefore to draw up an account of the plan somewhat less
+meagre, by separating the important from the trivial details. For this
+purpose we shall begin--1. with the GOVERNMENT of the school; _i. e._
+with an account of the _legislative_, the _executive_, and the
+_judicial_ powers, where lodged--held by what tenure--and how
+administered. The _legislative power_ is vested in a committee of boys
+elected by the boys themselves. The members are elected monthly; the
+boy, who ranks highest in the school, electing one member; the _two_
+next in rank another; the _three_ next a third; and so on. The
+head-master as well as all the under-masters are members by virtue of
+their office. This arrangement might seem likely to throw a dangerous
+weight in the deliberations of the 'house' into the hands of the
+executive power, especially as the head-master might pursue Queen
+Anne's policy under the Tory ministers--and, by introducing the
+fencing-master--the dancing-master--the riding-master, &c. under the
+unconstitutional equivocation of the word '_teachers_,' carry a
+favourite measure in the teeth of the patriotic party. Hitherto
+however the reigning sovereign has shown so laudable a desire to
+strengthen those checks upon his own authority which make him a
+limited monarch--that 'only one teacher has been in the habit of
+attending the committee's meetings' (p. 5): and, where any teacher
+himself happens to be interested in the question before the house (_e.
+g._ in a case of appeal from any decision of his), 'it has lately been
+the etiquette' for that one who does attend to decline voting. Thus we
+see that the liberty of the subject is on the growth: which is a sure
+argument that it has not been abused. In fact, as a fresh proof of the
+eternal truth--that in proportion as human beings are honourably
+confided in, they will _in the gross_ become worthy of confidence, it
+will give pleasure to the reader to be informed that, though this
+committee 'has the formation of _all_ the laws and regulations of the
+school (excepting such as determine the hours of attendance and the
+regular amount of exercises to be performed),' yet 'the master's
+assent has never even in a single instance been withheld or even
+delayed.' 'I do not remember,' says Sir William Temple in 1683 to his
+son, 'ever to have refused anything you have desired of me; which I
+take to be a greater compliment to you than to myself; since for a
+young man to make none but reasonable desires is yet more
+extraordinary than for an old man to think them so.' A good
+arrangement has been adopted for the purpose of combining the benefits
+of mature deliberation with the vigour and dispatch necessary for
+sudden emergencies: by a standing order of the committee a week's
+notice must be given before a new law can be introduced for
+discussion: in cases of urgency therefore a sort of _orders of
+council_ are passed by a sub-committee composed of two principal
+officers for the time being: these may of course be intercepted _in
+limine_ by the _veto_ of the master; and they may be annulled by the
+general committee: in any case they expire in a fortnight: and thus
+not only is a present necessity met, but also an opportunity gained
+for trying the effect of a law before it is formally proposed. The
+_executive_ body, exclusively of its standing members the upper and
+lower masters, is composed of a sheriff (whose duties are to levy
+fines imposed by the court of justice, and to imprison on
+non-payment)--of a magistrate, and of two constables. All these
+officers are elected every month by the committee immediately after
+its own election. The magistrate is bound, in conjunction with his
+constables, to detect all offences committed in the school: petty
+cases of dispute he decides himself, and so far becomes a _judicial_
+officer: cases beyond his own jurisdiction he sends to the
+attorney-general, directing him to draw an impeachment against the
+offending party: he also enforces all penalties below a certain
+amount. Of the _judicial_ body we shall speak a little more at length.
+The principal officers of the court are the judge who is elected
+monthly by the committee, and the attorney-general who is appointed at
+the same time by the master. The court assembles every week: and the
+jury, consisting of six, is 'chosen by lot from among the whole number
+of qualified boys:' disqualifications arise in three ways; on account
+of holding a judicial office, on account of conviction by the court
+within the preceding month, and on account of youth (or, what we
+presume to be tantamount, being 'in certain lower classes'). The jury
+choose their own foreman. The attorney-general and the accused party,
+if the case be penal, and each disputant, if civil, has a _peremptory_
+challenge of three, and an unlimited right of challenge _for cause_.
+The judge decides upon the validity of the objections. Such is the
+constitution of the court: its forms of proceeding we cannot state in
+fewer words than those of the Experimentalist, which we shall
+therefore quote: 'The officers of the court and the jury having taken
+their seats, the defendant (when the cause is penal) is called to the
+bar by the crier of the court, and placed between the constables. The
+clerk of the court then reads the indictment, at the close of which
+the defendant is asked if he object to any of the jury--when he may
+make his challenges (as before stated). The same question is put to
+the attorney-general. A short time is then allowed the defendant to
+plead _guilty_, if he be so disposed: he is asked no question however
+that he may not be induced to tell a falsehood: but, in order to
+encourage an acknowledgment of the fault, when he pleads _guilty_--a
+small deduction is made from the penalty appointed by the law for the
+offence. The consequence is--that at least five out of six of those
+who are justly accused acknowledge the offence in the first instance.
+If the defendant be determined to stand his trial, the attorney-general
+opens the case and the trial proceeds. The defendant may either plead
+his own cause, or employ a school-fellow as counsel--which he sometimes
+does. The judge takes notes of the evidence, to assist him in delivering
+his charge to the jury: in determining the sentence he is guided by the
+regulations enacted by the committee, which affix punishments varying
+with the magnitude of the offence and the age of the defendant, but
+invest the judge with the power of increasing or diminishing the penalty
+to the extent of one-fourth.' A copy of the sentence is laid before the
+master, who has of course 'the power of mitigation or pardon.' From the
+decision of the court there lies an appeal to the committee, which is
+thus not only the legislative body, but also the supreme court of
+judicature. Two such appeals however are all that have yet occurred:
+both were brought by the attorney-general--of course therefore against
+verdicts of acquittal; and both verdicts were reversed. Fresh evidence
+however was in both cases laid before the committee in addition to that
+which had been heard in the court below; and on this as well on other
+grounds there was good reason to acquit the jury of all partiality.
+Whilst appeals have thus been so rare from the verdicts of juries,
+appeals from the decisions of the magistrate, and even from those of the
+teachers, have been frequent: generally indeed the decisions have been
+affirmed by the committee; and, when they have been reversed, in all but
+two cases the reversal has met with the sanction of the teachers as a
+body. Even in these two (where, by the way, the original decision was
+only modified and not annulled); the Experimentalist is himself of
+opinion (p. 12) that the non-concurrence of the teachers may possibly
+have been owing to a partiality on their side. So far indeed as his
+experience had then extended, the Experimentalist tells us (p. 79) that
+'one solitary instance only' had occurred in which the verdict of the
+jury did not coincide with his own opinion. This judgment, deliberately
+pronounced by so competent a judge, combined with the entire
+acquiescence in the verdict of the jury which is argued by the
+non-existence of any appeals except on the side of the crown (and then
+only in two instances), is a very striking attestation to the spirit of
+conscientious justice developed in the students by this confidence in
+their incorruptible integrity. 'Great,' says the Experimentalist,
+'great, but of course unexpressed, anxiety has more than once been felt
+by us--lest the influence of a leading boy, which in every school must
+be considerable, should overcome the virtue of the jury: but our fears
+have been uniformly relieved, and the hopes of the offender crushed, by
+the voice of the foreman pronouncing, in a shrill but steady tone, the
+awful word--Guilty!' Some persons, who hate all innovations, will
+pronounce all this '_mummery_,' which is a very compendious piece of
+criticism. For ourselves, though we cannot altogether agree with the
+Experimentalist, who seems to build too much on an assumption that
+nature and increasing intercourse with human life contribute nothing of
+themselves without any artificial discipline to the evolution and
+culture of the sense of justice and to the power of the understanding
+for discovering where justice lies, yet thus much is evident, 1. That
+the intellectual faculties must be sharpened by the constant habit of
+discriminating the just and the unjust in concrete cases such as a real
+experience of life produces; 2. That the moral sense must be deepened,
+if it were only by looking back upon so large a body of decisions, and
+thus measuring as it were, by the resistance which they had often
+overcome arising out of their own immediate interest, the mightiness of
+the conscientious power within which had compelled them to such
+decisions; 3. That all sorts of forensic ability is thus cherished; and
+much ability indeed of larger application: thus the logical faculty of
+abstracting the essential from the accidental is involved in the summing
+up of the judge; in the pleadings for and against are involved the
+rhetorical arts of narrating facts perspicuously--of arranging arguments
+in the best order of meeting (therefore of remembering) the
+counter-arguments; of solving sophisms; of disentangling
+misrepresentations--of weighing the value of probabilities--to say
+nothing of elocution and the arts of style and diction which even the
+records of the court and the committee (as is urged at p. 105) must tend
+to cultivate: 4. (to descend to a humbler use) that in this way the
+master is absolved from the grievous waste of time in administering
+justice, which on the old system was always imperfect justice that it
+might waste but little time, and which yet wasted much time though it
+was imperfect justice. The author's own _moral_ of this innovation is as
+follows (p. 76); and with this we shall leave the subject: 'We shall be
+disappointed if the intelligent reader have not already discovered that
+by the establishment of a system of legislation and jurisprudence
+wherein the power of the master is bounded by general rules, and the
+duties of the scholar accurately defined, and where the boys are called
+upon to examine and decide upon the conduct of their fellows, we have
+provided a course of instruction in the great code of morality which is
+likely to produce far more powerful and lasting effects than any
+quantity of mere precept.'
+
+We now pass to the other characteristics of the new system, which seem
+to lie chiefly in what relates to _economy of time_, _rewards and
+punishments_, the _motives to exertion_, and _voluntary labour_. For,
+as to the _musical performances_ (which occur more than twenty times a
+day), we see no practical use in them except that they regulate the
+marching; and the marching it is said teaches to measure time: and
+measuring time accurately contributes 'to the order and celerity with
+which the various evolutions of the school are performed,' and also
+the conquest of 'serious impediments of speech.' But the latter case
+not occurring (we presume) very frequently, and marching accurately
+not being wholly dependant on music,--it appears to us that a
+practice, which tends to throw an air of fanciful trifling over the
+excellent good sense of the system in other respects, would be better
+omitted. _Division into classes_ again, though insisted on by the
+Experimentalist (see pp. 290, 291) in a way which would lead us to
+suppose it a novelty in his own neighbourhood, is next to universal in
+England; and in all the great grammar schools has been established for
+ages. All that distinguishes this arrangement in his use of it--is
+this, that the classes are variable: that is, the school forms by
+different combinations according to the subject of study; the boys,
+who study Greek together, are not the same who study arithmetic
+together. Dismissing therefore these two arrangements as either not
+characteristic or not laudably characteristic, we shall make a brief
+exposition of the others. 1. _Economy of Time_:--'We have been
+startled at the reflection' (says the Experimentalist)--'that if, by a
+faulty arrangement, one minute be lost to sixty of our boys, the
+injury sustained would be equal to the waste of an hour by a single
+individual.' Hence, as the Experimentalist justly argues, the use of
+classes; by means of which ten minutes spent by the tutor in
+explaining a difficult point to a class of ten boys become equal to
+100 minutes distributed amongst them severally. Great improvement in
+the economising of time was on this system derived from exacting 'an
+almost superstitious punctuality' of the _monitor_, whose duty it is
+to summon the school to all its changes of employment by ringing a
+bell. It is worthy of notice, but to us not at all surprising,
+that--'when the duty of the monitor was easy, and he had time for
+play, the exact moment for ringing the bell was but seldom observed:
+but when, as the system grew more complex, he was more constantly in
+requisition, it was found that with increased labour came increased
+perfection: and the same boy who had complained of the difficulty of
+being punctual when he had to ring the bell only ten times in the day,
+found his duty comparatively easy when his memory was taxed to a
+four-fold amount. It is amusing to see what a living timepiece the
+giddiest boy will become during his week of office. The succession of
+monitors gradually infuses a habit, and somewhat of a love of
+punctuality, into the body scholastic itself. The masters also cannot
+think of being absent when the scholars are waiting for them: and thus
+the nominal and the real hours of attendance become exactly the
+same.'--2. _Motives to Exertion._ 'After furnishing the pupil with the
+_opportunity_ of spending his time to the greatest advantage, our next
+case was to examine how we had supplied him with _motives_' for so
+spending it (p. 92). These are ranged under five heads,--'Love of
+knowledge--love of employment--emulation--hope of reward--and fear of
+punishment,'--and according to what the Experimentalist rightly thinks
+'their order of excellence.' The three last, he alleges, are stimuli;
+and of necessity lose their power by constant use. Love of employment,
+though a more durable motive, leaves the pupil open to the attractions
+of any other employment that may chance to offer itself in competition
+with knowledge. Love of knowledge for its own sake therefore is the
+mainspring relied on; insomuch that the Experimentalist gives it as
+his opinion (p. 96) that 'if it were possible for the pupil to acquire
+a love of knowledge, and that only during the time he remained at
+school, he would have done more towards insuring a stock of knowledge
+in maturer age than if he had been the recipient of as much learning
+as ever was infused into the passive school-boy' by any means which
+fell short of generating such a principle of exertion. We heartily
+agree with him: and we are further of opinion that this love needs not
+to be generated as an independent birth previously to our commencing
+the labour of tuition, but that every system of tuition in proportion
+as it approaches to a good one will inevitably involve the generation
+of this love of knowledge concurrently with the generation of
+knowledge itself. Most melancholy are the cases which have come under
+our immediate notice of good faculties wholly lost to their possessor
+and an incurable disgust for literature and knowledge founded to our
+certain knowledge solely on the stupidity and false methods of the
+teacher, who alike in what he knew or did _not_ know was incapable of
+connecting one spark of pleasurable feeling with any science, by
+leading his pupils' minds to re-act upon the knowledge he attempted to
+convey. Being thus important, how shall a love of knowledge be
+created? According to the Experimentalist, first of all (p. 97--to the
+word 'zest' in p. 107) by combining the sense of obvious _utility_
+with all the elementary exercises of the intellect:--secondly (from p.
+108--to the word 'rock' in p. 114) by matching the difficulties of the
+learner exactly with his capacity:--thirdly (from p. 114--to the word
+'attention' in p. 117) by connecting with the learner's progress the
+sense of continual success:--fourthly (from p. 117--to the word
+'co-operation' in p. 121) by communicating clear, vivid and accurate
+conceptions. The first means is illustrated by a reference to the art
+of learning a language--to arithmetic--to surveying, and to the
+writing of 'themes.' Can any boy, for instance, reconcile himself to
+the loathsome effort of learning '_Propria quæ maribus_' by any [but]
+the dimmest sense of its future utility? No, we answer with the
+Experimentalist: and we go farther even than the Experimentalist is
+disposed to do (p. 98); for we deny the existence of any future
+utility. We, the reviewer of this book, at eight years of age, though
+even then passionately fond of study and disdainful of childish
+sports, passed some of the most wretched and ungenial days of our life
+in 'learning by _heart_,' as it is called (oh! most ironical
+misnomer!), _Propria quæ maribus_, '_Quæ genus_,' and '_As in
+præsenti_,' a three-headed monster worse than Cerberus: we _did_ learn
+them _ad unguem_; and to this hour their accursed barbarisms cling to
+our memory as ineradicably as the golden lines of Æschylus or
+Shakspeare. And what was our profit from all this loathsome labour,
+and the loathsome heap of rubbish thus deposited in the memory?
+Attend, if you please, good reader: the first professes to teach the
+irregularities of nouns as to gender (_i. e._ which nouns having a
+masculine termination are yet feminine, &c.), the second to teach the
+irregularities of nouns as to number (_i. e._ which want the singular,
+which the plural), the third to teach the irregularities of verbs (_i. e._
+their deviations from the generic forms of the preterite and the
+supine): this is what they _profess_ to teach. Suppose then their
+professions realised, what is the result? Why that you have
+laboriously anticipated a case of anomaly which, if it do actually
+occur, could not possibly cost more trouble to explain at the time of
+its occurrence than you are thus premising. This is as if a man should
+sit down to cull all the difficult cases of action which could ever
+occur to him in his relations of son, father, citizen, neighbour,
+public functionary, &c. under the plea that he would thus have got
+over the labour of discussion before the case itself arrived.
+Supposing that this could be accomplished, what would it effect but to
+cancel a benevolent arrangement of providence by which the
+difficulties of life are distributed with tolerable equality
+throughout its whole course, and obstinately to accumulate them all
+upon a particular period. Sufficient for the day is its own evil:
+dispatch your business as it arises, and every day clears itself: but
+suffer a few months of unaudited accounts, or of unanswered letters,
+to accumulate; and a mountain of arrears is before you which years
+seem insufficient to get rid of. This sort of accumulation arises in
+the shape of _arrears_: but any accumulation of trouble out of its
+proper place,--_i. e._ of a distributed trouble into a state of
+convergement,--no matter whether in the shape of needless anticipation
+or needless procrastination, has equally the practical effect of
+converting a light trouble (or none at all) into a heavy and hateful
+one. The daily experience of books, actual intercourse with Latin
+authors, is sufficient to teach all the irregularities of that
+language: just as the daily experience of an English child leads him
+without trouble into all the anomalies of his own language. And, to
+return to the question which we put--'What was our profit from all
+this loathsome labour?' In this way it was, viz. in the way of actual
+experience that we, the reviewer of this book, did actually in the end
+come to the knowledge of those irregularities which the three elegant
+poems in question profess to communicate. Mark this, reader: the logic
+of what we are saying--is first, that, if they _did_ teach what they
+profess, they would attain that end by an artificial means far more
+laborious than the natural means: and secondly, that in fact they do
+_not_ attain their end. The reason of this--is partly the perplexed
+and barbarous texture of the verse, which for metrical purposes, _i. e._
+to keep the promise of metre to the mere technical scansion, is
+obliged to abandon all those natural beauties of metre in the fluent
+connection of the words, in the rhythmus, cadence, cæsura, &c. which
+alone recommend metre as a better or more rememberable form for
+conveying knowledge than prose: prose, if it has no music, at any rate
+does not compel the most inartificial writer to dislocate, and distort
+it into non-intelligibility. Another reason is, that '_As in
+præsenti_' and its companions, are not so much adapted to the reading
+as to the writing of Latin. For instance, I remember (we will suppose)
+this sequence of '_tango tetigi_' from the '_As in P_.' Now, if I am
+_reading_ Latin I meet either with the tense '_tango_,' or the tense
+'_tetigi_.' In the former case, I have no difficulty; for there is as
+yet no irregularity: and therefore it is impertinent to offer
+assistance: in the latter case I _do_ find a difficulty, for,
+according to the models of verbs which I have learned in my grammar,
+there is no possible verb which could yield _tetigi_: for such a verb
+as _tetigo_ even ought to yield _tetixi_: here therefore I should be
+glad of some assistance; but just here it is that I obtain none: for,
+because I remember '_tango tetigi_' in the direct order, it is quite
+contrary to the laws of association which govern the memory in such a
+case, to suppose that I remember the inverted order of _tetigi
+tango_--any more than the forward repetition of the Lord's prayer
+ensures its backward repetition. The practical applicability of '_As
+in præsenti_' is therefore solely to the act of _writing_ Latin: for,
+having occasion to translate the words 'I touched' I search for the
+Latin equivalent to the English word _touch_--find that it is _tango_,
+and then am reminded (whilst forming the preterite) that _tango_ makes
+not _tanxi_ but '_tetigi_.' Such a use therefore I might by
+possibility derive from my long labours: meantime even here the
+service is in all probability doubly superfluous: for, by the time
+that I am called on to write Latin at all, experience will have taught
+me that _tango_ makes _tetigi_; or, supposing that I am required to
+write Latin as one of the earliest means for gaining experience, even
+in that case the very same dictionary which teaches me what is Latin
+for '_touch_' teaches me what is the irregular preterite and supine of
+_tango_. And thus the 'upshot' (to use a homely word) of the whole
+business--is that an effort of memory, so great as to be capable
+otherwise directed of mastering a science, and secondly (because
+directed to an unnatural composition, viz. an arrangement of metre,
+which is at once the rudest and the most elaborately artificial), so
+disgusting as that no accession of knowledge could compensate the
+injury thus done to the simplicity of the child's understanding, by
+connecting pain and a sense of unintelligible mystery with his
+earliest steps in knowledge,--all this hyperbolical apparatus and
+machinery is worked for no one end or purpose that is not better
+answered by a question to his tutor, by consulting his dictionary, or
+by the _insensible_ progress of daily experience. Even this argument
+derived from its utter uselessness does not however weigh so much with
+us as the other argument derived from the want of common-sense,
+involved in the wilful forestalling and artificial concentrating into
+one long rosary of anomalies, what else the nature of the case has by
+good luck dispersed over the whole territory of the Latin language. To
+be consistent, a tutor should take the same proleptical course with
+regard to the prosody of the Latin language: every Latin
+hyperdissyllable is manifestly accentuated according to the following
+law: if the penultimate be long, that syllable inevitably claims the
+accent; if short, inevitably it rejects it--_i. e._ gives it to the
+ante-penultimate. The determining syllable is therefore the
+penultimate; and for the due reading of Latin the sole question is
+about the quantity of the penultimate. According to the logic
+therefore which could ever have introduced '_As in præsenti_,' the
+tutor ought to make his pupils commit to memory every individual word
+in which the quantity was not predetermined by a mechanical rule--(as
+it is _e. g._ in the gen. plural _[=o]rum_, of the second declension,
+the _[=e]runt_ of the third per. plurals of the preterite, &c., or the
+cases where the vowel is long by position). But what man of sense
+would forbear to cry out in such a case--'Leave the poor child to his
+daily reading: practice, under correct tuition, will give him
+insensibly and without effort all that you would thus endeavour to
+communicate through a most Herculean exertion.' Whom has it cost any
+trouble to learn the accentuation of his own language? How has he
+learned _that_? Simply by copying others--and so much without effort,
+that the effort (and a very great effort) would have been _not_ to
+copy them. In that way let him learn the quantity of Latin and Greek
+penultimates. That Edmund Burke could violate the quantity of the word
+'Vectigal' was owing to his tutor's ignorance, who had allowed him so
+to read it; that Lord North, and every other Etonian in the house,
+knew better--was owing not to any disproportionate effort of memory
+directed to that particular word, as though they had committed to
+memory a rule enjoining them to place the accent on the penultimate of
+the word vectigal: their knowledge no more rested on such an
+anticipation by express rules of their own experience, than Burke's
+ignorance of the quantity on the want of such anticipation; the
+anticipation was needless--coming from a tutor who knew the quantity,
+and impossible--coming from a tutor who knew it not. At this moment a
+little boy (three years old) is standing by our table, and repeatedly
+using the word _mans_ for _men_: his sister (five years old), at his
+age, made the very same mistake: but she is now correcting her
+brother's grammar, which just at this moment he is stoutly
+defending--conceiving his dignity involved in the assertion of his own
+impeccability. Now whence came the little girl's error and its
+correction? Following blindly the general analogy of the language, she
+formed her plural by adding an _s_ to the singular: afterwards
+everybody about her became a daily monitor--a living _Propria quæ
+maribus_, as she is in her turn to her brother, instructing her that
+this particular word '_man_' swerved, as to this one particular point,
+from the general analogy of the language. But the result is just as
+inevitable from daily intercourse with Latin books, as to the parallel
+anomalies in that language. In proportion as any case of anomaly could
+escape the practical regulation of such an intercourse, just in that
+proportion it must be a rare case, and less important to be known:
+whatsoever the future experience will be most like to demand, the past
+experience will be most likely to have furnished. All this we urge not
+against the Eton grammar in particular: on the contrary, as grammars
+go, we admire the Eton grammar;[40] and love it with a filial
+partiality from early associations (always excepting, however, the
+three lead-mines of the Eton grammar, '_Propria quæ maribus_,' &c. of
+which it is not extravagant to say, that the author, though possibly a
+good sort of a man in his way, has undoubtedly caused more human
+suffering than Nero, Robespierre, or any other enemy of the human
+race). Our opposition is to the general principle, which lies at the
+root of such treatises as the three we have been considering: it will
+be observed that, making a proper allowance for the smallness of the
+print, these three bodies of absurd anticipations of exceptions, are
+collectively about equal in quantity, and virtually for the effort to
+the memory far more than equal, to the whole body of the rules
+contained in the Accidence and the Syntax: _i. e._ that which exits on
+account of many thousand cases is put on the same level of value and
+burthen to the memory, as that which exists on account of itself
+alone. Here lies the original sin of grammars, the mortal taint on
+which they all demand regeneration: whosoever would show himself a
+great artist in the profound but as yet infant art of teaching, should
+regard all arbitrary taxes upon the memory with the same superstition
+that a wise lawgiver should regard the punishment of death: the
+lawgiver, who sets out with little knowledge (and therefore little
+veneration) of human nature, is perpetually invoking the thunders of
+the law to compensate the internal weakness of his own laws: and the
+same spirit of levity disposes inefficient teachers to put in motion
+the weightiest machinery of the mind for the most trifling purposes:
+but we are convinced that this law should be engraven on the title
+page of all elementary books--that the memory is degraded, if it be
+called in to deliver any individual fact, or any number of individual
+facts, or for any less purpose than that of delivering a comprehensive
+law, by means of which the understanding is to _produce_ the
+individual cases of knowledge wanted. Wherever exceptions or insulated
+cases are noticed, except in notes, which are not designed to be
+committed to memory, this rule is violated; and the Scotch expression
+for particularising, viz. _condescending upon_, becomes applicable in
+a literal sense: when the Eton grammar, _e. g._ notices _Deus_ as
+deviating in the vocative case from the general law for that
+declension, the memory is summoned to an unreasonable act of
+condescension--viz. to load itself almost as heavily for one
+particular word in one particular case, as it had done by the whole
+type of that declension (_i. e._ the implicit law for all words
+contained under it, which are possibly some thousands). But how then
+would we have such exceptions learnt, if not by an act of the memory?
+Precisely, we answer, as the meanings of all the words in the language
+are learned: how are _they_ learned? They are known, and they are
+remembered: but how? Not by any act or effort of the memory: they are
+_deposited_ in the memory from daily intercourse with them: just as
+the daily occurrences of our lives are recorded in our memories: not
+through any exertion on our part, or in consequence of previous
+determination on our parts that we will remember them: on the
+contrary, we take no pains about them, and often would willingly
+forget them: but they stay there in spite of us, and are pure
+_depositions_, settlings, or sediments, with or without our
+concurrence, from the stream of our daily experience.--Returning from
+this long excursus on arbitrary taxations of the memory suggested to
+us by the mention of '_Propria quæ maribus_,' which the
+Experimentalist objects to as disgusting to children before they have
+had experience of the cases in which it furnishes assistance (but
+which we have objected to as in any case barren of all power to
+assist), we resume the course of our analysis. We left the
+Experimentalist insisting on the benefit of directing the studies of
+children into such channels as that the practical _uses_ of their
+labours may become apprehensible to themselves--as the first mode of
+producing a love of knowledge. In some cases he admits that the pupil
+must pass through 'dark defiles,' confiding blindly in his tutor's
+'assurance that he will at last emerge into light:' but still contends
+that in many cases it is possible, and where possible--right, that he
+should 'catch a glimpse of the promised land.' Thus, for example, to
+construe the language he is learning--is an act of 'some
+respectability in his eyes' and its uses apparent: meantime the uses
+of the grammar are not so apparent until experience has brought him
+acquainted with the real cases to which it applies. On this
+account,--without laying aside the grammar, let him be advanced to the
+dignity of actual translation upon the very _minimum_ of grammatical
+knowledge which will admit of it. Again, in arithmetic, it is the
+received practice to commence with 'abstract numbers:' but, instead of
+risking injury to the child's intellect and to his temper by thus
+calling upon him to add together 'long rows of figures' to which no
+meaning is attached, he is taught 'to calculate all the various little
+problems which may be constructed respecting his tops and marbles,
+their price, and their comparative value.' Here the Experimentalist
+turns aside for about a page (from 'while,' p. 101--to 'practicable,'
+p. 102) to 'acknowledge his obligations to what is called Mental
+Arithmetic--that is, calculation without the employment of written
+symbols.' Jedediah Buxton's preternatural powers in this way have been
+long published to the world, and may now be found recorded in
+Encyclopædias: the Experimentalist refers also to the more recent
+cases of Porson and the American youth Zerah Colborn: amongst his own
+pupils it appears (p. 54) that this exercise is practised in the
+morning twilight, which for any other study would not furnish
+sufficient light: he does not pretend to any very splendid marvels:
+but the following facts, previously recited at pp. 16 and 17, he
+thinks may astonish 'those who have not estimated the combined power
+of youth, ardour, and practice.' The lower classes calculate, purely
+by the mind without any help from pen or pencil, questions respecting
+interest; determine whether a given year be bissextile or not, &c. &c.
+The upper classes determine the age of the moon at any given time, the
+day of the week which corresponds with any day of any month, and year,
+and Easter Sunday for a given year. They will square any number not
+exceeding a thousand, extract the square root of a number of not more
+than five places, determine the space through which a body falls in a
+given time, the circumference and areas of circles from their
+diameters, and solve many problems in mensuration: they practise also
+Mental Algebra, &c. In mental, no less than in written, Arithmetic,
+'by assimilating the questions to those which actually occur in the
+transactions of life,' the pupil is made sensible that he is rising
+into the usefulness and respectability of real business. The imitative
+principle of man is thus made to blend with the motive derived from
+the sense of utility. The same blended feelings, combined with the
+pleasurable influences of open air, are relied upon for creating the
+love of knowledge in the practice of surveying. In this operation so
+large an aggregate of subsidiary knowledge is demanded,--of
+arithmetic, for instance--of mensuration--of trigonometry, together
+with 'the manual facility of constructing maps and plans,' that a
+sudden revelation is made to the pupils of the uses and
+indispensableness of many previous studies which hitherto they had
+imperfectly appreciated; they also 'exercise their discretion in
+choosing points of observation; they learn expertness in the use, and
+care in the preservation of instruments: and, above all,--from this
+feeling that they are really _at work_, they acquire that sobriety and
+steadiness of conduct in which the elder school-boy is so often
+inferior to his less fortunate neighbour, who has been removed at an
+early age to the accompting-house.'--The value of the sense of utility
+the Experimentalist brings home forcibly to every reader's
+recollections, by reminding him of the many cases in which a sudden
+desire for self-education breaks out in a few months after the close
+of an inefficient education: 'and what,' he asks, 'produces the
+change? The experience, however short, of the utility of acquisitions,
+which were perhaps lately despised.' Better then 'to spare the future
+man many moments of painful retrospection,' by educing this sense of
+utility, 'while the time and opportunity of improvement remain
+unimpaired.' Finally, the sense of utility is connected with the
+peculiar exercises in _composition_; 'a department of education which
+we confess' (says the Experimentalist) 'has often caused us
+considerable uneasiness;' an uneasiness which we, on our part, look
+upon as groundless. For starting ourselves from the same point with
+the Experimentalist and the authority he alleges--viz. that the
+_matter_ of a good theme or essay altogether transcends the reflective
+powers and the opportunities for observing of a raw school-boy,--we
+yet come to a very different practical conclusion. The act of
+composition cannot, it is true, create thoughts in a boy's head unless
+they exist previously. On this consideration, let all questions of
+general speculation be dismissed from school exercises: especially
+questions of _moral_ speculation, which usually furnish the thesis of
+a school-boy's essay: let us have no more themes on Justice--on
+Ambition--on Benevolence--on the Love of Fame, &c.: for all theses
+such as these, which treat moral qualities as pure abstractions, are
+stripped of their _human_ interest: and few adults even could write
+endurably upon such subjects in such a shape; though many might have
+written very pleasingly and judiciously upon a moral _case_--_i. e._
+on a moral question _in concreto_. Grant that a school-boy has no
+independent thoughts of any value; yet every boy has thoughts
+dependent upon what he has read--thoughts involved in it--thoughts
+derived from it: but these he will (_cæteris paribus_) be more or less
+able to express, as he has been more or less accustomed to express
+them. The unevolved thoughts which pass through the youngest--the
+rudest--the most inexperienced brain, are innumerable; not
+detached--voluntary thoughts, but thoughts inherent in what is seen,
+talked of, experienced, or read of. To evolve these, to make them
+apprehensible by others, and often even to bring them within their own
+consciousness, is very difficult to most people; and at times to all
+people: and the power, by which this difficulty is conquered, admits
+of endless culture: and, amongst the modes of culture, is that of
+written composition. The true value of this exercise lies in the
+necessity which it imposes of forming distinct ideas--of connecting
+them--of disposing them into such an arrangement as that they can be
+connected--of clothing them in words--and many more acts of the mind:
+both analytic and synthetic. All that is necessary is--to determine
+for the young composer his choice of matter: require him therefore to
+narrate an interesting story which he has formerly read; to rehearse
+the most interesting particulars of a day's excursion: in the case of
+more advanced students, let them read one of the English state trials,
+where the evidence is of a complex character (as the trials on Titus
+Oates's plot), or a critical dissertation on some interesting
+question, or anything in short which admits of analysis--of
+abstraction--of expansion--or exhibition in an altered shape. Subjects
+for all this are innumerable; and, according to the selection made,
+more or less opportunity is given for collecting valuable knowledge:
+but this purpose is collateral to the one we are speaking of: the
+direct purpose is to exercise the mind in unravelling its own
+thoughts, which else lie huddled and tangled together in a state unfit
+for use, and but dimly developed to the possessor's own
+consciousness.--The three other modes of producing a love of
+knowledge, which the Experimentalist relies on, viz. the proportioning
+the difficulties to the capacity of the learner, the pleasure of
+success, and the communication of clear, vivid, and accurate
+conceptions, are treated with good sense--but not with any great
+originality: the last indeed (to speak scholastically) contains the
+other three _eminenter_: for he, who has once arrived at clear
+conceptions in relation to the various objects of his study, will not
+fail to generate for himself the pleasure of success; and so of the
+rest. But the power of communicating 'accurate conceptions' involves
+so many other powers, that it is in strictness but another name for
+the faculty of teaching in general. We fully agree with the
+Experimentalist (at p. 118), that the tutor would do well 'to provide
+himself with the various weights commonly spoken of, and the measures
+of content and of length; to portion off upon his play-ground a
+land-chain, a rood,' &c. to furnish 'maps' tracing 'the routes of
+armies;' 'plates exhibiting the costumes' of different nations: and
+more especially we agree with him (at p. 135) that in teaching the
+classics the tutor should have at hand 'plates or drawings of ships,
+temples, houses, altars, domestic and sacred utensils, robes, and of
+every object of which they are likely to read.' 'It is,' as he says,
+'impossible to calculate the injury which the minds of children suffer
+from the habit of receiving imperfect ideas:' and it is discreditable
+in the highest degree to the majority of good classical scholars that
+they have no accurate knowledge of the Roman calendar, and no
+knowledge at all of the classical coinage, &c.: not one out of every
+twenty scholars can state the relation of the _sestertius_ to the
+_denarius_, of the Roman _denarius_ to the Attic _drachma_, or express
+any of them in English money. All such defects are weighty: but they
+are not adequate illustrations of the injury which arises from
+inaccurate ideas in its most important shape. It is a subject however
+which we have here no room to enlarge upon.
+
+[Footnote 40: Indeed an Etonian must in consistency condemn either the
+Latin or the Greek grammar of Eton. For, where is the Greek '_Propria
+quæ maribus_'--'_Quæ genus_'--and '_As in præsenti_'? Either the Greek
+grammar is defective, or the Latin redundant. We are surprised that it
+has never struck the patrons of these three beautiful Idylls, that all
+the anomalies of the Greek language are left to be collected from
+practice.]
+
+
+REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS.--It has already been mentioned that corporal
+punishments are entirely abolished;[41] and upon the same principle
+all such disgrace as 'would destroy self-respect.' 'Expulsion even has
+been resorted to, rather than a boy should be submitted to treatment
+which might lead himself and his school-fellows to forget that he was
+a gentleman.' In this we think the Experimentalist very wise: and
+precisely upon this ground it was that Mr. Coleridge in his lectures
+at the Royal Institution attacked Mr. Lancaster's system, which
+deviated from the Madras system chiefly in the complexity of the
+details, and by pressing so cruelly in its punishments upon the
+principle of shame. 'Public disgrace' (as the Experimentalist alleges,
+p. 83) 'is painful exactly in proportion to the good feeling of the
+offender:' and thus the good are more heavily punished than the bad.
+Confinement, and certain disabilities, are the severest punishments:
+but the former is 'as rare as possible; both because it is attended
+with unavoidable disgrace' (but what punishment is wholly free from
+this objection?) 'and because, unlike labour, it is pain without any
+utility' (p. 183). The ordinary punishments therefore consist in the
+forfeiture of rewards, which are certain counters obtained by various
+kinds of merit. These are of two classes, _penal_ (so called from
+being received as forfeits) and premial, which are obtained by a
+higher degree of merit, and have higher powers attached to them.
+Premial counters will purchase _holidays_, and will also purchase
+_rank_ (which on this system is of great importance). A conflict is
+thus created between pleasure and ambition, which generally terminates
+in favour of the latter: 'a boy of fourteen, although constantly in
+the possession of marks sufficient to obtain a holiday per week, has
+bought but three-quarters of a day's relaxation during the whole of
+the last year. The same boy purchased his place on the list by a
+sacrifice of marks sufficient to have obtained for him twenty-six
+half-holidays.' The purchase of rank, the reader must remember, is no
+way objectionable--considering the means by which the purchase-money
+is obtained. One chief means is by study during the hours of
+leisure--_i. e._ by _voluntary labour_: this is treated of (rather out
+of its place) in Chap. VII., which ought to be considered as belonging
+to the first part of the work, viz. to the exposition of the system.
+Voluntary labour took its rise from the necessity of furnishing those
+boys, who had no chance of obtaining rank through their talents, with
+some other means of distinguishing themselves: this is accomplished in
+two modes: first, by giving rewards for industry exerted out of school
+hours, and receiving these rewards as the price of rank; making no
+other stipulation than one, in addition to its being 'tolerably well
+executed'--viz. that it shall be in a state of completion. The
+Experimentalist comments justly at p. 187, on 'the mental dissipation
+in which persons of talent often indulge' as being 'destructive beyond
+what can readily be imagined' and as leading to 'a life of shreds and
+patches.' 'We take care' (says he) 'to reward no boy for fragments,
+whatever may be their excellence. We know nothing of his exertions
+until they come before us in a state of completion.' Hence, besides
+gaining the 'habit of finishing' in early youth, the boy has an
+interest also in gaining the habit of measuring his own powers: for he
+knows 'that he can receive neither fame nor profit by instalments;'
+and therefore 'undertakes nothing which he has not a rational hope of
+accomplishing.'[42] A second mode of preventing rank from being
+monopolised by talents is by flinging the school into various
+arrangements, one of which is founded on 'propriety of manners and
+general good conduct.'
+
+[Footnote 41: On this point there is however an exception made, which
+amuses us not a little. 'In a few instances,' says the Experimentalist,
+'it has been found or supposed necessary to resent insolence by a blow:
+but this may be rather called an assertion of private right, than an
+official punishment. In these cases a single blow has _almost_ always
+been found sufficient, even the rarity of the infliction rendering
+severity unnecessary.' He insists therefore that this punishment (which,
+we cannot but think, might have been commuted for a long imprisonment)
+shall not be called a punishment, nor entered on the public records as
+such: in which case however it becomes a private 'turn-up,' as the
+boxers call it, between the boy and his tutor.]
+
+[Footnote 42: The details of the system in regard to the penal and
+premial counters may be found from pp. 23 to 29. We have no room to
+extract them: one remark only we must make--that we do not see how it
+is possible to ascribe any peculiar and incommunicable privileges to
+the premial as opposed to the penal counters, when it appears that
+they may be exchanged for each other 'at an established rate.']
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We have thus gone through a pretty full analysis, and a very accurate
+one, of the new system as contained in the three first chapters. Of
+the five miscellaneous chapters, the seventh or last but one (on
+_voluntary labour_), has been interwoven with our analysis; and the
+eighth, which contains a comparison of public and private education,
+we do not purpose to notice; the question is very sensibly discussed;
+but it is useless to discuss any question like this, which is a
+difficult problem only because it is an unlimited problem. Let the
+parent satisfy himself about the object he has in view for his child,
+and let him consider the particular means which he has at his disposal
+for securing a good private education, and he may then determine it
+for himself. As far as the attainment of knowledge is concerned,--it
+is always possible to secure a good public education, and not always
+possible to secure a good private one. Where either is possible
+indifferently, the comparison will proceed upon more equal grounds:
+and inquiry may then be made about the child's destination in future
+life: for many destinations a public education being much more
+eligible than for others. Under a perfect indetermination of
+everything relating to the child--the question is as indeterminable
+as--whether it is better to go to the Bank through Holborn or through
+the Strand: the particular case being given, it may then be possible
+to answer the question; previously it is impossible.----Three chapters
+therefore remain, viz.--Chap. IV. on Languages; Chap. V. on Elocution;
+and Chap. VI. on Penmanship.
+
+_Chap. IV. On the best method of acquiring Languages._--The
+Experimentalist had occasion to observe 'that, in the Welsh towns
+which are frequented by the English, even the children speak both
+languages with fluency:' this fact, contrasted with the labour and
+pain entailed upon the boy who is learning Latin (to say nothing of
+the eventual disgust to literature which is too often the remote
+consequence), and the drudgery entailed upon the master who teaches
+Latin,--and fortified by the consideration, that in the former
+instance the child learns to speak a new language, but in the latter
+only to read it,--first drew his attention to the _natural_ mode of
+learning languages, _i. e._ learning them from daily use. This mode
+never fails with living languages: but how is it to be applied to dead
+languages? The Experimentalist retorts by asking what is essential to
+this mode? Partly the necessity which the pupil is laid under of using
+the language daily for the common intercourse of life, and partly his
+hearing it spoken by those who thoroughly understand it. 'Stimulus to
+exertion then, and good models, are the great advantages of this mode
+of instruction:' and these, he thinks, are secured even for a dead
+language by his system: the first by the motives to exertion which
+have already been unfolded; and the second by the acting of Latin
+dramas (which had been previously noticed in his Exposition of the
+system). But a third imitation of the _natural_ method he places in
+the use of translations, 'which present the student with a dictionary
+both of words and phrases arranged in the order in which he wants
+them,' and in an abstinence from all use of the grammar, until the
+learner himself shall come to feel the want of it; _i. e._ using it
+with reference to an experience already accumulated, and not as an
+anticipation of an experience yet to come. The ordinary objection to
+the use of translations--that they produce indolent habits, he answers
+thus: 'We teach by the process of _construing_; and therefore, even
+with the translation before him, the scholar will have a task to
+perform in matching the English, word by word, with the language which
+he is learning.' For this _natural_ method of learning languages he
+alleges the authority of Locke, of Ascham, and of Pestalozzi. The best
+method, with those who have advanced to some degree of proficiency, he
+considers that of double translations--_i. e._ a translation first of
+all into the mother tongue of the learner, and a re-translation of
+this translation back into the language of the original. These, with
+the help of extemporaneous construing, _i. e._ construing any passage
+at random with the assistance of a master who supplies the meaning of
+the unknown words as they arise (a method practised, it seems, by Le
+Febvre the father of Madame Dacier, by others before his time, and by
+Condillac since)--compose the chief machinery which he employs for the
+communication of dead languages.
+
+_Chap. V. On Elocution._--In this chapter there is not much which is
+very important. To read well, the Experimentalist alleges, presupposes
+so much various knowledge, especially of that kind which is best
+acquired by private reading, and therefore most spares the labour of
+the tutor, that it ought reasonably to bestow high rank in the school.
+Private reading is most favourable to the rapid collection of an
+author's meaning: but for reading well--this is not sufficient: two
+great constituents of that art remain to be acquired--Enunciation and
+Inflection. These are best learned by Recitation. Thus far there is no
+great novelty: the most interesting part of the chapter is what
+relates to Stammering. This defect is held by the Experimentalist to
+result from inattention to rhythmus: so much he thinks has been proved
+by Mr. Thelwall. Whatsoever therefore compels the pupil to an
+efficient perception of time and measure, as for example, marching
+and music (p. 32), he resorts to for its correction. Stammerers, he
+observes, can all sing: let them be taught to sing therefore, if not
+otherwise corrigible: and from this let them descend to _recitative_:
+then to the recitation of verses distinguished by the simplicity of
+their rhythmus, marching at the same time and marking the accented
+syllables by the tread of the foot; from this to the recitation of
+more difficult verses; from that to measured prose; thence to ordinary
+prose; and lastly to narrative and dialogue.
+
+_Chap. VI. Of Penmanship._--This is a subject on which we profess no
+experience which could warrant us in contradicting a writer who should
+rest his innovations solely upon that ground: but the writer before us
+does not rely on the practical issue of his own experiment (he does
+not even tell us what that issue was), but on certain _à priori_
+arguments, which we conceive to be ill-reasoned. The amount of the
+chapter is this--that to write a good running hand is the main object
+to be aimed at in the art of caligraphy: we will go farther, and
+concede that it is the sole object, unless where the pupil is educated
+for a writing-master. Thus far we are agreed; and the question is--as
+to the best means of attaining this object. On which question the plan
+here proposed differs from those in use by the very natural
+error--that what is admitted to be the ultimate object, this plan
+would make the immediate object. The author starts from a false theory
+of the practice amongst writing-masters: in order that their pupils
+may write small and running hands well, writing-masters (as is
+well-known) begin by exacting from them a long praxis in large hands.
+But the rationale of this praxis escapes the Experimentalist: the
+large hand and the small hand stand related to each other, in the
+estimate of the masters, as a means to an end; whereas the
+Experimentalist supposes them to be viewed in the relation simply of
+two co-ordinate or collateral ends: on which false presumption he
+grounds what would on his own view be a very sound advice; for justly
+conceiving that the small hand is of incomparably more use in life, he
+argues in effect thus: let us communicate the main object, and then
+(if he has leisure and taste for it) let the pupil direct his
+attention to the lower object: 'when the running hand is
+accomplished,' says he, 'the pupil may (if it be thought necessary)
+learn to write the larger hands according to the received models.'
+_When_ it is acquired! 'Aye, but in order that it _may_ be
+acquired,'--the writing-master will reply, 'I must first teach the
+larger hands.' As well might the professor of dancing hold out as a
+tempting innovation to the public--I teach the actual dances, the true
+practical synthesis of the steps and movements, as it is in fact
+demanded by the usage of the ball-room: let others teach the analytic
+elements of the art--the mere useless steps--to those who have time to
+waste on superfluities. In either art (as in many others) that, which
+is first (or rather sole) in order of importance, is last in the order
+of attainment: as an object _per se_, the larger hand is not wanted at
+all, either before or after the running hand: if it does really
+contribute nothing to the more accurate formation of the letters, by
+compelling the pupil to exhibit his aberrations from the _ideal_
+letter more clearly because on a scale of greater magnitude (which
+yet in the second sentence of this chapter our Experimentalist himself
+admits), then let it be abandoned at once: for not doing this service,
+it does nothing at all. On the other hand, if this be its specific
+service, then it is clear that, being no object _per se_, but simply a
+means to an object, it must have precedency in the order of
+communication. And the innovation of our Experimentalist is so far (in
+the literal sense of that word) a _preposterous_ inversion of the old
+usage: and this being the chief principle of his 'plan' we desire to
+know no more of it; and were not sorry that (p. 178) we found him
+declining 'to enter into a detail of it.'--The business of the chapter
+being finished however, there yet remains some little matter of
+curiosity. 1. The Experimentalist affirms that 'Langford's
+copper-plate copies, or indeed any other which he has seen, fail' if
+tried by a certain test: what test? Why this: that 'the large hand
+seen through a diminishing glass, ought to be reduced into the current
+hand; and the current hand, magnified, ought to swell into a large
+hand.' Whereas, on the contrary, 'the large hands reduced appear very
+stiff and cramped; and the magnified running hand'--'appears little
+better than a scrawl.' Now to us the result appears in a different
+light. It is true that the large hands reduced do not appear good
+running hands according to the standard derived from the actual
+practice of the world: but why? Simply because they are too good: _i. e._
+they are _ideals_ and in fact are meant to be so; and have nothing
+characteristic: they are purely _generic_ hands, and therefore want
+_individualisation_: they are abstractions; but to affect us
+pleasurably, they should be concrete expressions of some human
+qualities, moral or intellectual. Perfect features in a human face
+arranged with perfect symmetry, affect us not at all, as is well
+known, where there is nothing characteristic; the latency of the
+individual in the generic, and of the generic in the individual, is
+that which gives to each its power over our human sensibilities. And
+this holds of caligraphy no less than other arts. And _that_ is the
+most perfect hand-writing which unites the _minimum_ of deviation from
+the ideal standard of beauty (as to the form and nexus of the letters)
+with the _maximum_ of characteristic expression. It has long been
+practically felt, and even expressly affirmed (in some instances even
+expanded into a distinct art and professed as such), that it is
+possible to determine the human _intellectual_ character as to some of
+its features from the hand-writing. Books even have been written on
+this art, as _e. g._ the _Ideographia_, or art of knowing the
+characters of men from their hand-writings, by _Aldorisius_: and,
+though this in common with all other modes of _physiognomy_, as
+craniology, Lavaterianism (usually called physiognomy), &c. &c. has
+laboured under the reproach of fancifulness,--yet we ought not to
+attribute this wholly to the groundlessness of the art as a possible
+art--but to these two causes; partly to the precipitation and
+imperfect psychology of the professors; who, like the craniologists,
+have been over-ready to determine the _indicantia_ before they had
+settled according to any tolerable theory the _indicanda_; _i. e._
+have settled what A, what B, what C, shall _indicate_, before they
+have inquired what it was presumable upon any systematic development
+of human nature would have a right _to be indicated_; and thus have
+assigned an external characteristic to a faculty of the third
+order--suppose (or perhaps a mere accidental effect of a faculty or a
+mere imaginary faculty), whilst a primary faculty went without any
+expression at all:--partly, I say, to this cause which is obviously
+not merely a subjective but also an accidental cause; and partly also
+to the following cause, which is objective (_i. e._ seated in the
+inherent imperfections of the art itself, and not removeable therefore
+by any future improvements to be anticipated from a more matured
+psychology); viz. that the human mind transcends or overflows the
+gamut or scale of the art; in other words, that the qualities--intellectual
+or moral, which ought to be expressed, are far more in number than the
+alphabet of signs or expressions by which they are to be enunciated.
+Hence it follows as an inevitable dilemma, that many qualities must go
+unrepresented; or else be represented by signs common to them with other
+qualities: in the first of which cases we have an art imperfect from
+defect, in the other case imperfect from equivocal language. Thus, for
+example, determination of character is built in some cases upon mere
+energy of the will (a moral cause); and again in other cases upon
+capaciousness of judgment and freedom from all logical perplexity (an
+intellectual cause). Yet it is possible that either cause will modify
+the hand-writing in the same way.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From the long analysis which we have thus given of the book recording
+this new system of education, it is sufficiently evident that we think
+very highly of it. In the hands of its founder we are convinced that
+it is calculated to work wonders; and so strong is the impression
+which his book conveys, that he is not only a man of very
+extraordinary talents for the improvement of the science of education,
+but also a very conscientious man--that, for our own parts, we should
+confide a child to his care with that spirit of perfect confidence
+which he has himself described at p. 74. There is an air of
+gentlemanly feeling spread over the book which tends still further to
+recommend the author. Meantime two questions arise on the
+system,--first, is it a good system? which we have answered:--secondly,
+is it a system adapted for general diffusion? This question we dare not
+answer in the affirmative, unless we could ensure the talents and energy
+of the original inventor in every other superintendent of this
+system.--In this we may be wrong: but at all events, it ought not to be
+considered as any deduction from the merits of the author--as a very
+original thinker on the science of education, that his system is not
+(like the Madras system) independent of the teacher's, ability, and
+therefore not unconditionally applicable.--Upon some future occasion we
+shall perhaps take an opportunity of stating what is in our opinion the
+great desideratum which is still to be supplied in the art of education
+considered simply in its _intellectual_ purposes--viz. the communication
+of knowledge, and the development of the intellectual faculties:
+purposes which have not been as yet treated in sufficient insulation
+from the _moral_ purposes. For the present we shall conclude by
+recommending to the notice of the Experimentalist the German writers on
+education. Basedow, who naturalised Rousseau in Germany, was the first
+author who called the attention of the German public to this important
+subject. Unfortunately Basedow had a silly ambition of being reputed an
+infidel, and thus created a great obstacle to his own success: he was
+also in many other respects a sciolist and a trifler: but, since his
+time, the subject has been much cultivated in Germany: 'Paedogogic'
+journals even, have been published periodically, like literary or
+philosophic journals: and, as might be anticipated from that love of
+children which so honourably distinguishes the Germans as a people, not
+without very considerable success.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CASE OF APPEAL.
+
+Our little Courts of Justice not unfrequently furnish cases of
+considerable interest; and we are always willing to make the
+resemblance between our microcosm and the world at large as close as
+possible, at least in every useful point we are trying to collect a
+volume of Reports. As all the boys are expected to be present during a
+trial, to give importance to the proceeding, the time of such as are
+capable of the task must be profitably employed in taking notes. A
+useful effect may also be produced upon the parties; and these records
+will be valuable acquisitions for those boys who wish to study the
+laws, and enable themselves to conduct the jurisprudence of the
+school. We shall detail a case which lately occurred, not because it
+is the most interesting which could have been selected, but because
+there will be nothing in its publication to hurt the feelings of any
+person engaged in the transaction.
+
+It would be vain to attempt any concealment of the fact that our
+pupils, like all boys in the full tide of health and spirits, do not
+always see the folly of an appeal to the _ultimo ratio regum_ in so
+strong a light as that in which it _sometimes_ appears to older eyes;
+and resort is now and then had to trial by combat, in preference to
+trial by jury. The candid and experienced teacher, who knows the
+difficulty and the danger of too rigorously suppressing natural
+impulses, will not censure us for endeavouring to regulate this
+custom, than to destroy it altogether. In the hope of lessening the
+number of those _fracas_ (never very large), a law was proposed, which
+the committee adopted, to render it penal for any person, except the
+Magistrate and the Constables, to be present at a battle. Six hours'
+notice must be given by both parties, and a tax paid in advance.
+During the interval, it is the duty of the Magistrate to attempt a
+reconciliation. These regulations were intended to give opportunity
+for the passions to cool, and to check the inclination for display
+which is often the sole cause of the disturbance.
+
+We consider the effect on the minds of the spectators as the worst
+part of the transaction. There is something dreadfully brutalising in
+the shouts of incitement and triumph which generally accompany a feat
+of pugilism. Neither boys nor men ought ever to witness pain without
+sympathy. It is almost needless to say, that, with us, fighting is
+anything rather than a source of festivity and amusement.
+
+To return to our story.--A day-scholar, whose father's grounds adjoin
+ours, was discovered by the Magistrate to have witnessed a battle from
+a tree which he had climbed for that purpose. The Magistrate fined
+him. He appealed, and the question of his liability was argued at some
+length before the Committee.
+
+The ground which the appellant took was, that no day-scholar could be
+amenable to the laws of the school, except during the hours of
+business, or while on the premises of the school, and that the alleged
+offence was committed out of school hours, and on his father's land.
+
+Public opinion ran in his favour. The plea that he was on his father's
+land seemed to have great weight with his schoolfellows. To fine a boy
+under such circumstances appeared to them like an attempt to invade
+the paternal sanctuary, and the motion for quashing conviction of the
+Magistrate, at first received the support of several members of the
+Committee.
+
+The attending Teacher saw that it would be necessary to call the
+attention of the Committee to general principles, and proposed as an
+amendment to the general motion, the following resolution, 'That it is
+desirable that the laws should be obeyed at all times, and in all
+places.' In support of this amendment he argued, that as the laws had
+the happiness of the school in view, a breach of those laws must
+certainly be in some degree destructive of the general good. That to
+allow this in certain individuals would be injurious to the great
+body, but still more so to the individuals themselves; and that what
+was wrong in the schoolroom or on the playground at eleven in the
+morning, could not be right in the fields at six in the afternoon. In
+conclusion he said, 'Whether or not we have the power to fine a person
+for a breach of our laws when he is at a distance from the schools,
+is a question which it is not our present business to determine; but I
+firmly believe that our laws are calculated to promote in the highest
+degree our welfare, and I wish the advantages to be derived from
+obeying them to be as widely diffused as possible.'
+
+The amendment was carried unanimously.
+
+Having determined 'that it was desirable that the laws should be
+obeyed at all times and in all places,' it was necessary in the next
+place to ascertain whether it was not a part of our law that such
+should be the case.
+
+With this view an amendment was proposed which declared, that such was
+the intention of the law, and in support of it cases were cited in
+which day-boys had been punished for offences committed at a distance
+from the school. It was also insisted, that in no single instance had
+the laws made an exception in favour of the day-boys. They universally
+begin by saying, that, if 'any one,' or 'any pupil,' or 'any boy,'
+shall commit such and such an offence, etc., and not 'any boarder,' or
+'any day-boy then at school.'
+
+The second amendment was also carried without opposition.
+
+The question was now confined within very narrow limits. The Committee
+had declared that it was 'desirable that the laws should be obeyed at
+all times and in all places;' and also, that by law no exception was
+made in favour of day-scholars. It only remained therefore for the
+Committee to consider, whether the police of the school had the power
+to enforce the laws.
+
+It was argued that in this case they had been enforced, for that the
+fine had actually been paid, and that unless the Committee interfered
+to prevent it, they would continue to operate as they had done, for
+the welfare of the school at large, and for the ultimate advantage
+even of the individuals who might at first appear to be injured.
+
+The amended motion was now put, and the conviction was unanimously
+confirmed.
+
+This detail will furnish the reader with a more correct conception
+than we could otherwise give him, of the opportunities with which the
+sittings of our little Committees furnish the members for making some
+important acquirements.
+
+In the first place, they study the art of reasoning, and that too
+under very favourable circumstances; being fully acquainted with the
+facts on which they are called to exercise their judgments, and seeing
+them in all their bearings. We believe that intimate acquaintance with
+the facts of which we speak to be the first and most important element
+in practical logic. Reasoning, strictly speaking, being no more than
+the art of tracing analogies and differences. The _reality_ of the
+business in which the students are engaged is very valuable, inasmuch
+as it furnishes them with strong motives to exert all their powers in
+the investigation. The matter at issue 'comes home to their business
+and bosoms;' it may deeply affect their interests, and will not pass
+unnoticed by their constituents; among whom the question will be again
+discussed, and the Committee-men will in conversation have to defend
+the opinions they have officially expressed. Thus every argument is
+well canvassed in their minds, and the ideas remain under
+consideration for a sufficient time to become permanently fixed in
+their remembrance. The power of public speaking is also in some degree
+acquired, and, we hope, without the countervailing evils which have
+been so justly deprecated. The great defects of all artificial methods
+of learning the art of debating is, that it is seldom of any real
+importance to either speaker or hearer, on which side the question
+under discussion is determined; consequently, the speaker is more
+anxious to display his own talents, than to convince the audience;
+which, on its part, wishes rather for amusement than instruction, or
+seeks the latter only by watching the conduct of this mental
+fencing-match, in order to learn the most skilful manner of handling
+the foils. Every one who addresses the company assembled, feels that
+he shall be more applauded for agreeably wandering, than for pointing
+out and following the best and straightest road. In short, discussion,
+instead of being a means employed to gain an object, is the end
+itself.
+
+The orator, if such a name is to be so degraded, rises not to gain the
+votes of his hearers, but to make them laugh and clap their hands;
+and, this is most easily done by advancing smart sophisms, and
+uttering well-delivered absurdities with mock solemnity, we may
+readily conceive how little the powers of investigation can be
+exercised and improved by such practice as that of spouting clubs and
+debating societies. No doubt there are many exceptions to these
+remarks, but the vice we complain of is, we fear, inherent in some
+degree in the nature of the institutions, although by care in the
+choice of members, and the selection of an audience, it may, in a
+great measure, be counteracted.
+
+We must not forget to state the advantages enjoyed by the Teacher's
+attendance on the sittings of our Committees. He becomes most
+intimately acquainted with the minds of his pupils. He sees their
+difficulties and their errors in a strong light, and is placed in a
+situation for addressing himself more completely to the state of their
+wants than he could be, unless they were thus induced, and almost
+compelled, to disclose all the workings of the mental machine. In
+general, nearly every person who knows a boy at all, has an
+opportunity of becoming better acquainted with him than his
+instructor. No wonder, considering the many painful sensations which
+the latter, in his various offices of accuser, witness, judge and
+executioner, is compelled to exite. We are happily relieved from these
+difficulties, but we still seize with avidity every means by which our
+pupils may be induced to develop their minds to our view, feeling that
+our acquaintance with their springs of thought and action can never be
+too accurate and complete. The votes at the conclusion of the debate
+show us the measure of our success. Every influence except that of
+mind, is, we trust, out of the question: we do not always carry a
+majority with us; and this fact gives us hope, that when we do, a
+sincere effect has been wrought on the convictions of the boys.
+
+To conclude, we must in candour acknowledge, that we search more
+industriously for arguments and illustrations to support our opinions,
+than we should or _could_ do, under other circumstances. The effect on
+the mind of the Master is not a bad test of any method of education.
+
+
+
+
+ABSTRACT OF SWEDENBORGIANISM:
+
+BY IMMANUEL KANT.
+
+(_May, 1824._)
+
+
+----But now to my hero. If many a forgotten writer, or writer destined
+to be forgotten, is on that account the more deserving of applause for
+having spared no cost of toil and intellectual exertion upon his
+works, certainly Swedenborg of all such writers is deserving of the
+most. Without doubt his flask in the moon is full; and not at all less
+than any of those which Ariosto saw in that planet filled with the
+lost wits of men, so thoroughly is his great work emptied of every
+drop of common sense. Nevertheless there prevails in every part so
+wonderful an agreement with all that the most refined and consistent
+sense under the same fantastic delusions could produce on the same
+subject, that the reader will pardon me if I here detect the same
+curiosities in the caprices of fancy which many other virtuosi have
+detected in the caprices of nature; for instance, in variegated
+marble, where some have discovered a holy family; or in stalactites
+and petrifactions, where others have discovered monks, baptismal
+fonts, and organs; or even in frozen window-panes, where our
+countryman Liscow, the humourist, discovered the number of the beast
+and the triple crown; things which he only is apt to descry, whose
+head is preoccupied with thoughts about them.
+
+The main work of this writer is composed of eight quarto volumes full
+of nonsense, which he presented to the world as a new revelation under
+the title of _Arcana Coelestia_. In this work his visions are
+chiefly directed to the discovery of the secret sense in the two first
+books of Moses, and to a similar way of interpreting the whole of the
+Scripture. All these fantastic interpretations are nothing to my
+present purpose: those who have any curiosity may find some account of
+them in the _Bibliotheca Theologica_ of Dr. Ernesti. All that I design
+to extract are his _audita et visa_, from the supplements to his
+chapters--that which he saw with his own eyes, and heard with his own
+ears: for these parts of his dreams it is which are to be considered
+as the foundation of all the rest. Swedenborg's style is dull and
+mean. His narrations and their whole contexture appear in fact to have
+originated in a disorder of his sensitive faculty, and suggest no
+reason for suspecting that the speculative delusions of a depraved
+intellect have moved him to invent them. Viewed in this light, they
+are really of some importance--and deserve to be exhibited in a short
+abstract; much more indeed than many a brainless product of fantastic
+philosophers who swell our journals with false subtilties; for a
+coherent delusion of the senses is always a more remarkable phenomenon
+than a delusion of the intellect; inasmuch as the grounds of this
+latter delusion are well known, and the delusion itself corrigible
+enough by self-exertion and by putting more check upon the rash
+precipitation of the judgment; whereas a delusion of the senses
+touches the original foundation of all judgment, and where it exists
+is radically incapable of all cure from logic. I distinguish therefore
+in our author his craziness of sense from his crazy wits; and I pass
+over his absurd and distorted reasonings in those parts where he
+abandons his visions, for the same reason that in reading a
+philosopher we are often obliged to separate his observations from his
+arguments: and generally, delusive experiences are more instructive
+than delusive grounds of experience in the reason. Whilst I thus rob
+the reader of some few moments, which otherwise perhaps he would have
+spent with no greater profit in reading works of abstract philosophy
+that are often of not less trivial import,--I have at the same time
+provided for the delicacy of his taste by the omission of many
+chimæras, and by concentrating the essence of the book into a few
+drops; and for this I anticipate no less gratitude from him than
+(according to the old story) a patient expressed towards his
+physicians--who had contented themselves with ordering him to eat the
+bark of the quinquina, when it was clearly in their power to have
+insisted on his eating up the whole tree.
+
+Mr. Swedenborg divides his visions into three kinds, of which the
+first consists in being liberated from the body--an intermediate state
+between waking and sleeping, in which he saw--heard--and felt spirits.
+This kind he has experienced three or four times. The second consists
+in being carried away by spirits, whilst he continues to walk the
+streets (suppose) without losing his way; meantime in spirit he is in
+quite other regions, and sees distinctly houses, men, forests, &c.;
+and all this for some hours long, until he suddenly finds himself
+again in his true place. This has happened to him two or three times.
+The third or ordinary kind of visions is that which he has daily when
+wide awake; and from this class his narrations are chiefly taken. All
+men, according to Swedenborg, stand in an intimate connection with the
+spiritual world; only they are not aware of it; and the difference
+between himself and others consists simply in this--that his innermost
+nature is laid open, of which gift he always speaks with the most
+devout spirit of gratitude (Datum mihi est ex divinâ Domini
+misericordiâ). From the context it is apparent that this gift consists
+in the consciousness of those obscure representations which the soul
+receives through its continual connection with the spiritual world.
+Accordingly he distinguishes in men between the external and the
+internal memory. The former he enjoys as a person who belongs to the
+visible world, but the latter in virtue of his intercourse with the
+spiritual world. Upon this distinction is grounded also the
+distinction between the outer and inner man; and Swedenborg's
+prerogative consists in this--that he stands already in this life in
+the society of spirits, and is recognised by them as possessing such a
+prerogative. In the inner memory is retained whatsoever has vanished
+from the outer; and of all which is presented to the consciousness of
+man nothing is ever lost. After death the remembrance of all which
+ever entered his soul, and even all that had perished to himself,
+constitutes the entire book of his life. The presence of spirits, it
+is true, strikes only upon his inner sense. Nevertheless this is able
+to excite an apparition of these spirits external to himself, and even
+to invest them with a human figure. The language of spirits is an
+_immediate_ and unsymbolic communication of ideas; notwithstanding
+which it is always clothed in the semblance of that language which
+Swedenborg himself speaks, and is represented as external to him. One
+spirit reads in the memory of another spirit all the representations,
+whether images or ideas, which it contains. Thus the spirits see in
+Swedenborg all the representations which he has of this world; and
+with so clear an intuition that they often deceive themselves and
+fancy that they see the objects themselves immediately--which however
+is impossible, since no pure spirit has the slightest perception of
+the material universe: nay they cannot gain any idea of it through
+intercourse with the souls of other living men, because their inner
+nature is not opened--_i. e._ their inner sense contains none but
+obscure representations. Hence it arises that Mr. Swedenborg is the
+true oracle of spirits, which are not at all less curious to read in
+him the present condition of the world, than he is to view in their
+memory, as in a mirror, the marvels of the spiritual world. Although
+these spirits stand in like manner closely connected with all other
+souls of living men, by a reciprocal commerce of action and passion,
+yet they are as little aware of this as men are aware of it. Spirits
+therefore ascribe to themselves as the product of their own minds what
+in fact results from the action of human souls upon them; just as men
+during their lives imagine that all their thoughts, and the motions of
+the will which take place within them, arise from themselves,
+although in fact they oftentimes take their origin in the spiritual
+world. Meantime every human soul, even in this life, has its place and
+station in this spiritual world, and belongs to a certain society
+which is always adapted to its inner condition of truth and
+goodness,--that is, to the condition of the understanding and the
+will. But the places of souls in relation to each other have nothing
+in common with the material world; and therefore the soul of a man in
+India is often in respect to spiritual situation next neighbour to the
+soul of another man in Europe; as on the contrary very often those,
+who dwell corporeally under the same roof, are with respect to their
+spiritual relations far enough asunder. If a man dies, his soul does
+not on that account change its place; but simply feels itself in that
+place which in regard to other spirits it already held in this life.
+For the rest, although the relation of spirits to each other is no
+true relation of space, yet has it to them the appearance of space;
+and their affinities or attractions for each other assume the
+semblance of proximities, as their repulsions do of distances; just as
+spirits themselves are not actually extended, but yet present the
+appearance to each other of a human figure. In this imaginary space
+there is an undisturbed intercourse of spiritual natures. Mr.
+Swedenborg converses with departed souls whenever he chooses, and
+reads in their memory (he means to say in their representative
+faculty) that very condition in which they contemplate themselves; and
+this he sees as clearly as with his bodily eyes. Moreover the enormous
+distance of the rational inhabitants of the world is to be accounted
+as nothing in relation to the spiritual universe; and to talk with an
+inhabitant of Saturn is just as easy to him as to speak with a
+departed human soul. All depends upon the relation of their inner
+condition in reference to their agreement in truth and goodness: but
+those spirits, which have weak affinities for each other, can readily
+come into intercourse through the inter-agency of others. On this
+account it is not necessary that a man should actually have dwelt on
+all the other heavenly bodies in order to know them together with all
+their wonders.
+
+One presiding doctrine in Swedenborg's ravings is this: corporeal
+beings have no subsistence of their own, but exist merely by and
+through the spiritual world; although each body not by means of one
+spirit alone, but of all taken together. Hence the knowledge of
+material things has two meanings; an external meaning referring to the
+inter-dependencies of the matter upon itself, and an internal meaning
+in so far as they denote the powers of the spiritual world which are
+their causes. Thus the body of man has a system of parts related to
+each other agreeably to material laws: but, in so far as it is
+supported by the spirit which lives, its limbs and their functions
+have a symbolic value as expressions of those faculties in the soul
+from which they derive their form, mode of activity, and power of
+enduring. The same law holds with regard to all other things in the
+visible universe: they have (as has been said) one meaning as
+things--which is trivial, and another as signs--which is far
+weightier. Hence by the way arises the source of those new
+interpretations of Scripture which Swedenborg has introduced. For the
+inner sense,--that is, the symbolic relation of all things there
+recorded to the spiritual world,--is, as he conceits, the kernel of
+its value; all the rest being only its shell. All spirits represent
+themselves to one another under the appearance of extended forms; and
+the influences of all these spiritual beings amongst one another raise
+to them at the same time appearances of other extended beings, and as
+it were of a material world. Swedenborg therefore speaks of
+gardens--spacious regions--mansions--galleries--and arcades of
+spirits--as of things seen by himself in the clearest light; and he
+assures us--that, having many times conversed with all his friends
+after their death, he had almost always found in those who had but
+lately died--that they could scarcely convince themselves that they
+had died, because they saw round about them a world similar to the one
+they had quitted. He found also that spiritual societies, which had
+the same inner condition, had the same apparition of space and of all
+things in space; and that the change of their internal state was
+always accompanied by the appearance of a change of place.
+
+I have already noticed that, according to our author, the various
+powers and properties of the soul stand in sympathy with the organs of
+the body entrusted to its government. The outer man therefore
+corresponds to the whole inner man; and hence, whenever any remarkable
+spiritual influence from the invisible world reaches one of these
+faculties of the soul, he is sensible also harmonically of the
+apparent presence of it in the corresponding members of his outer man.
+To this head now he refers a vast variety of sensations in his body
+which are uniformly connected with spiritual intuition; but the
+absurdity of them is so enormous that I shall not attempt to adduce
+even a single instance.----By all this a preparation is made for the
+strangest and most fantastic of his notions in which all his ravings
+are blended. As different powers and faculties constitute that unity
+which is the soul or inner man, so also different spirits (whose
+leading characteristics bear the same relation to each other as the
+various faculties of a spirit) constitute one society which exhibits
+the appearance of one great man; and in this shadowy image every
+spirit is seen in that place and in those visible members which are
+agreeable to its proper function in such a spiritual body. And all
+spiritual societies taken together, and the entire universe of all
+these invisible beings, appears again in the form of a hugest and
+ultra-enormous man mountain: a monstrous and gigantic fancy, which
+perhaps has grown out of the school mode of representing a whole
+quarter of the world under the image of a virgin sitting. In this
+immeasurable man is an entire and inner commerce of each spirit with
+all, and of all with each; and, let the position of men in reference
+to each other be what it may, they take quite another position in this
+enormous man--a position which they never change, and which is only in
+appearance a local position in an immeasurable space, but in fact a
+determinate kind of relation and influence.
+
+But I am weary of transcribing the delirious ravings of a poor
+visionary, the craziest that has ever existed, or of pursuing them to
+his descriptions of the state after death. I am checked also by other
+considerations. For, although in forming a medical museum it is right
+to collect specimens not only of natural but also of unnatural
+productions and abortions, yet it is necessary to be cautious before
+whom you show them: and amongst my readers there may happen to be some
+in a crazy condition of nerves; and it would give me pain to think
+that I had been the occasion of any mischief to them. Having warned
+them however from the beginning, I am not responsible for anything
+that may happen; and must desire that no person will lay at my door
+the moon-calves which may chance to arise from any teeming fancy
+impregnated by Mr. Swedenborg's revelations.
+
+In conclusion I have to say that I have not interpolated my author's
+dreams with any surreptitious ones of my own; but have laid a faithful
+abstract before the economic reader, who might not be well pleased to
+pay seven pounds sterling for a body of raving. I have indeed omitted
+many circumstantial pictures of his intuitions, because they could
+only have served to disturb the reader's slumber; and the confused
+sense of his revelations I have now and then clothed in a more current
+diction. But all the important features of the sketch I have preserved
+in their native integrity.--And thus I return with some little shame
+from my foolish labours, from which I shall draw this moral: That it
+is often a very easy thing to act prudentially; but alas! too often
+only after we have toiled to our prudence through a forest of
+delusions.
+
+
+
+
+SKETCH OF PROFESSOR WILSON.[43]
+
+[_In a Letter to an American Gentleman._]
+
+
+My dear L,--Among the _lions_ whom you missed by one accident or
+another on your late travels in Europe, I observe that you recur to
+none with so much regret as Professor Wilson; you dwell upon this one
+disappointment as a personal misfortune; and perhaps with reason; for,
+in the course of my life, I have met with no man of equally varied
+accomplishments, or, upon the whole, so well entitled to be ranked
+with that order of men distinguished by brilliant versatility and
+ambidexterity--of which order we find such eminent models in
+Alcibiades, in Cæsar, in Crichton, in that of Servan recorded by
+Sully, and in one or two Italians. Pity that you had not earlier
+communicated to me the exact route you were bound to, and the
+particular succession of your engagements when you visited the English
+Lakes; since, in that case, my interest with Professor Wilson
+(supposing always that you had declined to rely upon the better
+passport of your own merits as a naturalist) would have availed for a
+greater thing than at that time stood between you and the introduction
+which you coveted. On the day, or the night rather, when you were at
+Bowness and Ambleside, I happen to know that Professor Wilson's
+business was one which might have been executed by proxy, though it
+could not be delayed; and I also know that, apart from the _general_
+courtesy of his nature, he would, at all times, have an especial
+pleasure in waiving a claim of business for one of science or letters,
+in the person of a foreigner coming from a great distance; and that in
+no other instance would he make such a sacrifice so cordially as on
+behalf of an able naturalist. Perhaps you already know from your
+countryman, Audubon, that the Professor is himself a naturalist, and
+of original merit; in fact, worth a score of such meagre bookish
+naturalists as are formed in museums and by second-hand acts of
+memory; having (like Audubon) built much of his knowledge upon
+personal observation. Hence he has two great advantages: one, that his
+knowledge is accurate in a very unusual degree; and another, that this
+knowledge, having grown up under the inspiration of a real interest
+and an unaffected love for its objects,--commencing, indeed, at an age
+when no affectation in matters of that nature could exist,--has
+settled upon those facts and circumstances which have a true
+philosophical value: habits, predominant affections, the direction of
+instincts, and the compensatory processes where these happen to be
+thwarted,--on all such topics he is learned and full; whilst, on the
+science of measurements and proportions, applied to dorsal-fins and
+tail-feathers, and on the exact arrangement of colours, &c.--that
+petty upholstery of nature, on which books are so tedious and
+elaborate,--not uncommonly he is negligent or forgetful. What may have
+served in later years to quicken and stimulate his knowledge in this
+field, and, at any rate, greatly to extend it, is the conversation of
+his youngest brother, Mr. James Wilson, who (as _you_ know much better
+than I) is a naturalist _majorum gentium_. He, indeed, whilst a boy of
+not more than sixteen or seventeen, was in correspondence (I believe)
+with Montague the Ornithologist; and about the same time had skill
+enough to pick holes in the coat of Mr. Hüber, the German reformer of
+our then erroneous science of bees.
+
+[Footnote 43: This was written for _The Edinburgh Literary Gazette_,
+of which sixty-one numbers appear to have been issued in 1829-30. The
+paper is now so scarce, that the American publishers of DE QUINCEY'S
+works photographed their 'copy' from that contained in the Advocates'
+Library, Edinburgh. There is a file in the British Museum. I have not
+been able to authenticate any other contribution from the pen of DE
+QUINCEY. This letter deserves attention in various ways, but
+particularly for the passage on Elleray--CHRISTOPHER NORTH'S home on
+the banks of Windermere. MRS. GORDON in the life of her Father,
+PROFESSOR WILSON, remarks:--'For a description of this beautiful spot
+I gladly avail myself of the striking picture by Mr. DE QUINCEY.'--H.]
+
+You see, therefore, that no possible introduction could have stood you
+more in stead than your own extensive knowledge of transatlantic
+ornithology. Swammerdam passed his life, it is said, in a ditch.
+_That_ was a base, earthy solitude,--and a prison. But you and Audubon
+have passed _your_ lives in the heavenly solitudes of forests and
+savannahs; and such solitude as this is no prison, but infinite
+liberty. The knowledge which you have gathered has been answerable to
+the character of your school: and no sort of knowledge could have
+secured you a better welcome with Professor Wilson. Yet, had it been
+otherwise, I repeat that my interest (as I flatter myself) would have
+opened the gates of Elleray to you even at midnight; for I am so old
+a friend of Mr. Wilson that I take a pride in supposing myself the
+oldest; and, barring relations by blood, arrogate the rights of dean
+in the chapter of his associates: or at least I know of but one person
+whose title can probably date earlier than mine. About this very month
+when I am writing, I have known Professor Wilson for a cycle of twenty
+years and more, which is just half of his life--and also half of mine;
+for we are almost _ad apicem_ of the same age; Wilson being born in
+May, and I in August, of the same memorable year.
+
+My introduction to him--setting apart the introduc_ee_ himself--was
+memorable from one sole circumstance, viz. the person of the
+introducer. _William Wordsworth_ it was, who in the vale of Grasmere,
+if it can interest you to know the place, and in the latter end of
+1808, if you can be supposed to care about the time, did me the favour
+of making me known to John Wilson, or as I might say (upon the
+Scottish fashion of designating men from their territorial
+pretensions) to Elleray. I remember the whole scene as circumstantially
+as if it belonged to but yesterday. In the vale of Grasmere,--that
+peerless little vale which you and Gray the poet and so many others have
+joined in admiring as the very Eden of English beauty, peace, and
+pastoral solitude,--you may possibly recall, even from that flying
+glimpse you had of it, a modern house called Allan Bank, standing under
+a low screen of woody rocks which descend from the hill of Silver How,
+on the western side of the lake. This house had been then recently built
+by a worthy merchant of Liverpool; but for some reason of no importance
+to you and me, not being immediately wanted for the family of the
+owner, had been let for a term of three years to Mr. Wordsworth. At the
+time I speak of, both Mr. Coleridge and myself were on a visit to Mr.
+Wordsworth; and one room on the ground floor, designed for a
+breakfasting-room, which commands a sublime view of the three
+mountains,--Fairfield, Arthur's Chair, and Seat Sandal (the first of
+them within about four hundred feet of the highest mountains in Great
+Britain), was then occupied by Mr. Coleridge as a study. On this
+particular day, the sun having only just set, it naturally happened that
+Mr. Coleridge--whose nightly vigils were long--had not yet come down to
+breakfast: meantime, and until the epoch of the Coleridgian breakfast
+should arrive, his study was lawfully disposable to profaner uses. Here,
+therefore, it was, that, opening the door hastily in quest of a book, I
+found seated, and in earnest conversation, two gentlemen--one of them my
+host, Mr. Wordsworth, at that time about thirty-seven or thirty-eight
+years old; the other was a younger man by good sixteen or seventeen
+years, in a sailor's dress, manifestly in robust health--_fervidus
+juventâ_, and wearing upon his countenance a powerful expression of
+ardour and animated intelligence, mixed with much good nature. _'Mr.
+Wilson of Elleray'_--delivered, as the formula of introduction, in the
+deep tones of Mr. Wordsworth--at once banished the momentary surprise I
+felt on finding an unknown stranger where I had expected nobody, and
+substituted a surprise of another kind: I now well understood who it was
+that I saw; and there was no wonder in his being at Allan Bank, Elleray
+standing within nine miles; but (as usually happens in such cases) I
+felt a shock of surprise on seeing a person so little corresponding to
+the one I had half unconsciously prefigured.
+
+And here comes the place naturally, if anywhere, for a description of
+Mr. Wilson's person and general appearance in carriage, manner, and
+deportment; and a word or two I shall certainly say on these points,
+simply because I know that I _must_, else my American friends will
+complain that I have left out that precise section in my whole account
+which it is most impossible for them to supply for themselves by any
+acquaintance with his printed works. Yet suffer me, before I comply
+with this demand, to enter one word of private protest against the
+childish (nay, worse than childish--the _missy_) spirit in which such
+demands originate. From my very earliest years,--that is the earliest
+years in which I had any sense of what belongs to true dignity of
+mind,--I declare to you that I have considered the interest which men,
+grown men, take in the personal appearance of each other as one of the
+meanest aspects under which human curiosity commonly presents itself.
+Certainly I have the same intellectual perception of differences in
+such things that other men have; but I connect none of the feelings,
+whether of admiration or contempt, liking or disliking, which are
+obviously connected with these perceptions by human beings generally.
+Such words as 'commanding appearance,' 'prepossessing countenance,'
+applied to the figures or faces of the males of the human species,
+have no meaning in my ears: no man commands me, no man prepossesses
+me, by anything in, on, or about his carcass. What care I for any
+man's legs? I laugh at his ridiculous presumption in conceiting that
+I shall trouble myself to admire or to respect anything that he can
+produce in his _physics_. What! shall I honour Milo for the very
+qualities which he has in common with the beastly ox he carries--his
+thews and sinews, his ponderous strength and weight, and the quantity
+of thumping that his hide will carry? I disclaim and disdain any
+participation in such green-girl feelings. I admit that the baby
+feelings I am here condemning are found in connection with the highest
+intellects: in particular, Mr. Coleridge for instance once said to me,
+as a justifying reason for his dislike of a certain celebrated
+Scotsman, with an air of infinite disgust,--'that ugh!' (making a
+guttural sound as if of execration) 'he (viz. the said Scotsman) was
+so chicken-breasted.' I have been assured by the way, that Mr.
+Coleridge was mistaken in the mere matter of fact: but supposing that
+he were not, what a reason for a philosopher to build a disgust upon!
+And Mr. Wordsworth, in or about the year 1820, in expressing the
+extremity of his _Nil admirari_ spirit, declared that he would not go
+ten yards out of his road to see the finest specimen of man
+(intellectually speaking) that Europe had to show: and so far indeed I
+do not quarrel with his opinion; but Mr. Wordsworth went on to say
+that this indifference did _not_ extend itself to man considered
+physically; and that he would still exert himself to a small extent
+(suppose a mile or so) for the sake of seeing Belzoni. _That_ was the
+case he instanced: and, as I understood him, not by way of a general
+illustration for his meaning, but that he really felt an exclusive
+interest in this particular man's _physics_. Now Belzoni was certainly
+a good tumbler, as I have heard; and hopped well upon one leg, when
+surmounted and crested by a pyramid of men and boys; and jumped
+capitally through a hoop; and did all sorts of tricks in all sorts of
+styles, not at all worse than any monkey, bear, or learned pig, that
+ever exhibited in Great Britain. And I would myself have given a
+shilling to have seen him fight with that cursed Turk that assaulted
+him in the streets of Cairo; and would have given him a crown for
+catching the circumcised dog by the throat and effectually taking the
+conceit out of his Mahometan carcass: but then _that_ would have been
+for the spectacle of the passions, which, in such a case, would have
+been let loose: as to the mere animal Belzoni,--who after all was not
+to be compared to Topham the Warwickshire man, that drew back by main
+force a cart, and its driver, and a strong horse,--as to the mere
+animal Belzoni, I say, and his bull neck, I would have much preferred
+to see a real bull or the Darlington ox. The sum of the matter is
+this: all men, even those who are most manly in their style of
+thinking and feeling, in many things retain the childishness of their
+childish years: no man thoroughly weeds himself of all. And this
+particular mode of childishness is one of the commonest, into which
+they fall the more readily from the force of sympathy, and because
+they apprehend no reason for directing any vigilance against it. But I
+contend that reasonably no feelings of deep interest are justifiable
+as applied to any point of external form or feature in human beings,
+unless under two reservations: first, that they shall have reference
+to women; because women, being lawfully the objects of passions and
+tender affections, which can have no existence as applied to men, are
+objects also, rationally and consistently, of all other secondary
+feelings (such as those derived from their personal appearance) which
+have any tendency to promote and support the first. Whereas between
+men the highest mode of intercourse is merely intellectual, which is
+not of a nature to receive support or strength from any feelings of
+pleasure or disgust connected with the accidents of external
+appearance: but exactly in the degree in which these have any
+influence at all they must warp and disturb by improper biases; and
+the single case of exception, where such feelings can be honourable
+and laudable amongst the males of the human species, is where they
+regard such deformities as are the known products and expressions of
+criminal or degrading propensities. All beyond this, I care not by
+whom countenanced, is infirmity of mind, and would be baseness if it
+were not excused by imbecility.
+
+Excuse this digression, for which I have a double reason: chiefly I
+was anxious to put on record my own opinions, and my contempt for men
+generally in this particular; and here I seemed to have a conspicuous
+situation for that purpose. Secondly, apart from this purpose of
+offence, I was at any rate anxious, merely on a defensive principle,
+to screen myself from the obvious misinterpretation incident to the
+case: saying anything minute or in detail upon a man's person, I
+should necessarily be supposed to do so under the ordinary blind
+feelings of interest in that subject which govern most people;
+feelings which I disdain. Now, having said all this, and made my
+formal protest, _liberavi animam meam_; and I revert to my subject,
+and shall say that word or two which I was obliged to promise you on
+Professor Wilson's personal appearance.
+
+Figure to yourself, then, a tall man, about six feet high, within half
+an inch or so, built with tolerable appearance of strength; but at the
+date of my description (that is, in the very spring-tide and blossom
+of youth) wearing, for the predominant character of his person,
+lightness and agility, or (in our Westmoreland phrase), _lishness_: he
+seemed framed with an express view to gymnastic exercises of every
+sort--
+
+    "[Greek: Alma, podôkeiên, diskon, akonta, palên]"
+
+In the first of these exercises, indeed, and possibly (but of that I
+am not equally certain) in the second, I afterwards came to know that
+he was absolutely unrivalled: and the best leapers at that time in the
+ring, Richmond the Black and others, on getting 'a taste of his
+quality,' under circumstances of considerable disadvantage [viz. after
+a walk from Oxford to Moulsey Hurst, which I believe is fifty miles],
+declined to undertake him. For this exercise he had two remarkable
+advantages: it is recorded of Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, that,
+though otherwise a handsome man, he offended the connoisseurs in
+statuesque proportions by one eminent defect--perhaps the most
+obtrusive to which the human figure is liable--viz. a body of length
+disproportioned to his legs. In Mr. Wilson the proportions were
+fortunately reversed: a short trunk, and remarkably long legs, gave
+him one half of his advantages in the noble science of leaping; the
+other half was afterwards pointed out to me by an accurate critic in
+these matters as lying in the particular conformation of his foot,
+the instep of which is arched, and the back of the heel strengthened
+in so remarkable a way that it would be worth paying a penny or so for
+a sight of them. It is really laughable to think of the coxcombry
+which eminent men of letters have displayed in connection with their
+powers--real or fancied--in this art. Cardinal du Perron vapoured to
+the end of his life upon some remarkable leap that he either _had_
+accomplished, or conceived himself to have accomplished (not, I
+presume, in red stockings). Every tenth page of the _Perroniana_ rings
+with the echo of this stupendous leap--the length of which, if I
+remember rightly, is as obviously fabulous as any feat of Don Belianis
+of Greece. Des Cartes also had a lurking conceit that, in some unknown
+place, he had perpetrated a leap that ought to immortalise him; and in
+one of his letters he repeats and accredits a story of some obscure
+person's leap, which
+
+    'At one light bound high overleaped all bound'
+
+of reasonable credulity. Many other eminent leapers might be cited,
+Pagan and Christian: but the Cardinal, by his own account, appears to
+have been the flower of Popish leapers; and, with all deference to his
+Eminence, upon a better assurance than that, Professor Wilson may be
+rated, at the time I speak of, as the flower of all Protestant
+leapers. Not having the Cardinal's foible of connecting any vanity
+with this little accomplishment, knowing exactly what could and what
+could _not_ be effected in this department of gymnastics, and speaking
+with the utmost simplicity and candour of his failures and his
+successes alike, he might always be relied upon, and his statements
+were constantly in harmony with any collateral testimony that chance
+happened to turn up.
+
+Viewed, therefore, by an eye learned in gymnastic proportions, Mr.
+Wilson presented a somewhat striking figure: and by some people he was
+pronounced with emphasis a fine looking young man; but others, who
+less understood, or less valued these advantages, spoke of him as
+nothing extraordinary. Still greater division of voices I have heard
+on his pretensions to be thought handsome. In my opinion, and most
+certainly in his own, these pretensions were but slender. His
+complexion was too florid; hair of a hue quite unsuited to that
+complexion; eyes not good, having no apparent depth, but seeming mere
+surfaces; and in fine, no one feature that could be called fine,
+except the lower region of his face, mouth, chin, and the parts
+adjacent, which were then (and perhaps are now) truly elegant and
+Ciceronian. Ask in one of your public libraries for that little 4to
+edition of the _Rhetorical Works of Cicero_, edited by Schütz (the
+same who edited _Æschylus_), and you will there see (as a frontispiece
+to the 1st vol.) a reduced whole length of Cicero from the antique;
+which in the mouth and chin, and indeed generally, if I do not greatly
+forget, will give you a lively representation of the contour and
+expression of Professor Wilson's face. Taken as a whole, though not
+handsome (as I have already said), when viewed in a quiescent state,
+the head and countenance are massy, dignified, and expressive of
+tranquil sagacity.
+
+Thus far of Professor Wilson in his outward man, whom (to gratify you
+and yours, and upon the consideration that my letter is to cross the
+Atlantic), I have described with an effort and a circumstantiation
+that are truly terrific to look back upon. And now, returning to the
+course of my narrative, such in personal appearance was the young man
+upon whom my eyes suddenly rested, for the first time, upwards of
+twenty years ago, in the study of S. T. Coleridge--looking, as I said
+before, light as a Mercury to eyes familiar with the British build;
+but, with reference to the lengthy model of you Yankees, who spindle
+up so tall and narrow, already rather bulky and columnar. Note,
+however, that of all this array of personal features, as I have here
+described them, I then saw nothing at all, my attention being
+altogether occupied with Mr. Wilson's conversation and demeanour,
+which were in the highest degree agreeable: the points which chiefly
+struck me being the humility and gravity with which he spoke of
+himself, his large expansion of heart, and a certain air of noble
+frankness which overspread everything he said; he seemed to have an
+intense enjoyment of life; indeed, being young, rich, healthy, and
+full of intellectual activity, it could not be very wonderful that he
+should feel happy and pleased with himself and others; but it was
+somewhat unusual to find that so rare an assemblage of endowments had
+communicated no tinge of arrogance to his manner, or at all disturbed
+the general temperance of his mind.
+
+Turn we now suddenly, and without preparation,--simply by way of
+illustrating the versatile humour of the man,--from this grave and (as
+in reality it was) philosophic scene, to another first introduction,
+under most different circumstances, to the same Mr. Wilson. Represent
+to yourself the earliest dawn of a fine summer morning, time about
+half-past two o'clock. A young man, anxious for an introduction to Mr.
+Wilson, and as yet pretty nearly a stranger to the country, has taken
+up his abode in Grasmere, and has strolled out at this early hour to
+that rocky and moorish common (called the White Moss) which overhangs
+the Vale of Rydal, dividing it from Grasmere. Looking southwards in
+the direction of Rydal, suddenly he becomes aware of a huge beast
+advancing at a long trot with the heavy and thundering tread of a
+hippopotamus along the public road. The creature is soon arrived
+within half a mile of his station; and by the gray light of morning is
+at length made out to be a bull apparently flying from some unseen
+enemy in his rear. As yet, however, all is mystery; but suddenly three
+horsemen double a turn in the road, and come flying into sight with
+the speed of a hurricane, manifestly in pursuit of the fugitive bull;
+the bull labours to navigate his huge bulk to the moor, which he
+reaches, and then pauses, panting and blowing out clouds of smoke from
+his nostrils, to look back from his station amongst rocks and slippery
+crags upon his hunters. If he had conceited that the rockiness of the
+ground had secured his repose, the foolish bull is soon undeceived;
+the horsemen, scarcely relaxing their speed, charge up the hill, and
+speedily gaining the rear of the bull, drive him at a gallop over the
+worst part of that impracticable ground down into the level ground
+below. At this point of time the stranger perceives by the increasing
+light of the morning that the hunters are armed with immense spears
+fourteen feet long. With these the bull is soon dislodged, and
+scouring down to the plain below, he and the hunters at his tail take
+to the common at the head of the lake, and all, in the madness of the
+chase, are soon half engulfed in the swamps of the morass. After
+plunging together for ten or fifteen minutes, all suddenly regain the
+_terra firma_, and the bull again makes for the rocks. Up to this
+moment there had been the silence of ghosts; and the stranger had
+doubted whether the spectacle were not a pageant of aërial spectres,
+ghostly huntsmen; ghostly lances, and a ghostly bull. But just at this
+crisis--a voice (it was the voice of Mr. Wilson) shouted aloud, 'Turn
+the villain; turn that villain; or he will take to Cumberland.' The
+young stranger did the service required of him; the villain was turned
+and fled southwards; the hunters, lance in rest, rushed after him; all
+bowed their thanks as they fled past him; the fleet cavalcade again
+took the high road; they doubled the cape which shut them out of
+sight; and in a moment all had disappeared and left the quiet valley
+to its original silence, whilst the young stranger and two grave
+Westmoreland statesmen (who by this time had come into sight upon some
+accident or other) stood wondering in silence, and saying to
+themselves, perhaps,--
+
+    'The earth hath bubbles as the water hath;
+    And these are of them!'
+
+But they were no bubbles; the bull was a substantial bull; and took no
+harm at all from being turned out occasionally at midnight for a chase
+of fifteen or eighteen miles. The bull, no doubt, used to wonder at
+this nightly visitation; and the owner of the bull must sometimes have
+pondered a little on the draggled state in which the swamps would now
+and then leave his beast; but no other harm came of it. And so it
+happened, and in the very hurly burly of such an unheard-of chase,
+that my friend was fortunate enough, by a little service, to recommend
+himself to the notice of Mr. Wilson; and so passed the scene of his
+_first introduction_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In reading the anecdote of the bull hunt, you must bear in mind the
+period of Mr. Wilson's life to which it belongs, else I should here be
+unintentionally adding one more to the thousand misrepresentations of
+his character, which are already extant in different repositories of
+scandal: most of which I presume, unless in the rarer cases where they
+have been the pure creations of malice, owe their origin to a little
+exaggeration, and a great deal of confusion in dates. Levities and
+extravagances, which find a ready excuse at twenty, ten or fifteen
+years later are fatal to a man's character for good sense. In such a
+case, therefore, to be careless or inaccurate in dates, is a moral
+dishonesty. Understand then that the bull-hunting scenes belong to the
+time which immediately succeeded my first knowledge of Mr. Wilson.
+This particular frolic happened to fall within the earliest period of
+my own personal acquaintance with him. Else, and with this one
+exception, the era of his wildest (and according to the common
+estimate, of his insane) extravagances was already past. All those
+stories, therefore, which you question me about with so much
+curiosity, of his having joined a company of strolling players, and
+himself taken the leading parts both in Tragedy and Comedy--of his
+having assumed the garb of a Gipsy, and settled for some time in a
+Gipsy encampment, out of admiration for a young Egyptian beauty; with
+fifty others of the same class, belong undoubtedly (as many of them as
+are not wholly fabulous), to the four years immediately preceding the
+time at which my personal knowledge of Mr. Wilson commenced.
+
+From the latter end of 1803 to the spring of 1808, Mr. Wilson had
+studied at the University of Oxford; and it was within that period
+that most of his _escapades_ were crowded. He had previously studied
+as a mere boy, according to the Scotch fashion, at the University of
+Glasgow, chiefly under the tuition of the late Mr. Jardine (the
+Professor, I believe, of Logic), and Dr. or Mr. Young (the Professor
+of Greek). At both Universities he had greatly distinguished himself;
+but at Oxford, where the distribution of prizes and honours of every
+kind is to the last degree parsimonious and select, naturally it
+follows that such academical distinctions are really _significant_
+distinctions, and proclaim an unequivocal merit in him who has carried
+them off from a crowd of 1600 or 2000 co-rivals, to whom the contest
+was open; whereas, in the Scotch Universities, as I am told by
+Scotchmen, the multiplication of prizes and medals, and the almost
+indiscriminate profusion with which they are showered abroad,
+neutralises their whole effect and value. At least this was the case
+in Mr. Wilson's time; but lately some conspicuous changes have been
+introduced by a Royal Commission (not yet, I believe, dissolved) into
+one at least of the Scotch Universities, which have greatly improved
+it in this respect, by bringing it much nearer to the English model.
+When Mr. Wilson gained a prize of fifty guineas for fifty lines of
+English verse, without further inquiry it becomes evident, from the
+mere rarity of the distinction which, for a university _now_ nearly of
+five thousand members, occurs but once a year, and from the great
+over-proportion of that peculiar class (the Undergraduates) to whom
+the contest is open,--that such a victory was an indisputable
+criterion of very conspicuous merit. In fact, never in any place did
+Mr. Wilson play off his Proteus variety of character and talent with
+so much brilliant effect as at Oxford. In this great University, the
+most ancient, and by many degrees the most magnificent in the world,
+he found a stage for display, perfectly congenial with the native
+elevation of his own character. Perhaps you are not fully aware of the
+characteristic differences which separate our two English Universities
+of Oxford and Cambridge from those of Scotland and the Continent: for
+I have always observed that the best informed foreigners, even after a
+week's personal acquaintance with the Oxford system, still adhere to
+the inveterate preconceptions which they had brought with them from
+the Continent. For instance, they continue obstinately to speak of the
+_Professors_ as the persons to whom the students are indebted for
+tuition; whereas the majority of these hold their offices as the most
+absolute sinecures, and the task of tuition devolves upon the tutors
+appointed in each particular college. These tutors are called public
+tutors; meaning that they do not confine their instructions to any one
+individual; but distribute them amongst all the Undergraduates of the
+college to which they belong; and, in addition to these, _private_
+tutors are allowed to any student who chooses to increase his
+expenditure in that particular. But the main distinction, which
+applies to our immediate subject, is the more than regal provision for
+the lodging and accommodation of the students by the system of
+_Colleges_. Of these there are in Oxford, neglecting the technical
+subdivision of _Halls_, five-and-twenty; and the main use of all, both
+colleges and halls, is, not as in Scotland and on the Continent, to
+lodge the head of the University with suitable dignity, and to provide
+rooms for the library and public business of the University. These
+purposes are met by a separate provision, distinct from the colleges;
+and the colleges are applied as follows: 1st, and mainly to the
+reception of the Fellows, and of the Undergraduate Students; 2ndly, to
+the accommodation of the head (known in different colleges by the
+several designations of provost, principal, dean, rector, warden,
+&c.); 3rdly to the accommodation of the private library attached to
+that college, and to the chapel, which is used at least twice every
+day for public prayers; 4thly, to the Hall, and the whole
+establishment of kitchen, wine vaults, buttery, &c., &c., which may be
+supposed necessary for the liberal accommodation, at the public meals
+of dinner [and in some colleges supper] of gentlemen and visitors from
+the country, or from the Continent; varying (we will suppose) from 25
+to 500 heads. Everywhere else the great mass of the students are
+lodged in obscure nooks and corners, which may or may not be
+respectable, but are at all events withdrawn from the _surveillance_
+of the University. I shall state both the ground and the effect (or
+tendency rather) of this difference. Out of England, universities are
+not meant exclusively for professional men; the sons of great
+landholders, and a large proportion of the sons of noblemen, either go
+through the same academic course as others--or a shorter course
+adapted to their particular circumstances. In England, again, the
+church is supplied from the rank of gentry--not exclusively, it is
+true, but in a much larger proportion than anywhere else, except in
+Ireland. The corresponding ranks in Scotland, from their old
+connection with France, have adopted (I believe) much more of the
+Continental plan for disposing of their sons at this period. At any
+rate, it will not be contended by any man, that Scotland throws
+anything like the same proportion with England, of her gentry and her
+peerage into her universities. Hence, a higher standard of manners and
+of habits presides at Oxford and Cambridge; and, consequently, a
+demand for much higher accommodations would even _otherwise_ have
+arisen, had not such a demand already been supplied by the munificence
+of our English princes and peers, both male and female; and, in one
+instance at least, of a _Scottish_ Prince (Baliol). The extent of
+these vast Caravanseras enables the governors of the various colleges
+to furnish every student with a set of two rooms at the least, often
+with a _suite_ of three--[I, who lived at Oxford on no more than my
+school allowance, had that number]--or in many cases with far more. In
+the superior colleges, indeed (superior, I mean, as to their purse and
+landed endowments), all these accommodations keep pace with the
+refinements of the age; and thus a connection is maintained between
+the University and the landed _Noblesse_--upper and lower--of
+England, which must be reciprocally beneficial, and which, under other
+circumstances, could scarcely have taken place.
+
+Of these advantages, you may be sure, that Mr. Wilson availed himself
+to the utmost extent. Instead of going to _Baliol_ College, he entered
+himself at _Magdalen_, in the class of what are called, 'Gentlemen
+Commoners.' All of us (you know) in Oxford and Cambridge wear an
+Academic dress, which tells at once our Academic rank with all its
+modifications. And the term '_Gentlemen Commoner_' implies that he has
+more splendid costumes, and more in number; that he is expected to
+spend a good deal more money, that he enjoys a few trifling
+immunities; and that he has, in particular instances, something like a
+King's right of pre-emption, as in the choice of rooms, &c.
+
+Once launched in this orbit, Mr. Wilson continued to blaze away for
+the four successive years, 1804, 1805, 1806, 1807, I believe without
+any intermission. Possibly I myself was the one sole gownsman who had
+not then found my attention fixed by his most heterogeneous
+reputation. In a similar case, Cicero tells a man that ignorance so
+unaccountable of another man's pretensions argued himself to be a
+_homo ignorabilis_; or, in the language of the Miltonic Satan, 'Not to
+know me, argues thyself unknown.' And _that_ is true; a _homo
+ignorabilis_ most certainly I was. And even with that admission it is
+still difficult to account for the extent and the duration of my
+ignorance. The fact is, that the case well expresses _both_ our
+positions; that _he_ should be so conspicuous as to challenge
+knowledge from the most sequestered of anchorites expresses _his_
+life; that I should have right to absolute ignorance of him who was
+familiar as daylight to all the rest of Oxford--expresses _mine_.
+Never indeed before, to judge from what I have since heard upon
+inquiry, did a man, by variety of talents and variety of humours,
+contrive to place himself as the connecting link between orders of men
+so essentially repulsive of each other--as Mr. Wilson in this
+instance.
+
+    'Omnis Aristippum decuit color et status, et res.'
+
+From the learned president of his college, Dr. Routh, the editor of
+parts of _Plato_, and of some _Theological Selections_, with whom
+Wilson enjoyed an unlimited favour--from this learned Academic Doctor,
+and many others of the same class, Wilson had an infinite gamut of
+friends and associates, running through every key; and the diapason
+closing full in groom, cobbler, stable-boy, barber's apprentice, with
+every shade and hue of blackguard and ruffian. In particular, amongst
+this latter kind of worshipful society, there was no man who had any
+talents--real or fancied--for thumping or being thumped, but had
+experienced some _preeing_ of his merits from Mr. Wilson. All other
+pretensions in the gymnastic arts he took a pride in humbling or in
+honouring; but chiefly his examinations fell upon pugilism; and not a
+man, who could either 'give' or 'take,' but boasted to have punished,
+or to have been punished by, _Wilson of Mallens_.[44]
+
+[Footnote 44: The usual colloquial corruption of _Magdalen_ in Ox. is
+_Maudlin_; but amongst the very _lie dupeuple_, it is called
+_Mallens_.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A little before the time at which my acquaintance with Mr. Wilson
+commenced, he had purchased a beautiful estate on the lake of
+Windermere, which bore the ancient name of _Elleray_--a name which,
+with his customary good taste, Mr. Wilson has never disturbed. With
+the usual latitude of language in such cases, I say _on_ Windermere;
+but in fact this charming estate lies far above the lake; and one of
+the most interesting of its domestic features is the foreground of the
+rich landscape which connects, by the most gentle scale of
+declivities, this almost aërial altitude [as, for _habitable_ ground,
+it really is] with the sylvan margin of the deep water which rolls a
+mile and a half below. When I say a mile and a half, you will
+understand me to compute the descent according to the undulations of
+the ground; because else the perpendicular elevation above the level
+of the lake cannot be above one half of that extent. Seated on such an
+eminence, but yet surrounded by foregrounds of such quiet beauty, and
+settling downwards towards the lake by such tranquil steps as to take
+away every feeling of precipitous or dangerous elevation, Elleray
+possesses a double character of beauty, rarely found in connection;
+and yet each, by singular good fortune, in this case absolute and
+unrivalled in its kind. Within a bow-shot of each other may be found
+stations of the deepest seclusion, fenced in by verdurous walls of
+insuperable forest heights, and presenting a limited scene of
+beauty--deep, solemn, noiseless, severely sequestered--and other
+stations of a magnificence so gorgeous as few estates in this island
+can boast, and of those few perhaps none in such close connection with
+a dwelling-house. Stepping out from the very windows of the
+drawing-room, you find yourself on a terrace which gives you the
+feeling of a 'specular height,' such as you might expect on Ararat, or
+might appropriately conceive on 'Athos seen from Samothrace.' The
+whole course of a noble lake, about eleven miles long, lies subject to
+your view, with many of its islands, and its two opposite shores so
+different in character--the one stern, precipitous, and gloomy; the
+other (and luckily the hither one) by the mere bounty of nature and of
+accident--by the happy disposition of the ground originally, and by
+the fortunate equilibrium between the sylvan tracts, meandering
+irregularly through the whole district, and the proportion left to
+verdant fields and meadows,--wearing the character of the richest park
+scenery; except indeed that this character is here and there a little
+modified by a quiet hedge-row or the stealing smoke which betrays the
+embowered cottage of a labourer. But the sublime, peculiar, and
+not-to-be-forgotten feature of the scene is the great system of
+mountains which unite about five miles off at the head of the lake to
+lock in and inclose this noble landscape. The several ranges of
+mountains which stand at various distances within six or seven miles
+of the little town of Ambleside, all separately various in their forms
+and all eminently picturesque, when seen from Elleray appear to blend
+and group as parts of one connected whole; and when their usual
+drapery of clouds happens to take a fortunate arrangement, and the
+sunlights are properly broken and thrown from the most suitable
+quarter of the heavens,--I cannot recollect any spectacle in England
+or Wales, of the many hundreds I have seen, bearing a local, if not a
+national reputation for magnificence of prospect, which so much
+dilates the heart with a sense of power and aërial sublimity as this
+terrace view from Elleray. It is possible that I may have stood on
+other mountain terraces commanding as ample a view and as happily
+combined; but the difference of effect must always be immense between
+a spectacle to which you ascend by half a day's labour, and that upon
+which you are launched in a second of time from the breakfast table.
+It is of great importance, for the enjoyment of any natural scene, to
+be liberated from the necessity of viewing it under circumstances of
+haste and anxiety, to have it in one's power to surrender oneself
+passively and tranquilly to the influences of the objects as they
+gradually reveal themselves, and to be under no summons to crowd one's
+whole visual energy and task of examination within a single quarter of
+an hour. Having seen Elleray at all times under these favourable
+circumstances, it is certainly not impossible that I may unconsciously
+have overrated in some degree its pretensions in comparison with some
+rival scenes. I may have committed the common error of attributing to
+the _objects_ the whole sum of an impression which in part belonged to
+the _subjective_ advantages of the contemplator and the benefits of
+his station. But, making every allowance in this direction, I am still
+of opinion that Elleray has, in connection with the merits common to
+all scenes of its class, others peculiar to itself--and such as are
+indispensable conditions for the full effect of all the rest. In
+particular, I would instance this: To bring any scene upon a level of
+competition with Elleray as to range and majesty of prospect, it is
+absolutely essential that it should occupy an equal elevation, or one
+not conspicuously inferior. Now, it is seldom indeed that eminences so
+commanding are not, by that very circumstance, unfitted to the
+picturesque aspects of things: in fact I remember no tract of ground
+so elevated as Elleray from which the lowest level of the adjacent
+country does not take a petty, dotted, and map-like appearance. But
+this effect, which is so heavy a price for the sublimities of the
+upper regions, at Elleray is entirely intercepted by the exquisite
+gradations of descent by which the contiguous grounds begin their fall
+to the level of the lake: the moment that this fall in any quarter
+becomes accelerated and precipitous, it is concealed by the brows of
+this beautiful hanging foreground; and so happily is this remedy
+applied, that in every instance where the lowest grounds would, if
+seen at all, from their immediate proximity, be seen by the spectator
+looking down perpendicularly as into a well, there they are uniformly
+hidden; and these lowest levels first emerge to view at a remote
+distance--where, being necessarily viewed obliquely, they suffer no
+peculiar disadvantage by being viewed from an eminence. In short, to
+sum up the whole in one word, the splendours of Elleray, which could
+not have been had but at an unusual elevation, are by a rare bounty of
+nature obtained without one of those sacrifices for the learned eye
+which are usually entailed upon that one single advantage of unusual
+elevation.
+
+The beautiful estate, which I have thus described to you, was
+ornamented by no suitable dwelling-house at the time when it was
+purchased by Mr. Wilson: there was indeed a rustic cottage, most
+picturesquely situated, which, with the addition of a drawing-room
+thrown out at one end, was made for the present (and, as it turned
+out, for many a year to come) capable of meeting the hospitable system
+of life adopted by its owner. But, with a view to more ample and
+luxurious accommodations, even at that early period of his possession
+(1808), Mr. Wilson began to build a mansion of larger and more elegant
+proportions. The shell, and perhaps the greater part of the internal
+work, was soon finished; but for some reason, which I never remember
+to have inquired into, was not rendered thoroughly habitable (and
+consequently not inhabited) till the year 1825. I think it worth while
+to mention this house particularly, because it has always appeared to
+me a silent commentary on its master's state of mind, and an
+exemplification of his character both as it was and as it appeared. At
+first sight there was an air of adventurousness, or even of
+extravagance about the plan and situation of the building; and yet
+upon a considerate examination (and latterly upon a practical trial)
+of it, I cannot see that within the same dimensions it would have been
+possible to have contrived a more judicious or commodious house. Thus,
+for instance, the house is planted upon the boldest and most exposed
+point of ground that can be found on the whole estate, consequently
+upon that which might have presumed (and I believe was really reputed)
+to be the very stormiest: yet, whether from counteracting screens of
+wood that have since been reared in fortunate situations, or from what
+other cause I know not, but undoubtedly at this day no practical
+inconvenience is suffered; though it is true, I believe, that in the
+earlier years of its history, the house bore witness occasionally, by
+dismal wrecks of roof and windows, to the strength and fury of the
+wind on one particular quarter. Again, in the internal arrangements
+one room was constructed of such ample proportions, with a view to
+dancing, that the length (as I remember) was about seventy feet; the
+other dimensions I have forgotten. Now, in this instance most people
+saw an evidence of nothing but youthful extravagance, and a most
+disproportionate attention directed to one single purpose, which upon
+that scale could not probably be of very frequent occurrence in _any_
+family. This by the way was at any rate a sensible extravagance in my
+judgment; for our English mode of building tends violently to the
+opposite and most unwholesome extravagance of giving to the very
+principal room of a house the beggarly proportions of closets.
+However, the sequel showed that in providing for one end, Mr. Wilson
+had not lost sight of others: for the seventy-feet room was so divided
+by strong folding-doors, or temporary partitions, as in its customary
+state to exhibit three rooms of ordinary proportions, and unfolded its
+full extent only by special and extraordinary mechanism. Other
+instances I might give in which the plan seemed to be extravagant or
+inconsiderate, and yet really turned out to have been calculated with
+the coolest judgment and the nicest foresight of domestic needs. It is
+sufficient to say that I do not know a house apparently more
+commodiously arranged than this, which was planned and built with
+utmost precipitation, and in the very heyday of a most tempestuous
+youth. In one thing only, upon a retrospect at this day of the whole
+case, there may appear to have been some imprudence, viz. that timber
+being then at a most unprecedented high price, it is probable that the
+building cost seven or eight hundred pounds more than it would have
+done a few years later. Allowing for this one oversight, the principal
+house on the Elleray estate, which at the time was looked upon as an
+evidence of Mr. Wilson's flightiness of mind, remains at this day a
+lasting monument of his good sense and judgment.
+
+Whilst I justify him, however, on this head, I am obliged to admit
+that on another field, at that very time, Mr. Wilson was displaying
+the most reckless profusion. A sailing club had been established on
+Windermere, by whom I never heard; very probably by Mr. Wilson
+himself; at all events, he was the leader and the soul of the
+confederation; and he applied annually nothing less than a little
+fortune to the maintenance of the many expenses which arose out of it.
+Amongst the members of the club there were more than one who had far
+larger fortunes than Mr. Wilson could ever have possessed; but he
+would permit no one to outshine him on this arena. The number of his
+boats was so great as to compose a little fleet; and some of them, of
+unusually large dimensions for this lake, had been built at an
+enormous expense by regular builders brought over expressly from the
+port of Whitehaven (distant from Elleray about forty-five miles), and
+kept during the whole progress of their labour at a most expensive
+Lakers' hotel. One of these boats in particular, a ten-oared barge,
+which you will find specially introduced by name in Professor Wilson's
+tale of _The Foresters_ (_vide_ p. 215), was generally believed at
+the time to have cost him at the least five hundred pounds. And as the
+number of sailors which it required to man these boats was necessarily
+very great at particular seasons, and as the majority of these sailors
+lived, during the period of their services, with little or no
+restraint upon their expenses at the most costly inn in the
+neighbourhood,--it may be supposed very readily that about this time
+Mr. Wilson's lavish expenditure, added to the demands of architects
+and builders, and the recent purchase of Elleray, must have seriously
+injured his patrimonial property,--though generally believed to have
+been originally considerably more than thirty thousand (many asserted
+forty thousand) pounds. In fact, he had never less than three
+establishments going on concurrently for some years; one at the town
+or village of Bowness (the little port of the lake of Windermere), for
+his boatmen; one at the Ambleside Hotel, about five miles distant, for
+himself; and a third at Elleray, for his servants, and the occasional
+resort of himself and his friends. It is the opinion of some people
+that about this time, and during the succeeding two years, Mr. Wilson
+dissipated the main bulk of his patrimony in profuse expenditure. But
+more considerate people see no ground for that opinion: his expenses,
+though great, were never adequate to the dilapidation of so large an
+estate as he was reputed to have inherited: and the prevailing opinion
+is that some great loss of £20,000 at a blow, by the failure of some
+trustee or other, was the true cause of that diminution in his
+property which, within a year or two from this time, he is generally
+supposed to have suffered. However, as Mr. Wilson himself has always
+maintained an obstinate silence on the subject, and as the mere fact
+of the loss (however probable) is not more accurately known to me than
+its extent, or its particular mode, or its cause,--I shall not allow
+myself to make any conjectural speculations on the subject. It can be
+interesting to you and me only from one of its consequences, viz. its
+leading him afterwards to seek a professorship: for most certain it
+is, that, if the splendour of Mr. Wilson's youthful condition as to
+pecuniary matters had not been in some remarkable degree overcast, and
+suffered some signal eclipse, he would never have surrendered any part
+of that perfect liberty which was so dear to him, for all the honours
+and rewards that could have been offered by the foremost universities
+of Europe.
+
+You will have heard, no doubt, from some of those with whom you
+conversed about Professor Wilson when you were in Europe, or you may
+have read it in Peter's Letters, that in very early life (probably
+about the age of eighteen) he had formed a scheme for penetrating into
+central Africa, visiting the city of Tombuctoo, and solving (if it
+were possible) the great outstanding problem of the course of the
+Niger. To this scheme he was attracted probably not so much by any
+particular interest in the improvement of geographical knowledge, as
+by the youthful spirit of romantic adventure, and a very uncommon
+craving for whatever was grand--indefinite--and gigantic in
+conception, supposing that it required at the same time great physical
+powers in the execution. There cannot be a doubt for us at this day,
+who look back upon the melancholy list of victims in this perilous
+field of discovery which has been furnished by the two or three and
+twenty years elapsed since Mr. Wilson's plan was in agitation, that in
+that enterprise--had he ever irretrievably embarked himself upon
+it--he would infallibly have perished; for, though reasonably strong,
+he was not strong upon that heroic scale which an expedition so
+Titanic demands; and what was perhaps still more important, if strong
+enough--he was not _hardy_ enough, as a gentleman rarely is, more
+especially where he has literary habits; because the exposure to open
+air, which is the indispensable condition of hardiness, is at any rate
+interrupted--even if it were not counteracted--by the luxurious habits
+and the relaxing atmosphere of the library and the drawing-room.
+Moreover, Mr. Wilson's constitution was irritable and disposed to
+fever; his temperament was too much that of a man of genius not to
+have furnished a mine of inflammable materials for any tropical
+climate; his prudence, as regarded his health, was not remarkable; and
+if to all these internal and personal grounds of danger you add the
+incalculable hazards of the road itself, every friend of Mr. Wilson's
+must have rejoiced on hearing that in 1808, when I first met him, this
+Tim-(or Tom-) buctoo scheme was already laid aside.
+
+Yet, as the stimulus of danger, in one shape or other, was at that
+time of life perhaps essential to his comfort, he soon substituted
+another scheme, which at this day might be accomplished with ease and
+safety enough, but in the year 1809 (under the rancorous system of
+Bonaparte) was full of hazard. In this scheme he was so good as to
+associate myself as one of his travelling companions, together with an
+earlier friend of his own--an Englishman, of a philosophical turn of
+mind, with whom he had been a fellow-student at Glasgow; and we were
+certainly all three of an age and character to have enjoyed the
+expedition in the very highest degree, had the events of the war
+allowed us to realise our plan. The plan was as follows: from
+Falmouth, by one of the regular packets, we were to have sailed to the
+Tagus; and, landing wherever accident should allow us, to purchase
+mules--hire Spanish servants--and travel extensively in Spain and
+Portugal for eight or nine months; thence, by such of the islands in
+the Mediterranean as particularly interested us, we were gradually to
+have passed into Greece, and thence to Constantinople. Finally, we
+were to have visited the Troad, Syria, Egypt, and perhaps Nubia. I
+feel it almost ludicrous to sketch the outline of so extensive a tour,
+no part of which was ever executed; such a Barmacide feast is
+laughable in the very rehearsal. Yet it is bare justice to ourselves
+to say that on our parts there was no slackness or _make-believe_:
+what put an extinguisher upon our project was the entrance of Napoleon
+into Spain, his immediate advance upon Madrid, and the wretched
+catastrophe of the expedition so miserably misconducted under Sir John
+Moore. The _prestige_ of French generalship was at that time a
+nightmare upon the courage and spirit of hopeful exertion throughout
+Europe; and the earliest dawn was only then beginning to arise of that
+glorious experience which was for ever to dissolve it. Sir J. Moore,
+and through him his gallant but unfortunate army, was the last
+conspicuous victim to the mere sound and _humbug_ (if you will excuse
+a coarse expression) of the words _Napoleon Bonaparte_. What he fled
+from was precisely those two words. And the timid policy, adopted by
+Sir John on that memorable occasion, would--among other greater and
+national consequences--have had this little collateral interest to us
+unfortunate travellers, had our movements been as speedy as we had
+anticipated, that it would have cost us our heads. A certain bulletin,
+issued by Bonaparte at that time, sufficiently apprised us of that
+little truth. In this bulletin Bonaparte proclaimed with a careless
+air, but making at the same time somewhat of a boast of it, that
+having happened to meet a party of sixteen British travellers--persons
+of whom he had ascertained nothing at all but that they did not bear a
+military character--he had issued a summary order that they should all
+be strung up without loss of time by the neck. In this little
+facetious anecdote, as Bonaparte seemed to think it, we read the fate
+that we had escaped. Had nothing occurred to retard our departure from
+this country, we calculated that the route we had laid down for our
+daily motions would have brought us to Guadarama (or what was the name
+of the pass?) just in time to be hanged. Having a British general at
+our backs with an army of more than thirty thousand effective men, we
+should certainly have roamed in advance with perfect reliance upon the
+old British policy of fighting, for which we could never have allowed
+ourselves to dream of such a substitute as a flight through all the
+passes of Gallicia on the principle of '_the D---- take the
+hindmost_.' Infallibly also we should have been surprised by the
+extraordinary rapidity at that time of the French movements; our
+miserable shambling mules, with their accursed tempers, would have
+made but a shabby attempt at flight before a squadron of light
+cavalry; and in short, as I said before, we should have come just in
+time to be hanged. And hanged we should all have been: though _why_,
+and upon what principle, it would be difficult to say; and probably
+that question would have been left to after consideration in some more
+philosophical age. You will suppose naturally that we rejoiced at our
+escape; and so undoubtedly we did. Yet for my part I had, among
+nineteen-twentieths of joy, just one-twentieth of a lingering regret
+that we had missed the picturesque fate that awaited us. The reason
+was this: it has been through life an infirmity of Mr. Wilson's (at
+least in my judgment an infirmity) to think too indulgently of
+Bonaparte, not merely in an intellectual point of view, but even with
+reference to his pretensions--hollower, one would think, than the
+wind--to moral elevation and magnanimity. Such a mistake, about a man
+who could never in any one instance bring himself to speak generously,
+or even forbearingly of an enemy, rouses my indignation as often as I
+recur to it; and in Professor Wilson, I have long satisfied myself
+that it takes its rise from a more comprehensive weakness, the
+greatest in fact which besets his mind, viz. a general tendency to
+bend to the prevailing opinion of the world, and a constitutional
+predisposition, to sympathise with power and whatsoever is triumphant.
+Hence, I could not but regret most poignantly the capital opportunity
+I had forfeited of throwing in a deep and stinging sarcasm at his
+idol, just at the moment when we should have been waiting to be
+turned off. I know Professor Wilson well: though a brave man, at
+twenty-two he enjoyed life with a rapture that few men have ever
+known, and he would have clung to it with awful tenacity. Horribly he
+would have abominated the sight of the rope, and ruefully he would
+have sighed if I had suggested to him on the gallows any thoughts of
+that beautiful and quiet Elleray which he had left behind in England.
+Just at that moment I acknowledge that it would have been fiendish,
+but yet what a heaven of a luxury it would have been in the way of
+revenge--to have stung him with some neat epigram, that I might have
+composed in our walk to the gallows, or while the ropes were getting
+into tune, on the generosity and magnanimity of Bonaparte! Perhaps, in
+a sober estimate, hanging might be too heavy a price for the
+refutation of a single error; yet still, at times, when my moral sense
+is roused and provoked by the obstinate blindness of Professor Wilson
+to the meanness and _parvanimity_[45] of Bonaparte (a blindness which
+in him, as in all other worshippers of false idols, is connected at
+the moment with intense hatred for those who refuse to partake in it),
+a wandering regret comes over me that we should have missed so fine an
+opportunity for gathering in our own persons some of those redundant
+bounties which the Corsican's 'magnanimity' at that time scattered
+from his cornucopia of malice to the English name upon all his
+unfortunate prisoners of that nation.
+
+[Footnote 45: I coin this word _parvanimity_ as an adequate antithesis
+to _magnanimity_; for the word _pusillanimity_ has received from usage
+such a confined determination to one single idea, viz. the defect of
+spirit and courage, that it is wholly unfitted to tie the antipode to
+the complex idea of magnanimity.]
+
+But enough of this; an event soon occurred in Mr. Wilson's life which
+made it a duty to dismiss for ever all travelling schemes that were
+connected with so much hazard as this. The fierce _acharnement_ of
+Bonaparte so pointedly directed to everything English, and the
+prostration of the Continent, which had enabled him absolutely to seal
+every port of Europe against an Englishman, who could now no longer
+venture to stray a mile beyond the range of the ship's guns, which had
+brought him to the shore, without the certainty of being arrested as a
+spy,--this unheard-of condition of things had at length compelled all
+English gentlemen to reconcile themselves for the present to the
+bounds of their own island; and, accordingly, in the spring of 1809,
+we three unhanged friends had entirely weaned our minds from the
+travelling scheme which had so completely occupied our thoughts in
+1808. Mr. Wilson in particular gave himself up to the pleasures and
+occupations furnished by the neighbourhood of Windermere, which at
+that time were many and various; living myself at a distance of nine
+miles from Elleray, I did not see much of him through this year 1809;
+in 1810 he married a young English lady, greatly admired for her
+beauty and the elegance of her manners, who was generally supposed to
+have brought him a fortune of about ten thousand pounds. In saying
+_that_, I violate no confidence at any time reposed in me, for I rely
+only on the public voice--which, in this instance, I have been told by
+well-informed persons, was tolerably correct. Be that as it may,
+however, in other respects I have the best reasons for believing that
+this marriage connection has proved the happiest event of Mr.
+Wilson's life; and that the delightful temper and disposition of his
+wife have continued to shed a sunshine of peace and quiet happiness
+over his domestic establishment, which were well worth all the
+fortunes in the world. This lady has brought him a family of two sons
+and three daughters, all interesting by their personal appearance and
+their manners, and at this time rapidly growing up into young men and
+women.
+
+Here I should close all further notice of Mr. Wilson's life, and
+confine myself, through what remains of the space which I have allowed
+myself, to a short critical notice (such as it may be proper for a
+friend to write) of his literary character and merits; but one single
+event remains of a magnitude too conspicuous in any man's life to be
+dismissed wholly without mention. I should add, therefore, that, about
+eight or nine years after his marriage (for I forget the precise
+year[46]), Mr. Wilson offered himself a candidate for the chair of
+Moral Philosophy in the University in Edinburgh, which had recently
+become vacant by the death of Dr. Thomas Brown, the immediate
+successor of Mr. Dugald Stewart. The Scotch, who know just as much
+about what they call 'Moral[47] Philosophy' and Metaphysics as the
+English do, viz. exactly nothing at all, pride themselves
+prodigiously upon these two names of Dugald Stewart and Dr. Brown, and
+imagine that they filled the chair with some peculiar brilliance. Upon
+that subject a word or two farther on. Meantime this notion made the
+contest peculiarly painful and invidious, amongst ungenerous enemies,
+for any untried man--no matter though his real merits had been a
+thousand times greater than those of his predecessors. This Mr. Wilson
+found; he had made himself enemies; whether by any unjustifiable
+violences, and wanton provocations on his own part, I have no means of
+knowing. In whatever way created, however, these enemies now used the
+advantages of the occasion with rancorous malignity, and persecuted
+him at every step with unrelenting fury. Very different was the
+treatment he met with from his competitor in the contest; in that one
+circumstance of the case, the person of his competitor, he had reason
+to think himself equally fortunate and unfortunate; fortunate, that he
+should be met by the opposition of a man whose opposition was
+honour--a man of birth, talents, and high breeding, a good scholar,
+and for extensive reading and universal knowledge of books (and
+especially of philosophic literature) the Magliabecchi of Scotland;
+unfortunate on the other hand that this accomplished opponent, adorned
+by so many brilliant gifts that recommended him to the contested
+office, should happen to be his early and highly valued friend. The
+particular progress of the contest, and its circumstances, I am not
+able to state; in general I have heard in Edinburgh that, from
+political influences which chiefly governed the course of the
+election, the conduct of the partisans (perhaps on both sides) was
+intemperate, personal, and unjust; whilst that of the principals and
+their immediate friends was full of forbearance and generosity. The
+issue was, that Mr. Wilson carried the Professorship,--by what
+majority of votes, I am unable to say; and you will be pleased to hear
+that any little coolness, which must naturally have succeeded to so
+warm a contest, has long since passed away; and the two rival
+candidates have been for many years restored to their early feelings
+of mutual esteem and regard.
+
+[Footnote 46: [In July, 1820.]]
+
+[Footnote 47: Everywhere in the world, except in Scotland, by _moral_
+philosophy is meant the philosophy of the will, as opposed to the
+philosophy of the intellect; in Scotland only the word _moral_ is
+used, by the strongest abuse, as a comprehensive designation of
+whatsoever is not _physical_; so that in the cycle of knowledge,
+undertaken by the Edinburgh Professor of Moral Philosophy, are
+included logic, metaphysics, ethics, psychology, anthropology,--and,
+in one word, almost all human knowledge, with the exception of physics
+and mathematics.]
+
+Here I pause for everything that concerns in the remotest way the
+incidents of Professor Wilson's life; one letter I mean to add, as I
+have already promised, on the particular position which he occupies in
+relation to modern literature; and then I have done. Meantime, let me
+hope that you have not so far miscalculated my purpose as to have been
+looking out for anecdotes (_i. e._ scandal) about Professor Wilson
+throughout the course of this letter; since, if in any case I could
+descend to cater for tastes of that description (which I am persuaded,
+are naturally no tastes of _your_ family),--you must feel, on
+reflection, how peculiarly impossible it is to take that course in
+sketching the character of a friend, because the very means, by which
+in almost every case one becomes possessed of such private anecdotes,
+are the opportunities thrown in one's way by the confiding negligence
+of affectionate friendship; opportunities therefore which must be for
+ever sacred to every man of honour.
+
+Yours most faithfully,
+
+PARMENIDES.
+
+
+
+
+THE LAKE DIALECT.
+
+_To the Editor of 'Titan.'_
+
+
+My Dear Sir,--I send you a few hasty notes upon Mr. Robert Ferguson's
+little work (relating to the dialect current at the English
+Lakes).[48] Mr. Ferguson's book is learned and seasonable, adapted to
+the stage at which such studies have now arrived among us, and adapted
+also to a popular use. I am sure that Mr. Ferguson knows a great deal
+more about his very interesting theme than _I_ do. Nevertheless, I
+presume to sit in judgment upon him; or so it will be inferred from my
+assuming the office of his reviewer. But in reality I pretend to no
+such ambitious and invidious functions. What I propose to do, in this
+hasty and _extempore_ fashion, is--simply to take a seat in Mr.
+Ferguson's court as an _amicus curiæ_, and occasionally to suggest a
+doubt, by possibility an amendment; but more often to lead astray
+judge, jury, and docile audience into matter growing out of the
+subject, but very seldom leading back into it, too often, perhaps,
+having little to do with it; pleasant by possibility, according to
+Foote's judgment in a parallel case, 'pleasant, but wrong.' No great
+matter if it should be so. It will be read within the privileged term
+of Christmas;[49] during which licensed saturnalia it can be no blame
+to any paper, that it is 'pleasant, but wrong.'
+
+[Footnote 48: _The Northmen in Cumberland and Westmoreland._ By Robert
+Ferguson. Carlisle: Steel & Brother. London: Longmans & Co.]
+
+[Footnote 49: Writing at the moment in Scotland, where Christmas is as
+little heard of, or popularly understood or regarded, as the Mahometan
+festival of Beyram or the fast of Ramadan, I ought to explain that, as
+Christmas Day, by adjournment from Lady Day--namely, March 25--falls
+uniformly on December 25, it happens necessarily that _Twelfth_ Day
+(the adoration of the Magi at Bethlehem), which is the ceremonial
+close of Christmas, falls upon the 5th day of January; seven days in
+the old, five in the new, year.]
+
+I begin with lodging a complaint against Mr. Ferguson, namely, that he
+has ignored me--me, that in some measure may be described as having
+broken ground originally in this interesting field of research. Me,
+the undoubted parent of such studies--_i. e._ the person who first
+solemnly proclaimed the Danish language to be the master-key for
+unlocking the peculiarities of the Lake dialect--me, has this
+undutiful son never noticed, except incidentally, and then only with
+some reserve, or even with a distinct scruple, as regards the
+particular point of information for which I am cited. Seriously,
+however, this very passage, which offers me the affront of utter
+exclusion from what I had regarded as my own peculiar territory, my
+own Danish ring-fence, shows clearly that no affront had been
+designed. Mr. Ferguson had found occasion, at p. 80, to mention that
+_Fairfield_, the most distinguished[50] of the Grasmere boundaries,
+and 'next neighbour to Helvellyn' (next also in magnitude, being
+above three thousand feet high), had, as regarded its name, 'been
+derived from the Scandinavian _faar_, sheep, in allusion to the
+peculiar fertility of its pastures.' He goes on thus--'This mountain'
+(says De Quincey) 'has large, smooth pastoral savannahs, to which the
+sheep resort when all its rocky or barren neighbours are left
+desolate.' In thus referring to myself for the character of the
+mountain, he does not at all suppose that he is referring to the
+author of the etymology. On the contrary, the very next sentence
+says--'I do not know who is the author of this etymology, which has
+been quoted by several writers; but it appears to me to be open to
+considerable doubt'; and this for two separate reasons, which he
+assigns, and which I will notice a little further on.
+
+[Footnote 50:
+
+    'And mighty Fairfield, with its chime
+    Of echoes, still was keeping time.'
+
+    WORDSWORTH--_The Waggoner_.]
+
+Meantime I pause, for the sake of saying that the derivation is mine.
+Thirty-seven, or it may be thirty-eight, years ago, I first brought
+forward my Danish views in a local newspaper--namely, _The Kendal
+Gazette_, published every Saturday. The rival (I may truly say--the
+hostile) newspaper, published also on Saturday, was called _The
+Westmoreland Chronicle_. The exact date of my own communication upon
+the dialect of the Lake district I cannot at this moment assign.
+Earlier than 1818 it could not have been, nor later than 1820. What
+first threw me upon this vein of exploring industry was, the
+accidental stumbling suddenly upon an interesting little incident of
+Westmoreland rustic life. From a roadside cottage, just as I came
+nearly abreast of its door, issued a little child; not old enough to
+walk with particular firmness, but old enough for mischief; a laughing
+expression of which it bore upon its features. It was clearly in the
+act of absconding from home, and was hurrying earnestly to a turn of
+the road which it counted upon making available for concealment. But,
+before it could reach this point, a young woman, of remarkable beauty,
+perhaps twenty years old, ran out in some alarm, which was not
+diminished by hearing the sound of carriage-wheels rapidly coming up
+from a distance of probably two furlongs. The little rosy thing
+stopped and turned on hearing its mother's voice, but hesitated a
+little, until she made a gesture of withdrawing her handkerchief from
+her bosom, and said, coaxingly, 'Come its ways, then, and get its
+_patten_.' Until that reconciling word was uttered, there had been a
+shadow of distrust on the baby's face, as if treachery might be in the
+wind. But the magic of that one word _patten_ wrought an instant
+revolution. Back the little truant ran, and the young mother's manner
+made it evident that she would not on _her_ part forget what had
+passed between the high contracting parties.[51] What, then, could be
+the meaning of this talismanic word _patten_? Accidentally, having
+had a naval brother confined amongst the Danes, as a prisoner of war,
+for eighteen months, I knew that it meant the female bosom. Soon after
+I stumbled upon the meaning of the Danish word _Skyandren_--namely,
+what in street phrase amongst ourselves is called giving to any person
+a _blowing-up_. This was too remarkable a word, too bristling with
+harsh blustering consonants, to baffle the detecting ear, as it might
+have done under any masquerading _aura-textilis_, or woven air of
+vowels and diphthongs.
+
+[Footnote 51: It might seem odd to many people that a child able to
+run alone should not have been already weaned, a process of early
+misery that, in modern improved practice, takes place amongst opulent
+families at the age of six months; and, secondly, it might seem
+equally odd that, until weaned, any infant could be truly described as
+'rosy.' I wish, however, always to be punctiliously accurate; and I
+can assure my readers that, generally speaking, the wives of labouring
+men (for more reasons than one) suckle their infants for three years,
+to the great indignation of medical practitioners, who denounce the
+practice as six times too long. Secondly, although unweaned infants
+are ordinarily pale, yet, amongst those approaching their eighteenth
+or twentieth month, there are often found children as rosy as any one
+can meet with.]
+
+Many scores of times I had heard men threatening to _skiander_ this
+person or that when next they should meet. Not by possibility could it
+indicate any mode of personal violence; for no race of men could be
+more mild and honourably forbearing in their intercourse with each
+other than the manly dalesmen of the Lakes. From the context, it had
+long been evident that it implied expostulation and _verbal_ reproach.
+And now at length I learned that this was its Danish import. The very
+mountain at the foot of which my Grasmere cottage stood, and the
+little orchard attached to which formed 'the lowest step in that
+magnificent staircase' (such was Wordsworth's description of it),
+leading upwards to the summits of Helvellyn, reminded me daily of that
+Danish language which all around me suggested as being the secret
+writing--the seal--the lock that imprisoned ancient records as to
+thing or person, and yet again as being the key that should open this
+lock; as that which had hidden through many centuries, and yet also as
+that which should finally reveal.
+
+I have thus come round to the name of Fairfield, which seemed to me
+some forty years ago as beyond all reasonable doubt the Danish mask
+for _Sheep-fell_. But, in using the phrase '_reasonable_ doubt,' I am
+far from insinuating that Mr. Ferguson's deliberate doubt is _not_
+reasonable. I will state both sides of the question, for neither is
+without some show of argument. To me it seemed next to impossible that
+the early Danish settlers could, under the natural pressure of
+prominent differences among that circuit of hills which formed the
+barriers of Grasmere, have failed to distinguish as the sheep mountain
+that sole eminence which offered a pasture ground to their sheep all
+the year round. In summer and autumn _all_ the neighbouring fells,
+that were not mere rocks, yielded pasture more or less scanty. But
+Fairfield showed herself the _alma mater_ of their flocks even in
+winter and early spring. So, at least, my local informants asserted.
+Mr. Ferguson, however, objects, as an unaccountable singularity, that
+on this hypothesis we shall have one mountain, and one only, classed
+under the _modern_ Scandinavian term of _field_; all others being
+known by the elder name of _fell_. I acknowledge that this anomaly is
+perplexing. But, on the other hand, what Mr. Ferguson suggests is
+still more perplexing. He supposes that, 'because' the summit of this
+mountain is such a peculiarly green and level plain, it might not
+inappropriately be called _a fair field_.' Certainly it might; but by
+Englishmen of recent generations, and not by Danish immigrants of the
+ninth century. To balance the anomaly of what certainly wears a faint
+_soupçon_ of anachronism--namely, the _apparent_ anticipation of the
+modern Norse word _field_, Mr. Ferguson's conjecture would take a
+headlong plunge into good classical English. Now of this there is no
+other instance. Even the little swells of ground, that hardly rise to
+the dignity of hills, which might be expected to submit readily to
+changing appellations, under the changing accidents of ownership, yet
+still retain their primitive Scandinavian names--as _Butterlip Howe_,
+for example. Nor do I recollect any exceptions to this tendency,
+unless in the case of jocose names, such as _Skiddaw's Cub_, for
+Lattrig; and into this class, perhaps, falls even the dignified
+mountain of _The Old Man_, at the head of Coniston. Mr. Ferguson will
+allow that it would be as startling to the dense old Danes of King
+Alfred's time, if they had found a mountain of extra pretensions
+wearing a modern English name, as it would to the Macedonian
+_argyraspides_, if suspecting that, in some coming century, their
+mighty leader, 'the great Emathian conqueror,' could by any possible
+Dean of St. Patrick, and by any conceivable audacity of legerdemain,
+be traced back to _All-eggs-under-the-grate_. If the name really _is_
+good English, in that case a separate and _extra_ labour arises for us
+all; there must have been some old Danish name for this most
+serviceable of fells; and then we have not merely to explain the
+present English name, but also to account for the disappearance of
+this archæological Danish name. What I would throw out conjecturally
+as a bare possibility is this:--When an ancient dialect (A) is
+gradually superseded by a more modern one (E), the flood of innovation
+which steals over the old reign, and gradually dispossesses it, does
+not rush in simultaneously as a torrent, but supervenes stealthily and
+unequally, according to the humouring or thwarting of local
+circumstances. Nobody, I am sure, is better aware of this accident, as
+besetting the transit of dialects, than Mr. Ferguson. For instance,
+many of those words which are imported to us from the American United
+States, and often amuse us by their picturesqueness, have originally
+been carried to America by our own people; in England they lurked for
+ages as provincialisms, localised within some narrow circuit, and to
+which some trifling barrier (as a river--rivulet--or even a brook)
+offered a retarding force. In supercivilised England, a river, it may
+be thought, cannot offer much obstruction to the free current of
+words; ages ago it must have been bridged over. Sometimes, however, a
+bridge is impossible under the transcendent importance of a free
+navigation. For instance, at the Bristol Hotwells, the ready and
+fluent intercourse with Long Ashton, and a long line of adjacencies,
+is effectually obstructed by the necessity of an open water
+communication with the Bristol Channel. At one period (_i. e._ when as
+yet Liverpool and Glasgow were fifth-rate ports), all the wealth of
+the West Indies flowed into England through this little muddy ditch of
+the Bristol Avon, and Rownham Ferry became the exponent and measure of
+English intercourse with the northern nook of Somersetshire. A river
+is bad; but when a mountain of very toilsome ascent happens to be
+interposed, the interruption offered to the popular intercourse, and
+the results of this interruption, become much more memorable. An
+illustration which I can offer on this point, and which, in fact, I
+_did_ offer (as, upon inquiry, Mr. Ferguson will find), thirty-eight
+years ago, happens to bear with peculiar force upon our immediate
+difficulty of Fairfield. The valleys on the northern side of
+Kirkstone--namely, in particular, the three valleys of Patterdale,
+Matterdale, and Martindale--are as effectually cut off from
+intercourse with the valleys on the southern side--namely, the
+Windermere valley, Ryedale, and Grasmere, with all their tributary
+nooks and attachments--as though an arm of the sea had rolled between
+them. It costs a foot traveller half of a summer's day to effect the
+passage to and fro over Kirkstone (what the Greeks so tersely
+expressed in the case of a race-course[52] by the one word _diaulos_).
+And in _my_ time no innkeeper from the Windermere side of Kirkstone
+would carry even a solitary individual across with fewer than four
+horses. What has been the result? Why, that the dialect on the
+northern side of Kirkstone bears the impress of a more ultra-Danish
+influence than that upon the Windermere side. In particular this
+remarkable difference occurs: not the nouns and verbs merely are
+Danish amongst the trans-Kirkstonians (I speak as a Grasmerian), but
+even the particles--the very joints and articulations of language. The
+Danish _at_, for instance, is used for _to_; I do not mean for _to_
+the preposition: they do not say, 'Carry this letter at Mr. 'W.'; but
+as the sign of the infinitive mood. 'Tell him _at_ put his spurs on,
+and _at_ ride off for a surgeon?' Now this illustration carries along
+with it a proof that a stronger and a weaker infusion of the Danish
+element, possibly an older and a younger infusion, may prevail even in
+close adjacencies, provided they are powerfully divided by walls of
+rock that happen to be eight miles thick.
+
+[Footnote 52: I mean that they included the progressive or
+outward-bound course, and equally the regressive or homeward-bound
+course, within the compass of this one word [Greek: diaulos]. We in
+England have a phrase which conventionally has been made to supply the
+want of such an idea, but unfortunately with a limitation to the
+service of the Post-office. It is the phrase _course of post_. When a
+Newcastle man is asked, 'What is the course of post between you and
+Liverpool?' he understands, and by a legal decision it has been
+settled that he is under an obligation to understand--What is the
+_diaulos_, what is the flux and reflux--the to and the fro--the
+systole and diastole of the respiration--between you and Liverpool.
+What is the number of hours and minutes required for the transit of a
+letter from Newcastle to Liverpool, but coupled with the return
+transit of the answer? This forward and backward movement constitutes
+the _diaulos_: less than this will not satisfy the law as the complex
+process understood by the _course of post_. Less than this is only the
+half section of a _diaulos_.]
+
+But the inexorable Press, that waits for few men under the rank of a
+king, and not always for _him_ (as I happen to know, by having once
+seen a proof-sheet corrected by the royal hand of George IV., which
+proof exhibited some disloyal signs of impatience), forces me to
+adjourn all the rest to next month.--Yours ever,
+
+THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
+
+
+
+
+STORMS IN ENGLISH HISTORY:
+
+A GLANCE AT THE REIGN OF HENRY VIII.[53]
+
+
+What two works are those for which at this moment our national
+intellect (or, more rigorously speaking, our _popular_ intellect) is
+beginning clamorously to call? They are these: first, a
+_Conversations-Lexicon_, obeying (as regards plan and purpose) the
+general outline of the German work bearing that title; ministering to
+the same elementary necessities; implying, therefore, a somewhat
+corresponding stage of progress in our own populace and that of
+Germany; but otherwise (as regards the executive details in adapting
+such a work to the special service of an English public) moving under
+moral restraints sterner by much, and more faithfully upheld, than
+could rationally be looked for in any great literary enterprise
+resigned to purely German impulses. For over the atmosphere of thought
+and feeling in Germany there broods no _public_ conscience. Such a
+_Conversations-Lexicon_ is one of the two great works for which the
+popular mind of England is waiting and watching in silence. The other
+(and not less important) work is--a faithful _History of England_. We
+will offer, at some future time, a few words upon the first; but upon
+the second--here brought before us so advantageously in the earnest,
+thoughtful, and oftentimes eloquent volumes of Mr. Froude--we will
+venture to offer three or four pages of critical comment.
+
+[Footnote 53: _History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death
+of Elizabeth._ By James Anthony Froude, M.A., late Fellow of Exeter
+College, Oxford. Vols. I. and II. London: Parker & Son, West Strand.
+1856.]
+
+Could the England of the sixteenth century have escaped that great
+convulsion which accompanied the dissolution of the monasteries? It is
+barely possible that a gentle system of periodic decimations,
+distributing this inevitable ruin over an entire century, might have
+blunted the edge of the fierce ploughshare: but there were
+difficulties in the way of such arrangements, that would too probably
+have thwarted the benign purpose.
+
+Meantime, what was it that had stolen like a canker-worm into the
+machinery of these monastic bodies, and insensibly had corroded a
+principle originally of admitted purity? The malice of Protestantism
+has too readily assumed that Popery was answerable for this corrosion.
+But it would be hard to show that Popery in any one of its features,
+good or bad, manifested itself conspicuously and operatively: nay, to
+say the simple truth, it was through the very opposite agency that the
+monastic institutions came to ruin: it was because Popery, that
+supreme control to which these monasteries had been confided, shrank
+from its responsibilities--weakly, lazily, or even perfidiously,
+abandoned that supervisorship in default of which neither right of
+inspection, nor duty of inspection, nor power of inspection, was found
+to be lodged in any quarter--_there_ it was, precisely in that
+dereliction of censorial authority, that all went to ruin. All
+corporations grow corrupt, unless habitually kept under the eye of
+public inspection, or else officially liable to searching visitations.
+Now, who were the regular and official visitors of the English
+monasteries? Not the local bishops; for in that case the public
+clamour, the very notoriety of the scandals (as we see them reported
+by Wicliffe and Chaucer), would have guided the general wrath to some
+effectual surgery for the wounds and ulcers of the institutions.
+Unhappily the official visitors were the heads of the monastic orders;
+these, and these only. A Franciscan body, for example, owed no
+obedience except to the representative of St. Francis; and this
+representative too uniformly resided somewhere on the Continent. And
+thus it was that effectually and virtually English monasteries were
+subject to no control. Nay, the very corrections of old abuses by
+English parliamentary statutes had greatly strengthened the evil.
+Formerly, the monastic funds were drawn upon to excess in defraying
+the costs of a transmarine visitation. But that evil, rising into
+enormous proportions, was at length radically extirpated by
+parliamentary statutes that cut down the costs; so that continental
+devotees, finding their visitations no longer profitable in a
+pecuniary sense, sometimes even costly to themselves, and costly upon
+a scale but dimly intelligible to any continental experience, rapidly
+cooled down in their pious enthusiasm against monastic delinquencies.
+Hatred, at any rate, and malignant anger the visitor had to face, not
+impossibly some risk of assassination, in prosecuting his inquiries
+into the secret crimes of monks that were often confederated in a
+common interest of resistance to all honest or searching inquiry.
+But, if to these evils were superadded others of a pecuniary class, it
+was easy to anticipate, under this failure of all regular
+inspectorship, a period of plenary indulgence to the excesses of these
+potent corporations. Such a period came: no man being charged with the
+duty of inspection, no man inspected; but never was the danger more
+surely at hand, than when it seemed by all ordinary signs to have
+absolutely died out. Already, in the days of Richard II., the doom of
+the monasteries might be heard muttering in the chambers of the upper
+air. In the angry denunciations of Wicliffe, in the popular merriment
+of Chaucer, might be read the same sentence of condemnation awarded
+against them. Fierce warnings were given to them at intervals. A
+petition against them was addressed by the House of Commons to Henry
+IV. The son of this prince, the man of Agincourt, though superstitious
+enough, if superstition could have availed them, had in _his_ short
+reign (so occupied, one might have thought, with war and foreign
+affairs) found time to read them a dreadful warning: more than five
+scores of these offending bodies (Priories Alien) were suppressed by
+that single monarch, the laughing _Hal_ of Jack Falstaff. One whole
+century slipped away between this penal suppression and the ministry
+of Wolsey. What effect can we ascribe to this admonitory chastisement
+upon the general temper and conduct of the monastic interest? It would
+be difficult beyond measure at this day to draw up any adequate report
+of the foul abuses prevailing in the majority of religious houses, for
+the three following reasons:--First, because the main record of such
+abuses, after it had been elaborately compiled under the commission of
+Henry VIII., was (at the instigation of his eldest daughter Mary) most
+industriously destroyed by Bishop Bonner; secondly, because too
+generally the original oath of religious fidelity and secrecy, in
+matters interesting to the founder and the foundation, was held to
+interfere with frank disclosures; thirdly, because, as to much of the
+most crying licentiousness, its full and satisfactory detection too
+often depended upon a surprise. Steal upon the delinquents suddenly,
+and ten to one they were caught _flagrante delicto_: but upon any
+notice transpiring of the hostile approach, all was arranged so as to
+evade for the moment--or in the end to baffle finally--search alike
+and suspicion.
+
+The following report, which Mr. Froude views as the liveliest of all
+that Bishop Bonner's zeal has spared, offers a picturesque sketch of
+such cases, according to the shape which they often assumed. In
+Chaucer's tale, told with such unrivalled _vis comica_, of the
+_Trompington Miller and the Two Cambridge Scholars_, we have a most
+life-like picture of the miller with his 'big bones,' as a 'dangerous'
+man for the nonce. Just such a man, just as dangerous, and just as
+big-boned, we find in the person of an abbot--defending his abbey, not
+by any reputation for sanctity or learning, but solely by his
+_dangerousness_ as the wielder of quarter-staff and cudgel. With no
+bull-dog or mastiff, and taken by surprise, such an abbot naturally
+lost the stakes for which he played. The letter is addressed to the
+Secretary of State:--'Please it your goodness to understand, that on
+Friday the 22nd of October (1535), I rode back with speed to take an
+inventory of Folkstone; and thence I went to Langden. Whereat
+immediately descending from my horse, I sent Bartlett, your servant,
+with all _my_ servants, to circumsept the abbey [_i. e._ to form a
+hedge round about], and surely to keep [guard] all back-doors and
+starting holes. I myself went alone to the abbot's lodging--joining
+upon the fields and wood.' [This position, the reporter goes on to
+insinuate, was no matter of chance: but, like a rabbit-warren, had
+been so placed with a view to the advantages for retreat and for cover
+in the adjacent woodlands.] 'I was a good space knocking at the
+abbot's door; neither did any sound or sensible manifestation of life
+betray itself, saving the abbot's little dog, that within his door,
+fast locked, bayed and barked. I found a short pole-axe standing
+behind the door; and with it I dashed the abbot's door in pieces _ictu
+oculi_ [in the twinkling of an eye]; and set one of my men to keep
+that door; and about the house I go with that pole-axe in my hand--_ne
+forte_ ["_lest by any chance_"[54]--holding in suspense such words as
+"_some violence should be offered_"]--for the abbot is a dangerous,
+desperate knave, and a hardy. But, for a conclusion, his gentlewoman
+bestirred her stumps towards her starting holes; and then Bartlett,
+watching the pursuit, took the tender _demoisel_; and, after I had
+examined her, to Dover--to the mayor, to set her in some cage or
+prison for eight days. And I brought holy father abbot to Canterbury;
+and here, in Christ Church, I will leave him in prison.'
+
+[Footnote 54: '_Ne forte_' is a case of what is learnedly called
+_aposiopesis_ or _reticentia_; that is, where (for the sake of effect)
+some emphatic words are left to be guessed at: as Virgil's _Quos
+ego_----(Whom if I catch, I'll----)]
+
+This little interlude, offering its several figures in such life-like
+attitudes--its big-boned abbot prowling up and down the precincts of
+the abbey for the chance of a 'shy' at the intruding commissioner--the
+little faithful bow-wow doing its _petit possible_ to warn big-bones
+of his danger, thus ending his faithful services by an act of farewell
+loyalty--and the unlucky _demoisel_ scuttling away to her
+rabbit-warren, only to find all the spiracles and peeping-holes
+preoccupied or stopped, and her own 'apparel' unhappily locked up '_in
+the abbot his coffer_,' so as to render hopeless all evasion or
+subsequent denial of the fact, that ten big-boned 'indusia' (or
+shirts) lay interleaved in one and the same 'coffer,' _inter totidem
+niveas camisas_[55] (or chemises)--all this framed itself as a little
+amusing parenthesis, a sort of family picture amongst the dreadful
+reports of ecclesiastical commissioners.
+
+[Footnote 55: '_Camisas_:' _i. e._ chemises; but at one time the word
+_camisa_ was taken indifferently for shirt or chemise. And hence arose
+the term _camisado_ for a night-attack, in which the assailants
+recognised each other in the dark by their white shirt-sleeves,
+sometimes further distinguished by a tight cincture of broad black
+riband. The last literal camisado, that I remember, was a nautical
+one--a cutting-out enterprise somewhere about 1807-8.]
+
+No _suppression_ of the religious houses had originally been designed;
+nothing more than a searching _visitation_. And at this moment, yes,
+at this present midsummer of 1856, waiting and looking forward to the
+self-same joyful renewal of leases that then was looked for in
+England, but not improbably, alas! summoned to the same ineffable
+disappointment as fell more than three centuries back upon our own
+England--lies, waiting for her doom, a great kingdom in central
+Europe. She, and under the same causes, may chance to be disappointed.
+What was it that caused the tragic convulsion in England? Simply this:
+regular and healthy visitation having ceased, infinite abuses had
+arisen; and these abuses, it was found at last, could not be healed by
+any measure less searching than absolute suppression. Austria, as
+regards some of her provinces, stands in the same circumstances at
+this very moment. Imperfect visitations, that cleansed nothing, should
+naturally have left her religious establishments languishing for the
+one sole remedy that was found applicable to the England of 1540. And
+what was _that_? It was a remedy that carried along with it
+revolution. England was found able in those days to stand that fierce
+medicine: a more profound revolution has not often been witnessed than
+that of our mighty Reformation. Can Austria, considering the awful
+contagions amongst which her political relations have entangled her,
+hope for the same happy solution of her case? Perhaps a revolution,
+that once unlocks the fountains of blood in central Germany, will be
+the bloodiest of all revolutions: whereas, in our own chapters of
+revolution even the stormiest, those of the Marian Persecution and of
+the Parliamentary War, both alike moved under restraints of law and
+legislative policy. The very bloodiest promises of English history
+have replied but feebly to the clamour and expectations of cruel or
+fiery partisans. Different is the prospect for Austria. From her, and
+from the auguries of evil which becloud her else smiling atmosphere,
+let us turn back to our own history in this sixteenth century, and
+for a moment make a brief inquest into the blood that really was
+shed--whether justly or not justly. Bloodshed, as an instinct--bloodshed,
+as an appetite--raged like a monsoon in the French Revolution, and many
+centuries before in the Rome of Sylla and Marius--in the Rome of the
+Triumvirate, and generally in the period of Proscriptions. Too fearfully
+it is evident that these fits of _acharnement_ were underlaid and fed by
+paroxysms of personal cruelty. In England, on the other hand, foul and
+hateful as was the Marian butchery, nevertheless it cannot be denied
+that this butchery rested entirely upon principle. Homage offered to
+anti-Lutheran principles, in a moment disarmed the Popish executioner.
+Or if (will be the objection of the reflecting reader)--if there are
+exceptions to this rule, these must be looked for amongst the king's
+enemies. And the term 'enemies' will fail to represent adequately those
+who, not content with ranking themselves wilfully amongst persons
+courting objects irreconcilable to the king's interests, sought to
+exasperate the displeasure of Henry by special insults, by peculiar
+mortifications, and by complex ingratitude. Foremost amongst such cases
+stands forward the separate treason of Anne Boleyn, mysterious to this
+hour in some of its features, rank with pollutions such as European
+prejudice would class with Italian enormities, and by these very
+pollutions--literally by and through the very excess of the
+guilt--claiming to be incredible. Neither less nor more than this which
+follows is the logic put into the mouth of the Lady Anne Boleyn:--From
+the mere enormity of the guilt imputed to me, from that very abysmal
+stye of incestuous adultery in which now I wallow, I challenge as of
+right the presumption that I am innocent; for the very reason that I am
+loaded in my impeachment with crimes that are inhuman, I claim to be no
+criminal at all. Because my indictment is revolting and monstrous,
+therefore is it incredible. The case, taken apart from the person, would
+not (unless through its mysteriousness and imperfect circumstantiation)
+have attracted the interest which _has_ given it, and _will_ in all time
+coming continue to give it, a root in history amongst insoluble or
+doubtfully soluble historical problems. The _case_, being painful and
+shocking, would by readers generally have long since been dismissed to
+darkness. But the _person_, too critically connected with a vast and
+immortal revolution, will for ever call back the case before the
+tribunals of earth. The mother of Queen Elizabeth, the mother of
+Protestantism in England, cannot be suffered--never _will_ be
+suffered--to benefit by that shelter of merciful darkness which, upon
+any humbler person, or even upon this person in any humbler case, might
+be suffered to settle quietly as regards the memory of her acts. Mr.
+Froude, a pure-minded man, is the last man to call back into the glare
+of a judicial inquest deeds of horror, over which eternal silence should
+have brooded, had such an issue been possible. But three centuries of
+discussion have made _that_ more and more impossible. And now,
+therefore, with a view to the improvement of the dispute, and, perhaps,
+in one or two instances, with a chance for the rectification of the
+'_issues_' (speaking juridically) into which the question has been
+allowed to lapse, Mr. Froude has in some degree re-opened the
+discussion. 'The guilt,' he says, 'must rest where it is due. But under
+any hypothesis guilt there _was_--dark, mysterious, and most miserable.'
+
+Tell this story how you may, and the evidence remains of guilt under
+_any_ hypothesis--guilt such as in Grecian tragedy was seen thousands
+of years ago hanging in clouds of destiny over princely houses, and
+reading to them a doom of utter ruin, root and branch, in which, as in
+the anarchy of hurricanes, no form or feature was descried
+distinctly--nothing but some dim fluctuating phantom, pointing with
+recording finger to that one ancestral crime through which the
+desolation had been wrought.
+
+Mr. Froude, through his natural sense of justice, and his deep study
+of the case, is unfavourably disposed towards the Lady Anne Boleyn:
+nevertheless he retains lingering doubts on her behalf, all of which,
+small and great, we have found reason to dismiss. We, for our parts,
+are thoroughly convinced of her guilt. Our faith is, that no shadow of
+any ground exists for suspending the verdict of the sentence; but at
+the same time for mitigating that sentence there arose this strong
+argument--namely, that amongst women not formally pronounced idiots,
+there never can have been one more pitiably imbecile.
+
+There is a mystery hanging over her connection with the king which
+nobody has attempted to disperse. We will ourselves suggest a few
+considerations that may bring a little coherency amongst the scattered
+glimpses of her fugitive court life. The very first thought that
+presents itself, is a sentiment, that would be pathetic in the case of
+a person entitled to more respect, upon the brevity of her public
+career. Apparently she lost the king's favour almost in the very
+opening of her married life. But in what way? Not, we are persuaded,
+through the king's caprice. There was hardly time for caprice to have
+operated; and her declension in favour from that cause would have been
+gradual. Time there was none for her beauty to decay--neither _had_ it
+decayed. We are disposed to think that in a very early stage of her
+intercourse with the king, she had irritated the king by one
+indication of mental imbecility rarely understood even amongst medical
+men--namely, the offensive habit of laughing profusely without the
+least sense of anything ludicrous or comic. Oxford, or at least one of
+those who shot at the Queen, was signally distinguished by this habit.
+Without reason or pretext, he would break out into causeless laughter,
+not connected with any impulse that he could explain. With this
+infirmity Anne Boleyn was plagued in excess. On the 2nd of May, 1536,
+the very first day on which she was made aware of the dreadful
+accusations hanging over her good name and her life, on being
+committed to the Tower, and taken by Sir William Kingston, the
+governor, to the very same chambers in which she had lain at the
+period of her coronation, she said, 'It' (meaning the suite of rooms)
+'is too good for me; Jesu, have mercy on me;' next she kneeled down,
+'weeping a great space.' Such are Sir William's words; immediately
+after which he adds, 'and in the same sorrow fell into a great
+laughing.' A day or two later than this, she said, 'Master Kingston,
+shall I die without justice?'--meaning, it seems, would she be put to
+death without any judicial examination of her case; upon which Sir
+William replied, 'The poorest subject the king hath, had
+justice'--meaning, that previously to such an examination of his case,
+he could not by regular course of justice be put to death. Such was
+the question of the prisoner--such was the answer of the king's
+representative. What occasion was here suggested for rational
+laughter? And yet laughter was her sole comment. 'Therewith,' says Sir
+William, 'she laughed.' On May 18th, being the day next before that of
+her execution, she said, 'Master Kingston, I hear say I shall not die
+afore noon; and I am very sorry therefore, for I thought to be dead by
+this time, and past my pain.' Upon this Sir William assured her 'it
+should be no pain, it was so subtle;' meaning that the stroke of a
+sword by a powerful arm, applied to a slender neck, could not meet
+resistance enough to cause any serious pain. She replied, 'I heard say
+the executioner was very good, and I have a little neck;' after which
+she laughed heartily. Sir William so much misunderstood this laughter,
+which was doubtless of the same morbid and idiotic character as all
+the previous cases, that he supposes her to have had 'much joy and
+pleasure in death,' which is a mere misconstruction of the case. Even
+in the very act of dying she could not check her smiling, which
+assuredly was as morbid in its quality and origin as what of old was
+known as '_risus sardonicus_.'
+
+Carrying along with us, therefore, a remembrance of this repulsive
+habit, which argues a silliness so constitutional, and noting also the
+obstinate (almost it might be called the brutal) folly with which,
+during the last seventeen days of her life, she persisted in
+criminating herself, volunteering a continued rehearsal of
+conversations the most profligate, under a mere instinct of gossiping,
+we shall begin to comprehend the levity which no doubt must have
+presided in her conversations with the king. Too evidently in a court
+but recently emerging from barbarism, there was a shocking defect of
+rules or fixed ceremonial for protecting the dignity of the queen and
+of her female attendants. The settlement of any such rules devolved
+upon the queen herself, in default of any traditional system; and
+unhappily here was a queen without sense, without prudence, without
+native and sexual dignity for suggesting or upholding such restraints,
+and whose own breeding and experience had been purely French. Strange
+it was that the king's good sense, or even his jealousy, had not
+peremptorily enjoined, as a caution of mere decency, the constant
+presence of some elderly matrons, uniting rank and station with
+experience and good sense. But not the simplest guarantees for
+ordinary decorum were apparently established in the royal household.
+And the shocking spectacle was daily to be seen, of a young woman,
+singularly beautiful, atrociously silly, and without common
+self-respect, styling herself Queen of England, yet exacting no more
+respect or homage than a housemaid, suffering young men, the most
+licentious in all England, openly to speculate on the contingency of
+her husband's death, to talk of it in language the coarsest, as
+'waiting for dead men's shoes,' and bandying to and fro the chances
+that this man or that man, according to the whim of the morning,
+should 'have her,' or should _not_ 'have her'--that is, have the
+reversion of the queen's person as a derelict of the king. All this,
+though most injurious to her prospects, was made known by Anne Boleyn
+herself to the female companions who were appointed to watch her
+revelations in prison. And certainly no chambermaid ever rehearsed her
+own colloquies with these vile profligates in a style of thinking more
+abject than did at this period the female majesty of England.
+Listening to no accuser, but simply to the unsolicited revelations of
+the queen herself, as she lay in bed amongst her female attendants in
+the Tower, every man of sense becomes aware, that if these
+presumptuous young libertines abstained from daily proposals to the
+queen of the most criminal nature, _that_ could arise only from the
+reserve and suspicion incident to a state of rivalship, and not from
+any deference paid to the queen's personal pretensions, or to her
+public character.
+
+Three years, probably one-half of that term, had seen the beginning,
+the decay, and the utter extinction of the king's affection for Anne.
+It is known now, and at the time it had furnished a theme for
+conjecture, that very soon after his marriage the king manifested
+uneasiness, and not long after angry suspicions, upon matters
+connected with the queen. We have no doubt that she herself, whilst
+seeking to amuse the king with fragments of her French experiences,
+had, through mere oversight and want of tact, unintentionally betrayed
+the risks to which her honour had been at times exposed. Without
+presence of mind, without inventive talent or rapidity of artifice,
+she would often compromise herself, and overshoot her momentary
+purposes of furnishing amusement to the king. He had heard too much.
+He believed no longer in her purity. And very soon, as a natural
+consequence, she ceased to interest him. The vague wish to get rid of
+her would for some time suggest no hopeful devices towards such a
+purpose. For some months, apparently, he simply neglected her. This
+neglect unhappily it was that threw her unprotected upon the vile
+society of young libertines. Two of these--Sir Henry Norris and Sir
+Francis Weston--had been privileged friends of the king. But no
+restraints of friendship or of duty had checked their designs upon the
+queen. Either special words, or special acts, had been noticed and
+reported to the king. Thenceforward a systematic watch had been
+maintained upon all parties. Discoveries more shocking than anybody
+looked for had been made. The guilty parties had been careless: blind
+themselves, they thought all others blind; but, during the April of
+1536, the Privy Council had been actively engaged in digesting and
+arranging the information received.
+
+On May-day, the most gladsome day in the whole year, according to the
+usages of that generation, the dreadful news transpired of the awful
+accusations and the impending trials. Smeton, a musician, was the only
+person not of gentlemanly rank amongst the accused. He was accused of
+adultery with the queen; and he confessed the offence; never
+retracting that part of his confession. In discussing the
+probabilities of the case, it is necessary to use special and
+extraordinary caution. The confession, for instance, of Anne herself
+has been treated as hollow and unmeaning; because, it is alleged, the
+king's promise of indulgence and favour to her infant daughter was
+purchased under the condition of confession. It is clear that such a
+traffic would not have been available except in special and
+exceptional cases. As to Smeton, he did not at all meet the king's
+expectations, except as to the one point of confessing the adultery.
+Consequently, as he was quite disinterested, had nothing at all to
+gain, and did gain nothing by his confession, _him_ we are obliged to
+believe. On the other hand, the _non_-confession of some amongst the
+gentlemen, if any there were that steadfastly adhered to this
+non-confession, proves nothing at all; since _they_ thought it perfidy
+to confess such a case against a woman. Meantime, Constantyne, a known
+friend of Sir H. Norris and of Sir W. Brereton, two of the four
+gentlemen accused, declares that, for himself, being a Protestant, and
+knowing the queen's secret leaning to that party, he and all other
+'friends of the gospel' could not bring themselves to believe that the
+queen had behaved so abominably. 'As I may be saved before God,' he
+says, 'I could not believe it, afore I heard them speak at their
+death. But on the scaffold, in a manner _all_ confessed, unless
+Norris; and as to _him_, what he said amounted to nothing.' The truth
+is, there occurred in the cases of these gentlemen a dreadful
+struggle. The dilemma for _them_ was perhaps the most trying upon
+record. Gallantry and manly tenderness forbade any man's confessing,
+for a certain result of ruin to a woman, any treasonable instances of
+love which she had shown to him. Yet, on the other hand, to deny was
+to rush into the presence of God with a lie upon their lips. Hence the
+unintelligible character of their final declarations. Smeton, as no
+gentleman, was hanged. All the other four--Norris, Brereton, Weston,
+and Rochford--were beheaded. The four gentlemen and Smeton suffered
+all on the same day--namely, Wednesday, the 17th of May. Of all the
+five, Sir W. Brereton was the only one whose guilt was doubted. Yet he
+was the most emphatic in declaring his own guilt. If he could die a
+thousand deaths, he said, all would be deserved.
+
+But the crime of all the rest seemed pale by the side of Rochford's.
+He had been raised to the peerage by Henry, as an expression of his
+kindness to the Boleyn family. He was the brother of Anne; and whilst
+the others had offended by simple adultery with Anne, _his_ crime was
+incestuous adultery; and his dying words appeared (to the _auditors_),
+'if not,' says Mr. Froude, 'a confession, yet something too nearly
+resembling it.'
+
+From such dreadful offences, all readers are glad to hurry away; yet
+in one respect this awful impeachment has a reconciling effect. No
+reader after this wishes for further life to Anne. For her own sake it
+is plain that through death must lie the one sole peaceful solution of
+her unhappy and erring life. Some people have most falsely supposed
+that the case against the brother and sister, whatever might be
+pronounced upon the four other cases, laboured under antecedent
+improbabilities so great as to vitiate, or to load with suspicion, the
+entire case of the Privy Council. But, on the contrary, the shocking
+monstrosity of the charge strengthens the anti-Boleyn impeachment. As
+a means for getting rid of Anne, the Rochford case was not at all
+needed. If it could even in dreams be represented as false, the injury
+offered to the Boleyns, whilst quite superfluous for any purpose of
+Henry's, would be too atrocious an outrage upon truth and natural
+justice for human nature to tolerate. The very stones would mutiny
+against such a calumny coming as a crown or crest to other injuries
+separately unendurable, if they could once be regarded as injuries at
+all. Under these circumstances, what should we think of a call upon
+Lord Berkshire, the very father of Anne Boleyn, to sit as one of the
+judges upon the cases. Not, indeed, upon the cases of his son and his
+daughter; from such Roman trials of fortitude he was excused; but on
+the other cases he was required to officiate as one of the judges.
+And, in fact, the array of rank and splendour, as exhibited in the
+persons of those who composed the court, surpassed anything previously
+known in England. On the part of the crown, it was too keenly felt
+that the deep personal interest of the king, in obtaining liberty to
+form a new marriage connection with Jane Seymour, would triumphantly
+outweigh all the justice that ever could be arrayed against the two
+Boleyns. Nothing could win a moment's audience for the royal cause,
+except an unparalleled and matchless splendour in the composition of
+the court. This, therefore, was secured. Pretty nearly the whole
+peerage of that period was embattled upon the bench of judges.
+
+Meantime, the tragedy, so far as the queen is concerned, took a turn
+which convicts all parties of a blunder; of a blunder the most
+needless and superfluous. This blunder was exposed by Bishop Burnet
+about a hundred and fifty years later, but most insufficiently
+exposed; and to this hour it has not been satisfactorily cleared up.
+Let us pursue the arrears of the case. The four gentlemen, together
+with Mark Smeton, were executed (as we have seen) on Wednesday, the
+17th of May, 1536. Two days later Queen Anne Boleyn was brought out at
+noonday upon the verdant lawn within the Tower, and with very slight
+ceremonies she suffered decapitation. A single cannon-shot proclaimed
+to London and Westminster the final catastrophe of this unhappy
+romance. Anne had offered not one word of self-vindication on this
+memorable occasion; and, if her motive to so signal a forbearance were
+really consideration for the interests of her infant daughter, it must
+be granted that she exhibited, in the farewell act of her life, a
+grandeur of self-conquest which no man could have anticipated. For
+this act she has never received the homage which she deserved; whilst,
+on the other hand, praise most unmerited has been given for three
+centuries to the famous letter of self-defence which she is reputed to
+have addressed to the king at the opening of her trial. This letter,
+beyond all doubt a forgery, was first brought into effectual notice by
+the _Spectator_ somewhere about 1710; and, whether authentic or not,
+is most injudiciously composed. It consists of five paragraphs, each
+one of which is pulling distractedly in contradictory directions.
+
+Meantime, that or any other act of Anne Boleyn's was superseded by a
+fatal discovery, which changed utterly the relations of all parties,
+which in effect acquitted Anne of treason, and which summarily
+rehabilitated as untainted subjects of the king those five men who had
+suffered death in the character of traitors. The marriage of Anne to
+the king, it was suddenly discovered, had from the beginning been
+void. It is true that we have long ceased to accredit those objections
+from precontracts, &c., which in the papal courts would be held to
+establish a nullity. But we are to proceed by the laws as then
+settled. Grounds of scruple, which would now raise at most a mere case
+of irregularity, at that time, unless met _ab initio_ by a papal
+dispensation, did legally constitute a flaw such as even a friendly
+pope could not effectually cure; far less that angry priest, blazing
+up with wrath, and at intervals meditating an interdict, who at
+present occupied the chair of St. Peter. Here was a discovery to make,
+after so much irreparable injustice had been already perpetrated! If
+(which is too certain), under the marriage laws then valid, Anne
+Boleyn never had been the lawful wife of Henry, then, as Bishop Burnet
+suddenly objected when too late by one hundred and fifty years, what
+became of the adultery imputed to Anne, and the five young courtiers?
+Not being the king's wife, both _she_ was incapable in law of
+committing adultery as against the king, and by an inevitable
+consequence _they_ were incapable of participating in a crime which
+she was incapable of committing.
+
+When was this fatal blunder detected? Evidently before any of the
+victims had become cold in their graves. And the probability is--that,
+when the blunder was first perceived, the dreadful consequences of
+that blunder, and the legal relations of those consequences, were not
+immediately discerned. What convinces us of this is, that the first
+impulse of the king and his advisers, upon discovering through a
+secret communication made by Anne the existence of a precontract, and
+the consequent vitiation of her marriage with the king, had been, to
+charge upon Anne a new and scandalous offence. Not until they had
+taken time to review the case, did they become aware of the injustice
+that had been perpetrated by their own precipitance: and as this was
+past all reparation, probably it was agreed amongst the few who were
+parties to the fatal oversight, that the safest course was to lock up
+the secret in darkness. But it is singular to watch the fatality of
+error which pursued this ill-starred marriage. Every successive
+critic, in exposing the errors of his predecessor, has himself
+committed some fresh blunder. Bishop Burnet, for instance, first of
+all in a Protestant age indicated the bloody mistakes of papal lawyers
+in 1536; not meaning at all to describe these mistakes as undetected
+by those who were answerable for them. Though hushed up, they were
+evidently known to their unhappy authors. Next upon Burnet, down comes
+Mr. Froude. Burnet had shaped his criticism thus: 'If,' he says, 'the
+queen was not married to the king, there was no adultery.' Certainly
+not. But, says Mr. Froude, Burnet forgets that she was condemned for
+conspiracy and incest, as well as for adultery. Then thirdly come we,
+and reverting to this charge of forgetfulness upon Burnet, we say,
+Forgets! but how was he bound to remember? The conspiracy, the incest,
+the adultery, all alike vanish from the record exactly as the
+character of wife vanishes from Anne. With any or all of these crimes
+Henry had no right to intermeddle. They were the crimes of one who
+never had borne any legal relation to him; crimes, therefore, against
+her own conscience, but not against the king in any character that he
+was himself willing permanently to assume.
+
+On this particular section of Henry's reign, the unhappy episode of
+his second wife, Mr. Froude has erred by insufficient rigour of
+justice. Inclined to do more justice than is usually done to the king,
+and not blind to the dissolute character of Anne, he has yet been
+carried, by the pity inalienable from the situation, to concede more
+to the pretences of doubt and suspense than is warranted by the
+circumstances of the case. Anne Boleyn was too surely guilty up to the
+height of Messalina's guilt, and far beyond that height in one
+atrocious instance.
+
+Passing from _that_ to the general pretensions of this very eloquent
+and philosophic book, we desire to say--that Mr. Froude is the first
+writer (first and sole) who has opened his eyes to comprehend the
+grandeur of this tremendous reign.
+
+
+
+
+THE ENGLISH IN INDIA.
+
+
+In now reproducing the three series of notes on the Indian Mutiny
+written by DE QUINCEY for me in _Titan_, I must advert briefly to the
+agony of apprehension under which the two earlier chapters were
+written. I can never forget the intense anxiety with which he studied
+daily the columns of _The Scotsman_ and _The Times_, looking wistfully
+for tidings from Roorkhee where his daughter FLORENCE was shut up. The
+father's heart was on the rack until news arrived that the little
+garrison was saved.
+
+The following paragraph from a letter written to his daughter EMILY on
+Sunday, December 1st, 1857, will give some idea of the tension of that
+terrible suspense:--
+
+'INDIA.--Up to the last mail but one (or briefly in its Latin form, up
+to the penultimate mail), I suffered in my nervous system to an extent
+that (except once, in 1812) had not experimentally been made known to
+me as a possibility. Every night, oftentimes all night long, I had the
+same dream--a vision of children, most of them infants, but not all,
+the _first_ rank being girls of five and six years old, who were
+standing in the air outside, but so as to touch the window; and I
+heard, or perhaps fancied that I heard, always the same dreadful word
+_Delhi_, not then knowing that a word even more dreadful---
+Cawnpore--was still in arrear. This fierce shake to my nerves caused
+almost from the beginning a new symptom to expose itself (of which
+previously I never had the faintest outline), viz. somnambulism; and
+now every night, to my great alarm, I wake up to find myself at the
+window, which is sixteen feet from the nearest side of the bed. The
+horror was unspeakable from the hell-dog Nena or Nana; how if this
+fiend should get hold of FLORENCE or her baby (now within seventeen
+days of completing her half year)? What first gave me any relief was a
+good firm-toned letter, dated _Rourkee_,[56] in the public journals,
+from which it was plain that _Rourkee_ had found itself able to act
+aggressively.'
+
+[Footnote 56: Anglo-Indian authorities seem to spell this word in four
+different ways.--H.]
+
+DE QUINCEY had reason to be proud of his son-in-law, COLONEL BAIRD
+SMITH, whose varied and brilliant services, culminating at the siege
+of Delhi, are written in the pages of SIR JOHN KAYE'S and COLONEL
+MALLESON'S _History of the Sepoy War_.
+
+On that fateful day at Delhi, when so much hung upon the decision as
+to whether the British should hold the ground they had won in the
+first assault, it is not too much to say that 'the splendid obstinacy'
+of BAIRD SMITH practically saved India.
+
+I throw together a few passages from the thrilling pages where the
+story is told--sufficient to enable the reader who comes fresh to the
+subject, to understand what manner of man this gallant engineer was
+who made his mark on British India.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rúrki (or Roorkhee) was the head-quarters of the Engineering Science
+of the country. When the news came of the Delhi massacre, BAIRD SMITH
+instantly made 'admirable arrangements for the defence of the great
+engineering depot, in which he took such earnest and loving interest.
+Officially, he was superintendent of irrigation in the north-western
+provinces--a most useful functionary, great in all the arts of peace,
+and with a reputation which any man might be proud to possess. But the
+man of much science now grew at once into the man of war, and Rúrki
+became a garrison under his command. Not an hour was lost.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+His timely express to MAJOR CHARLES REID to bring his men on by the
+Ganges Canal route instead of by forced marches was an early evidence
+of his combination of dash and sound judgment. REID said, that it
+saved the place and the lives of the ladies and children.
+
+From the hour that he made his appearance before Delhi as Chief
+Engineer, a succession of incidents stand on record which show his
+skill and courage. On the first occasion of BRIGADIER-GENERAL WILSON
+consulting him professionally, 'he threw all the earnestness of his
+nature into a great remonstrance against the project of withdrawal. He
+told the General that to raise the siege would be fatal to our
+national interests. 'It is our duty,' he said, 'to retain the grip
+which we now have upon Delhi, and to hold on like Grim Death until the
+place is our own.' He argued it ably. WILSON listened, and was
+convinced.
+
+In that supreme moment at the storming of Delhi, when the repulse of
+two columns, the heavy losses, and the great strength of the place
+caused the General to hesitate whether to continue the operations,
+England had cause to feel thankful for the tenacity and daring of two
+of her sons:--
+
+'From this fatal determination GENERAL WILSON was saved by the
+splendid obstinacy of BAIRD SMITH, aided by the soldier-like instincts
+of NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN.... The General undoubtedly believed that the
+safety of the army would be compromised by the retention of the
+positions they had gained. Fortunately, BAIRD SMITH was at his elbow.
+Appealed to by GENERAL WILSON as to whether he thought it possible for
+the army to retain the ground they had won, his answer was short and
+decisive, "We _must_ do so!" That was all. But the uncompromising
+tone, the resolute manner, the authority of the speaker, combined to
+make it a decision against which there was no appeal. GENERAL WILSON
+accepted it.... It is not too much to affirm, that a retrograde
+movement would, for the time, have lost India.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In spite of the sufferings attendant on a severe wound, the
+indomitable spirit of this brave soldier carried him through all
+trials until India was practically saved. Then, shattered by his many
+exertions, the breathing time came too late. His career is thus summed
+up in the following inscription on his tomb in Calcutta Cathedral:--
+
+'COLONEL RICHARD BAIRD SMITH of the Bengal Engineers, Master of the
+Calcutta Mint, C.B. and A.D.C. to the Queen, whose career, crowded
+with brilliant service, cut short at its brightest, was born at
+Lasswade on the 31st of December, 1818. He went to India in 1836.
+Already distinguished in the two Sikh wars, his conduct on the
+outbreak of revolt in 1857 showed what a clear apprehension, a stout
+heart, and a hopeful spirit could effect with scanty means in crushing
+disorder. Called to Delhi as chief engineer, his bold and ready
+judgment, his weighty and tenacious counsels, played a foremost part
+in securing the success of the siege and England's supremacy. The
+gathered wisdom of many years spent in administering the irrigation of
+Upper India, trained him for his crowning service--the survey of the
+great famine of 1861, the provision of relief, and the suggestions of
+safeguards against such calamities. Broken by accumulated labours, he
+died at sea, Dec. 13, 1861, aged scarcely 43 years. At Madras, where
+his Indian career began, his body awaits the resurrection.'
+
+His great work, the _Report on Italian Irrigation_, published with
+maps and plans in 1852, remains a monument of his engineering ability.
+COLONEL BAIRD SMITH also published:--
+
+(1) _Agricultural Resources of the Punjab._ London:
+1849. 8vo.
+
+(2) _The Cauvery, Kistnah, and Godavery; being a
+report on the works constructed on these rivers for the
+Irrigation of the provinces of Tanjore, Guntoor,
+Masulipatam, and Rajahmundry, in the Presidency of
+Madras._ London: 1856. 8vo.
+
+(3) _A Short Account of the Ganges Canal, with a
+description of some of the Principal Works._ 40 pp.
+Thomason College Press, Roorkee: 1870. 8vo.--H.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+HURRIED NOTICES OF INDIAN AFFAIRS.
+
+(_September, 1857._)
+
+
+From the foundations of the earth, no case in human action or
+suffering has occurred which could less need or less tolerate the aid
+of artificial rhetoric than that tremendous tragedy which now for
+three months long has been moving over the plains of Hindostan. What
+in Grecian days were called _aporreta_ ([Greek: aporrhêta]), things
+not utterable in human language or to human ears--things
+ineffable--things to be whispered--things to dream of, not to
+tell[57]--these things amongst high-caste Brahmims, and amongst the
+Rajapoots, or martial race of heroes; have been the common product of
+the passing hour.[58] Is this well? Is this a fitting end for the
+mighty religious system that through countless generations has
+overshadowed India? Yes, it _is_ well: it _is_ a fitting end for that
+man-destroying system, more cruel than the bloody religions of Mexico,
+which, for the deification of the individual, made hopeless Helots of
+the multitude. Henceforward CASTE _must_ virtually be at an end. Upon
+_caste_ has our Bengal army founded a final treason bloodier and
+larger than any known to human annals. Now, therefore, mere instincts
+of self-preservation--mere shame--mere fiery stress of necessity, will
+compel our East India Directory (or whatsoever power may now under
+parliamentary appointment inherit their responsibilities) to
+proscribe, once and for ever, by steadfast exclusion from all
+possibility of a martial career--to ruin by _legal_ degradation and
+incapacities, all Hindoo pretensions to places of trust, profit, or
+public dignity which found themselves upon high caste, as Brahmins or
+Rajapoots. Yes, it _is_ well that the high-_caste_ men, who existed
+only for the general degradation of their own Hindoo race in humbler
+stations, have themselves severed the links which connected them with
+the glory (so unmerited for _them_) of a nobler Western nationality.
+Bought though it is by earthly ruin, by torment, many times by
+indignities past utterance inflicted upon our dear massacred sisters,
+and upon their unoffending infants, yet for that very reason we must
+now maintain the great conquest so obtained. There is no man living so
+base--no, there is not a felon living amongst us, who could be
+persuaded to repeat the act of the Grecian leader Agamemnon--namely,
+to sacrifice his innocent daughter, just entering the portals of life
+in its most golden stage, on the miserable pretence of winning a
+_public_ benefit; masking a diabolical selfishness by the ostentation
+of public spirit. Yet if some calamity, or even some atrocity, _had_
+carried off the innocent creature under circumstances which involved
+an advantage to her country, or to coming generations, the most loving
+father might gradually allow himself to draw consolation from the
+happy consequences of a crime which he would have died to prevent.
+Even such a mixed necessity of feeling presses upon ourselves at
+present. From the bloody graves of our dear martyred sisters,
+scattered over the vast plains of India, rises a solemn adjuration to
+the spiritual ear of Him that listens with understanding. Audibly this
+spiritual voice says: O dear distant England! mighty to save, were it
+not that in the dreadful hour of our trial thou wert far away, and
+heardest not the screams of thy dying daughters and of their perishing
+infants. Behold! for us all is finished! We from our bloody graves, in
+which all of us are sleeping to the resurrection, send up united
+prayers to thee, that upon the everlasting memory of our hell-born
+wrongs, thou, beloved mother, wouldst engraft a counter-memory of
+everlasting retribution, inflicted upon the Moloch idolatries of
+India. Upon the pride of _caste_ rests for its ultimate root all this
+towering tragedy, which now hides the very heavens from India. Grant,
+therefore, O distant, avenging England--grant the sole commensurate
+return which to us _can_ be granted--us women and children that trod
+the fields of carnage alone--grant to our sufferings the virtue and
+lasting efficacy of a _lutron_ ([Greek: lutron]), or ransom paid down
+on behalf of every creature groaning under the foul idol of caste.
+Only by the sufferance of England can that idolatry prosper. Thou,
+therefore, England, when Delhi is swept by the ploughshare and sown
+with salt, build a solitary monument to us; and on its base inscribe
+that the last and worst of the murderous idolatries which plagued and
+persecuted the generations of men was by us abolished; and that by
+women and children was the pollution of caste cleansed from the earth
+for ever!
+
+[Footnote 57: 'A sight to dream of, not to tell.'--_Coleridge._]
+
+[Footnote 58: Twenty-three and twenty-eight thousand of these two
+orders we have in our Bengal army.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now let us descend into the circumstantialities of the case,
+explaining what may have been obscure to the general reader. By which
+term _general reader_ is meant, that reader who has had no reason for
+cultivating any acquaintance whatever with India; to whom, therefore,
+the whole subject is unbroken ground; and who neither knows, nor
+pretends to know, the merest outline of our British connection with
+India; what first carried us thither; what accidents of good luck and
+of imminent peril raised us from a mere commercial to a political
+standing; how we improved this standing by prodigious energy into the
+position of a conquering state; prospered rapidly by the opposition
+which we met; overthrew even our European competitors, of whom the
+deadliest were the French; pursued a difficult war with an able
+Mahometan upstart, Hyder Ali--a treacherous and cruel prince; next
+with his son, Tippoo Sahib, a still more ferocious scoundrel, who, in
+his second war with us, was settled effectually by one thrust of a
+bayonet in the hands of an English soldier. This war, and the
+consequent division of Tippoo's dominions, closed the eighteenth
+century. About 1817 we undertook the great Mahratta war; the
+victorious termination of which placed us, after sixty years of
+struggle, in the supreme rank amongst Indian potentates. All the rest
+of our power and greatness accrued to us by a natural and spontaneous
+evolution of consequences, most of which would have followed us as if
+by some magnetic attraction, had we ourselves been passive. No
+conquering state was ever yet so mild and beneficent in the spirit of
+its government, or so free from arrogance in its demeanour. An
+impression thoroughly false prevails even amongst ourselves, that we
+have pursued a systematic course of usurpations, and have displaced
+all the _ancient_ thrones of Hindostan. Unfortunately for this
+representation, it happens that all the leading princes of India whose
+power and rank brought them naturally into collision with ourselves,
+could not be ancient, having been originally official dependants upon
+the great Tartar prince, whose throne was usually at Agra or Delhi,
+and whom we called sometimes the Emperor, or the Shah, or more often
+the _Great Mogul_. During the decay of the Mogul throne throughout the
+eighteenth century, these dependent princes had, by continual
+encroachments on the weakness of their sovereign, made themselves
+independent rulers; but they could not be older than the great Mogul
+Shah himself, who had first created them. Now the Mogul throne was
+itself a mere modern creation, owing its birth to Baber, the
+great-grandson of Tamerlane. But Baber, the eldest of these Tartar
+princes, synchronised with our English Henry VIII. In reality, there
+was nothing old in India that could be displaced by us; at least
+amongst the Mahometan princes. Some ancient Hindoo Rajahs there were
+in obscure corners, but without splendour of wealth or military
+distinction; and the charge of usurpation was specially absurd, since
+we pre-eminently were the king-makers, the king-supporters, the
+king-pensioners, in Hindostan; and excepting the obscure princes just
+mentioned, almost every Indian prince, at the time of our opening
+business in the political line, happened to be a usurper. We ourselves
+made the Rajah of Oude into a king; we ourselves more than once saved
+the supreme Shah (_i. e._ the Great Mogul) from military ruin, and for
+many a year saved _him_ and _his_ from the painful condition of
+insolvency. But all this is said in the way of parenthesis. In another
+number, a sketch of our Indian Empire, in its growth and early
+oscillations, may be presented to the reader, specially adapted to the
+use of those whose reading has not lain in that direction. Now let us
+return to the great domineering question of the hour--the present
+tremendous revolt on the part of seventy or eighty thousand men in our
+Bengal Presidency.
+
+This mutiny we propose to notice briefly but searchingly under three
+heads--first, in its relation to the mutineers themselves; next, in
+its relation to ourselves; but, subdividing that question, we will
+assign the second head to the consideration of its probable bearing on
+our political credit and reputation; whilst the third head may be
+usefully given to the consideration of its bearing on our pecuniary
+interests, and our means of effectual reparation for the ruins left
+behind by rebellion, and by the frantic spasms of blind destruction.
+
+First, then, let us look for a moment at this great tumultuary
+movement, as it points more or less obscurely to the ulterior purposes
+of the mutineers, and the temper in which they pursue those purposes.
+In a newspaper of Saturday, August 15, we observe the following
+sentence introductory to a most unsatisfactory discussion of the
+Indian revolt:--'The mutiny in India, from the uninterrupted nature of
+its progress, and its rapid spread through every considerable station,
+shows a power of combination and determination which has never before
+been given credit for to the native Indian mind.' This passage is
+cited by us, not for anything plausible in its views, but for the
+singular felicity of contradiction which fortunately it offers to
+every indication of the true disposable ability that is now, or ever
+has been, at the service of the insurgents. This, indeed, is rapidly
+becoming of very subordinate importance; since the ablest rebel,
+without an army, must be contemptible enough. But with a view to the
+larger question--What quality of opposition is ever likely to be
+brought into play against us, not in merely military displays, but in
+the secret organisation of plots and local tumults, propagated over
+extensive provinces? Some degree of anxiety is reasonable under any
+possible condition of the army; and this being so, it is satisfactory
+to observe, now in 1857, the same childishness and defect of plan and
+coherent purpose as have ever characterised the oriental mind. No
+foresight has been exhibited; no concert between remote points; no
+preparation; no tendency towards combined action. And, on the other
+hand, it is most justly noticed by a new London paper, of the same
+date--namely, the _People_--that it is perfectly dazzling to the mind
+to review over the whole face of India, under almost universal
+desertion, the attitude of erectness and preparation assumed by the
+scattered parties of our noble countrymen--'everywhere' (says the
+_People_) 'driven to bay, and everywhere turning upon and scattering
+all assailants. From all parts is the same tale. No matter how small
+the amount of the British force may be, if it were but a captain's
+company, it holds its own.' On the other hand, what single success
+have the rebels achieved? Most valiant, no doubt, they have shown
+themselves in hacking to pieces poor fugitive women, most intrepid in
+charging a column of infants. Else, what have they to show? Delhi is
+the solitary post which they have for the moment secured; but even
+that through the incomprehensible failure of the authorities at
+Meerut, and not through any vigour manifested by themselves. Any
+uneasiness which still possesses the minds of close observers fastens
+upon these two points--first, upon the disarmings, as distinguished
+from the desertions; secondly, upon the amount, and probable
+equipment, and supposed route of stragglers. It is now said that the
+mutiny has burned itself out from mere defect of fuel; there _can_ be
+no more revolts of sepoys, seeing that no sepoys now remain to revolt;
+that is, of the Bengal force. But in this general statement a great
+distinction is neglected. Regiments once disarmed, if also _stripped
+of their private arms_, whether deserters or not, are of slight
+account; but the grave question is this--how many of (say seventy)
+regiments have gone off _previously_ to the disarming. Even in that
+case, the most favourable for _them_ where arms are secured, it is
+true that ammunition will very soon fail them; but still their
+bayonets will be available; and we believe that the East India
+infantry carry swords. A second anxiety connects itself with the vast
+number of vagrant marauding soldiers, having power to unite, and to
+assail small detached stations or private bungalows. Yet, again, in
+cases known specially to ourselves, the inhabitants of such small
+insulated stations had rapidly fortified the buildings best fitted for
+defence. Already, by the 18th of May, in a station not far from Delhi,
+this had been effected; every native servant, male or female, had been
+discharged instantly; and perhaps they would be able to strengthen
+themselves with artillery. The horrors also of the early murders at
+Delhi would be likely to operate beneficially, by preventing what
+otherwise is sure to happen--namely, the disposition to relax in
+vigilance as first impressions wear off. Considering, upon the whole,
+the amount of regiments that may be assumed as absolutely disarmed and
+neutralised; and, on the other hand, counting the 5000 and upwards of
+troops intercepted on their route to Hong-Kong, and adding these to at
+least 25,000 of Queen's troops previously in the country, counting
+also the faithful section of the Sikhs, the Ghoorkas, and others that
+could be relied on, the upshot must be, that at least 40,000 troops of
+the best quality are scattered between the Hoogly and the Sutlege (or,
+in other words, between Calcutta and Loodiana[59]). Beyond a few
+casual outrages on some small scale, we hope that no more of bloody
+tragedies can be _now_ (August 25) apprehended. But we, that have dear
+friends in Bengal, must, for weeks to come, feel restless and anxious.
+Still, this is a great mitigation of the horror that besieged our
+anticipations six weeks ago.
+
+[Footnote 59: '_Loodiana_:'--The very last station in Bengal, on going
+westwards to the Indus. In Runjeet Singh's time this was for many
+years the station at which we lodged our Affghan pensioner, the Shah
+Soojah--too happy, had he never left his Loodiana lodgings.]
+
+But, having thrown a glance at the shifting aspects of the danger, now
+let us alight for a moment on the cause of this dreadful outbreak. We
+have no separate information upon this part of the subject, but we
+have the results of our own vigilant observations upon laying this
+and that together; and so much we will communicate. From the first, we
+have rejected incredulously the immoderate effects ascribed to the
+greased cartridges; and not one rational syllable is there in the
+pretended rumours about Christianising the army. Not only is it
+impossible that folly so gross should maintain itself against the
+unremitting evidence of facts, all tending in the opposite direction;
+but, moreover, under any such idle solution as this, there would still
+remain another point unaccounted for, and _that_ is the frantic hatred
+borne towards ourselves by many of the rebellious troops. Some of our
+hollow friends in France, Belgium, &c., profess to read in this hatred
+an undeniable inference that we must have treated the sepoys harshly,
+else how explain an animosity so deadly. To that argument we have a
+very brief answer, such as seems decisive. The Bengalese sepoy,[60]
+when most of all pressed for some rational explanation of his fury,
+never once thought of _this_ complaint; besides which, it is too
+notorious that our fault has always lain the other way. Heavily
+criminal, in fact, we had been by our lax discipline; and in
+particular, the following most scandalous breach of discipline must
+have been silently connived at for years by British authorities.
+Amongst the outward forms of respect between man and man, there is
+none that has so indifferently belonged to all nations, as the act of
+rising from a sedentary posture for the purpose of expressing respect.
+Most other forms of respect have varied with time and with place. The
+ancient Romans, for instance, never bowed; and amongst orientals, you
+are thought to offer an insult if you uncover your head. In this
+little England of ours, who could fancy two stout men curtseying to
+each other? Yet this they did, and so recently as in Shakspere's days.
+To use his words, they 'crook'd the pregnant hinges of the knee.'
+Sometimes they curtseyed with the right knee singly, sometimes with
+both, as did Romeo to the fiery Tybalt. Many and rapid, therefore,
+were the changes in ceremonial forms, at least with us, the changeable
+men of Christendom; else how could it happen that, two hundred and
+fifty years back, men of rank in England should have saluted each
+other by forms that now would be thought to indicate lunacy? And yet,
+violent as the spirit of change might otherwise be, one thing never
+changed--the expression of respect between man and man by rising from
+their seats.
+
+    'Utque viro sancto _chorus assurrexerit_ omnis'
+
+is a record belonging to the eldest of days; and that it belonged not
+to the eldest times only, but also to the highest rank, is involved in
+a memorable anecdote from the last days of Julius Cæsar. He, the
+mighty dictator--
+
+    'Yes, he, the foremost man of all this world'--
+
+actually owed his assassination, under one representation, to the
+burning resentment of his supposed aristocratic hauteur in a public
+neglect of this very form. A deputation of citizens, on a matter of
+business, had found him seated, and to their immeasurable disgust, he
+had made no effort even to rise. His friends excused him on the
+allegation, whether true or not, that at the moment he was physically
+incapacitated from rising by a distressing infirmity. It might be so:
+as Shakspere elsewhere observes, the black silk patch knows best
+whether there is a wound underneath it. But, if it were _not_ so, then
+the imperial man paid the full penalty of his offence, supposing the
+rancorous remembrance of that one neglect were truly and indeed what
+armed the Ides of March against his life. But, were this story as
+apocryphal as the legends of our nurseries, still the bare possibility
+that 'the laurelled majesty'[61] of that mighty brow should have been
+laid low by one frailty of this particular description--this
+possibility recalls us clamorously to the treasonable character of
+such an insolence, when practised systematically for the last eighteen
+months by a Pagan hound, by a sepoy from Lucknow or Benares, towards
+his British commanding officer. Shall it have been possible that the
+founder of the Roman empire died for having ignored the decencies of
+human courtesy, perhaps through momentary inattention, by wandering of
+thoughts, or by that collapse of energy which sometimes steps between
+our earnest intentions and their fulfilment--this man, so august,
+shall he have expiated by a bloody death one fleeting moment of
+forgetfulness? and yet, on the other hand, under our Indian
+government, the lowest of our servants, a mass of carrion from a
+brotherhood of Thugs, shall have had free license to insult the
+leaders of the army which finds bread for him and his kindred? That
+the reader may understand what it is that we are talking of--not very
+long ago, in one of the courts-martial occasioned by some explosions
+of tentative insubordination preliminary to the grand revolt, a
+British officer, holding the rank of lieutenant, made known to the
+court, that through the last twelve or eighteen months he had been
+struck and shocked by one alarming phenomenon within the cantonments
+of the sepoys: formerly, on his entering the lines, the men had risen
+respectfully from their seats as he walked along; but since 1854, or
+thereabouts, they had insolently looked him in the face, whilst
+doggedly retaining their seats. Now this was a punishable breach of
+discipline, which in our navy _would_ be punished without fail. Even a
+little middy, fresh from the arms of his sisters or his nurse, and who
+does not bear any royal commission, as an ensign or cornet in the
+army, is thus supported in the performance of his duty, and made
+respectable in the eyes of his men, though checked in all explosions
+of childish petulance--even to this child, as an officer in command,
+respect is exacted; and on the finest arena of discipline ever
+exhibited to the world, it is habitually felt that from open
+disrespect to the ruin of all discipline the steps of descent are
+rapid. This important fact in evidence as to the demeanour of the
+sepoy, throws a new light upon the whole revolt. Manifestly it had
+been moulding and preparing itself for the last two years, or more.
+And those authorities who had tolerated Colonel Wheler for months,
+might consistently tolerate this presumption in the sepoy for a year.
+
+[Footnote 60: For the sake of readers totally unacquainted with the
+subject, it may be as well to make an explanation or two. The East
+India regiments generally run to pretty high numbers--1000 or 1200.
+The _high_ commissioned officers, as the captain, lieutenant, &c., are
+always British; but the _non-commissioned_ officers are always native
+Hindoos--that is, sepoys. For instance, the _naïk_, or corporal; the
+_havildar_, or serjeant:--even of the _commissioned_ officers, the
+_lowest_ are unavoidably native, on account of the native private.
+Note that _sepoy_, as colloquially it is called, but _sipahee_, as in
+books it is often written, does not mean Hindoo or Hindoo soldier, but
+is simply the Hindoo word for _soldier_.]
+
+[Footnote 61: '_The laurelled majesty_,' &c.:--A flying reference to a
+grand expression--_majestas laurea frontis_--which occurs in a Latin
+supplement to the _Pharsalia_ by May, an English poet, contemporary
+with the latter days of Shakspere.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We had, in reliance upon receiving fuller materials for discussion by
+the Eastern mail _arriving_ in the middle of August, promised by
+anticipation two heads for our review, which, under the imperfect
+explanations received, we are compelled to defer. Meantime, upon each
+of these two heads we shall point the attention of our readers to one
+or two important facts, First, as regards the sepoy revolt considered
+in relation to the future pecuniary burdens on the Bengal exchequer,
+it ought to be remembered, that, if (according to a very loose report)
+the Company shall finally be found to have lost twenty millions of
+rupees, or two millions sterling, by the looting of many local
+treasuries, it will, on the other hand, have saved, upon forfeited
+pay, and (which is much more important) upon, forfeited pensions, in
+coming years, a sum nearly corresponding. Secondly, this _loot_ or
+plunder must have served the public interest in a variety of ways. It
+must have cramped the otherwise free motions of the rebels; must have
+given multiplied temptations to desertion; must have instilled
+jealousies of each other, and want of cordial co-operation in regard
+to the current plans, and oftentimes murderous animosities in regard
+to past transactions--divisions of spoil, or personal competitions.
+Thus far, if nothing had been concerned more precious than money, it
+is by no means clear that the _public_ service (as distinct from the
+interest of private individuals, whose property has been destroyed)
+will be found to have very seriously suffered.
+
+The other head, which concerns the probable relation of this
+astonishing revolt to the wisdom of our late Indian administration,
+finds us, for the present, enveloped in a mystery the most
+impenetrable that history, in any of its darkest chapters, has
+offered. We have a war on foot with Southern China, or rather with
+Canton; and what may be the Chinese object in that war, is hitherto an
+impenetrable mystery. But darker and more unfathomable is the mystery
+which invests the sepoy insurrection. Besides the notorious fact that
+no grievances, the very slightest, have been alleged, it must also be
+remembered that we first and solely made a provision for the invalided
+and for the superannuated soldier--a thing unheard of throughout Asia.
+And this golden reversion, the poor infatuated savages have _wilfully_
+renounced! The sole _sure_ result, from this most suicidal of revolts,
+is--that unpitied myriads of sepoys will be bayonetted, thousands will
+be hanged, and nearly all will lose their pensions.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+PASSING NOTICES OF INDIAN AFFAIRS.
+
+(_October, 1857._)
+
+
+An English historian--one amongst many--of our British India, having
+never happened to visit any part of that vast region, nor, indeed, any
+part of the East, founded upon that accident a claim to a very
+favourable distinction. It was, Mr. Mill argued, desirable--it was a
+splendid advantage--NOT to have seen India. This advantage he singly,
+amongst a crowd of coming rivals and precursors, might modestly plead;
+and to that extent he pretended to a precedency amongst all his
+competitors.
+
+The whole claim, and the arguments which supported it, wore the aspect
+of a paradox; and a paradox it certainly was--but not, therefore, a
+falsehood. A paradox, as I have many times explained, or proposition
+contradicting the _doxa_ or public opinion, not only may be true, but
+often has been the leading truth in capital struggles of opinion. Not
+only the true doctrine, but also, in some branches of science, the
+very fundamental doctrine, that which at this day furnishes a
+foundation to all the rest, originally came forward as a violent and
+revolting, paradox.[62] It is possible enough, therefore, that the
+Indian historiographer may have been right, and not merely speciously
+ingenious. It is something of a parallel case, which we may all have
+known through the candid admissions of the Duke of Wellington, that
+the battle of Waterloo might by possibility have been reported as
+satisfactorily, on the 18th of June, 1815, from the centre of London
+smoke, as from the centre of that Belgian smoke which sat in heavy
+clouds throughout the day upon the field of battle. Now and then, it
+is true, these Belgian clouds drew up in solemn draperies, and
+revealed the great tragic spectacle lying behind them for a brief
+interval. But they closed up again, and what the spectator saw through
+these fugitive openings would have availed him little indeed, unless
+in so far as it was extended and interpreted by _information_ issuing
+from the British staff. But this information would have been not less
+material and effectual towards a history of the mighty battle, if
+furnished to a man sitting in a London drawing-room, than if furnished
+to a reporter watching as an eye-witness at Hougoumont.
+
+[Footnote 62: This truth, for the sake of making it more impressive, I
+threw long ago into this antithetic form; and I will not scruple, out
+of any fear that I may be reproached with repeating myself, to place
+it once again on record:--'Not _that_ only is strictly a paradox,
+which, being false, is popularly regarded as true;' but that also, and
+in a prodigiously greater extent, which, being true, is popularly
+regarded as false.]
+
+This one Waterloo illustration, if thoughtfully applied, might yield a
+justification for the paradoxical historian. Much more, therefore,
+might it yield a justification for us at home, who, sitting at ten
+thousand miles' distance, take upon us to better the Indian reports
+written on the spot, to correct their errors of haste, or to improve
+them by showing the inferences which they authorise. We, who write
+upon the awful scenes of India at far-distant stations, do not so
+truly enjoy _unequal_ advantages, as we enjoy varying and _dissimilar_
+advantages.
+
+According to the old proverb, the bystander sees more of the game than
+those who share too closely in its passions. And assuredly, if it were
+asked, what it is that we who write upon Indian news aspire to effect,
+I may reply frankly, that, if but by a single suggestion any one of us
+should add something to the illumination of the great sepoy
+conspiracy--whether as to its ultimate purpose, or as to its
+machinery, or as to its wailing hopes, or if but by the merest trifle
+any one of us should take away something from the load of anxious
+terrors haunting the minds of all who have relations in India--that
+man will have earned his right to occupy the public ear. For my own
+part, I will not lose myself at present, when so much darkness
+prevails on many leading questions, in any views too large and
+theoretic for our present condition of light. And that I may not be
+tempted into doing so, I will proceed without regard to any systematic
+order, taking up, exactly as chance or preponderant interest may offer
+them, any urgent questions of the hour, before the progress of events
+may antiquate them, or time may exhale their flavour. This desultory
+and moody want of order has its attractions for many a state of
+nervous distraction. Every tenth reader may happen to share in the
+distraction, so far as it has an Indian origin. The same deadly
+anxiety on behalf of female relatives, separated from their male
+protectors in the centre of a howling wilderness, now dedicated as an
+altar to the dark Hindoo goddess of murder, may, in the reader also,
+as well as in the writer on Indian news, periodically be called on to
+submit to the insurmountable aggravation of delay. In such a case,
+what is good for one may be good for another. The same inexpressible
+terrors, so long as Nena Sahibs and other miscreant sons of hell are
+roaming through the infinite darkness, may prompt the same fretfulness
+of spirit; the same deadly irritation and restlessness, which cannot
+but sharpen the vision of fear, will sharpen also that of watching
+hope, and will continually read elements of consolation or trust in
+that which to the uninterested eye offers only a barren blank.
+
+
+EUROPEANS.
+
+I am not sorry that the first topic, which chance brings uppermost, is
+one which overflows with the wrath of inexhaustible disgust. What
+fiend of foolishness has suggested to our absurd kinsmen in the East,
+through the last sixty years, to generalise themselves under the name
+of _Europeans_? As if they were ashamed of their British connections,
+and precisely at that moment when they are leaving England, they begin
+to assume continental airs; when bidding farewell to Europe, they
+begin to style themselves _Europeans_, as if it were a greater thing
+to take up a visionary connection with the Continent, than to found a
+true and indestructible nobility upon their relationship to the one
+immortal island of this planet. There is no known spot of earth which
+has exerted upon the rest of the planet one-thousandth part of the
+influence which this noble island has exercised over the human
+race--exercised through the noblest organs; and yet, behold! these
+coxcombs of our own blood have no sooner landed on Indian soil, than
+they are anxious to disclaim the connection. Such at least is the
+_apparent_ construction of their usage. But mark the illogical
+consequences which follow. A noble British regiment suddenly, and for
+no rational purpose, receives a new baptism, and becomes a European
+regiment. The apologist for this folly will say, that a British
+regiment does not necessarily exclude Germans, for instance. But I
+answer that it _does_. The British Government have, during this very
+month of September, 1857, declared at Frankfort (in answer to
+obstinate applications from puppies who fancy that we cannot tame our
+rebels without _their_ assistance), '_that the British army, by its
+constitution, does not admit foreigners_.' But suppose that accidents
+of aristocratic patronage have now and then privately introduced a few
+Germans or Swedes into a very few regiments, surely this accident,
+improbable already, was not _more_ probable when the regiment was
+going away for twenty years (the old term of expatriation) to a
+half-year's distance from the Rhine and the Danube. The Germanism of
+the regiment might altogether evaporate in the East, but could not
+possibly increase. Next, observe this; if we must lose our
+nationality, and transmute ourselves into Europeans, for the very
+admirable reason that we were going away to climates far remote from
+Germany, then, at least, we ought not to call our native troops
+_sepoys_, but _Asiatics_. In this way only will there be any logical
+parity of antithesis. Scripturally, we are the children of Japheth;
+and, as all Asiatics are the sons of Shem, then we shall be able to
+mortify their conceit, by calling to their knowledge our biblical
+prophecy, that the sons of Japheth shall sit down in the tents of
+Shem. But, thirdly, even thus we should find ourselves in a dismal
+chaos of incoherences; for what is to become of 'Jack'? Must our
+sailors be re-baptised? Must Jack also be a _European_? Think of
+Admiral Seymour reporting to the Admiralty as a leader of Europeans!
+and exulting in having circumvented Yeh by Her Majesty's European
+crews! And then, lastly, come the Marines: must they also qualify for
+children of Europe? Was there ever such outrageous folly? One is sure,
+in the fine picturesque words of Chaucer, that, 'for very filth and
+shame,' neither admiral nor the youngest middy would disgrace himself
+by such ridiculous finery from the rag-fair of cosmopolitan swindling.
+The real origin of so savage an absurdity is this:--Amongst the
+commercial bodies of the three presidencies in all the leading cities,
+it became a matter of difficulty often to describe special individuals
+in any way legally operative. Your wish was to distinguish him from
+the native merchant or banker; but to do this by calling him a British
+merchant, &c., was possibly not true, and legally, therefore, not
+safe. He might be a Dane, a Russian, or a Frenchman; he was described,
+therefore, in a more generalising way, as a European. But a case so
+narrow as _that_--a case for pawnbrokers and old clothesmen--ought not
+to regulate the usage of great nations. Grand and spirit-stirring
+(especially in a land far _distant_ from home) are the recollections
+of towns or provinces connected with men's nativities. And poisonous
+to all such ancestral inspirations are the rascally devices of shroffs
+and money-changers.
+
+
+DELHI.
+
+That man--I suppose we are all agreed--who commanded in Meerut on
+Sunday the tenth day of May, in the year of Christ one thousand eight
+hundred and fifty-seven, a day which will furnish an epoch for ever to
+the records of civilisation--that man who _could_ have stopped the
+bloody kennel of hounds, but did _not_, racing in full cry to the
+homes of our unsuspecting brothers and sisters in Delhi--it were good
+for that man if he had not been born. He had notice such as might have
+wakened the dead early in the afternoon (2 or 3 o'clock P.M., I
+believe), and yet, at the end of a long summer day, torchlight found
+him barely putting his foot into the stirrup. And why into the stirrup
+at all? For what end, on what pretence, should he ever have played out
+the ridiculous pantomime and mockery of causing the cavalry to mount?
+Two missions there were to execute on that fatal night--first, to save
+our noble brothers and sisters at Delhi from a ruin that was destined
+to be total; secondly, to inflict instant and critical retribution
+upon those who had already opened the carnival of outrage, before they
+left Meerut. Oh, heaven and earth! heart so timid was there in all
+this world, sense of wrong so callous, as not to leap with frenzy of
+joy at so sublime a summons to wield the most impassioned functions of
+Providence--namely, hell-born destroyers to destroy in the very
+instant of their fancied triumph, and suffering innocence to raise
+from the dust in the very crisis of its last despairing prostration.
+Reader! it is not exaggeration--many a heart will bear witness in
+silence that it is _not_--if I should say that men exist, who would
+gladly pay down thirty years of life in exchange for powers so
+heavenly for redressing earthly wrongs. To the infamous torpor on that
+occasion, and the neglect of the fleeting hour that struck the signal
+for delivery and vengeance, are due many hundreds of the piteous
+outrages that have since polluted Bengal. Do I mean that, if the rebel
+capture of Delhi had been prevented, no subsequent outrages would have
+followed? By no means. Other horrors would have been perpetrated; but
+that first and greatest (always excepting the case of Cawnpore) would
+by all likelihood have been intercepted.[63]
+
+[Footnote 63: Here observe there were 2300 admirable British troops,
+and about 700 men of the mutineers, who might then have been attacked
+at a great advantage, whilst dispersed on errands of devastation.
+Contrast with these proportions the heroic exertions of the noble
+Havelock--fighting battle after battle, with perhaps never more than
+1700 or 1800 British troops; and having scarcely a gun but what he
+captured from the enemy. And what were the numbers of his enemy? Five
+thousand in the earlier actions, and 10,000 to 12,000 in the last.]
+
+But perhaps his military means were inadequate to the crisis? He had
+duties to Meerut, not less than duties of vengeance and of sudden
+deliverance for Delhi. True: he had so; and he had means for meeting
+all these duties. He had a well-mounted establishment of military
+force, duly organized in all its arms. Three-and-twenty hundreds he
+had of British, suitably proportioned as to infantry, cavalry, and
+artillery--a little army that would have faced anything that Delhi
+could at that time have put forward. Grant that Delhi could have
+mustered 5000 men: these are three propositions having no doubtful
+bearing upon such a fact:--
+
+1. That cheerfully would this little British force have faced any
+Asiatic force of 5000 men, which, indeed, it can hardly be necessary
+to say, in the face of so large and so transcendent an experience.
+
+2. That the Delhi force, could have reached the amount supposed of
+5000 only after a junction with the Meerut mutineers; which junction
+it was the main business of the Meerut commander to intercept.
+
+3. That this computation assumes also the whole of the Delhi garrison
+to be well affected to the mutineers; an assumption altogether
+unwarrantable on the _outside_ of Delhi during the 10th and 11th of
+May.
+
+Such were (1) the _motives_ of the commander at Meerut towards a noble
+and energetic resolution; such were (2) his _means_.[64]
+
+[Footnote 64: Mr. D. B. Jones comes forward to defend the commandant
+of Meerut. How? The last sentence only of his letter has any sort of
+reference to the public accusation; and this sentence replies, but not
+with _any_ mode of argument (sound or unsound), to a charge perfectly
+irrelevant, if it had ever existed--namely, an imaginary charge
+against the little army assembled on May 10 at Meerut. The short and
+summary answer is, that no such imaginary charge, pure and absolute
+moonshine, was ever advanced against the gallant force at Meerut.
+
+Secondly, if it had, such a charge could have no bearing whatever upon
+that charge, loudly preferred against the commander of that district.
+
+Thirdly, the charge has been (I presume) settled as regards its truth,
+and any grounds of disputation, this way or that, by the
+Governor-General. The newspapers have told us, and have not been
+contradicted, that Lord Canning has dismissed this functionary for
+'_supineness_.']
+
+Thinking of that vile _lacheté_, which surrendered, with a girl's
+tameness, absolutely suffered to lapse, without effort, and as if a
+bauble, this great arsenal and magazine into the hands of the
+revolters, involuntarily we have regarded it all along as a deadly
+misfortune; and, upon each periodic mail, the whole nation has
+received the news of its non-capture as a capital disappointment.
+
+But, on steadier consideration, apparently all this must be regarded
+as a very great error. Not that it could be any error to have wished
+for any course of events involving the safety of our poor slaughtered
+compatriots. That event would have been cheap at _any_ price. But that
+dismal catastrophe _having_ happened, to intercept that bitter wo
+having been already ripened into an impossibility by the 11th and 12th
+of May, seven-and-forty days before our thoughts at home began to
+settle upon India, thenceforwards it became a very great advantage--a
+supreme advantage--that Delhi should have been occupied by the
+mutineers. Briefly, then, why?
+
+First of all, because this movement shut up within one ring fence the
+_élite_ of the rebels (according to some calculations, at least
+three-and-twenty thousand of well-armed and well-disciplined men),
+that would otherwise have been roaming over the whole face of Bengal
+as marauders and murderers. These men, left to follow their own
+vagrant instincts, would, it is true, in some not inconsiderable
+proportion, have fallen victims to those fierce reactions of rustic
+vengeance which their own atrocities would very soon have provoked.
+But large concentrated masses would still have survived in a condition
+rapidly disposable as auxiliary bodies to all those towns invested by
+circumstances with a partisan interest, such as Lucknow, Benares,
+Cawnpore, Agra, Gwalior, and Allahabad.
+
+Secondly, Delhi it was that opened the horrors of retribution; mark
+what chastisement it was that alighted from the very first upon all
+the scoundrels who sought, and fancied they could not fail to find, an
+asylum in Delhi. It is probable that hardly one in twenty of the
+mutineers came to Delhi without plunder, and for strong reasons this
+plunder would universally assume the shape of heavy metallic money.
+For the public treasuries in almost every station were rifled; and
+unhappily for the comfort of the robbers under the Bengal sun of June
+and July, very much of the East Indian money lies in silver--namely,
+rupees; of which, in the last generation, eight were sufficient to
+make an English pound; but at present ten are required by the evil
+destiny of sepoys. Everybody has read an anecdote of the painter
+Correggio, that, upon finishing a picture for some monastery, the
+malicious monks paid him for it in copper. The day of payment was hot,
+and poor Correggio was overweighted; he lay down under his copper
+affliction; and whether he died or not, is more than I remember. But
+doubtless, to the curious in Correggiosity, Pilkington will tell. For
+the sepoys, although _their_ affliction took the shape of silver, and
+not of copper, virtually it was not less, considering the far more
+blazing sun. Mephistopheles might have arranged the whole affair. One
+could almost hear him whispering to each separate sepoy, as he stood
+amongst the treasury burglars, the reflection that those _pensions_,
+which the kind and munificent English Government granted to their old
+age or their infirmities, all over India, raising up memorial trophies
+of public gratitude or enlightened pity, never more would be heard of.
+All had perished, the justice that gave, the humble merit that
+received, the dutiful behaviour that hoped; and henceforwards of them
+and of their names, as after the earliest of rebellions, in the book
+of life 'was no remembrance.'
+
+Under these miserable thoughts the vast majority of the sepoys robbed
+largely, as opportunities continually opened upon them. Then, and
+chiefly _through_ their robberies, commenced their chastisement in
+good earnest. Every soldier by every comrade was viewed with hatred
+and suspicion; by the common labourer with the scrutiny of deep
+self-interest. The popular report of their sudden wealth travelled
+rapidly; every road, village, house, whether ahead or on their flanks,
+became a place of distrust and anxious jealousy; and Delhi seemed to
+offer the only safe asylum. Thither, as to a consecrated sanctuary,
+all hurried; and their first introduction to the duties of the new
+home they had adopted, would be a harsh and insolent summons to the
+chances of a desperate _sortie_ against men in whose presence their
+very souls sank. On reviewing the circumstances which _must_ have
+surrounded this Delhi life, probably no nearer resemblance to a hell
+of apostate spirits has ever existed. Money, carried in weighty
+parcels of coin, cannot be concealed. Swathed about the person, it
+disfigures the natural symmetries of the figure. The dilemma,
+therefore, in which every individual traitor stood was, that, if he
+escaped a special notice from every eye, this must have been because
+all his crimes had failed to bring him even a momentary gain. Having
+no money, he had no swollen trousers. For ever he had forfeited the
+pension that was the pledge of comfort and respectability to his
+family and his own old age. This he had sacrificed, in exchange
+for--nothing at all. But, on the other hand, if his robberies had been
+very productive and prosperous, in that proportion he became
+advertised to every eye, indicated and betrayed past all concealment
+to every ruffian less fortunate as a pillager. Delhi must in several
+points have ripened his troubles, and showed them on a magnifying
+disk. To have no confidential friend, or adviser, or depositary of a
+secret, is an inevitable evil amongst a population constitutionally
+treacherous. But now in Delhi this torment takes a more fearful shape.
+Every fifth or sixth day, when he is sternly ordered out upon his turn
+of duty, what shall he do with his money? He has by possibility 40
+lbs. weight of silver, each pound worth about three guineas. In the
+very improbable case of his escaping the gallows, since the British
+Government will endeavour to net the whole monstrous crew that have
+one and all broken the _sacramentum militare_, for which scourging
+with rods and subsequent strangulation is the inevitable penalty, what
+will remain to his poor family? His cottage, that once had been his
+pride, will now betray him, as soon as ever movable columns are
+formed, and horse-patrols begin to inspect the roads. But, as to his
+money, in nineteen cases out of twenty, he will find himself obliged
+to throw it away in his flight, and will then find that through three
+months of intolerable suffering he has only been acting as steward for
+some British soldier.
+
+The private letters and the local newspapers from many parts of India
+having now come in, it is possible through the fearful confusion to
+read some facts that would cause despair, were it not for two
+remembrances: first, what nation it is that supports the struggle;
+secondly, that of the six weeks immediately succeeding to the 10th of
+September, no two days, no period of forty-eight hours, _can_ pass
+without continued successions of reinforcements reaching Calcutta. It
+should be known that even the worst sailers among the transports--namely,
+exactly those which were despatched from England through the course of
+_July_ (not of August)--are all under contract to perform the voyage in
+seventy days; whereas many a calculation has proceeded on the old rate
+of ninety days. The small detachments of two and three hundreds,
+despatched on every successive day of July, are already arriving at
+their destination; and the August detachments, generally much stronger
+(800 or 900), all sailed in powerful steamers. Lord Elgin arrived at
+Calcutta in time to be reported by this mail, with marines (300) and
+others (300), most seasonably to meet the dangers and uproars of the
+great Mahometan festival. The bad tidings are chiefly these:--
+
+1. The failure of a night-attack upon the Dinapore mutineers by
+detachments from two of our British regiments, with a loss of '200
+_killed_'; in which, however, there _must_ be a mistake; for the total
+number of our attacking party was only 300. On the other hand, there
+may have been some call for a consciously desperate effort; and the
+enemy, having two regiments, would muster, probably, very nearly 2000
+men; for the sepoy regiments are always strong in numbers, and these
+particular regiments had not suffered.
+
+2. Much more ominous than these reports, is an estimate of our main
+force before Delhi at less than 2000 men. This, unhappily, is not
+intrinsically improbable. The force was, by many persons, never
+reckoned at more than 6000 or 7000 men; and this, when reduced by
+three-and-twenty conflicts (perhaps more), in which the enemy had the
+advantage of artillery more powerful than ours, and (what is worse) of
+trained artillerymen more numerous, might too naturally come down to
+the small number stated.
+
+3. The doubtful condition of Lucknow, Benares, and Agra comes in the
+rear of all this to strike a frost into the heart, or would do so,
+again I say, if any other nation were concerned.
+
+4. Worse still, because reluctantly unfolding facts that had
+previously been known and kept back, is the state of Bombay. When
+retreats on board the shipping are contemplated, or at least talked
+of, the mere insulated case of Kolapore becomes insignificant.
+
+5. I read a depressing record in the very quarter whence all our hopes
+arise. In summing up the particular transports throughout July whose
+destination was Calcutta, I find that the total of troops ordered to
+that port in the thirty-one days of July was just 6500, and no more.
+Every place was rapidly becoming of secondary importance in comparison
+of the area stretching with a radius of 150 miles in every direction
+from the centre of Allahabad. And the one capital danger is too
+clearly this--that, being unable to throw in _overwhelming_ succours,
+those inadequate succours, matched against the countless resources of
+Hindoo vagrant ruffianism, may, at the utmost, enable us to keep a
+lingering hold, whilst endless successions of incomparably gallant men
+fall before our own rifles, our own guns, and that discipline of a
+cowardly race which we ourselves have taught. We are true to
+ourselves, and ever shall be so: that is a rock to build upon. Yet, if
+it should appear by January next that no deep impression has then been
+made upon revolting India, it will probably appear the best course to
+send no more rivulets of aid; but to _combine_ measures energetically
+with every colony or outpost of the empire; to call up even the
+marines and such sections of our naval forces as have often
+co-operated with the land forces (in the Chinese war especially); and
+to do all this with a perfect disregard of money. Lord Palmerston
+explained very sufficiently why it is that any powerful squadrons of
+ships, which would else have rendered such overwhelming succour
+against the towns along the line of the Ganges and Jumna, were
+unhappily disqualified for action, by the shallows and sand-banks on
+those great rivers. But this apology does not stand good as regards
+flotillas of gunboats or rafts with a very light draught of water;
+still less as regards the seamen and marines.
+
+I conclude with these notices--too painfully entitled to some
+attention. Would to heaven they were _not_!
+
+1. Calcutta itself is not by any means in a state of _security_,
+either in the English sense of that word (namely, freedom from
+danger), or in its old Latin sense of freedom from the _anxieties_ of
+danger. All depends upon the prosperity of our affairs at Delhi,
+Lucknow, Agra, Cawnpore, and Allahabad. The possibility of a
+fanatical explosion, such as that which occurred recently at Patna,
+shows the inefficiency of our precautions and pretended police. I
+believe that the _native_ associations formed in Calcutta will be of
+little use. Either the members will be sleeping at the moment of
+outbreak, or will be separated from their arms. We are noble in our
+carelessness; our enemy is base, but his baseness, always in alliance
+with cunning and vigilance, tells cruelly against us.
+
+2. It may be feared that the Governor-General has in the following
+point lamentably neglected a great duty of his place. It must have
+been remarked with astonishment, as a matter almost inexplicable, how
+it has arisen that so many gallant men, at the head of every regiment,
+should have suffered themselves to be slaughtered like sheep in a
+butcher's shambles. Surely five-and-twenty or thirty men, in youthful
+vigour, many of them capital shots, could easily have shot down 150 of
+the cowardly sepoys. So much work they could have finished with their
+revolvers. More than one amongst the ladies, in this hideous struggle,
+have shot down their two brace of black scoundrels apiece. But the
+officers, having the advantage of swords, would have accounted for a
+few score more. Why, then, have they not done this?--an act of energy
+so natural to our countrymen when thus roused to unforgiving
+vengeance. Simply because they have held themselves most nobly, and in
+defiance of their own individual interest, to be under engagements of
+fidelity to the Company, and obligations of forbearance to the dogs
+whom they commanded, up to the last moment of possible doubt. Now,
+from these engagements of honour the Governor-General should, by one
+universal act (applicable to the three Presidencies) have absolved
+them. For it cannot be alleged _now_ for an instant, that perhaps the
+regiments might mean to continue faithful. If they _do_ mean this, no
+harm will come to any party from the official dispensing order; the
+sepoys could suffer by it only in the case of treachery. And, in the
+meantime, there has emerged amongst them a new policy of treason,
+which requires of us to assume, in mere self-defence, that _all_
+sepoys are meditating treason. It is this: they now reserve their
+final treason until the critical moment of action in the very crisis
+of battle. Ordered to charge the revolters, they discharge their
+carbines over their heads; or, if infantry, they blaze away with blank
+cartridge. This policy has been played off already eight or nine
+times; and by one time, as it happens, too many; for it was tried upon
+the stern Havelock, who took away both horses and carbines from the
+offenders. Too late it is _now_ for Bengal to baffle this sharper's
+trick. But Bombay and Madras, should _their_ turn come after all,
+might profit by the experience.
+
+3. For years it has been our nursery bugbear, to apprehend a Russian
+invasion on the Indus. This, by testimony from every quarter (the last
+being that of Sir Roderick Murchison, who had travelled over most of
+the ground), is an infinitely impossible chimera; or at least until
+the Russians have colonized Khiva and Bokhara. Meantime, to those who
+have suffered anxiety from such an anticipation, let me suggest one
+consolation at least amongst the many horrors of the present scenes in
+Bengal--namely, that this perfidy of our troops was not displayed
+first in the very agony of conflict with Russia, or some more
+probable invader.
+
+4. A dismal suggestion arises from the present condition of Bengal,
+which possibly it is too late now to regard as a warning. Ravaged by
+bands of marauders, no village safe from incursion, the usual culture
+of the soil must have been dangerously interrupted. Next, therefore,
+comes FAMINE (and note that the famines of India have been always
+excessive, from want of adequate carriage), and in the train of
+famine, inaudibly but surely, comes cholera; and then, perhaps, the
+guiltiest of races will pay down an expiation at which centuries will
+tremble. For in the grave of famishing nations treason languishes; the
+murderer has no escape; and the infant with its mother sleeps at last
+in peace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_P.S._--The following memoranda, more or less connected with points
+noticed in the preceding paper, but received later, seem to merit
+attention:--
+
+1. As to the strength of our army before Delhi, it seems, from better
+accounts, to be hardly less than 5000 men, of which one-half are
+British infantry; and the besieged seem, by the closest inquiries, to
+reach at the least 22,000 men.
+
+2. Colonel Edwardes, so well known in connection with Moultan, has
+published an important fact--namely, that the sepoys _did_ rely, in a
+very great degree, upon the whole country rising, and that their
+disappointment and despair are consequently proportionable.
+
+3. A great question arises--How it was possible for the
+sepoys--unquestionably not harbouring the smallest ill-will to the
+British--suddenly and almost universally to assail them with
+atrocities arguing the greatest. Even their own countrymen, with all
+their childish credulity, would not be made to believe that they
+really hated people with whom they had never had any but the kindest
+and most indulgent intercourse. I should imagine that the solution
+must do sought in two facts--first, in the deadly ennui and _tædium_
+of sepoy life, which disposes them to catch maniacally at any opening
+for furious excitement; but, secondly, in the wish to forward the ends
+of the conspiracy under Mahometan misleading. Hence, in particular,
+the cruelties practised on women and children: for they argued that,
+though the British _men_ would face anything in their own persons
+before they would relax their hold on India, they would yet be
+appalled by the miseries of their female partners and children.
+
+4. It is most unfair, undoubtedly, to attack any man in our present
+imperfect state of information. But some neglects are unsusceptible of
+after excuse. One I have noticed, which cannot be denied or varnished,
+in Lord Canning. Another is this:--Had he offered 10,000 rupees (£1000
+sterling) for the head of Nena Sahib, he would have got it in ten
+days, besides inflicting misery on the hell-kite.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+SUGGESTIONS UPON THE SECRET OF THE MUTINY.
+
+(_January, 1858._)
+
+
+The first question arises upon the true originators, proximate and
+immediate, of the mutiny--who were they? This question ploughs deeper
+than any which moves under an impulse of mere historic curiosity; and
+it is practically the main question. Knowing the true, instant,
+operative cause, already we know something of the remedy;--having sure
+information as to the ringleaders, we are enabled at once to read
+their motives in the past, to anticipate their policy in the
+future;--having the _persons_ indicated, those who first incited or
+encouraged the felonious agents, we can shorten the course of public
+vengeance; and in so vast a field of action can give a true direction
+from the first to the pursuit headed by our Indian police. For that
+should never be laid out of sight--that against rebels whose _least_
+offence is their rebellion, against men who have massacred by torture
+women and children, the service of extermination belongs of right to
+executioners armed with whips and rods, with the _lassos_ of South
+America for noosing them, and, being noosed, with halters to hang
+them.[65] It should be made known by proclamation to the sepoys, that
+_de jure_, in strict interpretation of the principle concerned, they
+are hunted by the hangman; and that the British army, whilst obliged
+by the vast scale of the outrages to join in this hangman's chase,
+feel themselves dishonoured, and called to a work which properly is
+the inheritance of the gallows; and yet, again, become reconciled to
+the work, as the purgation of an earth polluted by the blood of the
+innocent.
+
+[Footnote 65: '_To hang them:_'--But with a constant notification
+that, _after_ hanging, the criminals would be decapitated: otherwise
+the threat loses its sting. It seems to be a superstition universal
+amongst Southern Asiatics, unless possibly amongst the Malay race,
+that to suffer any dismemberment of the body operates disastrously
+upon the fate in the unseen world. And hence, no doubt, it has arisen
+that the gallows is not viewed in the light of a degrading punishment.
+Immunity from mutilation compensates any ignominy which might else
+attend it. Accordingly, we see in China that the innumerable victims
+of the present rebellion, captured in the vast province of Quantung by
+the cruel Yeh, were all beheaded by the sword in the blood-reeking
+privacies of Canton. And two centuries back, when the native dynasty
+was overthrown by the last Tartar invasion, the reigning emperor
+(having unlimited freedom of choice) ended his career by a halter:
+retiring to his orchard, he hanged both himself and his daughter.]
+
+Who then, again I ask--who are those that, after seven months'
+watching of the revolt, appeared, by any plausible construction of
+events, to have been the primal movers in this hideous convulsion?
+Individual opinions on this question, and such as could plead a weight
+of authority in regard to experience, to local advantages for
+conjecture, and to official opportunities for overlooking intercepted
+letters, there have been many; and at first (say from May 10 to the
+end of June), in the absence of any strong counter-arguments, some of
+these were entitled to the full benefit of their _personal_ weight
+(such weight, I mean, as could be drawn from the position or from the
+known character of him who announced the opinion). But now--namely,
+on the 15th of December (or, looking to India, say the 10th of
+November)--we are entitled to something weightier. And what _is_ there
+which generally would be held weightier? First, there are the
+confessions of dying criminals;--I mean, that, logically, we must
+reserve such a head, as likely to offer itself sooner or later.
+Tempers vary as to obduracy, and circumstances vary. All men will not
+share in the obstinacy of partisan pride; or not, by many degrees,
+equally. And again, some amongst the many thousands who leave families
+will have favours to ask. They all know secretly the perfect
+trustworthiness of the British Government. And when matters have come
+to a case of choice between a wife and children, in the one scale, and
+a fraternity consciously criminal, in the other, it may be judged
+which is likely to prevail. What through the coercion of mere
+circumstances--what through the entreaties of wife and children,
+co-operating with such circumstances--or sometimes through weakness of
+nature, or through relenting of compunction--it is not to be doubted
+that, as the cohesion of party begins rapidly to relax under
+approaching ruin, there will be confessions in abundance. For as yet,
+under the timid policy of the sepoys--hardly ever venturing out of
+cover, either skulking amongst bushy woodlands, or sneaking into
+house-shelter, or slinking back within the range of their great
+guns--it has naturally happened that our prisoners have been
+exceedingly few. But the decisive battle before Lucknow will tell us
+another story. There will at last be cavalry to _reap_ the harvest
+when our soldiery have won it. The prisoners will begin to accumulate
+by thousands; executions will proceed through week after week; and a
+large variety of cases will yield us a commensurate crop of
+confessions. These, when they come, will tell us, no doubt, most of
+what the sepoys can be supposed to know. But, meantime, how much is
+_that_? Too probably, except in the case of here and there some
+specially intelligent or specially influential sepoy officer,
+indispensable as a go-between to the non-military conspirators moving
+in darkness behind the rebel army, nothing at all was communicated to
+the bulk of the privates, beyond the mere detail of movements required
+by the varying circumstantialities of each particular case. But of the
+ultimate purpose, of the main strategic policy, or of the transcendent
+interests over-riding the narrow counsels that fell under the
+knowledge of the illiterate soldier, since no part was requisite to
+the fulfilment of each man's separate duty, no part would be
+communicated. It is barely possible that so much light as may be won
+from confessions, combined with so much further light as may be
+supposed to lurk amongst the mass of unexamined papers left behind
+them by the rebels at Delhi, might tell us something important. But
+any result to be expected from the Delhi papers is a doubtful
+contingency. It is uncertain whether they will ever be brought under
+the review of zeal united to sagacity sufficient for sustaining a
+search purely disinterested. Promising no great triumph for any
+literary purpose, proving as little, perhaps, one way or other, as the
+mathematician in the old story complained that the _Æneid_
+proved--these papers, unless worked by an enamoured bookworm (or
+paperworm), will probably be confiscated to some domestic purpose, of
+singeing chickens or lighting fires.
+
+But, in any case, whether speaking by confessions or by the varied
+memoranda (orders to subaltern officers, resolutions adopted by
+meetings, records of military councils, petitions, or suggestions on
+the public service, addressed to the king, &c.), abandoned in the
+palace at Delhi, the soldier can tell no more than he knew, which,
+under any theory of the case, must have been very little. Better,
+therefore, than all expectations fixed on the vile soldiery, whom, in
+every sense, and in all directions, I believe to have been brutally
+ignorant, and through their ignorance mainly to have been used as
+blind servile instruments--better and easier it would be to examine
+narrowly whether, in the whole course and evolution of this stupendous
+tragedy, there may not be found some characterising feature or
+distinguishing incident, that may secretly report the agency, and
+betray, by the style and character of the workmanship, _who_ might be
+the particular class of workmen standing at the centre of this
+unparalleled conspiracy. I think that we stand in this dilemma:
+either, on the one hand, that the miserable sepoys, who were the sole
+acting managers, were also the sole contrivers of the plot--in which
+case we can look for further light only to the judicial confessions;
+or, on the other hand, that an order of agents far higher in rank than
+any subaltern members of our army, and who were enabled by this rank
+and corresponding wealth to use these soldiers as their dupes and
+tools, stood in the background, holding the springs of the machinery
+in their hands, with a view to purposes transcending by far any that
+could ever suggest themselves to persons of obscure station, having no
+prospect of benefiting by their own fullest success. In this case, we
+shall learn nothing from the confessions of those who must, upon a
+principle of mere self-preservation, have been excluded from all real
+knowledge of the dreadful scheme to which they were made parties,
+simply as perpetrators of its murders and outrages. Here it is equally
+vain to look for revelations from the mercenary workers, who know
+nothing, or from the elevated leaders, who know all, but have an
+interest of life and death in dissembling their knowledge. Revelations
+of any value from those who cannot, and from those who will not,
+reveal the ambitious schemes communicated to a very few, are alike
+hopeless. In default of these, let us examine if any one incident, or
+class of incidents, in the course of these horrors, may not have made
+a self-revelation--a silent but significant revelation, pointing the
+attention of men to the true authors, and simultaneously to the final
+purposes, of this mysterious conspiracy.
+
+Now, it has not escaped the notice of many people that two most
+extraordinary classes of outrages, perpetrated or attempted, have
+marked a very large majority of the mutinous explosions; outrages that
+were in the last degree unnatural, as out of harmony with the whole
+temper and spirit of intercourse generally prevailing between the
+sepoys and their British officers. The case is peculiarly striking. No
+reproach on the character of their manners was ever alleged against
+their British officers by any section or subdivision of the sepoy
+soldiery. Indeed, the reproach, where any existed, ran in the very
+opposite channel. Too great indulgence to the sepoy, a spirit of
+concession too facile to their very whims and caprices, and generally
+too relaxed a state of discipline--these features it was of the
+British bearing towards the native soldiery which too often, and
+reasonably, provoked severe censures from the observing. The very
+case[66] which I adduced some months back, where an intelligent
+British officer, in the course of his evidence before some
+court-martial, mentioned, in illustration of the decaying discipline,
+that for some considerable space of time he had noticed a growing
+disrespect on the part of the privates; in particular, that, on coming
+into the cantonments of his own regiment, the men had ceased to rise
+from their seats, and took no notice of his presence--this one
+anecdote sufficiently exemplified the quality of the errors prevailing
+in the deportment of our countrymen to their native soldiery; and that
+it would be ludicrous to charge them with any harshness or severity of
+manner. Such being too notoriously the case, whence could possibly
+arise the bloody carnage by which, in almost every case, the sepoys
+inaugurated, or tried to inaugurate, their emancipation from British
+rule? Our continental neighbours at first grossly misinterpreted the
+case; and more excusably than in many other misinterpretations.
+Certainly it was unavoidable at first to read, in this frenzy of
+bloodshed, the vindictive retaliations of men that had suffered
+horrible and ineffable indignities at our hands. It was apparently the
+old case of African slaves in some West Indian colony--St. Domingo,
+for instance--breaking loose from the yoke, and murdering (often with
+cruel torments) the whole households of their oppressors. But a month
+dissipated these groundless commentaries. The most prejudiced
+Frenchman could not fail to observe that no sepoy regiment ever
+alluded to any rigour of treatment, or any haughtiness of demeanour.
+His complaints centred in the one sole subject of religion; even as to
+which he did not generally pretend to any certain knowledge, but
+simply to a very strong belief or persuasion that we secretly
+meditated, not that we openly avowed or deliberately pursued, a
+purpose of coercing him into Christianity. This, were it even true,
+though a false and most erroneous policy, could not be taxed with
+ill-will. A man's own religion, if it is sincerely such, is that which
+he profoundly believes to be the truth. Now, in seeking to inoculate
+another with that which sincerely he believes to be eminently the
+truth, though proceeding by false methods, a man acts in a spirit of
+benignity. So that, on all hands, the hellish fury of the sepoy was
+felt to be unnatural, artificially assumed, and, by a reasonable
+inference, was held to be a mask for something else that he wished to
+conceal. But what? What was that something else which he wished to
+conceal? The sepoy simulated, in order that he might dissimulate. He
+pretended a wrong sustained, that he might call away attention from a
+wrong which he designed. At this point I (and no doubt in company with
+multitudes beside that had watched the case) became sensible of an
+alien presence secretly intruding into this pretended quarrel of the
+native soldier. It was no sepoy that was moving at the centre of this
+feud: the objects towards which it ultimately tended were not such as
+could by possibility interest the poor, miserable, idolatrous native.
+What was _he_ to gain by the overthrow of the British Government? The
+poor simpleton, who had been decoyed into this monstrous field of
+strife, opened the game by renouncing all the vast advantages which he
+and his children to the hundredth generation might draw from the
+system of the Company, and entered upon a career towards distant
+objects that for _him_ have absolutely no meaning or intelligible
+existence. At this point it was that two enigmas, previously
+insoluble, suddenly received the fullest explanation:--
+
+1. What was the meaning of that hellish fury suddenly developed
+towards officers with whom previously the sepoy had lived on terms of
+reciprocal amity?
+
+2. What cause had led to that incomprehensible enmity manifested, in
+the process of these ferocious scenes, towards the wives and children
+of the officers? Surely, if his wish were to eliminate their families
+from the Indian territory, that purpose was sufficiently secured by
+the massacre of him whose exertions obtained a livelihood for the rest
+of the household.
+
+[Footnote 66: This case was entirely misapprehended by a journalist
+who happened to extract the passage. He understood me to mean that
+this particular mode of disrespect to their British officers had
+operated as a _cause_ of evil; whereas I alleged it simply as an
+evidence and exponent of evil habits criminally tolerated amongst the
+very lowest orders of our mercenary troops.]
+
+It was tolerably certain that the widows and their children would not
+remain much longer in the Indian territory, when it no longer offered
+them an asylum or a livelihood. Now, since personally, and viewed
+apart from their husbands, these ladies could have no interest for
+the murdering sepoys, it became more and more unintelligible on what
+principle, steady motive, or fugitive impulse, these incarnate demons
+could persist in cherishing any feeling whatever to those poor, ruined
+women, who, when their anchorage should be cut away by the murder of
+their husbands, would become mere waifs and derelicts stranded upon
+the Indian shores.
+
+These had seemed at first two separate mysteries not less hard to
+decipher than the primal mystery of the mutiny itself. But now all
+became clear; whatsoever might be the composition, or character, or
+final objects of that tyranny which had decoyed the sepoys under its
+yoke, one thing was certain--namely, that the childishness and levity
+of the Hindoo sepoy made it difficult in excess to gain any lasting
+hold over his mind, or consequently to count upon his lasting
+services. But to this general difficulty there had now supervened one
+signal aggravation, in a shape hateful to those who encountered
+it--namely, the attractions of the British service, which service
+would be no sooner abjured than it would be passionately regretted.
+Here lay the rock which threatened the free movement of the
+insurrection. It was evidently determined by those who meant to
+appropriate the services of the sepoys, that they should have no
+retreat, no opening for recovering a false step, in the well-known
+mercy of the British Government. For _them_ it was resolved that there
+should be no _locus penitentiæ_ left open. In order to close for ever
+that avenue to all hope of forgiveness, the misleaders of the soldiery
+urged them into those atrocities which every nation upon earth has
+heard of with horror. The mere fact of these atrocities indicates at
+once the overruling influence of such men as Nena Sahib, determined to
+place a bar of everlasting separation between the native army and that
+government which might else have reclaimed the erring men, had their
+offences lain within the reach of lawful forgiveness. The conspirators
+having thus divorced the ruling power, as they idly flattered
+themselves, from all martial resources, doubtless assumed the work of
+revolution already finished by midsummer-day of this present year. And
+this account of the course through which that attempted revolution
+travelled--according to which, not the sepoys, who could have had no
+ambition such as is implied in that attempt, but Indian princes and
+rajahs, standing in the background, were the true originators of the
+movement--finds an indirect justification of its own accuracy in the
+natural solution which it furnishes to those infernal massacres, which
+else, as they must remain for ever without a parallel, will also
+remain for ever without an intelligible motive. These atrocities were
+exacted from the sepoys by the conclave of princes as tests of their
+sincerity. Such doubtless was the argument for this exaction, the
+ostensible plea put forward to the miserable reptiles who were seduced
+into this treason, by the promise no doubt of sharing in the fruits of
+the new and mighty revolution. Such pleas were for the sepoy. But for
+himself and his own secret benefit the princely seducer needed all
+that he could obtain of such accursed acts, as the means sure and
+sudden of making the separation between the soldier and the government
+more and more irreparable.
+
+So much for the massacre of his officers: but a different reason
+availed for the more diabolical outrages upon women and their
+children. The murder of the _men_ was extorted from the sepoy as a
+kind of sacrifice. With _them_ the reptile had lived upon terms of
+humanising intercourse; and, vile as he was, in many cases this must
+have slowly ripened into some mode of regard and involuntary esteem;
+so that, in murdering the man, oftentimes a sepoy was making a real
+(if trifling) sacrifice. But for females he cared nothing at all. And
+in my opinion they perished on a very different principle. The male
+murders were levied as pledges for the benefit of the princes, and
+very distinctly understood to be levied _against_ the wishes of the
+sepoy. But in the female sacrifice all parties concurred--sepoy and
+prince, tempted and tempter alike. I require you to murder this
+officer, as a pledge of your real hostility (which else might be a
+pure pretence) to the government. But the murder of the officer's wife
+and child rested on a motive totally different--namely,
+this:--Throughout Hindostan no feature in the moral aspects of the
+British nature could have been so conspicuous or so impressive as the
+tenacity of purpose, the persistency, and the dogged resolution never
+to relax a grasp once taken. Consequently, had the _men_ of our
+nation, and they separately from the women, scattered themselves here
+and there over the land (as they have long done in China, for
+instance), then, perhaps, the natives, when finding themselves in
+conflict with this well-known principle of imperishable tenacity,
+would be liable to a sentiment of despair, as in a contest with fate.
+And that sentiment would paralyse the Hindoos when entering upon a
+struggle for unrooting the British from Hindostan. But here suddenly,
+Woman steps in to aid the Hindoo. For the Briton, it is notorious,
+would never loosen his hold, more than his compatriot the bull-dog.
+But that scene which a man had faced steadily upon his own account, he
+shrinks from as a husband or a father. Hence the sepoy attacks upon
+women and children.
+
+From hurried writing, it is to be feared that I may have done slight
+justice to my own views. Let me conclude this head therefore by
+briefly _resuming_.
+
+The argument for tracing back the great conspiracy to the discontented
+rajahs is--that otherwise, and supposing the mutiny raised for objects
+specially affecting the sepoys, they would _not_ have massacred their
+officers. _They_ must have desired to leave an opening for pardon in
+the event of failure. That crime was exacted to compromise the native
+army effectually with the government. But this in many ways was sure
+to operate ruinously for the sepoy interests, and could therefore have
+found a sufficient motive only with the native princes.
+
+But the _female_ sacrifice was welcome to all parties. For no doubt
+they represented the British officer as saying:--So long as the danger
+affected only myself, I would never have relaxed my hold on India; but
+now, when the war threatens our women and children, India can no
+longer be a home for _us_.
+
+Another urgent question concerns the acts of the Bengal Government.
+Many unfounded charges, as in a case of infinite confusion and hourly
+pressure, must be aimed at the Governor-General: the probability of
+such charges, and the multiplied experience of such charges, makes
+reasonable men cautious--in fact, unduly so; and the excess of
+caution reacts upon Lord Canning's estimation too advantageously. Lord
+Dalhousie is missed; his energy would have shown itself conspicuously
+by this time. For surely in such a case as the negotiation with
+Bahadoor Jung of Nepaul, as to the Ghoorkas, there can be no doubt _at
+present_, though a great doubt, unfairly indulgent to Lord Canning,
+was encouraged at first, that most imbecile oscillation governed the
+Calcutta counsels. And it is now settled that this oscillation turned
+entirely upon a petty personal motive. A subordinate officer had
+accepted the Nepaul offer, and by that unauthorised acceptance had
+intruded upon the prerogative of Lord Canning. The very same
+cause--this jealous punctiliousness of exacting vanity, and not any
+wish to enforce the severities of public justice--interfered to set
+aside the proclamation of Mr. Colvin at Agra. The insufficiency again
+of the steps taken as to Nena Sahib speaks the same language. In this
+very journal, full six weeks earlier than in the Calcutta
+proclamation, the offer of a large sum[67] for this man's head had
+been suggested. That offer was never kept sufficiently before the
+public eye. But a grosser neglect than this, as affecting the
+condition of many thousands, and not of any single villain, was the
+non-employment of the press in pursuing the steps of the mutineers.
+Everywhere, as fast as they appeared in any strength, brief handbills
+should have been circulated--circumstantially relating their defeats,
+exposing their false pretences, and describing their prospects. Once
+only the government attempted such a service; and blundered so far as
+to urge against the sepoys a reproach which must have been
+unintelligible both to them and to all native readers.
+
+[Footnote 67: And imperfectly as the offer was advertised, it seems to
+have had considerable effect. Apparently it has extinguished the
+Nena's power to show himself, and to move about with freedom. He is
+now distrustful and jealous--often no doubt with very little reason.]
+
+Again, a question even more practical and instant arises as to the
+modes of public vengeance.
+
+1. If, when finally defeated, and in a military sense destroyed, on
+some signal field of battle, the mutineers should fly to the hills in
+the great ranges, or the jungle, the main fear would arise not from
+_them_, but from the weak compromising government, that would show
+itself eager to treat, and make what the Roman law calls a
+_transactio_, or half-and-half settlement with any body of sepoys that
+showed a considerable strength. But, in such a case, besides that the
+rebels, having now no Delhi, will have scanty ammunition, our best
+resource would be found in the Spanish bloodhounds of Cuba, which we
+British used fifty years back for hunting down the poor negro Maroons
+in Jamaica, who were not by a thousand degrees so criminal as the
+sepoys.
+
+2. That no wrong is done to the Bengal Government by this anticipation
+of an eventual compromise, may be judged by the assertion (resting
+apparently on adequate authority), that even at this hour that
+government are making it a subject for deliberation and doubt--whether
+the sepoys have forfeited their pensions! Doubtless, the Delhi and
+Cawnpore exploits merit good-service pensions for life!
+
+3. Others by millions, who come to these questions in a far nobler
+spirit, fear that at any rate, and with every advantage for a
+righteous judgment, too many of the worst sepoys laden with booty may
+find means to escape. To these I would suggest that, after all, the
+appropriate, worst, and most hellish of punishments for hellish
+malefactors, is mortification and utter ruin in every one of their
+schemes. What is the thrust of a bayonet or the deepest of sabre-cuts?
+These are over in a few moments. And I with others rejoiced therefore
+that so many escaped from Delhi for prolonged torment. That torment
+will be found in the ever-rankling deadly mortification of knowing
+that in all things they and their wicked comrades have failed; and
+that in the coming spring, and amongst the resurrections of spring,
+when all will be finished, and the mighty storm will have wheeled
+away, there remains for the children of hell only this surviving
+consciousness--that the total result has been the awakening of our
+Indian Government, and the arming it for ever against a hideous peril,
+that might else have overwhelmed it unprepared in an hour of
+slumbering weakness. Such a game is played but once; and, having
+failed, never again can it be repeated.
+
+
+
+
+ON NOVELS.
+
+(_Two pages written in a Lady's Album._[68])
+
+
+A false ridicule has settled upon Novels, and upon Young Ladies as the
+readers of novels. Love, we are told authoritatively, has not that
+importance in the actual practice of life--nor that extensive
+influence upon human affairs--which novel-writers postulate, and which
+the interest of novels presumes. Something to this effect has been
+said by an eminent writer; and the law is generally laid down upon
+these principles by cynical old men, and envious blue-stockings who
+have outlived their personal attractions. The sentiment however is
+false even for the present condition of society; and it will become
+continually _more_ false as society improves. For what is the great
+commanding event, the one sole revolution, in a woman's life?
+Marriage. Viewing her course from the cradle to the grave in the light
+of a drama, I am entitled to say that her wedding-day is its
+catastrophe--or, in technical language, its _peripeteia_: whatever
+else is important to her in succeeding years has its origin in that
+event. So much for _that_ sex. For the other, it is admitted that Love
+is not, in the same exclusive sense, the governing principle under
+which their lives move: but what then are the concurrent forces, which
+sometimes happen to coöperate with that agency--but more frequently
+disturb it? They are two; Ambition, and Avarice. Now for the vast
+majority of men--Ambition, or the passion for personal distinction,
+has too narrow a stage of action, its grounds of hope are too fugitive
+and unsteady, to furnish any durable or domineering influence upon the
+course of life. Avarice again is so repulsive to the native nobility
+of the human heart, that it rarely obtains the dignity of a passion:
+great energy of character is requisite to form a consistent and
+accomplished miser: and of the mass of men it may be said--that, if
+the beneficence of nature has in some measure raised them _above_
+avarice by the necessity of those social instincts which she has
+impressed upon their hearts, in some measure also they sink _below_ it
+by their deficiencies in that austerity of self-denial and that savage
+strength of will which are indispensable qualifications for the _rôle_
+of heroic miser. A perfect miser in fact is a great man, and therefore
+a very rare one. Take away then the two forces of Ambition and
+Avarice,--what remains even to the male sex as a capital and
+overruling influence in life, except the much nobler force of Love?
+History confirms this view: the self-devotions and the voluntary
+martyrdoms of all other passions collectively have been few by
+comparison with those which have been offered at the altar of Love. If
+society should ever make any great advance, and man as a species grow
+conspicuously nobler, Love also will grow nobler; and a passion, which
+at present is possible in any elevated form for one perhaps in a
+hundred, will then be coëxtensive with the human heart.
+
+[Footnote 68: This was published in _facsimile_ from the Original MS.
+in _The Archivist and Autograph Review_, edited by S. Davey,
+F.R.S.L.--June, 1888. [H.]]
+
+On this view of the grandeur which belongs to the passion of Sexual
+Love in the economy of life, as it is and as it may be, Novels have an
+all-sufficient justification; and Novel-readers are obeying a higher
+and more philosophic impulse than they are aware of. They seek an
+imaginary world where the harsh hindrances, which in the real one too
+often fret and disturb the 'course of true love,' may be forced to
+bend to the claims of justice and the pleadings of the heart. In
+company with the agitations and the dread suspense--the anguish and
+the tears, which so often wait upon the uncertainties of earthly love,
+they demand at the hands of the Novelist a final event corresponding
+to the natural award of celestial wisdom and benignity. What they are
+striving after, in short, is--to realize an ideal; and to reproduce
+the actual world under more harmonious arrangements. This is the
+secret craving of the reader; and Novels are shaped to meet it. With
+what success, is a separate and independent question: the execution
+cannot prejudice the estimate of their aim and essential purpose.
+
+Fair and unknown Owner of this Album, whom perhaps I have never
+seen--whom perhaps I never _shall_ see, pardon me for wasting two
+pages of your elegant manual upon this semi-metaphysical disquisition.
+Let the subject plead my excuse. And believe that I am, Fair
+Incognita!
+
+Your faithful servant,
+      THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
+
+_Professor Wilson's--Glocester Place, Edinburgh._
+
+_Friday night, December 3, 1830._
+
+
+
+
+DE QUINCEY'S PORTRAIT.
+
+The only one which can be considered satisfactory is that of which a
+copy is prefixed to these Volumes. It is from a steel engraving by
+Frank Croll, taken at Edinburgh from a daguerreotype by Howie in 1850.
+
+DE QUINCEY'S own opinion of it is expressed to me in the amusing
+letter which was published in _The Instructor_ (New Series, vol. vi.
+p. 145).
+
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF _THE INSTRUCTOR_.
+
+_September 21, 1850._
+
+My Dear Sir,--I am much obliged to you for communicating to us (that
+is, to my daughters and myself) the engraved portrait, enlarged from
+the daguerreotype original. The engraver, at least, seems to have done
+his part ably. As to one of the earlier artists concerned, viz. the
+sun of July, I suppose it is not allowable to complain of _him_, else
+my daughters are inclined to upbraid him with having made the mouth
+too long. But, of old, it was held audacity to suspect the sun's
+veracity:--'Solem quis dicere falsum audeat!' And I remember that,
+half a century ago, the _Sun_ newspaper, in London, used to fight
+under sanction of that motto. But it was at length discovered by the
+learned, that Sun _junior_, viz. the newspaper, _did_ sometimes
+indulge in fibbing. The ancient prejudice about the solar truth broke
+down, therefore, in that instance; and who knows but Sun _senior_ may
+be detected, now that our optical glasses are so much improved, in
+similar practices? in which case he may have only been 'keeping his
+hand in' when operating upon that one feature of the mouth. The rest
+of the portrait, we all agree, does credit to his talents, showing
+that he is still wide-awake, and not at all the superannuated old
+artist that some speculators in philosophy had dreamed of his
+becoming.
+
+As an accompaniment to this portrait, your wish is that I should
+furnish a few brief chronological memoranda of my own life. _That_
+would be hard for me to do, and _when_ done, might not be very
+interesting for others to read. Nothing makes such dreary and
+monotonous reading as the old hackneyed roll-call, chronologically
+arrayed, of inevitable facts in a man's life. One is so certain of the
+man's having been born, and also of his having died, that it is dismal
+to lie under the necessity of reading it. That the man began by being
+a boy--that he went to school--and that, by intense application to his
+studies, 'which he took to be _his_ portion in this life,' he rose to
+distinction as a robber of orchards, seems so probable, upon the
+whole, that I am willing to accept it as a postulate. That he
+married--that, in fulness of time, he was hanged, or (being a humble,
+unambitious man) that he was content with deserving it--these little
+circumstances are so naturally to be looked for, as sown broadcast up
+and down the great fields of biography, that any one life becomes, in
+this respect, but the echo of thousands. Chronologic successions of
+events and dates, such as these, which, belonging to the race,
+illustrate nothing in the individual, are as wearisome as they are
+useless.
+
+A better plan will be--to detach some single chapter from the
+experiences of childhood, which is likely to offer, at least, this
+kind of value--either that it will record some of the deep impressions
+under which my childish sensibilities expanded, and the ideas which at
+that time brooded continually over my mind, or else will expose the
+traits of character that slumbered in those around me. This plan will
+have the advantage of not being liable to the suspicion of vanity or
+egotism; for, I beg the reader to understand distinctly, that I do not
+offer this sketch as deriving any part of what interest it may have
+from myself, as the person concerned in it. If the particular
+experience selected is really interesting, in virtue of its own
+circumstances, then it matters not to _whom_ it happened. Suppose that
+a man should record a perilous journey, it will be no fair inference
+that he records it as a journey performed by himself. Most sincerely
+he may be able to say, that he records it not _for_ that relation to
+himself, but _in spite of_ that relation. The incidents, being
+absolutely independent, in their power to amuse, of all personal
+reference, must be equally interesting [he will say] whether they
+occurred to A or to B. That is _my_ case. Let the reader abstract from
+_me_ as a person that by accident, or in some partial sense, may have
+been previously known to himself. Let him read the sketch as
+belonging to one who wishes to be profoundly anonymous. I offer it not
+as owing anything to its connection with a particular individual, but
+as likely to be amusing separately for itself; and if I make any
+mistake in _that_, it is not a mistake of vanity exaggerating the
+consequence of what relates to my own childhood, but a simple mistake
+of the judgment as to the power of amusement that may attach to a
+particular succession of reminiscences.
+
+Excuse the imperfect development which in some places of the sketch
+may have been given to my meaning. I suffer from a most afflicting
+derangement of the nervous system, which at times makes it difficult
+for me to write at all, and always makes me impatient, in a degree not
+easily understood, of recasting what may seem insufficiently, or even
+incoherently, expressed.--Believe me, ever yours,
+
+THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
+
+
+This letter was a preface to 'A Sketch from Childhood,' of which the
+first and second parts appeared in that Volume.
+
+After this came a blank of six months--a whole Volume containing
+nothing. In Volume VIII. (January, 1852), 'A Sketch from Childhood'
+was resumed with the following whimsical apology. It then ran for five
+months consecutively:--
+
+
+(_January, 1852._)
+
+I understand that several readers of my _Sketch from Childhood_ have
+lodged complaints against me for not having pursued it to what they
+can regard as a satisfactory close. Some may have done this in a
+gentle tone, as against an irreclaimable procrastinator, amiably
+inclined, perhaps, to penitence, though constitutionally incapable of
+amendment; but others more clamorously, as against one faithless to
+his engagements, and deliberately a defaulter. Themselves they regard
+in the light of creditors, and me as a slippery debtor, who, having
+been permitted to pay his debts by instalments--three, suppose, or
+four:--has paid two, and then absconded in order to evade the rest.
+Certainly to this extent I go along with them myself, that, in all
+cases of a tale or story moving through the regular stages of a plot,
+the writer, by the act of publishing the introductory parts, pledges
+himself to unweave the whole tissue to the last. The knot that he has
+tied, though it should prove a very Gordian knot, he is bound to
+untie. And, if he fails to do so, I doubt whether a reader has not a
+right of action against him for having wantonly irritated a curiosity
+that was never meant to be gratified--for having trifled with his
+feelings--and, possibly, for having distressed and perplexed his moral
+sense; as, for instance, by entangling the hero and heroine (two young
+people that can be thoroughly recommended for virtue) in an Irish bog
+of misfortunes, and there leaving them to their fate--the gentleman up
+to his shoulders, and the poor lady, therefore, in all probability up
+to her lips. But, in a case like the present, where the whole is
+offered as a _sketch_, an action would not lie. A sketch, by its very
+name, is understood to be a fragmentary thing: it is a _torso_, which
+may want the head, or the feet, or the arms, and still remain a
+marketable piece of sculpture. In buying a horse, you may look into
+his mouth, but not in buying a _torso_: for, if all his teeth have
+been gone for ten centuries, which would certainly operate in the way
+of discount upon the price of a horse, very possibly the loss would be
+urged as a good ground for an _extra_ premium upon the torso. Besides,
+it is hard to see how any proper _end_ could be devised for a paper of
+this nature, reciting a few incidents, sad and gay, from the records
+of a half-forgotten childhood, unless by putting the child to death;
+for which dénouement, unhappily, there was no solid historical
+foundation.
+
+Right or wrong, however, my accusers are entitled to my gratitude;
+since in the very fact of their anger is involved a compliment. By
+proclaiming their indignation against the procrastinating or
+absconding sketcher, they proclaim their interest in the sketch; and,
+therefore, if any fierce Peter Peebles should hang upon my skirts,
+haling me back to work, and denouncing me to the world as a fugitive
+from my public duties, I shall not feel myself called upon to
+contradict him. As often as he nails me with the charge of being a
+skulker from work _in meditatione fugæ_, I shall turn round and nail
+_him_ with the charge of harbouring an intense admiration for me, and
+putting a most hyperbolical value upon my services; or else why should
+he give himself so much trouble, after so many months are gone by, in
+pursuing and recapturing me? On this principle, I shall proceed with
+others who may have joined the cry of the accusers, obediently
+submitting to their pleasure, doing my best, therefore, to supply a
+conclusion which in my own eyes had not seemed absolutely required,
+and content to bear the utmost severity of their censure as applied to
+myself, the workman, in consideration of the approbation which that
+censure carries with it by implication to the work itself.
+
+
+END OF VOLUME I.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de
+Quincey--Vol. 1, by Thomas de Quincey
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THOMAS DE QUINCEY ***
+
+***** This file should be named 18862-8.txt or 18862-8.zip *****
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