CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE Cornell Unlverilty Library PR 4461.C2E7 Essays of a recluse; or. Traces of though 3 1924 013 464 767 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013464767 ESSAYS OF A RECLUSE ; OK, TRACES OF THOUGHT, LITERATURE, AND FANCY. WILLIAM BENTON ^LULOW, AUTHOR OF "SUNSHIITE AND SHADOWS; OB, SKETCHES OF THOUGHT, PHILOSOPHIC AND EELIQIOUS." LONDON. LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN, ROBERTS, AND GREEN. 1865. i\, ?)itrt7 The present Work is coseval in execution with the volume of " Sketches, Philosophic and Eeligious ; " as, in common with that performance, it contains the results of reflection and criticism carried on at intervals through a very considerable period. It differs from its predecessor chiefly in the nature of the contents, as in general literary and miscellaneous ; while together they include aU that the Author cares to retain of whatever he has hitherto published. CONTENTS'. ^ahtttngg of Pnn. The mental life „ A statue in fragments Individuality of minds Delineation of minuter traits The closing scenes The mens divlnior . . Interior lights and shadows Mystery and depth of imaginative feeling Evanescence of refined emotion Romance and philosophy . . Decay of the nobler kinds of writing Progressive phases of literature Classification of mental products Ancient Greek tragedy A rich setting to artificial diamonds Intellectual dissection Eembrandt colourings Union of logical and4ina^ative power . . Descriptions of angels Dugald Stewart Play of Hamlet without the Prince Historical compared with flctltlous misrepresentation . Lives of the unlettered Charm of iudiviauality . . Herbert's "Country Parson" Prose of Herbert Metaphysical school of poetry . . Prose and verse Unrecorded impressions The image in the block . . < PASS, 1 2 2 3 4 10 H 12 13 13 14 14 14 15 16 17 17 17 18 18 19 21 21 CONTENTS. PAOE- Productions of taste and of science .... ^^ Vitality of works ■ ■ • ^^ Bunyan's allegory • • • ■ ^^ Capabilities of fictitious composition . . ■ - • 24 Description, and reality . . .. .. •• ■• ■■ ^^ Lord Byron .. .. ^^ Byron and Jobnson, . . . . • - • • ■ ■ ^ * (BlimptB of #lb (Bitglisl^ ^i£e. A greenwood sport ,. .. ■• •- •■ •■ ^9 Ancient domeatic fool -- •• •• •• •• 29 Old Bnglisli yeoman . . . . . . - . ■ - 31 Komance of former travel . . - - . . - . • . 32 Exclusion of modern habits from nature .. -. 33 Readers in oldon times . . . . . . . . . . 33 The choice 35 Imitation.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .- 36 Distinction without originality .. .. .. .. 35 Juxtaposition and combination of ideas* .. .. .. 36 Metempsychosis 37 Method of research .... .. 37 ChercJiant midi A quator^e heures .. .. .. 38 Parentage of thoughts . . . . . . . . . . 38 Plagiarism .. .. .. .. .. .. ,, 39 €xmtB Hitb Wuwxtnht^ d Stains. The Eternal City ... .. . . 41 Ancient Roman senate .. . ,.. .. 42 System of Lycurgus . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Transmutations of governments . . ^ . . . 43 French civilization and English :^eedom - . . . . . 44 Seat of revolutions . . . . 46 Leaders in social crises . . .'. . , . . . . 46 Military agency in revolutions . . . . . - - , 47 Soldiers and popular freedom ...... 48 Prop of rulers . . . . . . . : . 48 Progress of fteedom . . . . . . . . 49 Activity of fancy in an orator . . oi Sound versus philosophy . . . . . . , . . . 51 Thought aud discourse . . . . . . . . . 52 Fluency .. . .. .. .. .. ^.i Extemporaneous speaking . . . . . . . . . . 52 Rhetorical celebrity , . . . . . . . . 53 COHTBNTS. VH., hmki Coloxtrings of i^t '^zisxtuiibt una ^adk. page. Shadowlngg from vrtthln 55 Song of the nightingale . . „ , , . . . . 55 Impressions on imaginative natures . . . . . 56 Melancholy and mirth . . . . . . . , . . 56 Death in Life . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Through the valley to the heights . . . . . 57 Charm of sensibility . , , , 57 SHSoeptiblllty of a sombre fancy . . . , . . 68 Helen's medicament . . . , . . . . 58 Escapes from grief . , . . . . . , . . 58 Falling of the sail after a breeze . . .. .. .. 69 Lot of the Seers . . . . , . . , . . . 59 Touches of melancholy. in great writers .. . .. CI Charm of plaintive effusions . . . . . . . . 63 Sabnxss. Compatibility of diseased brain with iutellectual power 65 Monomania of Don Qnlxote 6S Case of Cowper . . . . . . . . . . 65 Frederick William of Prussia . . . . . . 65 Undetected or mistaken dissonances .. ,, .. 66 Ascription of insanity to genius : Demoeritus — Sophocles — Byron ..66 g^mieni aitb PobfTK Midixs. Disappearance of the feeble . . . . . . . 68 Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona 68 IniluenoeB aflfeoting Greek and Roman literature 69 Prose writers of antiquity, compared with Bacon . . . . 70 English writers of the eighteenth century . . . - 71 Town and country aspects of things . . . . . . 73 Force of attrition .. .. .. •- •- "^^ Eesidence In the country . . . . • . . . 74 Tillage Influence . . . . • ^* Privacy of cities • ■• '^ % maib m PMU g^Sfc g^rt, f iterated, anb CiKIi^atioK. Taste in by-gone ages 76 Splendid architectural genius 'S Sculptural and minor ornaments 77 Inventions and productions of the period 7S The Schoolmen ■ ■ T^ Feudalism .. -. SO CONTENTS, Spell of wit and the graces.. Levity weightier than gravity. . Impressions from the facetious Loquacity Talk of the many Men of the world Affectation .. A levelling process Mask of vanity Intermingling of colours Companions for the intellectual Silence of fools and the wise . . Monopoly of disparagement Scandal Bark worse than the bite . . Eefuge of the distressed gag-br^ams, or P^ntal ^ittnring. ■Visitations of imagery Glimpaea and echoes of the infinite The palace of thought Mirage of fancy . . The Fata Morgana Pictures of quiet beauty Mnxs anmnt anb mokm. Ancient and modem tactics Invention of fire-arms . . Duration of national resentments. . Battles by land or sea . . Problem of universal peace €nmi^aatxan anb Stglc. The bow of Odysseus Kules for composition ninsion of a captivating theme Words ruling or serving Influence of subject on style The maxim of proper words in proper A smooth style . . . The alto relievo style of old writers The fool's brain in " As you like it" Mixed metaphor Elder and recent authors Gratuitous fetters . . Trite sentiments in masquerade places 81 81 32 82 84 84 84 85 85 86 86 87 87 87 87 88 89 91 91 91 92 92 97 97 98 98 100 101 101 102 102 102 103 103 103 104 104 105 106 107 CONTENTS. Composition anir Slgk. Etymological lore Literary merits of the Bible . . Morals of composition The vulgar idiom Acme of the EngUsh tongue |ld«at : ils |mp«sgmtts nvlh JarUilijs. Influences of man on man Concentrating force of seclusion . . Beattie's minstrel Luxury of secluded fancy . . Sphere for the workings of genius Solitude and self-flattery Freedom and solitude The outside or inside of human nature .-. A notion of Averroes . . The cloister and the mart I'arrer'B Retreat at Little Gidding . Distant gaze at existence . . .Unique solitude |nteto«rae — (fwnispp — gtffedion. Pursuit of friendship A window in the breast Ignotum pro magnifico Making way by acting . . Eetreat within the heart , . Process of petrifaction . . Burial of feeling A breathing statue Intellect and affection Love me, lore my faults Rousseau Rule for the sensitiTe . . Better side of fickleness Adulation and its counterpart Archbishops of. Granada . . Proximity of the cynical IMendship — ^philanthropy — candom* The deepest love . . Piquant dispositions Cariosity about others' thoughts Relation of Poesy and Love Gravitation of love Love and pride 107 108 108 109 109 111 112 113 113 114 114 114 lis 116 117 118 121 121 122 122 122 123 124 124 125 126 126 126 126 127 127 127 128 128 128 128 129 129 128 129 130 CONTENTS. ^vdttcomst — Jmnbs^p — ^fftttiotr. Auricular confessiou Londou the moruing after death . . .. tobEl anb- f ktorisi ^xmxdmtrd. Suggestive power of dead symbols Artificial aids to fancy By-play of the faculty Hogarth and Fielding Slix|ts, mental nrtin muttxinl. Wealth of the poor The best estate ■_ Bes non parta Idbore . , The market of scholarship The poor man's defence . . Estates In picture „ ■ •• Poverty of the wealthy . . Travelling out of self Kiches and leisure Intellectual character of the wealthy Modes of enrichment Poetry and poverty Seeming ruler of the world Pleasures of frugality Foes to thrift Misers Kiseof avartoe .. Domain of avarice Relation of life and death to wealth . . Affection among the poor . . A universal leveller Chiaese estimate of wealth The rebound of wrong . . Cistribntloii ol wealth Moral pressure on the poor A goM^n maxim fewes. Caprice of fame .... Traditional estimates of the Persian monarch Colourings of resentment GriEcia mmdaix Lights in the picture Jisroderks atttr Infentmns. Origin of inventions Fortune of inventors and world benefactors . . PAOB. 130 181 132 132 133 133 13,1 136 136 136 137 137 137 13S 188 139 139 140 141 141 142 142 142 142 143 143 US 143 143 144 144 145 146 146 146 147 148 149 149 CONTENTS. iLipctnttg uf tl^c Jlafer; at PCcirtal (Rrmmatbn: m)s ^crag. Periods of expansion Analysis of the senses Too early growtli Precocious and late developed minds . . Imagery In words and in the f^noy Basis of political augury Trees without leaves Hardening of the mental fibre . . Age of intellectual maturity SCraits of SKtnman. Mental rapidity of the sex Causes of its nicety of observation Instinctive arrival at results . . Thinking through the heart Characterized by fancy rather than imagination Criticism on the distinction Intellectual position beside his contemporaries Swift and Addison . . Style of Swift Professional misplacement . . One of a galaxy illustrating Ireland . . guttatflittg irf ^nttmt; ax, ClimMng i^i ^tep, Begina del monclo .. The brazen wheel of Fortune . Self-service and self-sacriflce Appearance Opportunity False positions . . Ambitious spirits Story of Diagoras Catiline Tout vien trap tarO, ^bmit Matis9 uxia ^orir-fooks. Dictionaries .. .. Haunts of vernacular idiom Philological picture of manners . . Commercial and metaphorical tincture of language Application of technical phrases 163 153 163 153 154 154, 166 155 156 169 160 169 159 160 160 1G2 162 163 163 164 165 166 167 167 168 168 169 170 170 171 178 173 174 174 175 CONTENTS. gansSouci; or, t|c Iplosflyfe ai iappirass. Well-heads of happiness . 177 Thekey-note 177 Aim of fashionable life ..178 Effect of a ruling passion on happiness . . 178 Cheerfulness ..178 The real and ideal . . 178 Chivalry of beneficence . . 179 Smiles or sighs 180 Advice to Menippua 180 Masteries and miseries 181 Vive la bagatelle . 181 Laughing before being happy .. .\ 182 Ties to familiar things .. 182 Multum in parvo . . 183 Exclusion of artificial wants by agreeable sensations 183 Delicious influence of climate and soenerV 183 Choice or dictation of pleasures 184 Retreat from the present 184 FesUna lente .. 186 Sight of happiness in the lower creatures 185 Happiness of childhood .. 186 Mental epicurism 186 Economy of feeling ..186 Hesiod's paradox . . . 186 Vanitas vanitatum ..187 Shining of the sun after clouds 187 Illusion of present feelings ..187 Cheap pleasures . . 188 Happiness moulded by mental association . . ..189 Excluslveness of strong emotion 189 Luxury of concentrated thought ..189 Horace's monomaniac 190 The happy as subjects for delineation .. 191 Coldness of the analytic 191 Caveat .. 191 The vis inerti whose fictitious per- formances alone would redeem the literary pretensions of the age from contempt ; but who, like Prospero, seems to have buried deep the wand ,by which so many magical wonders were wrought. We have also a number of recent works, in various departments and ■styles, which display acuteness, versatility, elegance, and no mean compass of reflection ; some indeed a subtlety and a range of specu- lative insight rarely to be found in the writings of preceding periods. Nor is it to be denied that our later productions are on the whole best adapted to the circumstances and the- mental demands of the majority of readers. The topic under notice is not, however, a question of utility or adapt- ation, but of comparative intellectual rank. Not so many errors are afloat in the decline, or rather the feebler manifestations of a nation's mind, as when the greatest originality and vigour prevail. In seasons which produce but few authors, we commonly find the best ; though it may be that the best often appear in groups. The period of English literature most remarkable for the invention and brilliancy of its performances, will perhaps be deemed that extending from the latter years of Elizabeth through a considerable proportion of the reign of James ; in which were contemporary, during some part of their career, Spenser, Shakspeare, Sir Philip Sidney, Lord Bacon, Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher, Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Ford — whose Perkin Warbeck need fear no comparison with more than one of the plays attributed to our great dramatist ; Daniel, the meditative and serene, the Words- worth in miniature of his day; Browne, author of Britannia's Pastorals, and Drayton, of the Poly-Olbion, — that rich 10 LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS. storehouse of descriptive and legendary lore, thougli sur- passed by his Nymphidia, among the most delicious of fairy tales. Such a galaxy of names, which might be enlarged with those of Giles and Phineas Fletcher, and other rare- gifted geniuses, it would be impossible to collect from an equal space in any other part of our annals. Yet the number of writers in that era was as nothing compared to those who have lived in the barrenest portions of our subse- quent history; not to mention the profuseness of the increase at present, when the press, teeming with works addressed to every shade of fancy, can count its annual products by hundreds : though how many which bear the stamp of immortality ? During the earlier epochs of intellectual power, imagiaation and creative thought most abound : conceptions are bolder, but poesy and fable appear in greater force than reason or philosophy. In later and more refined periods, when superficial accuracy is an ordinary characteristip, the progress of research ensures, with a Rowing enianeipation from the illusions of the Past, an approach to truth in its most comprehensive forms. Time naturally corrects and modifies opinions. The different kinds of mental accomplishment or superiority may be estimated generally, perhaps, in the following order: 1. Original and inventive thought: of which there are two classes, broadly discriminated; so much so as to mark distinct species or types of mind : one including discoveries such as those of Sir Isaac Newton, or disquisitions hke the De Augmentis and the Nomm Organum of Bacon, opening new vistas of reflection at each step : the other, ideal creations, as Shakspeare's, which demand not only far richer combinations and loftier ex- ercises of native power, but a spirit of inspiration that no logical or iuductive or mere meditative process can boast, yet which often exhibit a union of the subtlest with the, most comprehensive reach of intellect. 2. Fancy and LITEEAEY CHARACTERISTICS. 11 poetical embellishment ; displayed chiefly in gleams of imagery, or the decoration of the more soHd intellectual structures; as the ornaments of an architectural pile, or flashes of lightning on its unshrinMng proportions. 3. Humour and satire ; among the raciest specimens of which, by our elder wits, take, for instance, the far-renowned Hudibras; or the pleasantries that, profuse and variegated as the appearances of the kaleidoscope, are scattered, Hke stars on the face of night, in the pregnant pages of FuUer ; — and for a taste of the modem, Lord Byron's Vision of Judgment. 4. Picturesque narration or description ; of which, by the way, it were easier to find examples among the biographers, novelists, and early writers of travel, than among historians, if we except the old chroniclers. 5. Imi- tation ; not of course in the sense in which Aristotle refers to it all poetry and music, as being' imitations of nature, but rather the servile copying of expellence, artificially or ■otherwise produced. The ancient Greek tragedy was in some respects perhaps more adapted to its appropriate ends of pity and. terror, than the eflbrts of the tragic muse among the modems. In the former instance the calamities portrayed were linked, either directly, or by a belief underlying the substance of contemporary thought, with the mysterious sway of a certaia invisible, all-conquering Necessity or Force. This circumstance would tend to produce in the spectators an undeflnable impression of sublimity, arising from the obscure and impenetrable nature of the doom ; and consequently could not fail to excite the emotions of terror and awe. At the same time the innocence, or the hapless condition with the darkling guilt, of the unfortunate victim, was suited to awaken the tenderest feelings of sym- pathy and • compassion. — It is true that with us the result would be different, because we are happily free from the mythological and erroneous tenets on which the classical 12 LITEBAEY CHARACTERISTICS. drama was grounded ; but then we are to consider what would have been the probable case with those who yielded a firm assent to the doctrines of their fabulous theology. The ancient tragedy therefore was more vivid ia its effects ; that of the modems, in which the catastrophe is brought about by the influence of passion, and the agency of men, without reference to the dim, shadowy operation of Fate, is more just and instructive. The former was built on superstition and fancy ; the latter is founded on nature, and the laws of ethical propriety. Of all the plays of Shak- speare, Macbeth, in which something* of the mystic power gleams forth that was supposed to control the ruler of Olympus himself, exercises perhaps the strongest spell on the imagination.* There are certain departments of research, or species of metaphysical inquiry, that can boast little merit in themselves, but, as straws preserved by amber, hold a place among cherished things on account of the brilliant conceptions which some masterly genius has shed on the otherwise uninviting theme. Of the* former particular we are not without specimens in the polemical writings of our old divines, more especially those of Jeremy Taylor, the interest of which, so far as the subject is concerned, has long since evaporated, or which have been displaced by treatises more concise and logical, but which display a richness and prodigality of fancy, with an abundance of curious lore, offering a rare repast to minds of poetical or excursive cast. For an example of speculative disqui- sition utterly void of claims to regard, on the score of its leading philosophical aim, I may refer to Smith's Theory * The CEdipus Tyrannus of Sophocles in particular, one of the inOBt sublime and touching of dramatic fahlea, and especially that magnificent effusion of genius, the Prometheus of ^schylus, offer some illustration of these critioiBms respecting the ancient tragedy, as borrbwing both grandeur and pathos from the .principle of an overruling Destiny. LITEEAEY CHAKACTEEIST1C3. 13 of Moral Sentiments; a work of whicli the fundamental position is not less chimerical than absurd, yet whose ap- pendages and embellishments are so varied and picturesque, as justly to secure it a place among the most fascinating, productions of ethical literature. Exact analysis, whatever ingenuity or penetration it may exhibit, is not calculated to ensure its own immortality, as we are apt to neglect whatever is reduced to its simplest and most elementary principles. Where no scope exists for diversity of opinion, or additional investigation, the understanding turns insensibly to subjects more or less complex and doubtful. But matters which relate to the feehngs or imagination can never lose their interest with the mind, because they are for the most part undeflnable, and depend for their effect on individual association. It is usually more pleasing to see great truths presented in a combined form, than with a dissection of their constituent parts, or an analysis of their causes. • It is possible for subjects to receive too much Ulumi- nation, as a landscape commonly appears less beautiful and attractive amidst the fuU brightness of day, than when seen through a silvery veil of mist, or by the mellow light of the moon. The intricacies of fiction are usually more interest- ing than their developement, and mysteries than their solution. Were the obscure parts of a story to be left without explanation, the impression- of the piece would frequraitiy be heightened. The history of the Man in the Iron Mask, though stiU a tale of considera.ble curiosity, will never inspii-e the sentiments it awakened when an impene- trable enigma. Perhaps the powerful effect of several of Lord Byron's performances is attributable in no slight degree to the ambiguity in which he has chosen to envelope his principal characters and incidents; the interspersion of shadow with gleams or masses of light allowing most scopa 14' LITEBAHY CHAEACTEKISTICS. to the mystic play of fancy. A sulject may be rendered as transparent as an icicle, while it is still as cold. The tendency of a logical mind is to condense ; that ■of an imaginative mind, to amplify. Yet most capacious and powerful intellects are more or less imaginative. The facility is perceptible ia several of the most abstruse and argumentative writers ; but in such instances it displays itself, not in the production of distinct metaphor or picture, but rather in new trains of thought, .which gradually open upon the understanding, like a landscape spreading slowly to the view as the spectator emerges from a labyrinth or shaded vista. There are few vigorous conc'eptions, indeed, into which a considerable portion of imagination does not enter. Angels as exhibited ia paintings and engravings, or in written descriptions, whether poetical or prose, are com- monly but insipid personages. There is something in the conception so ethereal, or so appropriate to the realms over which imagination in her transcendental moods presides, that most attempts — -not excepting Milton's — at definite delineation, have been unsuccessful. The perspicuity by which some compositions are dis- tinguished invests them with a trite or superficial character in the apprehension of sophisticated judges, to whom simplicity, and a total freedom from obscurity, are evidences of subordinate genius. Among the celebrated persons whose writings are open to this species of captious dispar- agement, may be mentioned perhaps the name of Dugald Stewart. It seems to be the fashion of late to depreciate the speculations of this most elegant and accomplished author, whose conceptions are so transparent, and so accurately defined, as to appear common-place or frivolous to minds that are ever most attracted by the mystical or. inflated. Perhaps he has not extended the boundaries of HTEEAET CHABACTEEISTICS. 15 intellectual science, or made any particular discoveries in that department of inquiry ; but whatever may be the amount of his contributions to the subject, his works abound with ingenious and beautiful .reflections, expressed in a style that for calm dignified discussion is one of the most chaste and captivating that our literature can boast. He is the Virgil of philosophy ; and if his performances be estimated with that enlightened and comprehensive dis- ciimination which they so eminently display, he will be deemed perhaps as likely to hold an enduring position as any metaphysical or critical essayist in our language* Why is history for the most part a record of crueltj and crime ? Because it is badly wi-itten. The subject is. chiefly interesting for the biographical sketches, or the domestic incidents and manners which it embraces ; yet- all the more picturesque and placid scenes and occurrences are usually passed over in silence. Satire, or romance, to- gay nothing of that mirror of life, the drama, often gives a fairer insight into the social, and therefore real condition of nations, than historical recitals. We have more of the customs and characteristics of the Eoman people in Juvenal, than in any professed narrative of the period. It is astonishing what a mass of curious information, whai hvely summaries and portraits, are comprised in his power- * We should hardly he guilty of impropriety in applying to this eminently luSid and candid reasoner an observation which he has made respecting the two perhaps most elegant prose writers of France and England. " The reputation of Fenelon as a philosopher would prohahly have heen higher and more universal than, it is, if he had not added to the depth, comprehension, and soundness of his judgment, so rich a variety of those more pleasing and attractive qualities, which are commonly regarded rather as the flowers than the fruits of study. The same remark may he extended to the Fenelon of England, whoso ingenious and original essays on the Pleasures of Imagination would have heen much more valued hy modern metaphysicians, had they heen leas beautifully and happily written." — Dissertation on the Progress of Metaphysical Philosophy. 16 LITEEAKY CHARACTERISTICS. ful invectives. Where is the book of annals that contains so just or vivid a representation of the economy and habits of the Spaniards, as Don Quixote or Gil Bias ? Our own countrymen of the middle ages are better delineated in. Strutt's Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, than in Hume's History, though in point of mind, and as a composition, by far the best that has been produced : while Chaucer's poetical sketches, exhibiting so much of the inner and outer existence of those times, have a similar advantage over the ordinary chronicles to that which a living subject possesses over a figure chiselled in stone, or which a landscape coloured after nature has over the region as laid down on a map.* Historical are much less exceptionable than fictitious misrepresentations of character or opinions. The mere narration of facts does not much operate on feeKng. Besides, fact is of a tangible nature, and is easily con- fronted with fact. But the case is different when satire, imagination, incident, and the countless variety of iafluences that romance is capable of exerting, are enlisted on the side of prejudice or falsehood. The principal advantage afforded to literature by fame in war or politics, is the opportunity which it furnishes for * Perhaps it may te affirmed with truth, that the spirit or interior state of a people can better be discovered even from its national music, than by a chronology of its outward fortunes. I beg to cite here an observation of one who unites in himself the rare qualities of a picturesque, and a profound philosophical historian. "Les paroles de» chansons nationales," says Augustin Thierry, " dans lesquelles I'Irlande a oonsigne ses longues soufBrances, ont peri povir la plupart ; la musiquo seule a'est conservee. Oette muaique pent servir de commentaire h, I'histoire du pays. EUe peint I'int^rieur des ^mes aussi bien que les reoits peignent les actions; on y trouve beauooup de langueur et d'abattement, une tristesae profondement aentie, mais vaguement exprimee, comma la douleur qui se retient parce qu'on I'observe." Dix Ans d'Etudes Historiques. LITEEAEY CHAEACTEEISTICS. 17 introducing notices respecting private history or manners. On the interest which the celehrity has awakened, may be engrafted a large portion of amusement or instruction. Otherwise the ordinary tracks of existence supply more genuine developements of nature, and abound in materials of wider application. Hitherto we have had Kves of illus- trious commanders, statesmen, lawyers, philosophers, and so forth: — we now require Kves of the poor, the unlet- tered, and obscure. Something of the sort is occasionally attempted in poetry — witness the admirable tales of Crabbe — and in the lighter kind of prose works ; but the sketches thus offered are rather specimens of a class, mixed up with many fictitious accompaniments, than individual portraits or memoirs. The biography of the common •people is a mine that yet remains to be worked. It is the minute things of life pn which the feelings chiefly turn. The poem therefore, or other species of Uterary production, which deals mostly with its generalities, will seldom affect the imagination agreeably, or for a long period. Goldsmith's Traveller, containing a rapid sketch or philosophical estimate of the principal nations of Europe, will never, though embeUished with so many exquisite graces of sentiment and diction, be so captivating to the popular fancy as the Deserted Village, which is composed ahnost entirely of individual pictures, borrowed from those scenes of humble existence that appeal with irresistible force to the heart. I would rather have the history, bio- graphical and antiquarian, of a secluded rural hamlet, faithfully yet poetically portrayed — something of the spirit of Gray's Elegy being applied to its real personages and incidents — than most state histories I have seen. One of the most pleasing and 'valuable books of the kind in our language, is Herbert's " Country Parson." It deserves this encomium, not because it is of universal 18 LITEBABY CHAEACTBEISTICS. adaptation, being designed only for a particular order of ministers, and implying the existence of customs that are now obsolete, and could not be revived with advantage; but because it combines the rare merits of simplicity, conciseness, depth, and originality. It displays incom- parably more thought and genius than modern productions of a similar nature, which are generally mere compilations, abounding with minute details apparently as much calcu- lated to perplex and encumber as to afford any substantial assistance. Chaucer's "poor Parson," who however was "rich of holy thought and work," is a kind of embodied miniature of Herbert's, with the eflFectof a satire on models of a different description. It is singular that while the poetry of Cowley and George Herbert is in general characterised by the most incongruous and puerile conceits, their prose compositions: should be distinguished by so much amenity and grace. The prose of Herbert especially, though not to be ranked with Cowley's in ease or beauty, has never been sufficiently appreciated for its chaste and unaffected simplicity. Such a trait, mingled or not with quaintijess, wiU ever retain a charm: but it is a favourable symjitom in our national taste that the style of poesy, if poesy it can be deem-, ed, of Donne, Cowley, and others of the class which Johnson caUs the metaphysical, but which might more properly be termed the word or thought-playing, has long since lost its attraction; a considerable part, besides the taint of elaborate and far-fetched witticism, hardly rising above the level of Stemhold and Hopkins' vein,: or even the Scotch version of the Psalms, than whick " the force of doggrel can no farther go." Yet of Cowley in particular there are not a few pieces, both original and translated, that are well worthy of being rescued from oblivion; contrasting curiously with the strained allusions, and grotesque epigrammatic points, of that obsolete metrical school, and not iU matohiaf LITEBARY CHAEACTEEISTICS. 19 with Ma prose essays, so unaffected and beauti^. Donne also, though scarcely to be accounted a poet, claims no small admiration for the profusion of learning condensed into his lines, for the subtlety and penetration of his fancy, and for the pithiness, pregnancy, and occasional sweetness of his thoughts. Now and then too escapes a sparkle of the mens divinior, as in that fine passage in one of his elegies : Her pure and eloquent blood Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought. That one might almost say her body thought.* It may justly be wondered that Johnson should designate this race of rhymsters metaphysical; but he seems to have borrowed the expression from Dryden, who in his dedication of Juvenal, speaking of Donne, says, " He affectff the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign, and perplexes the miads of the fair sex with speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts, and entertaiu them with the softness of love." Both Dryden ajxd Pope, however, could yield their plaudits to a writer who blends so much variety and raciness of sentiment with a world of petty or distorted ingenuities. If prose were better written, poetry would be less in request. In several important respects, prose possesses a decided superiority over poetry. For the most part it is less difficult to comprehend ; it is a better vehicle for con- veying the precise sentiments of the writer ; and is likewise susceptible of much greater variety.. I own I have for more delight iu reading Addison's essays on the Pleasures * By a curious enough mistake, these lines, -which might almost pass for an effiision of Shakspeare's, and which occur in the poem quaintly entitled "The Progress off the Soul," have heen cited as a description of Donne's mistress, though written in commemoration of a girl who died at fifteen, the daughter of his friend and patron Sir Bohert Drury. 20 LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS. of Imagination than Akenside's poem, which, pursuing a similar train of speculation, enlarged and embellished, is giievously deficient in the simplicity of its prototype; and though studded here and there 'With no contemptible imagery, yet by straining after effect, is not unfreqnently obscure, imnatural, and inflated. The fault was in this instance perhaps chiefly an affair of individual execution and taste; but there are few poetical pieces that do not contrast perceptibly with Wordsworth's, in which, where you find no particular beauties of feehng or fancy, you have at least thoroughly transparent and- unaffected English. Who does not prefer Scott's novels to his metrical romances, excellent and fascinating as they are ? Yet both are aKke in subject and materials; in all, in fact, except the form as versified or not. The best poetry is no doubt better than the best prose, not merely as adding measure, and perhaps rhyme, to its other qualities, but especially as embodying the finer and richer emanations of mind : — but taking the average of each style, the advantage wiU probably be found with the latter. It is curious what a difference verse or prose makes with some people, who can admire Sir Walter's Lady of the Lake, Marmion, and other poetical fictions, but eschew his prose ones as romances : a casuistical distinction not un- worthy of those who anathematize novel-reading as a sin, yet devour with great avidity the religious romance ycleped Paradise Lost. It seems to escape the perspicacity of these sages, that the noblest productions of ancient or modern times have been not only works of imagination, but fictitious or dramatic stories ; as the Hiad and Odyssey and plays of Greece ; the Mneii ; Dante's Commedia, and the Jerusalem Delivered of Tasso ; Shakspeare's matchless effusions, and Milton's epic ; with a number of less illus- trious performances. Take away the works that may be denominated fictitious, and those vivid with the bright colourings of creative fancy, and, except as materials iot. lilTERARY CHAEACTEEISTICS. 21 speculation, or momentary enterta,ininent, little will be left but the husks of literature. Perhaps some of the finest sentiments and imagina- tions that the mind has produced, have never been exhibited to the world. The best conceptions lose much of their briUiance, or more evanescent grace, -when embodied in a visible or symbolic form. The sculptor whose grandeur of genius earned for him the same eminence ia his own art that BaffaeUe attained iu his — if any art can be called his own whose powers seem to have been almost as versatile as they were distinguished — uttered nothing remarkably sage in the lines that would represent himself as not formiog the statue, but only extricating it out of the block of marble. What should we say to the proposition, that a number of beautiful essays or poems existed in the EngUsh tongue, prior to the composition of a single literary work? Yet the assertion would be equally correct; for in writing a poem or essay, the author only joins artificially, not makes, the letters of the alphabet, or rather the words of the language. In the verses referred to, which it must be almost un- necessary to state are those of Michael Angelo, the illusion of the thought is perhaps favoured by the beauty of its expression : Kon ha I'ottimo artista alcuu concetto, Che un marmo solo in se non circonscriva Col suo BovercMo, e solo a qnello arriva La mano che obbedisce all' iuteUetto. The idea, of which the germ may be discovered in the Banquet of Plato, has been imfolded more particularly by Cicero, who in his treatise on Divination, adverting to a story about the form of a certaia person's head being found in the cleft stone of a quarry, philosophises on the 22 LITEEABY CHAEACTEEISTICS. circumstance in a strain importing, as the verses them- selves, that in any piece of marble are heads as fine as Praxiteles ever moulded ; and that aU which is necessary to arrive at them, is to remove the superfluous parts : a representation to be classed with those in which a senti- ment, imposing by an air of originahty or brilliance, dwindles on examination into a paradox or a truism. The fancy however may be applied to illustrate a significant reaUty in another department ; that the proper function of the educator is — to bring out the image in the block* It seems a pity, by the way, to throw the shadow of a shade on the celebrated definition of the Deity as a circle "whose centre is every where, and circumference nowhere : a comparison which has been traced, by a tolerably clear chain of evidence, through various writers — Pascal, Rabelais, G-erson, Vincent de Beauvais, and others — up to Empedocles. But though a iine sounding metaphor, yet, as postulating and denying the same thing, it carries with it a metaphysical incongruity ; for if the circumference is nowhere, there is no cu-cumferenee ; and if there is no circumference, there, can be • no circle. Doubtless the imagery is to be referred to those undefinable conceptions that are not to be looked at logically, the object and the efiiect being simply to convey a mystic sense of vastness or infinitude. Thebb is this circumstance deserving of notice respectiag abstract as well as practical truths in general, that they are capable of being separated from their authors, * The notion of Cicero that this or the other figure, virtually com- prehended in every marhle, may sometimes he disclosed hy chance, as alleged in the story, is a curious deduction of his own from the principle he so ingeniously expounds : — " Quasi non potuerit id evenire casu ; et non in omni marmore necesse sit inesse vel Fraxitelia capita : ilia enim ipsa effioiuntur detraotione ; nee quidquam iUuo affertur a Praxitele ; sed cum multa sunt detracta, et ad lineamenta oris perventum est, turn intelligag, illud quod jam expolitum sit, intus fuisss."— De Divin. lih. ii. LIXEEARY CHAEACTERISTICS. 23 and transmitted . or dififased through secondary channels. With most other species of mental production the case is different. A person can hardly emich himself with the ingredients of a poem or romance, or essay of varied wit or fancy, without perusing the composition itself. Works of taste and imagination are identified with the writer : works of mere science or philosophy, though distinguished by the highest merit, may soon incur neglect, because the principles they deliver are susceptible of conveyance in a multitude of other forms. A book that can be superseded is never of the first rank of intellectual performances. Few pubHeations will live of which the principal interest is not founded on human passions, sentiments, or manners ; nor will any work be a lasting favourite with the people at large, which is not considerably tinctured with vernacular and idiomatic phraseology. The two most popular books in the language, Eobinson Crusoe and the Pilgrim's Progress, are all over racy with the unadulterated expressions of our old EngKsh or mother tongue. Bunyan's allegory has no doubt various transcendant merits, besides the homeliness and colloquial zest of its style, to support the world-wide reputation it has acquired : but though a work of invention, it is not one of imagina- tion ; in the sense, that is,' of pictra:esque ideal creation. It is in general mere qualities or abstractions that talk in a piece, in which doctrines or feelings are so quaintly woven into narrative. Its figures want flesh and pulsation, and its landscapes warmth and Hving hues ; so that the former bear a resemblance to automata emitting words uttered by the invisible operator ; the latter to delineations of scenery in crayons. The book is the delight of the young, because fancy can vrith them easily fiU up the outlines ; and agree- able to most grovm persons of piety, in part as recalling a pleasure of earlier days, in part as embodying pithy religious sentiment in the dramatic form of adventure and dialogue, 24 LITERAEY CHARACTERISTICS. where however the literal often strangely peeps through the allegorical. Even the romance of Cervantes, with its matchless array of incident and character, giving the true colours of nature, and overflowing with humour, is yet not xar e$oxfiv, if at aU, remarkahle for the property in question ; far less so indeed than the most prosaic of the cantos, if any such there are, in the Faery Queen. It is with Bunyan's performance somewhat as with the fables in which birds and beasts discourse to the admiration of juvenile wits, but which are hardly so captivating to intellects ripe enough to extract the moral out of the story, and are surely not fruits of the imaginative or poetic faculty. FiCTXTioTis composition, executed with the higher aims which that species of writing* admits, and not in subservience to a taste which is at present the disease and the bane of literature, may be rendered the vehicle of several of its most interesting varieties ; as, sketches of character, scenery, and manners ; antiquities and tradi- tion ; the leading features of history ; opinions, usages, or the like. Biography may include ^ with no sKght fund of miscellaneous knowledge, many of the popular discoveries in science, as well as the principal maxims of social and domestic economy. Besides poetry, there would then vemain but one great branch of letters. — that comprised in essays or dissertations, comprehending of course criticism, and philosophical disquisition. In fact however, looking at the works of Sir Walter Scott, or the multifarious range of themes in the Wilhelm Meister of Goethe — remai'kable not more for its variety of well discriminated characters, and the naturalness of its descriptions, than for penetrating views on literature and art — who shall say that any class of subjects, except the purely technical or scientific, and these in their minuter aspects or ramifications, is strictly beyond the pale of the wide-embracing novel ? — The method of blending reality and fiction, or portraying things LITEEASY CHAEACTEEIs'l^ICS. 25 in the order in wMch they present themselves in nature and life, where they are always more or less complex and vaiiegated in their relations, appears preferable to the usual mode of exhibiting topics in a separate and meagre form. Our literature has been accustomed to partake, more than seems requisite, the principle of the dlTision of labour, which, however commodious in attempts to establish or enlarge the boundaries of "any specific department, is little desirable for the purpose of communicating ascertained infonnation. The Greeks, the originators of almost every thing intellectual in Europe, have set the example, in one particular walk at least, of the union here mentioned ; as may be seen in that political and ethical romance, the Institution of Cyrus, which embodies so many principles of the Socratic philosophy, with a number of antique traits, . in a story constructed for the most part out of the writer's fancy. ScENEEY and events are often more interesting in description than in reality. When actually witnessed, there is commonly an intermixture of some feeling or circum- stance that diminishes the pleasure. But in reading a well-written account of them, no toils or privations are imposed; the essence of what is striking or agreeable is extracted; and the range of imagination is not bounded by fact. The poetry of Lord Byron contains no pleasing pictures of human life or manners ; none of those quiet, innocent, domestic scenes, which shine so beautifully in the productions of Thomson, Goldsmith, and Cowper. He is not, nor is he likely ever to become, the poet of the people ; as, with some exceptions, his writings would fail to be understood by an uneducated, or relished by an unthinking or unpolished mind. But neither is Spenser, nor Dryden, nor Milton himself, though surrounded with 26 LITERARY CHARAOTEKISTICS. SO much glory, the poet of the people. Byron however can fairly claim a much loftier title than that : he is a poet whom Genius, Taste, Feehng, in spite of perversities too wilful for palliation, wiU ever rank among their choicest exponents. While his power is most conspicuous in delineating the darker workings of the brain, or the move- ments of passion, these, as depicted by the pencil of the noble bard, are generally of an unusual order, either as to theii- causes or their intensity. Perhaps his most appropriate appellation would be that of the Poet of the Soul; for in describiag its inmost thoughts and deepest amotions, he has incomparably surpassed all his poetical contemporaries, Wordsworth alone, or Coleridge, in some sort excepted. By a felicity of gifts not often co-existing, Byron shows the extent to which pathos, fire, and imagina- tion^ the leading qualities of his compositions, may be enhanced by the charms of elegance and refinement. To these pre-eminent merits he has united "the utmost poignancy of wit and satire; so as in the former to rival Butler, in the latter to excel Pope. On the whole, whatever the depreciation affected by certain later critics, whose declama- tion about his waning lustre is curiously confronted with the constant demand for new editions of his works, he may safely be pronounced the most vigorous, if not the most original poet that has appeared since the author of , Paradise Lost. His temperament was singularly unfortunate. With much generosity and elevation of spirit, added to a disdain of the attributes by which petty or hypocritical natures are characterised, his own was remarkable for the absence of moral restraint and culture, without which the most brilliant talents and most favourable situations contri- bute very shghtly to happiness. His melancholy, though in part no doubt attributable to constitutional causes and to cu'cumstances, was chiefly owing to the want of self-discipline and religious inflijences, which are LITEBAEY CHAEACTEKISTICS. 27 never, except in the case of extreme physical disordef, or partial insanity, found permanently dissociated from enjoyment. It is curious to trace, in authors of so different a cast as Byron and Johnson, not a few features of intellectual resemblance. Both display consummate manliness and independence of thought. The understandings of both were evidently of a practical mould, little adapted or inclined to matters of pure speculation. From the writings of the former, in poetry or prose, may be ex- tracted a large body of massive reflection, less common- place and more salient than Johnson's, as the fruit not merely of a strangely complex experience, but of a subtler and more instinctive knowledge of human natm-e. Both present the pith of philosophy, without the system or the details. Byron was of a deeply melancholy temperament ; so was Johnson. Superstition tog over each wove its mysterious web, though in one from the visionary speUs of a sombre brain, supplying the absence or deficiency of faith ; in the other from a morbid fear of the spiritual, allowing to faith an excess or aberration. The question of their poetical merits suggests some mixed points of comparison, the author of Easselas having no fine or inventive fancy, even if belonging to the tunefol fraternity; while the noble bard unites to his lofty imagination and pathos the same masculine vein of sentiment that pervades the metrical compositions of Johnson. Both accordingly were great admirers of Pope, who, like Dryden, excelled in terseness and condensation of sense, harmoniously expressed; which Byron, a better producer than critic, and influenced by early association and study, amusingly set up, contrary to the prevailing impress of his own genius, for high poetry; and which Johnson's taste and structure of intellect, that left him blind to the matchless beauties of the AUegro and Penseroso, of Comus and of Lycidas, as weU as to the 28 LITEEAEV CHAEACTEEISTICS. exquisite merits of Collins and Gray, made Mm almost exclusively reUsli. Though in political and religious tenets they were widely discriminated, yet with regard to politics, the discrepancy was perhaps more apparent than realy Byron ever retaining a strong predilection in favour of his order, but, ranking with the nobility, he could easily afford to patronise popular claims ; while Johnson, who was born a com- moner, aspired to assert the dignity and prerogatives of the aristocracy. Since writing the above many years ago, I have turned over afresh the principal of our modem poets, as Scott, Crabbe, Wordsworth, Coleridge, etc. | but with no abate- ment of admiration for these masters of song, especially the divine old bard of Eydal Mount, and the no less divine and more ethereal Coleridge, and notvrithstanding some recent attempts to enthrone this or the other, I shall stick to my creed that Byron, his age and various disturbing influences fairly reckoned for, outmatches them aU. K authority could decide such a question, it would be difficult to find a better than Goethe's. " The EngUsh," said he, in one of his conversations with Eckermann, " may think of Byron as they please ; but this is certain, that they can show no poet who is to be compared to him. He is different from all the others, and, for the most part, greater." — "Were it not for his hypochondriacal negative turn, he would be as great as Shakspeare and the ancients." Here at least is an estimate which, overdrawn as it may be, presents the notion of one as remote as possible from those echoers of others' thoughts, whose eulogies and censures are alike worthless. Have we had indeed a single poet that has arisen since Byron's time, or a novelist since Sir Walter's, whose works will bear! to be named in the same breath with theirs ? GLIMPSES OF OLD ENGLISH LIFE. CAN never think of the ancient practice of archery, in which our forefathers were so eminently skilled, without a feeling of regret that, as a popular pas- time, it is now almost extinct. It comprises most of the recommendations, apart from the disadyantages of other active amusements ; diverting the attention without en- feebling the intellect, and promoting health without leading to cruelty or vice of any sort. Koger Ascham, who thought that aU should be brought up to " the book and the bow," seems to have been among the last who pursued the recrea- tion with the keen zest of the genuine old Englishman. The custom of retaining a domestic fool or jester, was not so idle or contemptible as some may imagine. The genuine fool — to adopt something of his own vein, and talk in paradox — was only a coimterfeit one, having in most instances no slight shrewdness, together with considerable powers of wit and fertility of invention. This might be inferred from his estimation among aU the great of those periods ; a buffoon being a favourite appendage in the court of the prince, the palace of the cardinal or bishop, the castle of the baron, as well as, the residence of the inferior feudal proprietor. Even his Holiness the Pope had his sanctitude enlivened by one of these household a/rlecchini. It is curious to read of Sir Thomas More's having a jester ; a fact which would not iU accord with 80 GLIMPSES OF OLD ENGLISH LIFE. the faeetiousness of that extraordinary man, so strangely exhibited on the scaffold ; though many, we may remember, have suffered death with a witticism on their lips, perhaps on the principle which made Cowper write his John Gilpin when in the depths of melancholy. We have a not inexpressive trait connected with this characteristic of by-gone periods, in a circumstance related of Wolsey, who in his progress to Esher after his fall, being overtaken by Sir Henry Norris with a ring and an assurance of kindness from the Sovereign, in the fulness of his gratitude recalled the messenger, that he might bear to his majesty what the sagacious cardinal knew would be no unwelcome offering — a certain jester of his train, called by Lord Herbert a " facetious natural," who had often before diverted the monarch by his buffooneries. This official of the olden time supplied in part the want of literature, politics, and other modern auxiliaries of con- versation and entertainment. He was also the satirist of his day, at least in his particular circle, ridicuhng foUies as they arose, and noting affectations in dress or manners with a licensed freedom ; so that utUity was often blended with his sallies of jocularity. The ancients seem to have led the way in this remark- able usage, which can be traced on the paintings in tombs belonging to the remotest epochs of Egyptian story. From the Banquet of Xenophon, as also that of Lucian, it appears that with the Greeks the ye\(aTowoi,6s, or laughter-maher, was a professional personage, m high request on occasions of private festivity ; while among the Eomans the scwrra or buffoon had a regular place assigned bim at their tricUnivm: — witness the foHovring passage of Horace, who defends the freedom of his satirical pleasantry by the indulgence extended to these privileged banterers : Ssepe tribus lectis videas coanare quaternos, E quibus imus amet quavis adspergere cunctos, Prseter eum qvii prsebet aquam : post hunc quoque potus, GLIMPSES OF OLD ENGLISH LIFE. 31 Condita qunm^verax. apeiit prEecordia Liber : Hie tibi comis et urbanus Uberque videtnr Infesto nigris. A colleotion of all the burlesque sayings or bons mots recorded to have been uttered by this singular class of men, in different eras and countries, would furnish a curious medley of amusement for a vacant hour. It appears that in England the ofiBce of court-jester was contiuued till swept away by the civil wars of Charles the First ; though the practice was maiutaiued in some private establishments till after the commencement of the last century.* The extinction of the 6rder is little to be regi-etted. A malicious genius might perhaps insinuate, that the multiplication of real fools has superseded the necessity of fictitious ones. " You ^hall find," quoth the devil in Quevedo, " buffoons in all conditions ; and iu effect there are nigh as many as there are men and women ; for the whole world is given to jeering, slandering, backbiting, and there are more natural fools than artificial." Juvenal sarcastically remarks, that the diversion of public spectacles, was surpassed in his day by the drama of human eccen- tricities and follies : — Ergo omnia Morse Et Cereris licet et Cybeles anlaea relinquas ; Tauto majores humana negotia hidi. The race of old English yeomen, though not yet extinct, is, I fear, fast disappearing. Certainly there seem but few counterparts of Chaucer's worthy Franklin, so fond of a wine-sop in the morning, and of good cheer at all times ; whose bread and ale were always alike, that is, no doubt, * The story of Killigrew's having been eourt-jegter to Chaxles the Second, broached first I believe by Pepys, and repeated on the respect- able authority of Oldys, is admitted by Douce to be without foundation j (niuatrations of Sbaispeare ; Dissertation on the Clowns ; ) as would appear indeed sufficiently from the Memoirs of Grammont, and the notes to that work. 32 GLIMPSES OF OLD ENGLISH LIFE. the best that could be made ; and in whose house, we are assured, it " snowed" with plenty of fish and flesh, baked meat and stewed; the cellar too being well stored with wine, and a table ready covered in the hall through the liveJong day : His bread, his ale, was always after one ; ' A better envinSd ' man was no where none. Withouten bake meat never was his house Of fish and flesh, and that so plenteous It snowed in his house of meat and drink Of aU6 dainties that men could of think. * * * PuU many a fat partridge had he in mew,'' And many a bream and many a luce * in stew. * * * His table dormant in his hall alway Stood ready oover'd all the longg day. The nearest representative of this ancient rural class is the hospitable country squire of modem days. A MUCH smaller portion of interest is connected with journeys in England at the present time, than must have existed in more primitive and uncultivated periods. The rerdotest places are now pretty accurately known : traveUing too is marked with less of adv&ture and variety, as there are no extensive forests or heath-clad wastes to be traversed, whether on foot, by waggon, or in a style resembling the far-famed pilgrimage to Canterbury, which, if not fertile in romantic incidents, combined the charms of many-coloured narrative and social hilarity. Add to which, that a con- siderable uniformity in point of appearance, manners, and language, begins to prevail in every part of our island. Certainly the iron roads of the age, that delight in a material level, have a very levelling effect on locomotive thought and feeling. ' after ow— alike. ' envined — stored with wipe. ' in mew— in secret. 4 luce — pike. GLIMPSES OF OLD ENGLISH LIFE. 38 The transition, in habits of life, from what is natural, to that which is artificial or scientific, is constantly in- creasing, although in many respecta the change is little gratifying to an unsophisticated taste.. There is something, for instance, much less picturesque in judging of the weather by means of the barometer, while we sit immured in our habitations, than by the methods in use among our ancestors, who formed their conjectures, on the whole perhaps nearly as correct, from the flights and appearances of birds, from observation of the clouds, winds, cattle, or other external phenomena. The progress of arts and refine- ment is every day shutting us out more and more from nature. ^Perhaps we are mistaken in supposing that our countrymen, two or three centuries ago, were little ac- customed to the practice of reading. If we take into account the difference of population, together with the larger size of most works then pubKshed, we shall possibly be disposed to reverse the opinion, and conclude that the readers of books ia former days were not only numerous, but more indefatigable than the majority of readers in the present age. A great proportion of our elder productions, though mostly elaborate and voluminous, passed through several editions. Few persons now-a-days read any thing besides newspapers, critical periodicals, and the lighter performances of literature. — According to old Robert Burton, there was no lack either of number or variety of works issued in his time, now above two centuries ago ; as he enumerates, among the ten thousand curiosities that assailed the people of that era, "new books every day, pamphlets, currantoes, stories, whole catalogues of volumes of all sorts,, new paradoxes, opinions, schisms, heresies, controversies in philosophy, religion, etc."* — The public ' Anatomy of Melancholy : Demooritua junior to the Reader. 34 GLIMPSES OF OLD ENGLISH LIFE. of those days, methinks, must have been rather more greedy hankerers after current intelligence than a certain farmer I have heard of, who on being asked why he did not take ia a newspaper, answered, Because, when my father died some years ago, he left me a number of old papers, which I have not read through yet. COMMONPLACE AND ORIGINALITY. WOULD rather be the author of one original , thought, than conqueror of a hundred battles ; yet hold for an axiom, to be cherished with the noblest philosophy, that one pure or generous feeling, of those that spring up Kke flowers in the happiest natures, is more to be esteemed than, apart from goodness or any moral relation, a hundred original thoughts. Genuine mind is not imitative, either because it masters, is not mastered by, what it looks upon, as princes do not copy the manners of their attendants ; or is so filled with rcYerence at the divinity that dwells in genius, that imitation is shunned as a kind of sacrilege. It is possible for the mind to be peculiarly con- structed or exercised, without being original, or having the slightest force or independence of thought ; to say nothing of those gleams of inspiration or fancy which mark the more inventive class of spirits. There is a peculiarity of meanness, of contraction, of affectation, in mental things; a distinction not to be confounded even with eccentricity, which, as relating to manners, is often associated with the highest or most engaging qualities. The discovery of new ideas is not essential to the character of mental originality. A certain juxta-position 36 COMMONPLACE AND OEIGINALITY. or combination of well-known truths — as in the beautiM appearances of crystallization arising- out of the structure and affinities of the primitive particles — -will often supply unquestionable proof of decided originality and inTention. It is with the operation of thought somewhat as with that of the kaleidoscope, which out of a few simple materials, freshly arranged, and submitted to the action of Kght, produces the most surprising forms of novelty and beauty. Perhaps I may add that what are eaUed creations, and in a sense with accuracy, are rather but new forms or combina- tions elaborated out of the mind's pre-existing stores by the chemistry of genius. Buffon, I presume, was of this opinion. "L'esprit humain," says he, in one of his most eloquent pieces, "ne pent rien cr6er ; il ne produira qu'aprfes avoir et6 fecond«6 par I'experience et la meditation ; ses connaissances sont les germes de ses productions."* So I find it laid down by Sir Egerton Bjydges, who with Ms fine spiritual perceptions, that were not Hkely to miss the nature of real originality, yet acknowledges that " the great- est inventot must use materials whitsh separately are not new."-|- Of course it does not foUow that the products of genius are a sort of mosaic-work ; an elaboration of art, with- out fusion or amalgamation ; the resemblance being rather to a tree or flower, that springs up into shape and beauty from its own inherent vitality. Especially is this the case with works of inspiration or imaginative power : though even here the elements of the purest fancies are previously in the mind ; as the primordial substance or germ, yet not including, as was once fabled, the undeveloped form, of the oak in the acorn ; or as the rude clay which the Titan has to mould, and to animate with ethereal fii-e, working after those ideal models that, lying deep in the soul like diamonds in the dark, are revealed only by the lightning flashes of intuition. * Disoours prononoe k I'Academie Pran(;aise. t Letters on Vie Genius of Lord Byron. COMMONPLACE AND OBIGINALITY. 37 Trite maxims sometimes appear invested with origi- nality, when their correctness is first ascertained by experience. It is cmrious to hear =Hamlet, when stmig with the revelation of his uncle's atrocities, and while resolving to expunge all previous impressions from his braiQ, set down for retention, as if some strange, un- dreamt-of axiom, That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain : an observation which in substance he had probably met with again and again among those " saws of books " that he had just been mentioning. The trait is wonderfully natural: but in such cases we often find a counterpart to what Johnson said of Goldsmith, that had he fulfilled his project of traveUing in remote countries to coUect improve- ments in the arts, he would have brqught home a common grinding-barrow as one of his foreign acquisitions. The discoveries which a person makes in any province of mind, depend more on the point at which he commences his researches, or the direction that he takes, than on the sagacity or independence of his powers. One man of acute perception shall never advance much beyond commonplace, because, through a perverse taste for tracing out each element of truth, he busies himself in demonstrating what has been a thousand times demonstrated, and thus ends where he ought rather to have begun. Another, endowed with no higher faculty of discernment, shaU attain curious or striking results, because, reaUsing the simile of a dwarf on the shoulders of a giant, be employs the accumu- lations of others but as a vantage ground for his own explorations. Why is it that of all kinds of insipid things, trite maxims in morality are the most insipid ? Perhaps because every one knows, and few care to practise them. As wrapped up in fiction they are- much less distasteful ; 38 COMMONPLACE AND OKIGINALITY. but then, except in the case of apologues, or brief tales like Crabbe's, or linked with high poetry as in some of the Greek choral strains, where they haye a positive charm, the sentiment is apt to be lost in the story. When that is ended, who thinks of inquiring for the lessons which it teaches ? " Je suis fort de votre avis," writes Madame de S6vign6 to her daughter, " pour la preference des fables sur le poeme epique; la morality s'en presente bien plus vite et plus agr6ablemeut : on ne va point," she adds witii her accustomed UveHness, "chercher midi a quatorze heures." The Marchioness however seems to forget that the aim of the highest poetry, aiid indeed of all true poetry, is something much nobler than the mere didactic; namely, by pictures of human nature, captivating from their beauty or pathos, or by delineations of scenery linking the material with the spiritual, to purify and enlarge the sensibilities, and thus elevate the standard of thought and character. — "A moral," as Charles Lamb wittily says, " should be wrought into the body and soul, the matter and tendency of a poem, not tagg'd to the end, like a 'God send the good ship into harbour,' at the conclusion of our bills of lading." It is with ethical forms as with certaia architectural details, which, however necessary for support or convenience, a judicious artist takes care to hide, or to set off with a drapery of foliage or other decoration. What are called origiaal thoughts are often nothing more in substance than ideas which have passed through the minds of myriads before ; though without being so firmly grasped, or so forcibly if at aU expressed. The impressions and modes of judgment. that distinguish the wise and contemplative in particular, are in aU ages so far akin as not rarely to coincide in result; somewhat as the general strain, or recurrence of certain notes, in the variations of an air. In reading the philosophical pieces of Cicero, for instance, we might fancy ourselves engaged COMMONPLACE AND ORIGH«ALITY. 39 with the disquisitions of some living -writer, were it not for the differences of allusion and language. Montaigne represents himself as not displeased to find, that observa- tions which he had put down as the fruit of his own reflection, were frequently but the opinions or views of eminent authors who had flourished in preceding periods. Even where one thought lias been derived from another, the reproach of plagiarism cannot always be af&xed. It is cmious to notice a disparagement of the sort which has been cast on the poet Gray, by a writer who was himself the subject of similar imputations, but who knew how to estimate their legitimate worth. In Dante's Purgatoiy is a well-known and beautiful description of the moral effects of evening : Era gia I'ora che volge '1 disio, A' naviganti, e'ntenerisce il cuore ; Lo di ch'han detto a' doici amici addio ; E che lo nuovo peregrin' d'amore Punge, se ode sc[uiUa di lontano, Che paia '1 giomo piauger ehe si muore. Thus exquisitely rendered by Byron : Sofb hour ! which wakes the wish and melts the heart Of those who sail the seas, on the first day When they from their sweet friends are torn apart ; Or fills with love the pilgrim on his way As the far bell of vesper makes hiin start, Seeming to weep the dying day's decay. After quoting the original in a note,, his Lordship adds : " This last line is the first of Gray's Elegy, taken by him without acknowledgment." Gray is not one of those writers who need fear minute criticism as to the history or sources of their productions. In the first place, it is not fair to represent the line as taken from Dante. The idea was no doubt suggested by the passage of the Italian poet, but is so modified by Gray as t^ assume the aspect of an image almost entirely his own, having received that 40 COMMONPLACE AND OEIGINAHTY. fiision or transmutation which Genius effects in the materials submitted to her operations. But in the next place, it is ■whoUy incorrect to aflSrm that the line was taken without acknowledgment, the words of Dante being expressly cited in the later editions authorised by Gray. I can account for the remark of his Lordship only on the supposition that his copy of the Elegy wanted the notices of imitations, which Gray had inserted " out of justice," as he says, "to those writers from whom he happened to take the hint of any Une,"* but which, since the work of Mason, who introduced them, with other explanatory particulars of his own, in the form of an appendix, have been frequently omitted, or transferred to the end. — ^Wlule on such minutiae, I may advert to a phrase in the same poem, " the desert air," as apparently a literal version from Pindar, who has fpaitv^v Sirrpov iprjiuis St aldepos. t In this instance the poet makes no reference to any prototype; perhaps because the circumstance, if not a mere coincidence or unconscious reproduction, was deemed too trivial or too obvious for notice. * Letter to Beattie, Feb. 1, 1768. t Olymp. i. 9. TRAITS AND VICISSITUDES OF STATES. HE spectacle of modem Eome is an epitome of all history, exhibiting the grandeur, the degradation, the nothingness of man. In contemplating her dilapidated temples and amphitheatres, her ruinous arches and prostrate columns, we naturally heave a sigh at the remembrance of her vanished glory. Yet her later cultiva- tion of arts and letters may surely be regarded with more complacency by the philanthrophist or the philosopher, than her ancient encroachments and wars, her triumphal processions, and idolatrous rites. It was remarked con- cerning Rome of a former epoch, that she had more pictures and statues than inhabitants. This, one of her proudest boasts in days when her lustre, however changed, was little dimmed, is a distinction she may no longer claim, the arts themselves being now almost extinct in their once favomite abode. Yet while we may apply to this storied spot what Cicero said of Athens, that wherever we place our footsteps we tread on some memorial of the past,* the voices and relics of the dead will ever vindicate the appellation of the Eternal City — the centre of an interest yielding only to that which encircles the marvellous old Greeks, and still more marvellous Egyptians, their intel- lectual masters. * Literally, on some history. " Quaoimque iBgredimur, in aliquam historiam vestigium ponimus." — De Finib. lib. v. cap. 2. 42 TBAITS AND VICISSITUDES OF STATES. The dignified superiority of the ancient Roman senate, which made the ambassador of Pyrrhus describe it as a Tenerable assembly of kings, and which seemed to give its members the appearance of herofes or demi-gods, was not owing to a greater separation than prevails in modem times between the higher and the lower ranks of society. In the fortune and manners, though not political pretensions, of those who constituted that august council, there was little to distinguish them from the mass of private citizens. The rustic occupations of Cincinnatus, and the cottage with the modicum of land which formed the sole possession of Fabricius, are only examples of the 'patriarchal simplicity common to those primitive periods. During all the earlier ages of the republic, the artificial barriers which divide the different classes of a community advanced in civilisation and opulence, were for the most part unknown. Nor can education, vrith its ennobling influences, account for the phenomenon, literature having been held in contempt till about the sixth century from the foundation of the city. The causes, which are perhaps numerous, require to be sought in the sentiments peculiar to a people emerging from a condition of comparative barbarism ; inured to hard- ship, self-denial, and poverty; unacquainted with social refinements, and therefore exempt from the seductions which they create ; more habituated to enterprise than speculation; and whose currents of feeling, restricted to a few simple channels, flowed in a stream proportionaU]^ more deep and steady. When riches, the parent of luxury, had increased, and objects of public ambition were blended vnth motives of individual aggrandisement, the majestic and imposing character of the senatorial body gradually disappeared. M Op the many vicious or absurd principles that marked the institutes ascribed to Lycurgus, perhaps the most •vicious, to which even the odious system of Helotism TKAITS AND VICISSITUDES OF STATES. 43 appears to have been but subordinate, was the exclusive devotion of the citizens to a military life. The main labours of existence should ever be for periods of tran- quility, as these, in regard to any particular nation, form the rule, and seasons of disturbance or war the exception. The Chinese seem to have acted most steadily on this axiom, their chief energies having been directed for ages to the cultivation of the arts of peace. It is but in accordance with such a policy that among this extra- ordinary people, whose empire has subsisted longer than any other in the history of the world, the old Egyptian perhaps excepted, the civilians or men of letters not merely take precedence of the profession of arms, but are in fact the only governing class in the community. We have few or no examples of permanent republics founded on monarchies, but many examples of permanent monarchies founded on republics. I omit the states of ancient Greece, which, in their pristine form a species of petty chiefdoms or sovereignties, were in reality but cities with a small adjacent or dependent territory ; and which, for the most part growing to be a kind of municipal institu- tions, or oligarchies, having little more of the monarchical element than the Venice of recent ages, with the Doge at its head, passed through other changes before assuming a purely democratic shape. Add that both the Grecian and Italian states were ultimately absorbed by a kingly power. — A republican form of polity seems most agreeable to a rising and frugal nation; a monarchical one, to a nation that is wealthy and luxurious. It is remarkable that Washington himself, according to Jefferson who knew him intimately, entertained a belief that the American govern- ment would ultimately subside into something resembling the British constitution; and to make the transition less abrupt, favoured pomps and pageants on public occasions.* * Tucker's Life of Jefferson, vol. ii. p. 386. 44 TRAITS AND VICISSITUDES OF STATES. The problem of the systems wiU in the end perhaps be solved by an evolution of circumstances, that shall strike the balance in behalf of no legislative apparatus hitherto presented in history ; the result being the establishment of a system or form deriving its features from the principles of human nature, and the relations of society, in a more perfect state of developement : a system that, combining the advantages of rule with the widest possible extent of individual and social freedom, shall realise the fondest dream of the political philosopher and the patriot, in the fasion of those elements, often deemed incapable of amalga- mation, yet which are alike imbued with divinity, and of co-ordinate force in a weU-adjusted commonweal. For not merely Law, as Hooker so eloquently discourses, has her seat in the bosom of God, but Liberty also, whose twin- sister she is ; and the voice of both' united is that which makes the harmony of the universe. The French nation was perhaps as far advanced in general refinement of maimers and language, in the age of Louis the Fourteenth, as the English at the present period; though in civil freedom the priority has commonly been with ourselves. While the contest for liberty, begun by Hampden and his feUow-patriots, was in progress, that selfish voluptuary was wielding a despotic sceptre, which continued unrelaxed till the fiery outbreak of the Eevolution. But in matters of external polish, we have ever been con- siderably behind our neighbours; just as in the revival of letters, Italy outstripped us by more than a century. Perhaps the tardiness of our progress has been owing in great part to our insular situation, which has occasioned, vrith several of our proudest distinctions, some at least of our miaor disadvantages. It is an observation of Caesar respecting the ancient inhabitants of Britain, that those who resided on the sea-coast were more civilised than such as dwelt in the interior, the former having mor^ frequent eommunica- XEAITS AND VICISSITUDES OF STATES. 45 tion with the natives of the continent.* The prolonged barbarism of Africa has been deduced, among other causes, from the small extent of coast compared with the mainland, and from the natural barriers that exist to the vast terri- tories within— Egypt, the only part which ever rose to eminence, if we except the regions occupied by the Cartha- giaian and Arabian tribes, themselves too bordering on the Mediterranean, being intersected with the Nile, as well as otherwise favoured with facUities for intercom-se. Boileau little dreamed, when pourjng out his invectives against the British under CromweU, that he was depicting his own countrymen of the next century. The summons to arms is particularly striking, as descriptive of the aims that determined us in the late GaUican wars, and in which so far the tables were reversed : Arme-toi, Prance ; pren la foudre, C'est a toi de reduire en pojidre Ces sanglans ennemis des lois. Sui la Victoire qui t'appelle, Et va sur ce peuple rebelle Venger la querelle des rois. Ode centre les Anglois. Alas ! that the struggles so long carried on by France in the name of Liberty should, like some mighty river terminating in a desert or a marsh, have ended for the present in a tyranny unsurpassed by the most despotic systems that darken the face of Europe ! a tyranny that, allowing no freedom to words or looks, scarcely even to thought, but reproduces the portentous spectacle so vividly paiuted by Tacitus, of the worst periods of Eoman degra- * It is to the inhabitants of Kent, the part of Britain nearest to the French coast, that this eulogium was paid. Ex his omnihus longe sunt humaniasimi, qui Cantium inoolunt; quae regio est maritima omnis; neque multum a G-allicd differunt consuetudine. Interiores plerique frumenta nou serunt : sed laote et came vivunt ; pellibuaque sunt vestiti. — De Bello Gallico, lib. v. c. 14. The reasoii of the superiority is also noted in another passage ; Cantium, quo fere omnes ex Gallic naves appelluntur. 46 "TEAITS AND VICISSITUDES OF STATES. dation and semtude.* While the French, accustomed to hoast their civilization and refinement, can tolerate this iron rule, they may indeed continue to set the vogue in afiairs of finery or other effeminate trifles, hut ceasing to claim a place among the most advanced of nations, must he content, if not to become the laughiag-stock of a world that can merge both its laughter and its indignation, its sense of honour and of right, in the worship of success, yet to rank with the polished devotees of an Oriental court, t Great national changes are accomplished principally by those who reside in the capital, or at the seat of govern- ment. The mass of the population are in most cases indifferent or passive. The fortunes of Prance, and in no slight degree of the other European states, during the memorable era of the first Eevolution, were dependent on the movements of a few small juntos at Paris. It is commonly minds of an inferior though active character, that are most concerned in great political agita- tions. Genius, so well fitted, one should imagine, to control * Tacit, in Vit. Agric, o. 2.— The picture answers in almost every particular— in hostility to literature and its professors; in the banish- ment or repression of all that is nohle and independent, ne quid mquam honestum oeeurreret ; with the feature ahove referred to, ademto per imquisitiones et loqmndi audimdique commercio. The only things wanting to complete the portrait of the modern Domitian are, confiscation of property, and a counterpart to the massacre of the Boulevards. t The lapse of a considerahle interval sipce the above was written but leads me to add, that they to whom commercial and material pro- gress — which may be attained under the most despotic government— is such as to compensate or veil not only the tyranny of a rule which eats out the intellectual and moral life of a nation, but the atrocities on which it was founded, are welcome to the order of perceptions on which the estimate is based. The only plausible excuse for the myriads that remain passive under the system— for as to those who lend it active support or co-operation there is no possibiKty of absolution or apology— is the terror of the brute force which first enslaved and still enchains them. TRAITS AND VICISSITUDES OF STATES. 47 the tide of events, and regulate the stormy passions of men, dwells in a calmer and loftier sphere, and is mostly a passive spectator of public commotions. Even the kind of intellect inseparable from such affairs often lurks behind the scenes ; as Lady Wortley Montagu relates that in Turkey the effendis or men of letters are the concocters, and soldiers the agents, of revolutions. The military, though so often the dependence of princes, have commonly been the chief instruments in their deposition or overthrow. Witness the changes of dynasty effected in the times of the Roman emperors by the praetorian guards ; the convulsions which the Ottoman government used to sustain from the Janizaries ; the subversion of the Enghsh monarchy and constitution under Cromwell; and the events connected with the French revolution of 1789.— Nor is it less significant to remark the influence of a per- manent warlike force in relation to popular liberty, which, as a principle that, like the oak, is exposed to the assaults of tempests, as well as to attacks of an insidious and slower kind, is no more compatible with the existence of large standing armies, at present the sole bulwark of those con- tinental despotisms that involve the blackest treason against the birthright and the prerogatives of man, than the liberty of the horse is compatible with subjection to the bit and bridle, and the management of a weU-trained rider. There is this difference, to be sure, between the two cases of military agency, that soldiers rarely turn against princes or governments except on occasions of extremity, and in obedience to some countervailing authority; whUe, apart from the instances, uncommon in recent times, of their employment in repelling aggression or the like, their characteristic function would seem to' be the maintenance of Power as such, rather than the maintenance of Law as an instrument of justice or order, — good laws seldom requiring such species of support, and bad ones having 48 TEAITS AND VICISSITUDES "OF STATES. no claim to its intervention. The supremacy of law, and the peace of society, have been upheld when standing armies, which can now introduce and sustain a Cyclops rule that crushes freedom and usurps thrones, as banditti on a smaller scale once extorted purses and made captives, were unknown : nor is there reason to appre- hend that the stability of the social fabric wiU be impaired, when an institute so perilous ia its capabilities shall have passed away, with other political excrescences to be lopped off in the moral and iatellectual manhood of nations. One of the firmest supports of princes and statesmen is the general distribution of moderate wealth, and the multiplication of domestic comforts among the members of the community. It is chiefly this circumstance which up to our own time has kept together the heterogeneous materials composing the American population; as to the same cause may be attributed in no small degree the tranquiUity that has so long prevailed in China, containing, according to the most authentic accounts, above three hundred and sixty millions of inhabitants. The whole com'se of things, in modem society and politics, seems tending to a comparative equalization of property and other external advantages ; thus diminishing the probability of those crises and terrific explosions which, like the, more violent outbreaks of disease in the human frame, are ever the consequences, though sometime, by a species of vu medicatrix naturce, the remedies, of an ill-conditioned temperament of the body politic. It is not the least evil attendant on such a system, that a catastrophe of the kind may be brought on, as it is always accelerated, by alarming representations of its approach. To keep subjects quiet by protecting them in the exercise of their rights, may appear a very simple thiug ; but in reality comprehends the entire sphere of the statesman's duties. .TEAITS AND VICISSITUDES OF STATES. 49 The science of government, and the principles of rational freedom, have perhaps made greater progress within the last two centuries, than during all preceding ages. M. Guizot, with some appearance of justice, refers the. highest proficience in these respects to the eighteenth century, notwithstanding the convulsions with which it was attended. The elements then at work, however, were hut a revival of those which had agitated Britain a century before; while these may be considered as the mere ex- tension to poUtics of principles which had operated in matters ecclesiastical at the period of the Reformation. Not the least considerable impulse may undoubtedly be traced to the career of our transatlantic colonies since the epoch of their independence ; as the tyrannies of ancient Greece were successively abolished for the most part in consequence of the prosperity attending her popularly constructed settlements on the Asiatic coasts. Yet the progression of recent ages has scarcely been such as philosophy, expanded by a hopeful benevolence, might have predicted, taking into view the mighty capabilities of the press, and the co-existence of a wide-spread spirit of com- mercial activity. While it would require no small hardihood or prejudice to dispute the extraordinary advancement of America in free institutions, it wiU be time enough for her to boast when she has cleared herseK of the plague-spot of slavery; the stigma that vitiates the pretensions of the antique states to the genuine love of liberty, which was demanded with sufficient vehemence by a certain class called citizens, but denied to the rgst of the population, who were kept in a condition of tte most ignominious servitude. It is melancholy, though to some it may appear invidious to record, what however the magnanimity due to the failings of heroic worth should not lead us to overlook, that George Washington himself, the founder of the Ameri- can republic, lived and died a slaveholder ; a fact which the panegyrists of that great man seem to pass by in oblivion. 60 TRAITS AND VICISSITUDES OP STATES. Heaven knows wliether we in Britain, till lately aflfected with a similar blot, have unmitigated cause for self-con- gratulation; among whom, though now slowly curtailing the list of long-continued abuses, those that still flourish in the shape of law, institutions, and social arrangements, are scarcely to be screened from obloquy by the reflection, that the drawbacks to freedom in this country are trifling, compared with the existing thraldom of the continental states. Our darker characteristics, unhappily, are of a more spontaneous order. If impatient of tyranny our- selves, we are sufficiently complaisant to its manifestations in others, when conjoined with power: while it may be reserved for some future historian of prodigies and portents to depict the baseness or the blindness that could shower its flatteries on the most gigantic of criminals. ORATOEY. HTJ*. influence of an active and susceptible fancy on the practice of oratoiy, is perhaps on the whole unfavourable ; for though it may supply with metaphor, enthusiasm, or vrit, yet unless combined with no common judgment and self-possession, as in Burke and other rare-tempered geniuses, it will be liable to exaggerate the difficulties of the subject, or, perplexed amidst the profusion of its own imagery and associations, to weaken the effort by dweUing on its concomitants or remoter con- sequences : as a person who can picture to himseK the collateral interests of a battle, and whose sensibilities are open to the moral impressions or results of the scene, wiU not be the most likely to meet the danger with the greatest intrepidity. There have been few poets who were either noted orators, or what the world calls brave men. The cultured and philosophic are frequently as much captivated by appeals to the physical part of our nature as the vulgar. It is not a little curious to notice the effect of mere rhetorical power, as sweetness, intonation, and variety of cadence, in awakening passion, and procuring admiration towards commonplace, with those of sage and stoical pretensions, who in theory had abandoned such influences to the unreflecting crowd. Both have the same senses, though not the same intellects ; and in this case, as in so 52 ORATORY. many others, feeling triumphs over philosophy. By the way, what Demosthenes is said to have uttered respecting action as the chief requisite of an orator, applies more strictly to melody and compass of voice. Garrick is reported to have declared, after hearing the celehrated Whitefield preach, that he would he able to put an audience into tears by the varied repetition of the word Mesopotamia. As thought supplies materials for discourse, so dis- course gives precision to thought, as well as often assists its evolution. The best orators owe half their inspiration to the music of their own voice. Profundity of ideas is commonly an impediment to fluency of words; at least where logical pertinence, or a transparent exhibition of the subject, is attempted. Cole- ridge was a deep thinker and a ready speaker ; but his intellectual associations were not the most broad or palpable, nor did he clothe his mysterious abstractions in the most perspicuous phraseology. Those harangues which flow with the greatest facility, and are what some call eloquent, seldom display much power of reflection or imagination. One principal impediment to extemporary public speak- ing might be obviated, or at least diminished, by the simple reflection, that the largest audience is only an assemblage of units ; for what man of ordinary abilities jSnds difficulty or embarrassment in expressing his ideas on any subject with which he is familiar, before a sitgle iudividual? Nor is the advantage to be despised which attends the greater probabUity of success in addressiug a multitude ; the observation of Herodotus being commonly true, that it is easier to persuade many than one.* ♦Such is hia sagacious remark on narrating the attempts of Ariatagoraa to excite resistance to the Persian domination ; who, having OEATORY. 63 The praise of oratory, like that of political, and especially of histrionic eminence, soon dies, unless sus- tained by the lustre of written performances. Had Sheridan not penned the School for Scandal, the Rivals, or any other of his dramatic pieces, what would become of his rhetoric m Westminster Hall and the House of Commons ? What indeed is abeady the fate of those displays, or wUl be a few years hence ? Perhaps Fox will ultimately be better known, except in the range of party politics or history, as the author of a valuable fragment on the reign of James the Second, than as the most eloquent re.asoner in the British senate. Burke has embalmed himseK chiefly by his pro- ductions, and his magnanimous treatment of indigent genius, as Crabbe the poet, and Barry the paiater ; though we must not omit the records of his superiority in Boswell's miscellany. Grattan, with all his sublimity, imagination, and argumentative force, and Curran, with these qualities diversified by pleasantry and pathos, wiU hardly join the phalanx of immortals, having left no- adequate monument of their powers. Selden must have been a speaker far from despicable, as Lord Bacon appears to have been an excellent, almost a consummate one ; yet the niemory of both these illustrious statesmen would long ago have perished, had it rested on the like extrinsic accompHshments. How many persons would now be familiar with the name of Demos- thenes, if his speeches had not been preserved ? The fame of Dr. Parr rests on grounds very distinct from anything appertaining to pulpit eloquence ; but there are few more urged the king of Sparta without effect, suooeeded in arousing the enthusiasm of the assemhled Athenians. The incident is memorable as the first decisive outhreak among the Grreoian states against the formida- hle power of Persia, about five hundred years before the Christian era. (Hist. lib. V. cap. 37.) The apparent exaggera,tion in the number, stated at thirty thousand, would not of course affect the principle ; afterwards so pithily expressed also by Oato the Censor, in his comparison of the Roman people to a flock of sheep, which a, man can more readily drive than a solitary one. 54 ORATORY. touching or impressive passages in the language, than the nohle peroration to his sermon on the " House of Prayer." It is somewhat amusing to find, .among the circumstances which excited the gratitude of Dr. Priestley, that he had never been gifted with the faculty of oratory. While this may obtain a man eclat in his own day, or among a particular circle, a book of the right stamp will ensure him distinction throughout all time, and with every class of cultivated intellect. SOMBRE COLOUKINGS OF THE MEDITATIVE AND POETIC. |HATEVER may be the real aspect of different objects or circumstances, they produce on some minds only a saddening impression ; as the clouds, however variegated or beautiful, reflect on the earth but one melancholy slfade. With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies. How ^eutly, and with how wan a face ! So sings the author of the Arcadia, investing with the hues of his own feeling or fancy, a spectacle which Homer and other descriptive bards represent as filling the beholder with joy. But the pensive and gentle Sidney, romantic in! his poesy as in his life, and unfortunate in love, could Mend with one of the most exquisite of scenes, a strain so touchingly plaintive. Who however has not felt at times that there is something melancholy, as well as soothing, in the sight of the moon shining brightly on the earth, as if the world contained no mourners ? as there is something that pierces the spirit with awe on looking up to the heavens in the dead of night, when all the universe seems asleep but the stars. Perhaps the controversy whether the notes of the night- ingale are plaintive or lively, is to be determined by the state of individual feeling at the time. If the listener is in a melancholy mood, the strain wiU probably be thought sad; if in a cheerful temper, the reverse. Or haply the 56 SOMBEE COLOUBINGS OF melody of its voice, varying like the aspect of flowers under the changeful incidents of light, is of the one kind or the other, as giief or joy dictates the lay : for why should the song of birds be thought involuntary, or less affected by pass- ing iafluenees than the strings of an JEoUan lyre, which send forth their ethereal music, lighter or more deep, ac- cording as they are touched by the wandering breeze ? To a susceptible and fanciful nature, the slightest circum- stance will sometimes convey an undefinable impression of melancholy; as the sight occasionally witnessed of fruit- blossoms and flowers clustering beautifully on the walls of a house which is deserted or ia ruins ; or the distant sound of the village passing-beU, while the swallows are twittering sportively in the air as though nothing had occurred. Yet how much more has happened than the return of clay to clay! Which may be considered the more natural to man, melancholy or mirth ? In general perhaps the former. Mirth is frequently but the effervescence or cheat of a perturbed and fantastic brain. It has been alleged that if a marriage procession were to meet a funeral train, the hilarity of the one party would merge in the sadness or decent sobriety of the other. Smiles may play on the countenance, while Hope and Joy lie mouldering in the heart beneath, like the moonbeams shining over a grave. As the song of a bird poured forth luxuriously in its imprisoning cage, and which beguiles unsuffering listeners into the fancy of its bUss ; so is the outward calm, not unmingled perchance with pleasantry, of many a one whose spirit, wearied 'with the shows and specious mockeries of sense, lies cold and prostrate within, — what is taken for patience being then only brokenness of heart or despair. The lingering, passionless quiescence of such a state, in which the sun shinesi and the flowers ripen in vain, and Hope, from earth at least, has ceased to wrestle with G-rief, were piteous even to dream ; and, apart from THE MEDITATIVE AND POETIC. 57 the ends of goodness, whicli suffering is often the great instrument of achieving, might haply suggest the lot of those as more to be envied, on whom the Angel of Death executes his commission at a stroke — who are destined to see the lightning, but not to hear the thunder. When the mind is in a certain stage of progression, it turns for enjoyment in great degree to the past, as present- ing what is most fixed, or exempt from fluctuation. In its ultimate or mature state, however, it builds its chief pleasures on what is to come. Its ordinary aspirations, or those relating to selfish and inferior objects, are dis- pelled ; but nobler anticipations replenish the vacancy. Yet in the interval that passes before this re-occupation of the fancy with brighter images and prospects, the intellectual resources sometimes threaten to fail, and Melancholy spreads her wings over the soul. There is a species of indescribable pleasure, known but to spirits of a certain mould, in the sense of abandon- ment and desolation which they sometimes experience. To feel as if forsaken or forgotten by all; that selfishness and unkindness reign around ; that youth and life and hope are vain ; is a mournful, but not altogether miserable emotion. Perhaps the discovery gratifies intellectual pride ; or the mind, in the very depth of its grief, may undergo a partial re-action by the opening of its fountains of sensi- bility; as it is in darkness or shades that the stars come forth. Gray must have known well the feeling, if we may judge fi-om his own exquisite verges, preceded by the acknowledgment that he had long bid adieu to smiles, and *was paulo mcestitice studiosiorem : lacrymarum fons, tenero sacros Ducentium ortus ex animo : quater Felix ! in imo qui scatentem Pectore te, pia Nympha, sensit. 58 SOMBRE COLOUEINGS OF The lines, a fragment of mingled pathos and beauty, are still more touching than those which reflected the shadowings of the poet's heart on his solitary way home after his separation from Walpole, and amidst the wild and lonely magnificence of the Grande Chartreuse. — Of those imbued with this mystic undefinable susceptibility, the imaginations are so sensitive, or so open to the operation of sadness, that reluctance is sometimes felt even to pluck a flower, because of the pain which may arise from beholding it wither and die : a feeling not unaMn to that which is apt to steal over the mind on reading the praises of beauty that has long been resolved into its elementary dust. For my part I can hardly conceive it possible for a person whose intellect or heart is not asleep, to be altogether free from melancholy; the enigma of Hfe, and stiU more that of the grave, being sufficient to shed a momentary gloom even over the most joyous. Byron supposed that the sentiment is common to men in general, but remarked only in the remarkable. Perhaps he was not far wrong; the wise, if from no other cause, being melancholy from reflection ; the rest from sensation. Yet irrespective of the mysteries that overshadow our present or future existence, and under the pressure of which minds the more thoughtful and imaginative tremble with awe, a loving nature would be slow to wish for the alleviation furnished by the medicament of Helen, m)iTev6is r' a)(oX6v te, KaicStv fTtikt)6ov anavraiv, which not merely charmed away gri«f fr-om the recipient, but would prevent the tribute of a tear on the rupture of the closest and dearest ties.* Perhaps it is undesirable, in seasons of temporary dejection, to seek rehef in occupations or scenes that * Odyas. 8'. 221-226. — But qnaere : Is this latter effect a necessary or actual result of the kind of anodyne referred to, apparently a prepa- ration of opium, or some such narcotic ? In ge.neral, it is not the tendency of pleasurable feelings to make people hard or selfish. THE MEDITATIVE AND POETIC. S9 generally administer delight, lest their effect should be impaired for the future by association. There are times when I should be afraid to take up certain authors, who never fail to diffuse a sunshine on my ordinary moments. Swift recommended diverting books as a remedy for melan- choly: but for the deeper forms of the passion at least, I should prefer a close piece of reasoning or speculation, such as may be found in the volumes of Berkeley or Malebranche. For though it is more difficult to get the mind interested by such disquisitions at first, yet that once attained, they hold it with a firmer chain ; besides tending to allay the sensibilities, which are apt to be fostered by the allusions or the contrast suggfested by a work of amusement. After high exhilaration, the spirits sometimes fall as rapidly as the sail of a vessel wheli the wind suddenly ceases. The contrast to the imagination would be scarcely more remarkable, if a person were transported fi:om the vivacity of a brilliant assembly in the metropolis, to the sohtude of such a scene as the Grande Chartreuse, or that of the Great St. Bernard, where, however, the hospi- tahty and cheerfiilness that reign within, go far to compensate for the wild and wintry desolation around.* The melancholy attributed to the contemplative, is perhaps less than is commonly supposed ; but after all * Of the sublime and magnificent, though appalling and disoonaolato scenery of the Grande Chartreuse, a famous convent among the moun- tains on the herders of Savoy, the reader wil]^ find an admirahle sketch or two in Grray's Letters ; and a deseription no less vivid and poetical, intermixed with several curious particulars, in those of the author of Vathek. I need scarcely say that the Hospice of St. Bernard, situated near the summit of one of the most dangerous Alpine passes, is celehrated not more for its sagacious and wonderful breed of dogs, than for the friendly entertainment it affords to the weary pilgrim ; realising in this respect what Ariosto says of Vallombrosa — corteaa a cMangue vi vmia, 60 SOMBBE COLOUEINGS OF reasonable deductions, it will probably be found consid- erable. One reason may be, that there are so many chasms in theu- existence to be filled up. A mechanic or labourer has continuous occupation, divided between the mind and the body; but it is placid, and does not weary the thoughts. The studious man has vigorous oc- cupation, which is solely or chiefly intellectual, and cannot be without intermissions. In these intervals the reflec- tions are often desultory, which, from previous application, or the uninteresting nature of surrounding scenes, become not unfrequently tinctured with gloom. — The facts also unfolded to deep thinkers, in the prosecution of their inquiries, are sometimes little adapted to nourish cheer- fulness. Superficial contemplations of men and things may not, indeed, occasion much perplexity ; but those speculations which are the most penetrating and pro- found, usually comprehend a number of mysterious or bitter truths, altogether concealed from the shorter vision of common minds. — Besides, expansion and variety of thought are indirectly calculated to foster melancholy, by suggesting the contrast arising from the absence of corresponding progression in other respects. The soul may wander over the universe, and tiiumph in the con- and presenting a delightful counterpart to Homer's picture of the wealthy inhahitant of Arisbe, who, dwelling by the roadside, and a friend to human kind, gave a hospitable welcome to all comers : a(j)vei6s ^LOTOto, (J)lKos &' r/v dvOpajrourW TravTas yap (fnXeeaKiv, oSm orj oki'a vaiav. — H. ^. 14. It is with shame I record that this monastic institution, regarded with Bo much affection by multitudes who have shared its kindness, among the grateful acknowledgments of which is not to be forgotten the beautiful tribute of Eogers in his poem on Italy, has been lately, though not suppressed, or pillaged of all its property, yet stript of no inconsiderable part, in virtue of a decree issued by the Council of State of "Valais : men ranking themselves with the so-called Liberals of Switzerland ; the patrons of a liberty that, indulging itself in the license of confiscation and violence, is more tyrannical than the tyranny it pretends to put down. THE MEDITATIVE AND POETIC. 61 Bciousness of its strength, but feels, amidst all, that — like music wedded, not to immortal verse, but to creeping rhymes, or no less unpoetic prose — it is allied to dust ; and that while its attainments and capabilities are multiplied, its performances are insignificant, and life itself is sta- tionary. On the whole, it is scarcely to be wondered that superiority of perception or sensibility is seldom without an aUoy of more exquisite pain ; and that philo- sophy, which removes the colourings of fancy, and detects the: realities of things, is often the parent or nurse of sadness. " In much wisdom is much grief," was the utterance of one whose conceptions* of human existence were not drawn from the surface, however from their sombre, not to say sceptical and epicurean tone, requiring the modification of wider and nobler vdews. — No doubt, as Bacon so eloquently contends in the introduction to his Advancement of Learning, it is .owing to some defect or misdirection of knowledge if it ever become the instru- ment of iU ; yet as the same may be said of all things not intrinsically evil, and man being so fraU, and examples of literary unhappiness so fi-equent, the main position is not much affected by the circumstance. But whether reason or phantasy most enters into the notion that men of genius are addicted to melancholy,* it is reniarkable that many of the most celebrated authors, whose writings in general are by no means tinctured with that disposition, appear to have felt at seasons no iaeonsiderable portion of its influence. Who would imagine that Virgil, treating on such a subject as the rearing of cattle, would * The words of CSoero, quoting the authority of Aristotle, present the maxim without qualification or exception ; — Omnes ingmiosos melcm- ehoUeot. In the passage of the Stagyrite, however, the position, though equally comprehensive and more specific, is less ahsolutely conveyed : Haures otroi wtpiTTol ypyovairiv avSpes, rj laiTa (j>iKop'oCJ)iav, ^ wohjcriv, 1 ri^vas, ipaivovraL /ieKayxoKiKol SvT€s, One of these classes, the poets, have commonly heen eminent for the feeling. 62 SOMBRE COLOURINGS OF introduce the plaintive sentiment expressed in the following verses : Optima quseque dies miseris mortalibus sevi Prima fiigit : subennt morbi, tristisque senectus, Et labor et durae rapit inclementia mortis. The muse ofShakspeare is supposed to have found its appropriate element and occupation amidst the scenes of comedy ; yet some of his most beautiful passages are those which are pervaded by a melancholy tenderness. Even Horace, the Roman Anacreon, the merry votary of wine and pleasure, frequently blends with his most sportive strains notes of the deepest sadness. If he celebrates the return of spring, he aUudes to the shortness of its duration, and to that of life : Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam : Jam te premet nox, fabnlseqae manes. He dissuades from anxious pursuits and travels, because of the brief date assigned to mortals, and the intermixture of care with every ambitious enterprise : Quid brevi fortes jaculamnt sevo Mnlta P quid terras alio calentes Sole mutamus P patriae quis exsvil Se quoque fugit ? Seandit seratas vitiosa naves Cura ; nee turmas eqnitnm relinqnit, Ocior cervis, et agente nimbos Ocior Euro. He meets with a disastrous accident, and takes occasion to moralise on the short-sighted views, and the presumption of man : Quid qvusqne vitet, nunqnam homini satis Cautum est, in horas. Throughout the writings of this incomparable bard, his mirth and his philosophy, his pleasure and regret, go hand in hand, so that images and scenes in themselves the most THE MEDITATIVE AND POETIC. 63 agreeable, appear to have awakened in his mind some pensive reflections : Linqnenda tellns, et domns, et placeus Uxor ; neque harum, quas colis, arborum Te, pi;seter invisas cupressos, TJlla brevem dominum sequetur. Such passages, detached from the Epicurean dogmas with which in Horace, a true disciple of the school, they are commonly interwoven, are hy no means unpleasing, as they find an echo in every bosom. The sweetest and most beautifd poem of antiquity I take to be the Odyssey. One of the sweetest, if not, for its size, the best and most beautiftd of modem date, is the Excursion of Wordsworth. Both have their irequent touches of pathos ; but how much sadder the strain of the latter, distinguished by so wide a range of fancy, and picturing life in some of its recent and, most secluded forms. Certainly the productions which breathe a spirit of melancholy often obtain the strongest hold on the imagina- tion ; perhaps because the tone accords most with man's conscious feelings of misery. H Penseroso is by most critics, and I believe by most readers of sensibility, pre- ferred to L'Allegro ; yet it would be difficult to find a reason for this preference in any superiority of invention or description exhibited by the former of these exquisite pieces. It may well be that Milton, in composing it, besides being indebted to the work of Burton and to other sources, has borrowed a hint or two, if not drawn some- thing of his inspiration, from a beautiftd song in Beaumont and Fletcher's Nice Valour, or Passionate Madman ; which may form no unfitting close to these pensive contemplations. The praises of melancholy have never been sung more sweetly : Hence, all you vain delights, As short as are the nights Wherein you spend your folly : 64 SOMBRE COLOTJEINGS OP THE MEDITATIVE, ETC. There's nought in this life sweet. If man were wise to see't. But only melancholy ; O, sweetest melancholy ! Welcome folded arms, and fixed eyes ; A sigh that, piercing, mortifies ; A look that's fasten'd to the ground ; A tongue chain'd up without a sound. Fountain heads, and pathless groves ; Places which pale passion loves ; Moonlight walks, when all the fowls Are warmly housed, save hats and owls ; A midnight bell, a parting groan ; — These are the sounds we feed upon : Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley : Nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy. The lyric stands out in tlie play somewhat as a solitary star, looking down on a confused ancl fantastic scene of a vexed and darkling ocean. MADNESS. ADNESS is much more common than is frequently supposed, and seems hy no means incompatible with the vigorous exercise of the intellectual functions. In such instances, no doubt, it must be the disease in its lowest stages, or else what physicians call monomania, that is, madness confined to a single topic, or exhibited only in a particular direction. But it is possible for a person to be insane, in the strict acceptation of the term, who is capable of discussing a qiiestion in a connected and argumentative manner, or of conversing intelligibly on subjects in general. Look at the phrenzy of Don Quixote, who however spoke with the utmost rationahty on points not relatiug to chivalry ; a,nd observe the peculiarity, the Bmgleness of the disturbance in the case of Cowper, whose literary capacities, when he could bring himself to write, were shown to have suffered no decay. The mischief is when persons whose brain is disordered are unsuspected of the misfortune ; for then they are often censured where no censure is due ; or are treated with advice when they ought to be treated with medicine ; or if in stations of power, play off their freaks to the consternation or misery of their dependents. I have no doubt that the father of Frederick the Second of Prussia, like one or two of the Roman emperors with obliquities still more outrageous, was radi- cally insane ; his absurd and unnatural cruelty towards his 66 MADNESS. children, all too under the colour of religion, and with every appearance of sincerity, being sufficient, without reference to other morbid or incoherent manifestations, to settle the point; — however the plastic power of Fancy, like the Eastern superstition which deems the planet-struck inspired, can metamorphose the perversities of an ill-compounded nature into the semi-poetic or heroic. Nor do I question that ma,ny have undergone the last penalties of the law for actions which mainly originated in a diseased state of that mysterious organ by which we think. It would be one of the nicest of problems, requiring for its solution consum- mate skiU both in physiology and in ethics, to determine, in certain cases, the lines which separate mental aberration from idiosyncrasy on the one hand, and from moral delin- quency on the other. Not a few perhaps remain without the suspicion or the developement of the malady, because that part of their natm-e in which it lurks has never been excited ; as an instrument of music with a string or' two untuned, which happen not to be struck, or not in a connexion to make the dissonance perceptible. Others are suspected on grounds sufficiently trivial, insanity being sometimes attributed to genius because of the eccentricity of its movements; as though it would be remarkable if those who are original in feeling and mental combination, should deviate from others in actions or demeanour. Shall the interior mecha- nism and operations be peculiar, and not the external signs or results ? The surface only is perceived by the ordinary class of minds, to whom aU the treasures of fancy and meditation lodged in the soul are utterly invisible. Hippo- crates weU reproved this shallowness of judgment, affirming, after his interview with Democritus to examine the justice of the charge against his sanity, that the allegation appHed, not to the philosopher, but to his detractors. When Sophocles was compelled to vindicate himself from an accusation of the kind, he recited the beautiful tra,gedy of CEdipus • MADNESS. 67 at Colonos which he had just composed, and was at once acc[uitted by the Areopagus. Some have impeached the soundness of Byron's intellect; but to mention no other qualities in his writings, the penetration, sustained energy, and practical views of life which they present, coupled with the impossibility of fixing on any thing Kke real alienation iu his conduct, evince the folly of the imputation. That he was not without a latent tendency of the sort, may readily be acknowledged ; a person of his ardent temperament and extreme sensibility being especially Eable to those impres- sions from without which most threstten the equilibrium of the mental faculties. ANCIENT AND MODEKN WEITEES. NTIQUITY seems the more wise that its follies, as reflected ia the weaker .births of the brain, have not descended to later times. Inferior capacities and productions abound in every period, but die their natural death. Our own epoch, its ordinary traits and doings obliterated in the march of ages, might haply be chronicled as a golden one, surveyed, as ancient Egypt in the magnificence of its architectural remains surrounded with sands, only in its best and noblest monuments. Many of the ancients appear more original than they would be deemed, if preceding and contemporary works were still extant. This will apply in ,part even to Homer, the fountain of Greek literature, and iiideed of most litera- ture, strictly so called, but of whom it were idle to suppose that he was without predecessors or models in the walks of poesy. In like manner various current ideas and metaphors are employed by some modem authors, who, in case the productions of other writers were to perish, might seem to posterity endowed with no small share of inventive genius. Sir Walter Scott will ever stand on his own pre-eminent • merits ; but it is astonishing what a number of ready-coined phrases, and figures in ordinary circulation, have been adopted by this prince of -romancers. Perhaps however ho was in the right, in works replete with dialogue and ANCIENT AND MODERN WRITERS. 69 narrative, and calculated for popular effect. There is a magic in words, as in scenery or notes of music with certain associations. Shakspeare did as much ; and most of those remarkable for the raciness of their English have pursued a similar track. We should possess but a feeble insight into the circumstances affecting the genius and characteristics of the ancient writers, so differently moulded from our own, were we to overlook the peculiarity of position which enabled them, in the process of equipment requisite for minds of whatever class or era, to devote attention almost entirely to knowledge itself, without the necessity of spending so large a portion of life in acquiring the instru- ments of knowledge. The Greeks studied no other tongue than their own, lest its purity should be impaired by the intermixture of foreign idioms ; yet where did philosophy, eloquence, poetry, painting, statuary, architecture, flourish with so much vigour ? Little, it is true, was to be obtained at that time tiova. other nations, 9,t least through any Kterary medium; though Egypt and the East had furnished even the Greeks with the seeds of various speculations, and the former country had been their first instructor in the fine arts. Nevertheless this concentration of reflection and effort to so great an extent among themselves, surrounded as they were with Nature in her fairest and most capti- vating forms, had doubtless considerable influence iu raising them to that perfection for which they were celebrated. Even among the Romans, who were a military rather than speculative or poetic people, and whose literature was in the main derivative, the expenditure of labour in the direc- tion referred to, was confined to initiation into the language and learning of Greece, which formed a regular part of liberal education during all the more cultivated periods of their history. Cicero borrowed most of his philosophy from this source, his observations being commonly but the 70 ANCIENT AND MODERN WKITEKS. echo or paraphrase of doctrines whicli had been propounded by the gi*eat masters of -wisdom in that favoured clime. The prose compositions of antiquity, especially the ethical and miscellaneous kiad, as those of Xenophon which detail the opinions and discourses of Socrates, are in general distinguished by vigour of thought, simpHcity of style, and modesty of argumentation; qualities that appear ia striking contrast to the flippant and decisive tone assumed by some modem pretenders to criticism and philosophy. Yet it were vain to seek, in the speculations of the antique sages, Plato or Aristotle perhaps excepted, a parallel to the depth, richness, and comprehensive range of reflection, which characterise the writings of Lord Bacon. Most of the illustrations and arguments employed by the classical moralists, are taken from the simplest objects or most familiar occupations, indicating a state of society little advanced in the career of refinement; in which circumstances extensive views, or profound and discriminating observations on nature and manners, are rarely produced. The Essays of Bacon, exhibiting no attempts at curious analysis, or chain of logical deduction, present the essence of philosophy in its results ; and while far from deficient in imagery or embellishment, abound, perhaps more than any other performance of equal compass in our language, in massy and diversified practical truths.* It may be left for those yielding to idiosyncrasies, or peculiar mental training, to doubt whether the modems • I feel a pleasure in reoaUing here a passage of Addison, which delineates the merits of Bacon in a manner claiming no common admira* tion not only for the chaste simplicity and elegance of the diction, hut as furnishing on the whole a faithful sketch of that remarkahle person; "A man," says he, " who, for greatness of genius, and compass of knowledge, did honour to his age and country ; I could almost say to human nature itself. He possessed at once all those extraordinary talents which were divided amongst the greatest writers of antiquity. He had the sound, ANCIENT AND MODERN WEITEES. 71 possess incomparably more intellectual wealth in their own productions, than the whole range of antiquity can furnish. For my. part I should be tempted to prefer the English works of the last century alone, to all the remains of the classic ages; not excepting, though with reluctance, the Ihad and Odyssey, the scholar's bible, or the magnificent dramas in which the genius of Greece shone out so resplendently. That period of our literary history, which a criticism no less narrow than petulant can affect to disparage, comprises a noble list of authors in almost every department : — ^in pohte and niisceUaneous learning, Addison, Swift, Johnson ; in poetiy, whether descriptive, fcumorons, or contemplative. Pope, Thomson, Collms, Youmg, Akenside, Q-ray, Goldsmith, Bums, Cowper, Beattie ; in profound and comprehensive reasoning. Bishops Butler and Berkeley, with the vivacious and origiual Tucker, whose treatise on the Light of Nature, diffuse as it is, con- tains things that mankind should not wilhngly let die; in the walks of fiction, Eichardson, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne; in historical composition, Hume, Eobertson, and Gibbon ; in classes of writing, various in kind, yet characterised by terseness and amenity, Conyers Middleton, Adam Smith, and Paley ; in eloquent, impassioned disquisition and invec- tive, Edmund Burke, and the femed nominis umbba, his mystic contemporary. The letters of Cowper, with those of Swift, Gray, and Lady Wortley Montagu, may surely be placed in the balance against the epistles of Cicero and PHny, The Essays of Hume, less partial than pyrrhonistic in tone, are almost unrivalled for acuteness and ingenuity of distinct, compiehenBive knowledge of AiiBtotle, with all the beautiful lights, graces, and embellishments of Cicero. One does not know which to admire most in his writings, the strength of reason, force of style, or brightness of imagination." — ^Tatler, No. 267. Of course the comparison is with writers of prose ; otherwise the poets and e\r)v icraravTO KaXr^Vf ^(pvo'eLTjv' OTtXTTi/al 8' aireTTiitTOv eepcat, II. g. 347. The most imaginative minds are the most liable to disappointment, not only as prone to cherish visions alto- gether chimerical, but because of those objects which they anticipate, and which they ultimately attain, they generally form too minute a picture beforehand — somewhat as the merely vain or idly ambitious, — the laughter-provoking Alnasohar, in the Ai-abian story, for instance, whose basket of ware was to end in the marriage of its owner with the gra,nd vizier's daughter, and in all the luxuries of oriental 92 DAY-DKEAMS, OE MENTAL PICTURING. magnificence, but who would have found the difference between the colourings of hope, and the baldness of experience, even if the prospects which rose up before him in such long perspective, had not received so sudden and decisive an eclipse. A BEAUTIFUL landscape sleeping calmly on the bosom of a lake, is like Eeality as reflected" in the mirror of the youthful fancy. But the magic of the scene is quickly dissolved, and its visionary charms sojnetimes fade away as rapidly as the brilliant appearances of the Fata Morgana, or the fantastic and magnificent piles of clouds which are suspended in the firmament on a summer's day, resembling gothic towers and pinnacles, or mountains of snow illumi- nated with the rays of the sun, but which are mixed together and dispersed on the rising of the wind. It is not the most impassioned parts of writing that Hve the longest iu remembrance, but those which exhibit touches of humour, or striking deUneations of character, scenery, or manners. There is something, indeed, more attractive in pictures of quiet Ufe, when drawn with fideUty, than in the most animated descriptions of feeling or events. In any poet, the passages to which memory reverts the most frequently, and with the greatest deUght, are such as contain placid and agreeable images. Of this kind, for example, is the following night-piece from Tasso, which is a beautiful imitation of Virgil : ■'to-^ Era la notte, aJlor oh' alto riposo Han I'onde e i venti, e parea muto il mondo. Gli animai lassi, e quel che' 1 mare ondoso, de' liqiiidi laghi alberga il fondo, E chi si giace iu tana, o in mandra ascoso, E i piuti augelli, nell' obbllo profondo, Sotto il silenzio de' secret! orrori, Sopian gli afFanni, e raddolciano i cori. Gerusaleinme Liberata, canto il. DAY-DREAMS, OE MENTAL PICTUKING. 93 Paraphrased rather than translated by Fairfax as fol- lows : — Now spread the night her spangled canopy, And summon'd every restless eye to sleep : On beds of tender grass the beasts down lie. The fishes slum'bred in the silent deep. Unheard was serpent's hiss, and dragon's cry. Birds left to sing, and Philomene to weep. Only that noise heav'n's rolling circles kest. Sung luUaby, to bring the world to rest. The allusion to the music of the spheres is a poetic touch enhancing the grace of the original. Or take some of the delicious stanzas at the opening of Thomson's Castle of Indolence : Was nought around but im^es of rest : Sleep-soothing groves, and quiet lawns between ; And flowery beds that slumberous influence kest. From poppies breath'd ; and beds of pleasant green, Where never yet was creeping creature seen. Meantime unnumber'd glittering streamlets play'd, And hurled every where their waters sheen ; That, as they bicker'd through the sunny glade, < Though restless still themselves, a lulling murmur made. Join'd to the prattle of the purling riljs, Were heard the lowing herds along the vale. And flocks loud-bleating from the distant hills. And vacant shepherds piping in the dale : And now and then sweet Philomel would wail. Or stock-doves plain amid the forests deep. That drowsy rustled to the sighing gale ; And stiU a coil the grasshopper did keep ; Yet all these sounds yblent inclined all to sleep. The whole landscape and its accompaniments, the very diction in which the poet's fancies are clothed, appear "slumberous," presenting only emblems of softness S,nd repose : yet what battles or dramatic incidents in Homer, or any painter of tumultuous scenes, acquire so captivating 94 DAY-DEEAMS, OE MENTAL PJCTUEING. an influence over the imagination ? Nothing can he more exquisite than the lines which follow : Full in the passage of the vale, above, A sable, silent, solemn forest stood ; ' Where nought but shadowy forms was seen to move, As Idless fancy'd in her dreaming mood : And up the hills, on either side, a wood Of blackening pines, ay waving to and fro, Sent forth a sleepy horror through the blood ; And where this valley winded out, below, The murmuring main was heard, and scarcely heard, to flow. A pleasing land of drowsy-head it was. Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye ; And of gay castles in the clouds that pass. For ever flushing round a summer-sky : There eke the soft delights, that witchingly Instil a wanton sweetness through the breast. And the calm pleasures always hover'd nigh ; But whate'er smack'd of noyance, or unrest. Was far far off expell'd from this delicious nest. Spenser is remarkahly profuse, and almost unequalled, in these sketches of calm solitary heauty. His " Bower of BHss " is scarcely matched hy MUtOn's Eden, disclosing among its varied emhellishments, The painted flowera ; the trees upshooting high ; The dales for shade ; the hiUs for breathing space ; The trembling groves ; the crystal running by. As the knight and palmer approach, they are entertained with the sweetest and most enchanting harmonies : The joyous birds, shrouded in cheerful shade. Their notes unto the voice attemper'd sweet ; Th' angelical soft trembling voices made To th' instruments divine respondence meet ; The silver-sounding instruments did meet With the base murmur of the water's fall; The water's fall with difference discreet. Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call ; The gentle warbling wind low answered.to all. DAY-DBEAMS, OE MENTAL PICTUEING. 95 The objects and sounds here so vividly represented by this most picturesque of English bards, Chaucer perhaps ex- cepted, conspire to luU the imagination into a pleasing reverie, rather than awaken impetuous emotions in the breast. It is such passages as the parting of Hector and Andromache ; the fine description of moonlight in the account of the Trojan vyatch-fires ; the similes drawn from rural existence or nature ; and those delicate touches which sometimes in a verse or two give the story of a Hfe, that most endear as weil as immortalize* the great poet of Greece. Traits or episodes of this kind, occurring as they often do in juxta-position with the march of events, or the effervescence of passion, have somewhat the effect of a still blue lake amid an assemblage of savage rocks; or a soft pastoral glade in the depths of a forest; or, as in the closing Unes of the Paradise Lost, or the last book of the Hiad, the decreasing or sweetly drawn notes that wind up a majestic and thrilling melody ; or the graceful swelling of the ocean the day after a storm. Byron was quite out of the common order; otherwise strains such as his, though impregnated with a fiery hying vigour, wiU hardly, whatever their peculiar and unapproach- able merits, remain so fondly in the recollection as the calm, mellow effusions of Goldsmith. We feel controlled by the one ; we imbibe a lasting affection for the other. A pervading characteristic of Wordsworth's poetry is gentle- ness ; but few writings speak so touchingly to the heart, or form the groundwork of more intimate and dehghtful asso- ciations. Some may conceive that the question is one of tempera- ment, as if the placid were most captivated by pictures of placidity, and vice versa. But so far as temperament is concerned, the rule is rather the reverse; the restless or ardent being often most soothed by descriptions of tran- quillity and beauty, while those of cooler disposition find an agreeable contrast or stimulus in the more vehement 96 DAY-DBEAMS, OE MENTAL PICTURING. delineations of things. It is a curious though well authen- ticated fact, that the younger in particular of the fraternity which is almost proverbial for equanimity and nuldness, seldom prefer the less passionate kinds of poesy, as that of their own Barton or of Cowper, but rather the bolder and more energetic strains of Byron, Scott, and Bums. WARS ANCIENT AND MODEEN. |T may admit of dispute whether any of the martial exploits of antiquity equal, in poiat of skill, the celebrated ones of modern times. Most of the illustrious battles of the Greeks, for instance, from Mara- thon to the campaigns of Alexander, were fought with effeminate people, or with undisciplined barbarians. Naval tactics were no doubt very superflciaUy understood by the ancients. The art of breaking the enemy's line — a strata- gem in combat not peculiar to maritime warfare, but often adopted in land engagements, being in fact the great secret of Napoleon's victories — is of recent introduction.* Whethbk the invention of fire-arms has increased the destruction of human hfe, is a problem that seems fairly resolvable in favour of the more pleasing hypothesis, ac- cording to the brief but philosophical remarks of Hume on the employment of artillery at the battle of Crecy.t Intellect bears the sway, and would shortly obtain the supremacy under any other system or discovery. — Some scepticism, it is true, may naturally arise on considering the wars which have raged in Europe since the date of the invention, especially those originating in the French * The famous action of Lord Eodney, in which this mode of eu- counter was first systematically employed at sea, tookplaoe April 12, 1782. t History, ch. xv. ; where the same view is unfolded as had appeared in hia Essay on the !^opulou6ness of Ancient Nations. H 98 WARS ANCIENT AND MODERN. revolution, and which, up to the peace of 1815, are computed to have occasioned the loss of not fewer than nine or ten millions of our species. Where is the period of equal extent in the annals of our race, that has been signahsed by so terrific a waste of life from such a cause ? It seems also indisputable that had the ancient modes of warfare continued, there would have been much less havoc com- mitted by Europeans among the natives of savage or half- civilised countries, whose incapacity to resist aggression has chiefly arisen from the formidable powers of this apparatus, and from the terror inspired by its novelty. Would the Spaniards, for instance, have been able otherwise to per- petrate their dreadful enormities in the New World, or Cortes not have been driven from Mexico, and Pizarro from Peru, with the discomfiture which those ruthless marauders merited ? The claims of Edward the First to the crown of Scotland, and of Edward the Third to that of Erance, have been productive of more rancorous animosity, if not bloodshed, than almost any other contest in the annals of our country. The enmity thus excited has been perpetu- ated from age to age, besides having occasioned, or contributed to exasperate, many of the foreign wars in which the EngUsh have been engaged; whUe the effects of those unjust and absurd pretensions are not yet perhaps entirely obliterated from the feehngs or circumstances of the respective nations. A similar antipathy, not wholly extinct, between the French and Germans, has been traced to a much more remote, if not more trivial origin — the conflicts preceding the separation of Germany and France at the peace of Verdun in 843, when the vast empire of Charlemagne was dismembered under his three grandsons. Theee is much less expenditure of life in naval than in land battles. It is calculated that in the memorable ■WARS ANCIENT AND MODEEN. 99 engagement of Waterloo, the number of the slain on both sides was near fifty thousand. At the action of the Nile, though so bloody and decisive, the carnage was not one eighth that amount. So long therefore as those relics of barbaric foUy, the hostilities of states, shall continue, the humanity as well as policy of Britain dictates the import- ance of directing her chief protective energies to the maintenance of the sti-ength and superioiity of her iron walls, which are at once her bulwark and her glory. — Not- withstanding all the lights which political science has of late received, and which have served to dissipate so many prophetic chimeras, the observation of Sir Walter Ealeigh respecting the dependence of Britain on her marine, is substantially correct: "a land," says he, in his Discourse on the Invention of Ships, " which cain never be conquered whilst the kings thereof keep the dominion of the seas." "Whosoever," he remarks in the same treatise, "com- mands the sea commands the trade ; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself." The eminence of the principal Grecian states, that of Attica in particular, had its foundation in their naval force, which was equally necessary to the security as to the rise of their grandeur. Horace, who was a timid man, and lived in an unmaritime age, caUs the ocean dissociable: — njodem enterprise and improvement can hail it as the bravest medium of inter- course — a highway or railroad that needs no mending. What British heart will not respond to the sentiment embodied in the weU-known verse of Campbell, which an accomplished critic has pronounced "one of the noblest stanzas of English lyric poetry?" Britd^nma needs no bulwark, No towers along the steep : Her march is on the mountain wave, Her home is on the deep. But whether bulwarks are needed on the steep or not, it ,100 WAES ANCIENT AND MODERN. will sooner or later he practically admitted, that the main bulwarks must ever be those which float on the water. "Were not the predominance of tyranny in so many countries incompatible with the conditions on which the repose of empires is dependent, one might cherish the hope that the time is not far distant when our maritime superiority, hitherto so much an object of national pride on general grounds, wiU be not less so as employed exclusively for the purposes of peaceful communication, and no longer made tributary to the senseless game of war. It requires but two or three wise heads in certain situations, that is, the principal thrones of Europe, or the seats of power which they represent, to preserve the greater part of the civilized world in a state of* constant tranquillity; guairanteed by interest, if not by principle, or the recog- nition of the fact, that the productions of mind display the dignity, the pursuits of war the degradation, of man. In a wiser age than our own, a very few pages will suffice to sum up the lives of conquerors, miscalled Great, with their mediocrity of intellect, their despotism, and unscru- pulous devotion to that meanest of ambitions — military and territorial aggrandisement. COMPOSITION AND STYLE. HE words of a language resemble the strings of a musical instrument, which yield only uninterest- ing tones when struck by an ordiuary hand, but from which a skilful performer draws forth the soul of harmony, awakening and captivating the passions of the mind. EuLES for composition are of very questionable utiKty, being apt to fetter the mind, and seldom do more than preserve from blemishes. AU the directions that seem necessary for acquiring a good style are, to read only the best authors; to select for memory their most expressive terms ; to cultivate the taste iu general ; to compose frequently; and to revise with care. It is amusing to find Bishop Pearce, at the end of his edition of Longinus on the Sublime, recommend to the reader a frequent perusal of the treatise, that he ma.y learn to become a great writer himself. A great writer is not formed by the agency of critical canons and Uluatrations. To produce any thing strikingly original or lofty, there must be an absolute freedom from the trammels and the fear of criticism. It has sometimes struck me, that the super- lative ease and grandeur of the Cartoons were owing in part to the boldness assumed by the genius of the painter, from the consciousness that he was not attempting a 102 COMPOSITION AND STTLK. laborious or minutely finished work, but only sketches on paper to be wrought into tapestry. Wb judge of the merits of atyle much more by the subject and the thoughts, than by the choice or collocation of the words. It is an amusing circumstance which Colmdge related of Klopstock, liiat he endeaTOured to persuade him the German is a mudeal language, by reciting a piece which merely contained soft and agreeable images. Perhaps it was not so much on acconnt of any iatrinsic superiority that the Attic dialect came to be con- sidered the standard of Greek, in purity and elegance, as because it could boast a numbea: of the finest writers in history, poetry, philosophy, and every branch of pohte letters. Langs-uage is properly the servant of thonight, but not unfrequently becomes its master. The conceptions of a feeble writer are greatly modified by his style: a man of vigorous powers makes his style bend to his con- ceptions; a fact compatible enough with the acknow- ledgment of Dryd&n, that a rhyme bad oft^ helped him to an idea. Political economy, however alen to the inspirations or colourings of poetic genius, is an excellent subject to give precision and conciseness to style. It is chiefly in works of fancy or luxury that so much a£ectation and verbosity prevail. Adam Smith would have written well on any topic requiring clearness or comprehensiveness of view ; but nowhere is the perspicuity or force of his language more apparent than in his treatise on the "Wealth of Nations. Compare, in some of our literacy journals, the articles on matters of taste or sentiment, with those which discuss a question of finance or practical legislation. You will find, that while the former are not seldom difi&ise. COMPOSITION AND STYLE. 103 inflated, or jejune, the latter as often display a simplicity which goes directly to the poiat, with a result corre- spondent to Swift's definition of a perfect style, proper words ia proper places. Such a quality, however, impressed on the several species of writing, would iaclude much more than the Dean might imagine ; more, in particular, than appears in compositions which present chiefly a succession of detached sentences or propositions, with as little organic cohesion as a set of trees in a forest, or a numher of persona assembled at an opera or review. A style of this kind, exemplified in more than one of our popular authors, is, in comparison with the richness, involution, and variety, that mark the nobler utterances of certain writers — the Coleridges and De Quin- ceys of later time — the Miltons and Jgremy Taylors of a former — but as an air or symphony made up of a few simple notes, that may please for a whUe, but soon tire from their meagreness or monotony ; while the other may be likened to some complex melodious strain, or the inter- mingling of voices and instruments in a divine combination of sounds. Nothing is easier to acquire than a fluent and harmo- nious cast of expression, A musical ear alone, especially if aided by an acquaintance with our smoothest writers, vrill commonly be sufficient to ensure the accomplishment. But to attain a diction at once nervous and elegant, picturesque and varied, sometimes flowing, sometimes abrupt, bearing the impress of the changeful fancies as they spring up in the mind, this is the rare privilege of those whose genius predominates over their words, and whose compositions are immortal. The style of our old vniters is in general highly figurative and masculine; while that of most among the modems, though smooth and accurate, is as destitute of 104 COMPOSITION AND STYLE. expression aS their character or manners. The progi'ess of refinement has introduced the ahnost exclusive use of ahstract terms, which, however desirahle in metaphysical or argumentative pieces, are little adapted to such as appeal to the imagination or passions. The effect may be compared to certain sculptural remains of the ancient Egyptians, where in a hunting scene, for instance, a wild ox, shot by an arrow, shall seem as calm and contented as if pasturing in a meadow.* A SECRET in rich significant diction is the employment of figurative terms and language in a blended or continuous form, in distinction from the employijient of separate meta- phors. Let the whole texture of the composition be imbued vrith imagery, instead of spiinkling a few detached similes over a generally meagre and barren style. It has been said of Shakspeare, by no less a judge than Gray, that " every word in him is a picture;" a remark which applies with perhaps greater force to Homer. It inay be said of many, if I may be pardoned a grotesque application of a passage, itself somewhat grotesque, though with infinite effect, that their diction resembles the fool's brain in As You Like It — "as dry as the remainder biscuit after -a voyage." Such sterility often attends the fastidiousness which avoids the faintest approach to intermixture of metaphor, though ia certain cases it contributes essentiaUj to vigour and beauty of expression; as flowers interwreathed show sometimes better than apart. It abounds in the writings of the great dramatist, impai-ting an undefinable charm to many of Ms sweetest and noblest descriptions, whose rich poetic colour- ing aU can admire, though few possess an eye for those combinations of hues, or interlacings of imagery and epithet, which enter into the secret of its power. * Such at least might be the fancy on looking at the print in Wilkin- son's Manners and Customs of the Ancient 'Egyptians, vol. iii. p. 18. Ist edit. COMPOSITION AND STYLE. 105 A coMPAEisoN of our elder and more recent, authors will perhaps show, that the former display more attention to thought than to style; the latter, to style than to thought. It is certain that the graces of language, at least with regard to prose, received little cultivation before the time of Dryden. Our earlier geniuses have struck out the statue ; their successors correct or polish the lineaments or drapery r which are the better artists? With our over- strained efforts at refinement, the diction of most books exhibits a marked degeneracy from the nervous, racy,, un- affected simplicity of our ancestors. That indescribable charm, whether in writing or conversation, which the French csHndivetS, and which appears so beautifully in the cheerful, gossiping tomes of Izaak Walton, and in the fictions of De Foe, is banished from a gi-eat part of our literature : so that what a profound critical scholar, Duport, remarked in his Prselections on Theophrastus, delivered more than two hundred years ago, may be repeated in some respects with stricter justice at the present period; "Veteres et vitse et vocis simplicitatem nobis tradiderunt : nos utramque corru- pimus." This depravation of speech has resulted in part from the over-laboured care of some ; in part from the self-satisfied facOity of others ; but above aU from the vicious taste and pretension of those who, fulfilling neither branch of the rule, to think with the wise, and talk with the multitude, think with the one-sided, and talk with the afi'ected. There is a curious passage in the Schloss Hainfeld of Captain BasU Hall; — a charming narrative, though tinged with a melancholy interest. The Countess PurgstaU, the heroine of the work, who had mingled in earlier Hfe with the wits and philosophers of Edinburgh, and was quite a genius in her way, had been settled for a long tract of years ia Lower Styria, having married an Austrian noble- man whose family chateau was situated in that district. Retaining a fondness for British literature, and misti-ess 106 COMPOSITION AND STYLE. of a piire English, which her letters aijd other pieces attest, she complained that she had forgotten her mother tongue, because, in turning over recent publications, she encountered so many unusual words, or words with unusual significations. In truth, it was not her Ladyship's memory that had failed, but the English laiguage which had become corrupted. If we find difficulty here and there iii comprehending the phraseology of Shakspeare, (which Dryden teUs us was a little obsolete in his day,) no doubt, could he rise from the dead, he would be nonplussed with om* modem innovations and jargon. Some who appear to scrupkiajo monstrosities of expres- sion, excuse themselves by mying that they never coin any of this affected gibberish; being content apparently with the honour of circulating so much base metal of others' coining. The whole compass of our language, so copious and expressive, and the vehicle of thought in so great a multi- plicity of walks, being open to our choice, there is less occasion, on the one hand, for foreign importations, or forms trespassing on pm-ity or harmony; while, on the other, the erection of any single writer, or the writers of any particular period, into exclusive authorities, would not only impose an injurious restraint, but supply a curious exemplification of a taste converting what is fortuitous into a principle or standard of government. It was of course an affair of mere accident or caprice that Dryden employed but a certain portion of the vocabulary of our tongue ; yet Fox, no despicable critic in literary niceties, originally intended, in composing the historical fragment which he has left behind, to use no words that are not found in the writings of that celebrated poet. The trait may remind one of a set of purists in Latinity three or four centuries ago, so well lashed by Erasmus for affecting a similar scrupulosity about expressions not sanctioned by the practice of Cicero. COMPOSITION AND STYLE. 107 It is the province of mediocrity to remove common- place thought from ordinary apprehension, by parade of expression. It is the province of gemius to bring down elevated thought to virlgar apprehension, by simplicity of expression. Certain works, extolled perhaps as ingenious or profound, display nottiing but trite sentiments in masquerade; their reception offering a counterpart to fte order of things in Egypt, where tiie greatest respect is awarded to those who, crazed or deficient in their intel- lectuals, abound in contortions anU extravagance; the reason, it see^gs, of this strange obliquity, which venerates the, wildest "%^^^, being the fancy that the souls of such persons are ab^rbed in devotion. Would that a similar exfenuatioa could be pleaded in behalf of our tinsel and ish writers, who however, like Escobar and bis ^ immortalized by the roimitable irony of Pascal, are caterers of pleasantry in their own despite. These gentlemen, reversing the ancient stories of armour which rendered the wearer invisible to enemies and proof against peril, are clothed with a veil of affectation or stolidity, which renders their own impertinences invisible to them- selves. Ceiticisms on etymological points, and on the ancient Bigmfications of words, are of trifling service in the applica- tion of language ; and will no more confaibute to form a master of style, than accurate acquaintance with the political constitufaon and usages of our remote ancestors, vdll make an able statesman of the present period. The practice may allow scope for the indulgence of an antiquarian or philo- sophic curiosity, — perchance for the colom'iag of error as truth, or truth as error, under the guise of a verbal nicety ; but win ensure ndther justness of thinking, nor force or beauty of expression. There is scarcely perhaps a vyriter, from Campbell to Trench, who in dealing with speculations of the kind, is not chargeable with refinements unsanctioned 108 COMPOSITION AND STYLE. aKke by the idioms of our tongue, an^ the compositions of our best authors. Even Coleridge now and then beguiles himself and others by a fantastic trace of etymological distinctions, which either never existed, or, found only ia certain connexions, are not to be drawn into general examples ; or which have vanished altogether from popular and legitimate phraseology. The Bible is unquestionably the richest repository of thought and imagery, and the best model of pure style, that our language can boast. It would be difficult to discover in its pages a single instance of affected or bombastic phrase- ology; a circumstance probably arising in part from the subdued and chastened tone of feeling with which the translation was executed, and a remarkable specimen therefore of the influence exerted on diction by the moral qualities of the writer. Yet its very simplicity and unos- tentatious character are attributes which render it dis- tasteful, in a critical point of view, to artificial and pretending minds. A man's style is so much influenced by his prevailing disposition, that the morals of composition would form no uninstructive topic of reflection. The best language is commonly that which flows without effort from an unsophis- ticated and accomplished mind. Where the character is tinged with affectation or conceit, the diction is sure to partake of the attribute, and to be substantially bad. If a person of education, who is famihar with good authors, puts down his ideas for the most p^rt in the phraseology which first presents itself, he will seldom fail to express himself with propriety, or to excite the attention of his readers, if his sentiments are worth communicating. In every case, a writer that would be interesting must be more occupied with his subject, than- with himself or his stylo. COMPOSITION AND ST>YLE. 109 PuEiTY of language prevails most among the unlet- tered classes of society, who, strangers to the foreign and ' sometimes obscm-e idioms xii the learned, express their meaning without research or pretence, in the words which spontaneously suggest themselves. There is often indeed much to admire in the phraseology of those who have received no tincture of literary education. In general it is more picturesque and expressive, much clearer and better English, than the artificial and imposing style of fine-spoken orators or ambitious writers. Where there is sterling solidity of understanding, the vulgar idiom, free from its occasional grossness and inaccuracies, will pervade a man's diction through life, and give strength to his compositions, whatever may be his progress in literature or refinement. OuB, language hiay be considered as having attained its summit of perfection ; so that whatever change it may receive wiU probably be for the worse'. One of its greatest masters, Dryden, in his Essay on Dramatic Poetry, sup- poses it to have reached this acme in Beaumont and Fletcher's performances, now above two hundred years old ; though he seems to be speaking rather of the vocabulary of our tongue, than of absolute perfection in its employment. It has for some time been stationary, rather than pro- gressive; and as far back as a century, or a century and a half, we may discover specimens of EngUsh prose rivalling in accuracy and grace the most finished productions that have subsequently appeared. The principal effect of the lapse of years has been the diffusion Of correct phraseology, not any perceptible improvement in the structure or idioms of our tongue. The diction of Di-yden has been equalled, if not surpassed, by numbers of writers who have flourished since the age of Addison. Yet it was a strange notion of Horace Walpole, which seems to have been also the opinion of Johnson, that every body now-a-days employs a good 110 COMPOSITION AND STYLE. style. A good style is mucli rarer than genius. The com- positions of some, though very few of our living authors, exhihit a union of almost every excellence ; ease blended ■with dignity, and perspicuity enhanced by refinement and vigour. In general also decent and intelligible writing is a matter of ordinary occurrence. EETEEAT : ITS IMPEESSIONS AND FACILITIES. SOMETIMES entertain myself with fancying the condition of a man entirely debarred from the conversation and sight of his fellow-creatm-es, and living under the persuasion that he shall never emerge from this state of perfect solitude. How different would be his pursuits and ideas from those which commonly prevail ! Supposing him furnished with the materials of luxury and the appendages of refinement, how few of them would he actually employ ! The greater part of the know- ledge and accomplishments which mankind value so highly, would to him be utterly useless. Intellectual occupations would almost certainly be abandoned, even if they had before been the objects of his fondest attention ; as there would be no person to whom he could communicate his sentiments, none with whose powers or attainments his own might be brought into comparison or competition, and no prospect of fame or of recompense to stimulate his efforts. In point of mind, he would perhaps descend ahnost to a level with the least civilised portions of the race; and with respect to enjoyment, would probably be inferior to the brutes. It is somewhat remarkable that among all the singular cases which the records of the human species afford, none should be found exactly parallel to the one supposed, which might have served to elucidate the extent to which man is influenced by man, in the forma- 112 KETREAT : ITS IMPRESSIONS AND FACILITIES. tion of his opinions, tastes, character, and happiness. The fabulous history of Kobinson Crusoe comes the nearest to the hypothesis, and is valuable as exhibiting a philosophical portraiture of human natm-e under extraordinary cu'cum- stances. When the incidents of hfe are few, they produce a more powerful impression on the mind, and deficiency in variety of feehng is made up by its intensity. " Toutes les grandes passions," says Rousseau, " se forment dans la solitude." Doubtless seclusion and retirement are most favourable to unity of emotion, and to those deep though indescribable movements of thought which sometimes issue in heroic or tragical events, but which might have been dissipated, or never had an existence, amidst a busy throng of active pursuits and interests. Petrarch only aggravated the flame which consumed him, by burying himself in the lonely, picturesque recesses of Vaucluse. The seclusion too vyhich adds intensity to feelings* already existing, can lend an interest and a charm to objects or scenes — a rook, a tree, a flower — that otherwise might have failed to im- press ; as Humboldt remarks that amid the lonehness of the sea, the sight of a star is hailed as. that of a friend from whom one has been long separated. Many of the greatest minds have been nurtured in solitude. Where there is extreme* susceptibility of ini' pressions from immediate objects or* occurrences, a ratha; sequestered sphere of life seems preferable for genius, to allow sufficient scope for its unbiassed operations. A poetic "temperament in particular, if it does not always shrink from ihe bustle of the world, at least courts the luxury of its own ruminations unbroken ; when thoughts and images sometimes flow in, that, as a procession of clouds along a summer sky, or as a ship with her white sails just peering on the skirts of ocean, seem to comefrom some dream-like, EETEBAT : ITS IMPRESSIONS AND FACILITIES. 113 immeasurable void. It is amidst scenes of romantic and picturesque seclusion, that the musings of Seattle's minstrel are cherished : Concourse, and noise, and toil, he ever fled, Nor cared to mingle in the clamorous fray Of squabbling imps ; but to the forest sped. Or roam'd at lai^e the lonely mountain's head, Or, where the maze of some bewilder'd stream To deep untrodden groves his footsteps led, There would he wander wild, tiU Phosbus' beam Shot from the western cliff, released the weary team. Certainly an imaginative mind cannot but be more capti- vated by the natural than the artificial, and when hot sophisticated or repressed, will draw a deeper rapture froip the fields, the woods, the firmament — from contemplating the changeful and magnificent aspects of heaven and earth, or from loneliness itself, as prolific in the airy visions of the brain, than from the glitter and excitement attending the shows and huny of the world. These may amuse or stimulate for a while, or better suit a temperament at once melancholy and uninventive, but are surely deficient in the pabulum most adapted to a lofty or •creative fancy. How many poets, enriched by converse vt^th nature, have had their- imaginations impaired, or their lives embittered, by converse with man ! Yet whUe a common characteristic of those distinguished by the strength and colour of their intellectual activity, is the largest influx of thought in the absence of external gratification and excitement, the reverse would seem to be the condition of others, whose powers of reflection or imagination are most kindled by commotion and variety. Gibbon relates that his faculties were never more vigorous than amidst the bustle of his parliamentary winters ; and the author of ChUde Harold is known to have composed several of his exquisite tales when immersed in all the Mvohties and dissipation attaching to fashionable life in the metropolis. Instances of this kind, however, have 114 EETEEAT : ITS IMPRESSIONS AND FACILITIES. usually been accompanied with the practice of deep or habitual meditation, so as to be but occasional phenomena or fruits of a brain commonly at work, but refreshed by the contrast of Ughter scenes. For in general, no doubt, a formidable barrier to the loftier efforts of intellect, is a pro- fusion of miscellaneous objects invitrng attention, amusing the fancy, and frittering away the feelings and thoughts. This is one reason why the wealthy, who are occupied with elegant trifles, or the industrious cla'sses who are seeking to be wealthy, or busied with the means of obtaining a subsistence, so rarely excel ia the departments of mind. He who would secure intellectual pre-eminence must spend much of his time in solitary reflection. Even Gibbon betook himself to the retirement of Lausanne for the com- pletion of his noble history ; and the most imaginative and powerful works of Byron were written abroad, in compara- tive seclusion. It is not uniastruetive to hear Goethe, whose Hfe was devoted to literature, and who has been accused of not minghng sufficiently in practical affairs, complain, on revievring his career, of the diffusion of his faculties among so many things unadapted to the proper workings of his genius. If solitude deprives of the benefit of advice, it also excludes from the mischief of flattery. But the absence of others' applause is generally supplied by the flattery of one's own breast. Those who delight in unrestricted, and especially in imaginative thought, often feel society oppressive, because the very presence of others operates as a barrier to the wanderings of fancy, or the exercise of reflection. To suCh, therefore, and to all whose susceptibilities relate rather to intellectual beauty and truth than to fortune or events, solitude has its attractions because it allows most scope for freedom of ideas ; to the proud or the RETREAT : ITS IMPRESSIONS AND FACILITIES. 115 capricious, because it affords the greatest latitude to man- ners and actions. In each case a retired course of li'fe is connected with most independence. Society is founded on a voluntary sacrifice of liberty in some particulars, for the sake of advantage in others : — an observation at once appEcable to the relations of private existence, and illus- trated by the history of communities, national as well as civic. The natives of Switzerland, a secluded and scattered population, have ever been noted for their love of freedom : so the Arab tribes of the desert, and the inhabitants of most mountain regions, who are separated by the natm-al baniers of their situation. It is in densely peopled terri- tories and crowded cities that tyranny finds its readiest instruments and victims ; however true that ia commercial countries especially, cities have commonly been the chief nurseries and dwelhng-place of freedom. It is not unusual for persons to spend a great pro- portion of their days amidst the turmoU of active scenes, yet to acquire scarcely the mo^ superficial knowledge of human nature. They have beheld the fleeting aspects of society, and contemplated more or less of its modes and sentiments; but as to the real springs which give move- ment to the affairs of mankind, or the discriminative features of individual character, they are almost entirely in 'the dark. Others, on the contrary, as Colman in his Random Records has remarked of Goldsmith, have a knowledge of nature, but are ignorant of the world; that is, they know man, but not mar kind. To gain a correct acquaintance vrith human nature, it is not necessary to move in a public or extensive sphere. A more limited circle of observation conduces to greater minuteness and accuracy. A public mode of life is favour- able to a knowledge of manners ; a private, to a knowledge of character. Montaigne, so far as his general habits are concerned, annears to have mineled little with the world, 116 EETEBAT ; ITS IMPBESSIONS AND FACILITIES. answering in most particulars to the idea of a philosophi- cal recluse; yet his writings display extraordinary familiarity with man, his foihles, sentiments, and passions. Few persons of liberal tastes and education have passed their days in closer retirement than Shenstone ; but, to say nothing of his poetical performances ^ — his Schoolmistress, or the traits interspersed in his Elegies and miscellaneous pieces — -the prose essays which he has left behind evince a shrewdness of perception, and a penetration into the springs of conduct, not often found in those who spend their existence amidst the bustle of society. A similar remark may be applied to Cowper, and no inconsiderable number of our poets and most sagacious moral writers. Solitude is adapted to give a knowledge of character; mixing with the world, to draw out or to modify character. The former shows man in the abstract, or in his universal being ; the latter in his exterior phases and varieties. The strange, though profound and subtle, notion of Averroes, that the souls of all mankind are but a single spirit animating different iudividuals, ^las, like most fictions, its substratum of truth ; or at least is capable of suggesting a very salutary one — that the easiest and most effectual way to become acquaiated with human nature, is to study oneself. Our own hearts present us with a miniature picture of the race ; and by knowing om-selves, we in a sense know all men. On this principle only can we solve the fact, that writers of genius often give so just delinea- tions of characters far beyond the* range of their own experience ; and that some even in early years have pro- duced sketches displaying so profound an insight into the motives of action, as would commonly be deemed the fruit of a long and intimate commerce with various classes. By the same rule are we famished with a key to the circumstance, that while describers of manners are indebted for their success to contact with the actual world, those who have best depicted the inner qualities of our being, as EETREAT : ITS IMPEESSIONS AND FACILITIES. 117 Rousseau in passion, and Pascal in thought, have lived much alone. We should err in supposing that Shakspeare derived his principal materials from society, however pene- trating an observer of persons and things. The mode in which he constructed his wonderful dramas was the reverse of this ; for, adopting some previous story as the ground- work of a piece, and aided in the fiUing up by the lights of experience, he drew chiefly from those fountains of reflec- tion and inspiration which lay within. — It is owing to the essential identity of man under all circumstances, that any genuine stroke of sentiment or humour, in poetry or prose, or any noble touch of feeling in actual life, draws a tribute of admiration from minds the most ilHterate, that are seldom slow in responding to manifestations of the divine- ness that centres in the soul. Great authors, the greatest perhaps excepted, differ from the rest of their species not so much ia superiority of perception or imagination, as ia the faculty of arresting and embodying those impressions with which aU are more or less conversant, but which pass away from the generality like shadows or confused dreams. Multiplicity and diversity of incidents frequently operate as a substitute for multiplicity and diversity of ideas. When a mind of native power is left to itself, and to an equable tenor of life, it is the more induced, by outward monotony, to seek for intellectual variety; and when excluded from external pleasures, is most apt to revel in those of an ideal nature : so that solitude, as deficient in objects of practical interest to absorb or bound the desires, is pretty sure to nourish a host of romantic or spiritual phantasies in the susceptible and meditative. The- legends and super- natural stories that were the delight of the olden time, and some of which have been wrought up into the permanent creations of genius, were but the natural outgrowth of circumstances limiting the range of mental activity and entertainment. We may see this in the curious collection 118 BETKEAT : ITS IMPRESSIONS AND FACILITIES. of tales called the Gesta Romanorwn, which, besides enlivening the sage instructions of the pnlpit with a variety of marvellous narrative, contributed to cheer the baronial halls and the fire-sides of multitudes, in the darker periods of European history ; and which, however blended with oriental or other fictions, may doubtless be referred in great part to the seclusion and monotonous existence of the monks, so favourable to visionary wanderings and the inventions of fable. What a contrast, by the way, between the super- stitious, and not unfrequently perhaps poetic, reveries of the cloister, during the middle ages, and the aU-engrossing, mechanical, money-getting pursuits of the present era. In throwing off the yoke of Popery, we have discarded several usages not always perhaps objectionable. In certain cases the system of establishments for religious retirement, and for Hterary or other tranquil occupations, might not be unattended with advantage. Circumstances may surely be conceived, in which the mental faculties would be employed with more effect ia seclusion from the world, than amidst the excitement, and effervescence of public activity. Imagine, for instance, a species of clois- tral Retreat, wider in scope, and less fcged with asceticism, than the institution founded by Nicholas Faxrer, the friend of George Herbert, which, however, includes features not a Kttle curious and interesting; a Eetreat, in short, that while offering an asylum to helpless or oppressed Worth, might be made to comprise, apart from the austerities or vows of a conventual hfe, the utility of such a society as that of Port Royal, to which literature has been indebted for so many estimable works, in some sort rivalling the magnificent contributions of the Benedietiues to the cause of learning. At all events, there seems little tendency in the present generation to contract sm. inordmate fondness for recluse habits or contemplations. The Moravian settle- ments, as those of Fulneck in Yorkshire, and Herrnhut in reteeat; its impressions and facilities. 119 Lusatia, present a partial approximation to the plan, resem- bling on a small scale what were called the Eeductions of the Spanish Jesuits in Paraguay ; a body of men whose con- duct towards the natives of that unhappy country reflects unfading lustre on an Order that, whatever its faults, or the wit or partial colourings of a Pascal, has displayed qualities that neither literature nor piety may lightly esteem. Of the extraordinary Society instituted by Loyola, and which has been styled by Mackintosh " the glory of Catholic Europe," it may surprise some to hear the opinion of Southey, no great admirer of the Eomish system or usurpations, but who had the honesty to see worth in an enemy. " The extinction of the order," says he, in narrating its doings in another part of the globe, " was a heavy loss to literature, a great evil to the Catholic world, and an irreparable injury to the tribes of South America." The work on the Monastic Orders, ibr which that multi- farious and entertaining writer had made so elaborate preparations, and to whieji he looked forward as one of the great achievements of his life — his magmmi opus, that should increase and consolidate his flame — would no doubt have presented much curious matter for reflection in reference to the subject above adverted to ; on which indeed he had long and extensively meditated, and which he has touched upon in a paper on British Monachism, that, from my early recollections of it, I should call delight- ful.^ — How is it, by the by, that in this age of reprints, and infinity of ephemeral productions besides, the best prose essays of Southey have not long ere now been selected ffom the mass of his multitudinous performances, anc" reproduced for the admirers of works which, if here and there tinctured with prejudices unworthy of the benignity and fairness that belonged to the author personally, can never be without a charm, as the unaffected utterances of a genuine man of letters. 120 RETREAT : ITS IMPRESSIONS AND FACILITIES. Respecting Farrer and his establishment at Little Gidding near Huntingdon, briefly commemorated by Izaak Walton and others, most of the particulars that can now be collected will be found ia a small volume lately pubhshed, containing two racy old memoirs of that remarkable man, carefully annotated as one of a series intended to illustrate Cambridge in the seventeenth century. I add a passing glimpse or two from a work which com- bines, with much gracefulness of style and manner, a considerable mass of historical and antiquarian informa- tion — Lawrance's Memoirs of the Queens of England. After referring to the utility of monastic establishments in former and less cultivated periods, the fair writer observes : " Even in the present day, to the philosopher devoted to his absorbing pursuits ; to the aged and solitary man of letters; to the lady, high-bom, perchance, but thrust by adverse fortunes from the sphere ia which she was destined to move, the abbey, with its noble haUs, its pleasant cloisters, and its quiet cells, may still appear a vision of peace and repose, on which the mind wiU linger with feelings of unavailing regret." The picture, with the associated sounds of the matin or vesper bell, calling the inmates of a Sequestered abode from sleep or various occupations to the exercises of devotion, were surely as agreeable to think about as the throng of selfish interests that make up the pursuits of Mammon, or as the grosser appliances in their train, often darkening and disfiguring the fairest landscape. Nor, haply, was the piety of the monastic days so great a rarity as may be fancied by the admirers of a commodity by no means rare in our own — a bustling and specious religionism ; a thing and religion as distinct as the poles. On the whole, perhaps the most desirable condition is that which brings us least into intimate contact with man- kind. It seems more conducive to happiness to take a EETKEAT : ITS IMPEESSIONS AND FACILITIES. 121 distant survey of the species, remarking the phenomena presented hy the varying phases of society, than to investi- gate its interior mechanism, or enter into nice examinations of human conduct. It is such a meditative, panoramic view of scenes and characters, which Lucretius portrays as possessing so sweet a charm to minds that occupy the summits of wisdom,— Despicere unde queas alios, passimque videre Errare, atqtie viam palanteis quaerere vitae ; Certare ingenio, contendere nobilitate, Nocteis atque dies niti prsestante labore Ad summas emergere opes, rerumque potiri. A passage of which the spirit is well conveyed in the beautiful Knes of Cowper : 'Tis pleasant, throngb. the loopholes of retreat, To peep at sucb a world ; to see the stir Of the great i3abel, and not feel the crowd ; To hear the roar she sends through all her gates At a safe distance, where the dying sound Falls a soft murmur on the' uninjured ear: I doubt not that Goldsmith's Citizen of the World, abounding in pictures drawn from a general perspective of humanity, and embellished with the sparkling touches of wit and genius, has in numberless instances afforded more pleasure than was ever derived from personal intermix- ture with affairs. It is to a like cause that poetry, fictitious or dramatic sketches, narratives of voyages and travels, and the delineations of history, all relating to the absent or remote, are indebted for no small portiop of their fascination. There is one kind of solitude, the rarest perhaps of all; that, namely, of original thinkers, or such as are intellectually in advance of their age ; who, whatever their outward activity or association, live essentially alone ; and that by a twofold necessity — in order that they may think, and became they think. INTERCOURSE— FEIENDSHIP— AFFECTION. T may appear singular that while so many pro- fessedly aim at the acquisition of wealth, scarcely any make friendship a specific object of pursuit; but that ia most instances it is the offspring of secondary ■or incidental circumstances. The explanation may be, that the advantages of friendship are not sufficiently palpable to satisfy the ordinary class of feeHngs. Perhaps it is also supposed, that the search would be generally unavailing in the absence of wealth or influence; and that riches once attained, it will be easy to purchase friendship, or what may supply ],its place. Theee was little benevolence, whatever pleasantry, in Momus reproaching Vulcan for not having placed, in the breast of the human form which he had made, a window to disclose the thoughts and movements of the soul. Could such a fancy be realised, men would probably despise each other much more than they do ; because, whatever unex- pected excellences they might discover, they would seldom perceive, in their nearest associates, an extraordinary portion of regard to themselves. The reason why intimate acquaintance seldom en- hances esteem is, because the contemplation of character at a distance allows scope for imagination and kindness ; a circutnstance peculiarly exeipplified in those of sensitive INTEECOUBSE — FKIENDBHIP — AFFECTIOK. 123 or poetic make. It was remarked of the author of Childe Harold, that his friendships were miiformly most cordial and best sustained towards those with whom he had least personal intercourse. Nearness dispels the illusions of fancy, and forces truth, however unpleasing, on the miud. It is frequently politic to entertaiu distrust of others, but seldom wise to indicate that distrust. The reply of an old Italian courtier to Sir Henry Wotton, who had besought his advice respecting the best course for him to pursue at Eome, embodies the pith of what is called worldly wisdom : I pensieri stretti, ed il viso sciolto. With "the thoughts close, and the countenance open," a 'person, as Sir Henry rightly concludes, may travel safely over the whole world. Such concealment or partial simulation, however, though weU. enough suited to the atmosphere of courts, especially the petty Italian ones of those days, is little accordant with nobleness of temper, or that frankness of bearing which forms so much the charm even of casual intercourse.* The advice of Polonius to his son, on embarking for Prance, includes the same lesson as the Italian's, with much that is a great deal better ; and for those just entering the motley, panoramic scenes called life, is one of the best pieces of counsel, expressed in concise and pointed phrase- ology, that human sagacity has produced : Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any disproportion'd thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried. Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel ; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. . . . Qire every man thine ear, but few thy voice : Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. . . ♦ This anecdote of Sir Henry is related in his letter to Milton -when about to proceed on his foreign travels, and may be seen in Keliquiss Wottonianse, p. 342, edit. 4th. 124 INTEKCOUESE — FEIENDSHIP AFFECTION. Neither a borrower nor a lender be ; For loan oft loses both itself and Mend ; And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all, — To thine own self be true ; And It must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. these pithy aphorisms come natutally enough from an acute and practised courtier; though we should scarcely have expected such raciness and condensation of thought iu one whose intellect received so contemptuous an estimate from a personage of Hamlet's penetration. Perhaps how- ever the disparagement was but a part of his feigned insanity. — It is curious that a similar shrouding of miad is inculcated in the dying instructions- of the vizier Noured- din Ali to his son, in the far-famed collection of Arabian stories. The artificial and complex circumstances attending a varied state of civilised existence, operate somewhat as the windings and counter-currents of a river, by which certain objects afloat are cast out of the course of the stream : so that many persons, virtually as detached from the move- ments of the world as Crusoe ia his solitary isle, are compelled to seek enjoyment almost exclusively in their own resources. In that case who shall censure them with severity, although they acquire a tone of sentiment Uttle characterised by expansive warmth, or form a habit of referring things to themselves rather than to others ? It is a beautiful feature in the story of Silvio Pellico, that during his long imprisonment in the fortress of Spielberg through the tyranny of Austria, he lost none of the sympathies or virtues becoming the most active commerce with mankind. It would be curious to trace the process by which a mind, originally enthusiastic and generous, becomes INTEECOURSE FRIENDSHIP AFFECTION. 125 ■decidedly selfish and unimpassioned, through contact with selfishiiess and unkiadness. Even the highest turpitude may be occasioned by the ]ike hardening operation. Medea, as portrayed by Euripides, was evidently endued with a disposition unusually affectionate ; but unjust and dis- ' honourable treatment impelled a being in whom the fiercer passions were so strongly blended with the softer, to an act of the most unnatural barbarity. To receive wrong is often a more dangerous test of principle than an opportunity of doing wrong. Eousseau, in that extraordinary specimen of self-delinea- tion, the Confessions, which, with aU the grievous blemishes it discloses, unites the charm of romance to the authenticity of history, refers the first perceptible. warp in his character to a certain chastisement inflicted upon him in boyhood under a charge entirely without foundation. Better have given him credit for veracity if uttering a falsehood, than punished him as a Har when speaking the truth. The feelings of some, though once open to a variety of impulses, are now buried so deep in the heart, that few of the vicissitudes of life can move them ; as in the pro- found parts . of the ocean, the fluctuations on its surface, the sunshiue, cloud-shadows, breeze, and tempest, are equally unknovm. Some who are imbued vrith affectionate dispositions, exhibit a cold or repulsive demeanour, from an idea, of which they are perhaps scarcely conscious, that the in- dulgence or manifestation of deep emotion is a weakness in character. Where feeHng is the most intense, there is often little external indication of it, sometimes the appearance even of unusual apathy. The depth and strength of the current preserve unrufBed calmness on the surface ; while the con- finement of sensibUities within the breast only serves, like the retention of waters by a dam, to augment their power. 126 INTBECOUBSE — FRIENDSHIP AFFECTION . It has been alleged that the British, under a frigid exterior, are the most impassioned of people. Actors, who, with whatever exceptions among the nobler gifted, but counter- feit emotion, seem to possess it in an extraordinary degree. A statue made of relentless marble, and void of all that constitutes humanity, shall appear to breathe and smile, or express the repose of voluptuous satisfaction ; whUe the soldier on parade, though in semblance but a species of automaton, shaU conceal, under that rigid and apparently inanimate form, a host of imfathomable impulses and fancies. An interesting circumstance is presented in the con- trast of stem intellect with the amiable affections. There are numerous occasions on which the latter appear, even to those who possess them least, incalculably superior and more commanding, — a sense of their divineness subduiag and almost oppressing the heart ; as to certain orders of mind, or minds in a certain mood,- there is a touch of undefinable sadness in the sight of flowers, — so silent, so exquisite, so frail, — looking forth, as man with his face towards the heavens, into the infinite universe. Feiendship is more firmly secured by lenity towards ■feUings, than by attachment to excellences. The former is Talued as a kindness which cannot be claimed ; the latter is exacted as the payment of a debt to merit. If you find a person suspicious, you may read his history, and conclude that he has often met with treachery or iU-treatment ; . for of all qualities, suspicion is the least natural to man. When not traceable to such a source, or fixing on friends its visionary mistrust, it is commonly the symptom of a diseased brain ; as seems to have been the case with Eousseau, who in the latter part of his fife especially, was haunted with the persuasion that the philo- INTERCOURSE — FRIENDSHIP— AFFECTION. 127 sophers and great men of his acquaintance had conspired to effect his ruin : though it may be owned that the vehement outcry raised against some of his writings, and the preposterous persecutions that followed, were sufficient to warp or utterly discolour the perceptions of one so sus- ceptible and imaginative of mould, and living iu so secluded a manner, as the author' of JuUe. A circumstance which struck Sir Walter Scott in his interviews with Lord Byron, is related to have been the transient shadowings of such a temper ia that singularly constituted genius — whether owing to one or both of these causes cannot perhaps be determined — but which vanished of themselves in the pro- gress of conversation. It behoves the sensitive in particular — a class compre- hending a large proportion of the rarest-gifted minds — to guard against the moody colourings of solitary, unrestricted thought ; otherwise they will be liable to indulge a train of reflection calculated to nourish their peculiar temperament ; that is, they will magnify the real or imaginary failings of others, and by the activity of fancy under the influence of self-love, discover abundant means of justifying themselves, even though in error. There is something melancholy in the circumstance related of Goldsmith, that he would some- times retire from, the company of his associates, to brood for hours and even weep over the supposed affronts or sHghts he had received. Such a trait might almost be adduced as an illustration of the alleged alliance between genius and madness. Fjcklbnbss in friendship, or in a good cause, is some- times combined vyith the negative advantage of fickleness in resentment, or in the pursuit of unworthy objects. They whd can resort to obsequiousness and flattery, have commonly little or no principle. There is a curious affinity between the state of mind which prompts to adula- 128 INTEECOTJKSE —FRIENDSHIP AFFECTION. tion, and that whicli incites to calumny. The greatest flatterers are often the greatest slanderers. "I am of the number of those," says HoweU, in one of his celebrated Letters, " that had rather commend tjie virtue of an enemy than soothe the vices of a friend." Most persons, when censured, omit to inquire whether the reproof is just. The fact that they are censured is sufficient to provoke their animosity and resentment. It is some apology for leaving the faults of others without remonstrance, that so few can bear to have them touched upon, though in the gentlest manner, and not take a grudge against you in their hearts. I rememb.er that, reading when a boy the story in GU Bias about the archbishop of Granada and his apoplexy, on coming to the dismissal of his proteg6 for critical bUndness, I regarded the picture as a glaring caricature. Eiper observation has convinced me that the thing is no fiction, and that without the intervention of disease, there are plenty of archbishops of Granada. In point of benefit, whatever ma,y he the case in point of comfort, the proximity of a critical or uncandid acquaint- ance is sometimes not undesirable, as it may constitute one motive, among others more disinterested or powerful, to pursue an upright and circumspect career. The removal of such an influence may not unaptly suggest the feeling expressed by the younger Phny, on the death of an honoured fiiend : Vereor ne negligentius vivam. Theeb is more affection in the world than Mendship, more friendship than philanthropy, and more philanthropy than candour. Love nurtured amidst grief is often of the deepest order ; because affliction tends to soften the feelings, and to infuse a spirit of sensibility, — the element in which love INTERCOUBSE FRIENDSHIP — AFFECTION. 129 breathes and flourishes. The discovery seems to have come upon the enamoured Julie with all the force of surprise. " Dis-moi, mon ami, moh doux ami ! " she ■writes to the object of her passionate attachment, " sens- tu com|)ien un cceur languissant est tendre, et combien la tristesse fait fermenter Tamour?" With allowance for exceptions, the remark of Shakspeare about the course of true love never runniag smooth, may be somewhat reversed; that the love is true because its course is not smooth. The imagination is often most deeply interested by those who exhibit appearances of general indifference or nonchalance, blended with partial and unexpected gleams of affection ; as the unintermitted brightness of the moon is less picturesque than her occasional beamings from the margin or through the crevices of a cloud. There is perhaps no occasion on which a person feels so desirous to know the thoughts of another, as in a case of undisclosed love. Imagination is one of the great nomishers of affection. If Poesy be the daughter of Love, Love is at least sus- tained and cherished by Poesy. It is with our affections as with bodies under the influence of gravitation ; the nearer we approach the objects of our regard, the more strongly are our desires attracted towards them. But in the opposite direction, the rule is commonly reversed, and affection increases with the dis- tance. Thus in the opening lines of the Traveller : Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see, My heart, untravell'd, fondly turns to thee ; Still to my brother turns, with ceaseless pain, And drags at each remove a lengthening chain. "I find," says Bums, "the attraction of love is in an K 130 INTEReOUBSB — FEIENDSHIP AFFECTION. inverse proportion to the attraction of the Newtonian philosophy. Every mile-stone that marked my progress from Clarinda, awakened a keener pang of attachment." The union of pride with affectionate feeling — a characteristic hy no means uncommon — often occasions considerahle uoeasiness to its subject. The former assumes the appearance of sufBcient internal or personal resources ; while the latter requires the sympathy or attachment of others, which is liable to be chiUed or repeUed by that appearance. The effect, where the stronger passions are at play, is sometimes of a deeply tragic nature ; as is finely illustrated in the story of one of Shenstone's Elegies, founded on the madness to which high-born beauty fell a prey, smitten with the love of a person in humble life, whom pride of birth prevented her from regarding as a lover. Society appears to require something which may be a kiad of substitute for the practice of auricular confession among the Catholics ; chiefly, however, as an expedient for disbm-dening the heart of its emotions, without the appre- hension of farther disclosure. Friendship might in some measure suffice, but it is too rare, and in most instances too feeble, for the purpose. How few indeed are there to whom, except in the ease supposed, a person would feel confidence- in laying open the interior movements of his mind. Authors have an advantage in this particular; those at least who deal with fancy, or the more refined sensibilities of our nature, as poets, and writers of fictitious naiTatives. The fire and mental fermentation of genius would be liable to produce insanity, were it not for the outlet afforded by composition. Byi'on oiten speaks of "the relief he obtained in this way ; and Chatterton, gloomy ft-om a child, is said to have become more cheerful from the time that he wrote Tei'ses. There is one resource accessible to aU, but too INTEEOOUESE — FBIENDSHIP — A-PFECTION. 131 sacred to be blended with inferior associations — converse with the Great Invisible. Certainly it is necessary to have some surer basis of Tepose than humanity, a very limited knowledge of the world being sufficient to show, that people in general care little for their professed friends or acquaintances while hving, and soon forget them when dead. There is a curious story in the Odyssey respecting the companions of Ulysses, that whoever tasted the fruit of the lotus, at once became unmindful of kindred and country. "We may witness something of the phenomenon without the fable ; or the produce of that oblivious shrub may be gathered on every shore. It is a remark of the excellent Francis de Sales, complaining that we do not su^ciently remember our dead, that lev/r memoire jpirit chez nous avec le son des cloches. As to the promiscuous multitudes that move around us, our exit would be utterly unperceived, or occa- sion no deeper impression than the flight of an arrow through the air. I think it is Pope who expresses a sort of plaintive regret, that London would be as busy and Uvely the morning after his death as before. It is perhaps true, however, that no person, whatever his station or merits, is whoUy uninteresting to all of his kind, or dies without leaving an image of himself in another's breast. By some unknown hands, the grave even of a NiSro was atrgwed with flowers.* * This token of gratitude, or affection, or -whatever it may be deemed, appears to have heen frequently rep'eated. "Et tamen," says the hiographer of the emperors, after relating the joy that was diffused through the city by the monster's death — for monster I call him, in spite of the recent mania to leave hardly a blackened name in history without eulogy or vindication — " non defuerunt qui, per longum tempus, vernis iseetivisque iloribus tumulum ejus ornarent."— ^Suet. in Vit. Ner. cap. 47. VERBAL AND PICTOEIAL PBESENTMENT. |RITTEN language, though a tolerahle medium for the conveyance of fact, is very inadequate ia matters of passion, which often depend on some- thing undefinahle in looks, tone, or general demeanour. In representations of things addressed to the eye, and especially for the seizure of the momentary effect, painting has, to all minds not eminently gifted with the imaginative faculty, a decisive advantage over verhal description. But in cases which speak more directly to that faculty, words, heiag only dead symbols, do not, Kke painting or sculpture, tend to bound its operations, but rather set it upon the weaving of its own wondrous speUs. In matters of fiction, a vivid imagination renders you independent of the aid of painting, as well as of dramatic representation, " For my part," says Dugald Stewart, in whom the faculty of picturing ideal objects was scarcely the most conspicuous endowment, " I have never received from any Falstafi" on the stage, half the pleasure which Shaks- peare gives me in the closet; and I am persuaded that I should feel some degree of uneasiness, if I were present at any attempt to personate the figure or the voice of Don Quixote or Sancho Panza."* * For an expansioa of the sentiment, I feol happy in referring to an admirable Easay of Charlas Lamb, " On the Tragedies of Shakspeare, considered with reference to their fitness for Stage-representation." VERBAL AND PICTORIAL PRESENTMENT. 133 We may hence appreciate the practice of emhellishing fictitious or poetical performances with supposed illustra- tions of the scenery or characters. There is one decisive ohjection to such attempts— they interfere with the sketches which the mind has already foi-med for itself; so that if in the abstract more just, they are less pleasing as an apparent violation of the truth. In most instances, however, they are no doubt far inferior to the conceptions which they are intended to assist. The power of mental portraiture is never so great as when least supplied with artificial ap- pliances. The best periods of our poetry were those in which few or none of these pictorial accompaniments had place. It win often be found that the less men love Nature herself, the more they admire imitations of Nature. If painters do not always flourish m.ost when imagination decays, they are then most numerous, and most prolific in works of mere decoration. It is on a similar principle that reading a poem or romance to others, affords less scope to fancy than the private perusal. The very circumstance of their presence, and the mental reference incidentally made to the impres- sions which they receive from the piece, divide the attention ; while the want of adequate pauses, and of occasional repetition, precludes any successful attempt to fill up the outlines of the characters or scenes portrayed. A person always glides slowly over a description or nar- rative, when his own faculties are in operation. Hogarth may be considered as occupying a similar position in the fine arts, to that of Fielding in literature. Both these eminent geniuses, who flourished about the same time, display, in their respective provinces, almost equal skill in the anatomy of the heart and character of man. Certainly for genuine de^ejition of humanity, in .some of its finer and more tou(5|iin^rf s well as humorous aspects, I would rather have'' one ^rafegarth's series of 184 VEBBAL AND PICTOEIAL PKESENTMENT. picturfes, the Marriage a-la-Mode, or the Eake's Progress, than the Cartoons of Raphael, matchless as these may he in their kind; but which — if it be not irremissible pre- sumption to breathe a syllable in depreciation of works confessedly so divine — OTerstep at times the limits both of nature and of pure fancy; not without appearance too of incongruity, especially in the mixture of the literal and the allegorical; as in the Charge to St. Peter, where, in a professedly historical scene, or representation of reality, may be noted, amid other incoherences, metaphor painted, in the veritable images of keys, and a flock of sheep. — It is the praise of Hogarth's performances that, while taken from life, they are admirable illustrations not only of the manners and costume of the periods to which they relate, but, what is far better, of human nature in every period. Those who disparage Hogarth on account of his subjects, must dis- parage also Shakspeare ; for both are* depicters of man as he is, not as he might be under some imaginary circum- stances. • RICHES, MENTAL AND MATEEIAL, |N surveying from an eminence a spacious and magnificent landscape, I soinetimes think within myself what slight reason there is to eoTet pos- sessions in the wide world ; how small a portion of it is held by the most afSuent ; and how Kttle even of that small portion is actually enjoyed by its owner. In a condition the least favoured by fortune, we may apprepriate to ourselves as much palpable good as wUl he advantageous, and of higher commodities almost as large a share as the wealthiest can command. The finest prospects, scents, air, the gratification of wants not inspired by cmiosity or pride, the pleasures of kind feeling, intellect, and imagination, are cheap to all. I WOULD wish to be master of my possessions, not my possessions to be master of me. It is noted by Valerius Maximus respecting Ptolemy, the affluent king of Cyprus, that he possessed not riches, but was possessed by them ; of which indeed he gave a memorable proof in providing for the safety of his jewels and gold when he destroyed himself. Nor is the philosophy to be despised which instructs one to consider the mind, rather than the more tangible goods of existence, as one's estate; the former being not only the far nobler species of property, but susceptible of infinitely higher improvement. Such an 136 KICHBS, MENTAL AND MATERIAL. estimate would at least be one of the best securities against the contingences and deprivations of fortune. " Certes," says the contemplative Montaigne, " I'homme d'entendement n'a rien perdu, s'il a soy-mesme." Peivation and hardship are not always the most admirable preparatives for the enjoyment of opulence and prosperity, whatever influence they may sometimes have in stimulating to the successful pursuit of those advantages. They who have fought their way to riches by dint of plodding, nnremittiag industry, are not seldom of contracted or sordid intellect ; while such as have been raised to affluence by some unexpected turn of fortune, are often distinguished for reckless extravagance, or tasteless expenditure. In the former case men are apt to become misers ; in the latter, spendthrifts. There is more wisdom than may at first appear in Martial's description of a happy Hfe, where he enumerates among its ingredients, res non parta lahore, sed relicta. It is a congratulation of Horace to his friend TibnUus, that the gods had given biTn with riches the art of enjoying them. Theee is an ancient adage, Learning is better than house or land. Whether the saying arose in times of com- parative ignorance, when learning was rare, and therefore fetched its price, cannot now perhaps be determined. Certainly the maxim scarcely holds good in the present day, if it is to be understood as expressing the secular benefits of erudition ; for the world -in general entertaias little veneration for mere scholarship. The high and the low are alike worshippers of Mammon ; nor do the learned themselves scruple to participate in the idolatry. If how- ever the apophthegm is to be taken in another sense, that literary and intellectual pursuits ai-e more prolific in enjoy- ment than riches or exterior possessions, the sentiment is amply confirmed where mental occuf)ations are conjoined UICHES, MENTAL AND MATEEIAL. 137 witi a tolerable, degree of health, and exemption from vulgar cares. Then indeed the advantages of a taste for letters incomparably surpass those which opulence can procurel It is interesting to hear the historian of the Dechne and Fall refer, with a species of enthusiasm, to what he denominates his "invincible love of reading, which," says he, "I would not exchange for the treasm-es of India." If you happen to be wealthy, you need not much fear the encroachments or impositions of the dishonest, directed either against goods or mind; for in the one case, redress is at your command ; in the other, you can afford to smile at their impotence. But if you happen to be poor, the only preservative is to avoid coming in contact with that class of character. Yet how to discover the feints and disguises which the kidnappers of mind are wont to assume? But one way discloses itself; which is, to cul- tivate the light of truth within, possessed by the poorest as by the rich, and to let names and pretences pass for what they are worth. It is difficult to see why a reasbnable man, possessed of a competence, should not be as much gratified vrith having houses or lands in picture as in reaUty. The effect of redundance is but Hke the spare money of the Vicar of Wakefield's daughters, who had always a guinea in their pockets, but which they were never allowed to change. If, according to the maxim of Socrates, and the natural signification of the term, only those things can be denominated the goods of a man which are instruments of his benefit, how few are the goods even of the most affluent! and what a disproportion subsists between the possessions and the goods of the majority of mankind ! 138 EICHES, MENTAL AND MATERIAL. For the most part people are struggling with indi- gence, and thus excluded from numerous gratifications ; or if possessed of riches, are prevented from enjoying them by ill health, passionate or envious temper, or some other misfortune. Poverty delights to revel in ideal scenes of wealth and splendour, ui distinction from those which hahit has familiarised, or shown to be distastefrd ; which is one reason perhaps why the poems of Crabbe, so full of truth and nature, have never been eminently popular among the class whose merits and failings, sentipents and hardships, they depict with unrivalled pathos and skill. On the other hand, affluence and refinement deHght in the contemplation of the simpler and more obscure walks of life. In each situation the mind feels its own barrenness of pleasure, and therefore turns from real dissatisfaction in what is known, to fancied happiness in what is unknown ; somewhat as in another ease Scaliger appears to have done, who used to say that if he had twenty sons, he would not breed one of them a scholar. Had he not been himself a scholar, he would probably have been ready to envy the character in others. If, as some have represented, the principal advantage conferred by riches is leisure, many who are penniless may already boast that advantage. To what purpose then the toilsome avocations to which multitudes devote them- selves ? Perhaps however we should be nearer the mark in saying that leisure, uncombined vsith Hterary tastes or mental excitation, is one of the direst iUs that can afflict humanity. The dolce far riiente of the Italians will hardly admit a rigid application, even in their own voluptuous climate ; while in harsher regions at least, when people are unfit for action, they are generally unfit for enjoyment.— The noblest prerogative of wealth is what SICHES, MENTAL AND MATERIAL. 139 Seneca makes the crowning attribute of kings — the ability prodesse miseris. Amidst the temptations to indolence and fashionable dissipation which affluence presents, it is scarcely surprising that the intellectual character of the wealthy should in general be sufficiently indifferent. But it is not perhaps the owners of hereditai-y wealth who are most noted for a paucity or an inferiority of scholastic or elegant attain- ments. In our own country in particular, where mechanical inventions have so rapidly multiplied, and innumerable circumstances have lent a powerful impulse to commercial enterprise, thousands who were born to poverty have amassed a fortune ; and their whole attention having been, occupied with the means of accumulation, they neither possess nor appreciate the advantages of literary dis- tinctions or accomplishments. SuPEEiOEiTY of intellect is frequently a barrier rather than help to the attainment of riches. A man of expanded and philosophic views, or of imaginative temperament, is iot the most likely to form exaggerated notions of the value of wealth, especially as compared with the sacrifices that may be requisite for its accumulation ; nor vsdU he be apt to descend to those petty artifices or ignoble expedient* which avarice is so liable to engender^ and which the mer- cenary often employ with so much success. He who aims merely to push his interest in the world, need concern him- self httle with the transactions of former periods, or bestow much labour on the acquisition of mental accomplishments or refinement. All that he has to do is to keep a steady eye on the object before him, and make himself familiar with passing events and characters. A lively imagination, if it does not disqualify a person for narrowness of fortune, begets impatience of the means which may be necessary to escape or conquer the inconvenience. Goldsmith, rich in 140 EICHBS, MENTAL AND MATEEIAL. the brightest endowments of intellect, hut whose life was a tissue of penury and improvidence, affords a melancholy exempHfi cation of the remark. After all the stress which may be laid on that improvidence, as much perhaps the effect as the cause of the penury, it is a curious specimen of distribution of what the world deems the sovereign good, that while that matchless writer, whose works will delight and profit mankind to the latest generations, had to struggle for a precarious subsistence, the cook to a gambling house* can obtain a salary of one thousand guineas a-year; and that an opera singerf has been able to realise above ten times that amount by a few months' professional exertions. For my part I despise the sentiment occasionally broached, that because genius possesses the magnanimity to soar above the sordid motives that influence the generality, it has no reason to complain if poverty be the reward of its labours ; and because it is stimulated in its captivating though toilsome pursuits by the prospect of celebrity in future times, it ought to be content with ignominy in the present: for who knows not that in a commercial, aristo- cratic country Kke ours, iadigence and ignominy are synonymous ? More wisdom is necessary to use than to acquire a fortune; which may be attained or augmented in three several ways, — by descent, by exertion, or by gift. The last, which is perhaps the most gratifying method, was not unfrequent among the Romans, where those illustrious for theii- worth or rank often became on that account heirs to considerable property. Thus Atticus, we are told, received a number of valuable inheritances solely as a tribute to his personal merits. ~ It is related in commendation of LucuUus, that while proconsul of A-sia he obtained many * Mons. Tide, head cook at Crockford's establishment. t Madame Catalani ; whoso private excellence appears to have been not unworthy of her professional celebrity, and of whom personally it were impossible to speak but with respect. EICHES, MENTAL AND MATERIAL. 141 estates in a similar manner. And Cicero informs us, that by the bequests of friends he had come into possession of sums which even in the eyes of modern cupidity would he reckoned no insignificant treasure.* At first sight it appea,rs as if wealth and rank, not intellect, governed the world ; but a closer inspection, and more comprehensive survey, may satisfy of the 'contrary ; in spite of the rule which, assigning to mediocrity the, chief places of trust and profit, leaves genius, Kke virtue, to be its own reward. Perhaps as much pleasure is felt in the practice of economy, as in that of profuse expenditure. " The very care and forecast," remarks Paley, "that are necessary to keep expenses and earnings upon a level, form, when not embarrrssed by too great difficulties, an agreeable entertain- ment of the thoughts." Certainly those of moderate incomes are generally the most happy, whatever may be said in relation to such as, with ample means, are far fi'om lavish in their expenditure, at least on themselves ; whether from simplicity of taste, or the overma^ering force of intel- lectual impulses ; as would seem to have been pre-eminently the case with that concentration of almost all the nobler attributes of humanity, Michael Angelo, who used to say that however rich he had been, he had always lived as a poor man. Not of coui-se from parsimony, for his gifts and benefactions were munificent ; and, unlike the liberality of too many in the present day, bestowed on the needy and meritorious ; not in forms of charity that are worthless or mischievous, or in ways that, designed to make persons this, that, or the other, have little tendency to make them MEN. * The amount, as stated by himself, was ampliiis SS twenties, or Bear two hundred thousand pounds. — Philipp. ii. 16. Middleton'8 Life of Cicero, sect. xii. 142 EICHES, MENTAL AND MiTEEIAL. These are three special foes to economy : — im- patience; curiosity, or the thirst of novelty; and the gratification of revenge. A THOEOUGH miser must possess considerable strength of character, to bear the self-denial imposed by his penu- riousness. Equal sacrifices, endured voluntarily in a better cause, would make a saint or a martyr. It is a curious instance of the facility with which ci^rrent maxims may be assailed, that avarice has received so specious a eulogium in one of the cantos of Don Juan ; • as Priestley, in his Lectures on General History, makes out a very plausible argument in extenuation of war, though in a difiisrent straia from De Quincey's rhapsodies on the subject : * while Talleyrand, whose versatility of wit would seem to have •equalled that of his political career, proposed an emen- dation of the ordinary doctrine about procrastioation, the sound one, according to him, being, never to do to-day what can be deferred till to-morrow. Avarice seldom abounds in the ruder stages of society ; but when luxuries have begun to multiply, a -desire is created for money as the means of their attaia- ment. Afterwards, a desire for money as an instrument of purchasing pleasures, frequently degenerates into a passion for accumulation itself ; the end being sup- planted by the means, in consequence of the infludnce of habit. It is a rare thing for avarice to prevail in the •extremes of great opulence or great penury; though in aU the intermediate -gradations, it can flourish without ■dilBculty. * Selectiona, Grave and Gray, vol, iv : where, besides a panegyric on "War, a unique defence of the slaughters under Joshua may he seen, in a oote worthy of a, special place among the curidsitiea of logic. RICHES, IMBNTAL AND MATERIAL. 143 As mamages often lead to marriages, and funerals to funerals ; so riches, though sometimes, as the Eastern proverb says, they make to themselves wings and fly away, are ever apt to produce their kind. There is also a general tendency in man's life to accumulation ; so that, were life more protracted, the evils which frequently attend this circumstance would but increase in proportion. Death, ending the process of gain, and dispersing treasures before too concentrated, is the natural remedy for overgrown fortunes. Lost objects of affection often Hvo longer in the feelings of the poor than of the rich ; the former, with sympathies in the main less sophisticated, having few resources or gratifications to fiU up the void ; the latter, a great number and variety, — including perchance the solace of augmented means, mitigating the grief Of diminished friends. For a considerable part of life, the poorest man is on m equality with the richest, as the meanest with the most- exalted ; for Sleep, like Death, levels aU distinctions. Poverty is despised by few so much as by the- poor, perhaps because they have a deeper insight into its- privations and indignities. Calamity and suffering, when habitiM, seldom fail to inspire contempt. The Chinese, whom it might be well to disparage less and imitate more,, seem almost the only people among whom learning and merit have the ascendancy, and wealth is not the standard of estimation. Mankind would not be so eager in pursuit of money,, were it not for deficiency of right feeling among their fellow-men. The motive to accumulation is commonly exemption from wrong, disrespect, or unkindness, rather 144 EICHES, MENTAL AND MATEEIAL. than any accession of positive enjoyment. Old age, as talents and capabilities of ensuring influence die away, often clings to wealth as the only remaining instrument of power. Misfortune too, especially when allied with a dis- tempered fancy, wiU sometimes produce a remarkable effect of the kind. Beethoven, that wonderful musical genius, who was noted in the earlier part of his career for a total indifference to lucre, yet when overtaken with dea&ess and other disasters, imbibed, we are told, aU the self-tormenting propensities of a grasping avarice. In Norway, where the non-existence of the law of primogeniture conspires with other causes to occasion the general diffusion of an ample competence, where the habits of expenditure are much ahke among aU classes, and any examples of riches above the common are connected with no political, and little social importance, there is a happy exemption from that immo- derate thirst of gain which predominates in countries dis- tinguished by the widest inequalities of rank and fortune, where the means of luxurious indulgence command universal homage, and poverty is worse than crime. The comparatively small share of direct influence or of wealth allotted to mind in the general arrangements of hfe, will hardly appear surprising if we reflect, that moral worth has still less of these external accompaniments than mental — the race of the shadowless comprehending no small pro- portion of the best as well as wisest of the species.* , PovEETV and dependence have their train of vices, fully as numerous perhaps as those of opulence. The principal are, selfishness, acquired or strengthened by the habit of receiving without imparting; dishonesty; hypo- crisy and adulation ; improvidence and extravagance, or a * The allusion iB to "Peter Sohlemihl's* Wunderaame Geschichte," by Clianiisso : wonderful enough indeed, and no less entertaining, though picturing paraTjolically a truth too common to he very surprising. BICHES, MENTAL AND MATERIAL. 145 disposition to seize present enjoyment without reference to the future, from an idea of the impossihility of sinking much lower, the poorest heing usually the least economical, and persons seldom becoming frugal tiU they begin to accumulate ; and from these causes combined, a general laxity of conduct. At the same time, the many instances in which the hnmbler classes sustain this complicated pressure with a strength and purity of principle unsurpassed in any rank of life, are among the brightest attestations to the worth of our species, demonstrating that the noblest heroisms are far from extinct. I CLOSE with two axioms, the first of which, in its relation to such a subject, I shall venture to call a golden one: That were we to consider the goods of life as temporary loans, which they are, rather than appropriate or permanent possessions, which they are not, we should be more likely to employ them in a manner profitable to ourselves and others. The second is, That if we were obhged to make a right use of aU our acquisitions and resources, we should wish for a diminution of them rather than an increase ; as a devotee of books, if he had to master or even read all that he accumulates, would be satisfied with a very moderate number, unless of a super- ficial or frivolous kind. XERXES. |T would be easy to adduce several plausible argu- ments to show that Xei-xes has not been fairly dealt with on the page of history. Neither bis genius nor character, when judged by those minute traits which often speak more decisively than conspicuous ap- pearances, wiU support the common representations on the subject. Of whatever follies or excesses he was guilty, we may find equal or greater in Alexander and other noted warriors, whose qualities and exploits- have been sufficiently applauded. A remark or two may be offered ia explana- tion. In the first place, the Persian monarch, though his arms had been triumphant in Egypt, was unsuccessful. This wUl go a considerable way to account for the dis- paragement attending his name, but still leaves a large mass of iajustice uneluoidated. Hannibal was unsuccessful, though not so rapidly or extensively as Xerxes. Pyrrhus, Mithridates, Pompey, were unsuccessful; as was Napoleon in most of his undertakings and battles after the Eussian expedition. But, secondly, Xerxes was opposed to the Athenians and other states of Gree'ce, who possessed so many writers capable of depicting their adversaries in the least favourable colours. All our information concerning Xerxes and his memorable campaign is derived from his enemies; and what enemies so exasperated, or hkely to be so unfair, as those whose territory has been invaded by XEKXES. 147 the object of their delineation ? This circumstance, with the disposition to magnify, which formed so prominent a characteristic of the Greeks, may also lead us to suspect exaggeration in the statements respecting the amount of Xerxes' forces.* His discomfiture appears to have been owing partly to the undisciplined state and the cowardice of his troops, but chiefly to the incapacity if not treachery of their leaders, Artabazus and Mardonius. That he was not wholly despicable may be inferred from the fact, that even after the action at Jlataea, a friendly coiTespondence was maintained with him by Pausanias and Themistocles, the two most eminent Grecians of the period, and the most formidable antagonists that Persia had ever known. His reply to the Spartans who came to offer themselves as an expiation for the murder inflicted on the Persian ambas- sadors, would add lustre to the best ages of Koman virtue. Tell the Lacedaemonians, said he, that if they are capable of violating the rights of nations, I am not capable of imitating their example, or of taking away your life for the crime with which they have sullied themselves. His weeping at the thought that the immense multitudes he was surveying would soon be numbered with the dead, evinces a fund of sensibility and reflection not always to he discovered in princes. While it is the fortune of some historical personages to be extoUed on very dubious or slender grounds, it is the destiny of others to be unjustly or extravagantly depreciated. Cornelius Nepos remarks * Juvenal has a satirical allusion or two on this head ; though the reference to Athoa in the following verses is scarcely the most pungent, as the belief had a basis of fact, a passage for the ships having been actually cut at the foot of the mountain : — Creditur dim Velifioatus Athos, et quicquid Grascia mendax Audet in historia : oonstratum classibus isdem Suppositumque rotis solidum mare : oredimus altos Defecisse amnes, epotaque flumina' Medo Prandente, et madidis cantat quae Sostratus alia. Sat. X. 173. 148 XERXES. that none of the ancient generals exceeded Thrasybulus in merit, though numbers had eclipsed him in celebrity. Some of the stories in circulation respecting Xerxes, as that he ordered the Hellespont to be lashed and fettered, are now deservedly exploded. His project we must acknow- ledge to have been magnificent, which was not the mere conquest of Greece, but the annexation of Europe to his vast dominions. If on some occasions he displayed con- summate weakness and pride, a palliation at least may be found in his youth, combined as it was with an unbounded stretch of power, and the possession of the utmost personal accomplishments; for with regard to a full-proportioned and handsome form, no one, according to Herodotus, out of all the myriads composing his immense train, was his superior. On the whole, there have been few noted con- querors or monarchs who, if their merits were to be estimated by isolated acts, would pass the ordeal much better than Xerxes. Charles the Twelfth has been styled a madman ; and by the same rule the appellation might lengthen the list of titles bestowed on the Macedonian hero, and others whose achievements have been most trumpeted in the ears of mankind. In spite however of Pope's lines to this effect, a judgment at once impartial and comprehensive would never dream of such a rule, much less apply it to a person like Alexander, who, if he had his Warlike propensities and weaknesses, was also distinguished by capacious views, literary tastes, the faculty of command, and that noble generosity of spirit so often a characteristic of minds cast in a superior mould. DISCO\^KIES AND INVENTIONS. NVENTIONS have in numeroifs instances proceeded from persons not professionally conversant with the subject, but who, endowed with acute under- standings, have had them casually applied in that direction; though often with an amount of laborious thought greater than is commonly supposed. The opinion is now pretty well exploded that Koger Bacon, after Abelard the brightest philosophic luminary of the middle ages, and the harbinger of the revival of letters, was first acquainted with the com- position of gunpowder, which had been known long before to the Saracens — from whom probably the secret was derived to Europeans — as weU as among the Chinese from time immemorial, whose claim to priority is of course not affected by their exclusive application of the substance to piirposes of amusement, as in fire-works. But a brilliant discovery in naval tactics, the method of breaking the line of the enemy, since often practised with unvarying succesSj seems properly attributed to the late Mr. Clerk of Eldin, a private gentleman of antiquarian tastes, who had never •made a single voyage by sea. The steam engine has been ascribed, and so far as its essential principles are concerned, with apparent justice, to a Marquis of Worcester, who lived above two hundred years ago : and the modem practice of stereotype printing was planned and introduced by an in- genious goldsmith of Edinburgh, William Ged. Per the 150 DISCOVEBIES AND INVENTIONS. power-loom, and other important contributions to the arts, we are indebted to Dr. Cartwright, a clergyman and man of letters, who up to his fortieth year had been unconscious of any aptitude for mechanical departments. Jacquard, the inventor of the loom which bears his name — one of the most beautiful of automatic contrivances — was a manu- facturer of straw hats. Examples laight be multiplied in almost every branch of scientific and practical ingenuity. They whose familiarity with any pursuit is derived from habit or constant occupation, are seldom distinguished for much originaKty of views about the matter ; in part because the mind is without the stimulus inspired by novelty, but chiefly perhaps as being too engrossed with details, or the technical portion of the process, to speculate on principles. As the invention and perfection of a thing rarely pro- ceed from the same person, so it frequently happens that he who only improves on the contrivances or discoveries of another, reaps the principal advantage of them. They who have first struck out the path in any province of iaquiry or enterprise, and thus conferred a signal benefit on their kind, have seldom been able to boast the rewards of their genius, or the felicity of their fortunes. Columbus was almost heart-broken by the vexations and wrongs accumu- lated upon him during a considerable part of his career. Galileo, to whom the world is indebted not only for the telescope and thermometer, but for several important ac- quisitions in astronomy, geometry, -and mechanics, was imprisoned by the Inquisition, and persecuted for a long series of years before his death, for promulgating the system of Copernicus; who had himself encountered a similar fate about a century before, and been compelled to recant the. opinions which he had. demonsti'ated. Lord Bacon too, who as having first conjprehensively grasped, and stni more . admirably unfolded, the grand organon of physical research, is properly considered the Father of DISCOVERIES AND INVENTIONS. 151 inductive philosophy, and the indicator of the course which has led to our present improvements in science and art, spent the closing years of his life in disgrace and privacy ; though not owing to the maintenance of any speculative tenets, but to causes with which falsehood and faction had more to do than justice or truth. And Locke, one of the earliest writers who laid down on a broad and rational basis the principles of toleration and civil liberty, was deprived of his situation in the University, having already sought an asylum in a foreign land. On the whole, however, he was perhaps among the happiest of those who have materially contributed to the advancement of the human species ; his spirit, at once benign and pene- trating, being sustained and elevated by that ennobling love of Truth, and unshackled exercise of thought, which are among the most valuable prerogatives of humanity, but which parties imbued with the ecclesiastical element, or with political exclusiveness, its natural ally, are ever anxious to suppress. RIPENING OF THE FLOWER ; OR, MENTAL GERMINATION AND DECAY. |ERHAPS in most cases the understanding grows more between the ages of fifteen and twenty, than during an equal space in any other part of life. It is not impossible, however, that in the periods of infancy and childhood more information, though of a par- ticular kind, -is amassed ; as it is then that we learn the use of the senses, and form our acquaintance with the material universe. The function of sight, for instance, simple and instinctive though it may appear, yet, as any one may be satisfied who reads Dr. Brown's observations on the subject, is acquired by a very artificial and complicated process.* But were we to mark, with half the curiosity which many apply to the course of germination in plants, the progress and changes of our inner being, we should commonly find that about the season immediately succeeding adolescence, the mental operations are characterised by a sensible ac- cession, if not of rapidity, yet of compass, vigour, and discrimination. * The germ of the reasoning is nndouhtedly to he found in Bishop Berkeley's Theory of Vision, to ■whom the merit of the discovery in great degree, though not exclusively, belongs.; Locke having apparently furnished him with the first hints on the subject, which he prosecuted with no less originality than acuteness. The point is elucidated, with equal sagacity and candour, in Dugald Stewart's Dissertation on the Progress of Philosophy, Part the Second, sect 4, MENTAL GERMINATION AND DECAY. 163 By the way, the common distribution of the senses into five, though useful, and sufficiently accurate for the purpose of distinction, is susceptible of nicer analysis or explanation. On a first critical view, aU might seem to merge in those of sight and touch ; while much that is usually classed under the former can be demonstrated to be the effect of the latter. Taste, smeU, hearing, are modifications of touch ; the first being the sensation consequent on the application of certain particles to the papillae of tiie tongue ; smell, the sensation arising ft-om the action of certain particles on the olfactory nerves; and hearing, the sensation produced by the action of the substance caUed air on the tympanum. According to the principle which admits five senses, we might add a sixth, though it could scarcely be called an external one, in hunger, which is the- sensation occasioned by the repletion of the vessels that distil the gastric juice. — In strictness, however, the whole of our sensations, those of sight- included, may be resolved into touch ; the ideas of different colours being the sequences or results of certain movements communicated to the optic nerves. Prematuee davelopement of the intellectual faculties is generally succeeded by melancholy, in part because healthful exercises and pastimes are in such cases often neglected ; in part because excitement and activity of mind oppress the bodily frame, at a time especially when its growth requires mental quietude and repose ; in part like- wise because novelty in the acquisition of ideas, so fertile a source of pleasure, is sooner exhausted. For the most part minds which rjpen with rapidity are imaginative ; while those distinguished for deep or original thinking are slow in attaining maturity. We read of Pope, Chatterton, Shelley, and many others, as giving proof of their poetical talents at a very early age ; but seldom do we read of juvenile metaphysicians. There have been some 154 RIPENING OF THE FLOAVEE ; OB, instances, to be sure. Brown's Observations on the Zoonomia of Dr. Darwin, written at the age of eighteen, are a prodigy of the kind. Pascal showed his mathematical and philosophic propensities in the mere dawn of his genius ; and Bishop Butler must have been remarkably precocious in a power of speculative disquisition, when he could carry on about twenty a controversy with Clarke, in a manner to win the applause of that abstruse though un- satisfactory reasoner. A similar remark applies to Berkeley, who, when quite a young man, produced several of his highly subtle and ingenious performances. In general, however, the force of the passions must be pretty well spent, to ensure any sustained or sucdessful exertion of the meditative faculties. In the minority of the understanding, it is most expert in seizing terms, without an adequate, comprehension of the ideas which they include. In its maturity, it is chiefly occupied with ideas, to the comparative neglect of terms. In the former case, terms famish ideas; in the latter, ideas supply terms. A writer may employ metaphorical language in abundance, yet have no vivid perception of the imagery it is calculated to suggest, because he merely adopts accustomed phraseology, and is destitute of inven- tion ; while the same phraseology shall summon up a series of pictm-es before an imaginative or poetic nature, which unites to expression in itself barren a living spirit that animates the whole ; as the breezes awakening music along the strings of an iEoHan lyi-e, or the rays of light bringing out into sharpness and colour the objects of a scene before immersed in the shades of night. A man's opinion of practical things is rarely worth much before the age of thirty; though some intellects are so precocious that their apprehensions in general are as soimd and matm-e at eighteen or twenty, as at any sub- MENTAL GEKMINATION ANB DECAY. 155 sequent period. If the observation be correct, there appears something rather startHng in Lord Bacon's idea, that the notions of those between twenty and thirty form the chief basis of political augury ; especially if the position be meant to include not only those who think for themselves, but the much larger class who, as Robert Hall phrases it, think by proxy. Broad views of a national kind, however, are less dependent on reflection or authority, than on the plastic power of circumstances, which are apt to print one species of impression to be shortly effaced by another. The aged frequently appear inferior, in an intellectual view, to the rising race; yet that appearance is in great degree fallacious. It is true, age has dropped several trappings, makes fewer attempts to please, and is less rapid in the flow or the expression of ideas ; but the main stamina of mind and attainments in any particular gene- ration, are commonly equal to those of the subsequent one. The leaves and blossoms are gone — it is winter — but the trunk and branches remain. Yet while few suppose, at least in their own case, that as life advances, understanding and sense may decline, it is certain that with many, an increase of years brings only an increase of mental imperfections and frailties. Goethe, when near fourscore, but with little diminished force of genius, had the candour to own, that it requires no small effort for those who are descending the vale, to be as wise and good as they once were. A wrong principle of judg- ment multiplies absurdities or mistakes in proportion to the period of its exercise. Flexibility of mind too, so powerful an instrument of improvement in the young, is abated by time, — the mental fibre apparently hardening somewhat as the physical. Harvey is said to have declared, that he could never induce any one beyond forty to beHeve in the hypothesis which has immortalised his name. Such strange 156 MPfiNlNG Ol" THfi I'LOWER ; OS, perversity however must be owing less to the mere inroads of decay, than to the neglect of soupd habits of reflectiou during the dawn of the facilities, which, if rightly trained then, bid fair to be as pliant ia old age as in childhood. Youth possesses the vigour and fancy requisite for successful literary exertion, but is ijiostly deficient in the necessary judgment. Old age possesses the judgment, with- out the impulse or the fire. No universal axiom however can be laid down as to the season when the understanding attains its highest perfection, or when its powers begin to decline. Several of our distinguished authors have produced their most eminent works at an early period of hfe ; while a considerable list of names might be mentioned, whose proudest achievements were the fruit of mature manhood or of old age. Some of the finest cbmpositions of Pope, Gray, Sheridan, and Byron, with nearly aU the exquisite eifusions of CoUtns, were written before the age of six-and- twenty ; though the most splendid efi'orts of Byron, — those displaying the loftiest flights and the greatest strength of wing, as the third and fourth cantos of Childe Harold, Cain, Heaven and Earth, with parts of Don, Juan, — are of subse- quent origin. By about seven-and-twenty, Congreve had secured the first place, both in tragedy and comedy, among the dramatists of his time, having added to the number of his plays the last but one — the Mourning Bride. Newton had accomplished his leading discoveries in science by Ms forty-fifth year, though he lived till his eighty-fifth ; while his three most noted discoveries, relating to fluxions; gravitation, and light, were conceived before the age of twenty-four. Berkeley was but twenty-six when he had produced his Theory of Vision, and the Principles of Human Knowledge; the former generally allowed to be demonstrative, — the latter containing his far-famed Ideal hypothesis, open to no colourable attacks but from the counter hypothesis of intuitive belief,, amounting in reahty MENTAL GERMINATION AND DECAY. 157 but to a belief in some external cause of sensation, which Berkeley himself, admitting the principle of irresistible conviction as stoutly as his opponents, acknowledges to exist, only deeming it the Infinite Mind, instead of a con- fessedly unknown hypothetical something termed Matter. On the other hand, at thirty-three Swift had given nothing to the world, nor, except to clear-sighted judges, exhibited any decisive tokens of superior capacity ; although the previous ripeness of his invention cannot be doubted, when we remember that about thirty he wrote the Tale of a Tub, so marked by originality, and replete with the pithiest and most meditative wit. The delightful Essays of Addison were all penned after his thirty-seventh year. Thomson had completed his Seasons at thirty ; though his master-piece, the Castle of Indolence, was not printed till the year of his death at forty-eight. Goldsmith, whom Johnson described as one who flowered late, was about thu-ty-seven on the appearance of his Traveller, which however had been partly written, as weU as the Vicar of Wakefield, some years before. Cowper was above fifty on the publication of his first work ; Young not far from sixty when he composed the Night Thoughts. All the chief poems of Sir Walter Scott date after his thirty-third year ; and all his romances, except a few Chapters of Waverley, after his forty-second. The star of Bums, which shone so early, burned brighter almost to its untimely setting at thirty-seven. The Essays and principal treatises of Bacon were the ofl^spring of his full-grown powers ; the former, in a much more imperfect state than we now possess them, not having seen the light till toward the age of thirty-six ; the Advancement of Learning eight or nine years afterwards ; while that wonderful monument of creative wisdom, the Novum Organum Scientiarum, which had occupied him more or less during the greater part of his life, and which he is said to harve transcribed no fewer than twelve different times, was not published till he had reached threescore. 158 MENTAL GERMINATION AND DECAY. Butler was between foi-ty and fifty on the appearance of his Analogy ; Abraham Tucker still older when he began his work on the Light of Nature ; Locke no less than fifty-five when he had finished his immortal Essay; and De Foe near sixty on commencing his career of fictitious writing by the composition of Robinson Crusoe. Dryden's most imaginative and vigorous pieces, his. Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, and his Fables, were his latest, being struck off a little before his death, when near seventy. It would seem that Chaucer, the prototype of Dryden in part of the Fables, could not be much younger on the completion of the Can- terbury Tales : while Johnson was almost seventy when he wrote his Lives of the Poets, the ablest and most enter- taining of his works. Of some of our immortal luminaries, the intellectual brilliance has been almost equally conspicuous in youth and in age; though the most resplendent of them, and the greatest of human geniuses, Shakspeare, is scarcely an instance, — none of his earlier dramas ranking with his best, but his profundity and force of invention unfolding them- selves most in his riper years. Spenser was near forty when both parts of the Faery Queen had been published. Before thirty, Milton had composed L'Allegro, II Penseroso, Comus, Lycidas, and Arcades; while Paradise Lost was not completed tiU about his fifty-seventh year. Burke was more than sixty when he wrote his Reflections, the most eloquent and celebrated of his performances. On the whole, it can scarcely be questioned that a greater number of distinguished works have been executed after than before the age of thirty. TRAITS OF WOMAN. jOMEN are in general more rapid, and in no small variety of particulars, more acute observers of character than men; but their quickness of perception seems owing to a sort of instinct, or native sensibility, rather than to the exercise of induction, or a process of analysis. Perhaps they draw their conclusions from fewer premises; or facility produced by habit may help to explain the secret, the position which the fair sex occupy in society, as not possessed of much direct power, requiring a more careful study of surrounding agents ; or haply the domestic and social Hfe of women allows better opportunities of observation. But the chief cause I take to be something independent of art or acquisition, and so far akin to the poetic sense as to be ilot only constitutional or inborn, but, like many of the finest, operations of mind, intuitive and undefinable. Eesults which men arrive at by the clue of reason, women seize by the lightning touches of phantasy or of sentiment. The former think through the understanding ; the latter through the heart. Women, accordingly, are little moved by argument, or the deeper qualities of mind, but are easily captivated by appearance, facility of manners, and vivacity. Feeling, rather than intellect, is their world; whence we might suppose that imagination, the sister of feeling, would be one of their chief attributes. But it is fancy, as distinguished from 160 TRAITS OF WOMAN. imagination, that predominates in the sex; which would scarcely be able to supply materials for a tolerable counter- part to Johnson's Lives, though a performance which passes by the richest, if not the most brilliant portion of our poetical annals, and to which, if we ejicept Milton, and one or two others, may be appHed the criticism of Godwin, that it is the Lives of the Poets from the decline of poetry in England to the date of the biographer : not to add that, if the work so far answers to its title as to include the most eminent English Poets of the hmited period it embraces, it yet presents the signal incongruity of a majority of names that have no claim whatever to the character of poets. Be this as it may, there is one circumstance which, more than aU the rare faculties belonging to the sex enhances its claims to admiration, — ^that most of the kindness, delicacy, and refinement that exist, is to be found among women, or traced to their influence, who are to human life what leaves and blossoms and ornamental branches are to the world of vegetation. On the difi'erence above assumed between the terms Fancy and Imagination, which I have generally employed in their ordinary and popular acceptation as almost synonymous, a controversy has been raised, more curious perhaps or arbitrary than important. Those who mdy seek to investigate the point will find some pertinent remarks in Stewart's Philosophy of the Mind; and a number of observations, more exquisite and illustrative, in Wordsworth's preface to the collective edition of his Poems. It may be mentioned that Sir Egerton Brydges, whose opinion on subjects of literary criticism is often of the finest order, not seldom insists on a distinction which, whether conformable to received phraseology or not, has a foundation in truth, and is certainly of conse- quence in the estimate of poetry, as well as other kinds TKAITS OF WOMAN. 161 of intellectual production ; Fancy, according to him, being the faculty whicli reflects or pictures reality ; Imagination, the far higher power, that which invents ideal images or combinations; which however, to be genuine, must be accordant with verisimilitude, and characterised by grandeur, beauty, or pathos. SWIFT. I HE intellectual character of this celebrated man has been differently estimated, according to the predilections, habits, or associations of his critics. By some it has been placed above that of any of his con- temporaries ; and Addison himself is said to have inscribed, in a book which he presented to Swift, the flattering enlogiuin, " To tha greatest genius of his age." The modesty of the donor, added to the refined sensibility which would unconsciously shrink before a nature cast in so stern a mould as Swift, not to lay much stress on the score of compliment or friendship, may considerably detract from the weight of this encomium. To claim for the Dean of St. Patrick's so eminent a distinction among the wits of an age which, depreciated by the withngs of our own, has been styled, with little more exaggeration on the other side, the Augustan of English literature, and which boasted the illustrious names of Addison, Pope, and Berkeley, besides a train of brUHant and accomplished writers in various walks, may well be pronounced a somewhat hazardous undertaking. For my part I should be disposed to concede to Addison the palm of superiority over Swift. If the latter possessed more readiness and facility, more passionate energy of invective, with keener faculties of satirical observation and sarcasm, the former exhibits equal originality or invention ; (witness the number of beautiful apologues and allegories SWIFT. 163 wMch his feney has constructed) a finer vein of humour ; more sublimity' and pathos ; richer varieties of illustration ; and ten thousand times more graces and embellishments of style. If there are some performances of Swift which Addison could not have produced, though less from in- feriority of talent than dissimilitude of taste and iatellect, there are not a few pieces from the pen of Addison which no one could imagine Swift capable of writiog ; for example, the Essays on tiie Pleasures of Imagiaation, and more especially the short but exquisite moral fable, the Vision of Mirza. The chai-m of Swift's style consists rather in a perfect fceedom from affectation, ia perspicuity, and an easy flow of words, than in any remarkable vigour, copiousness, or variety. Its excellences are chiefly negative, but these are very numerous ;: and in composition, an assemblage of Begatrva exceHeaces argues no contemptible merit. Swift was not a little misplaced in the peaceful and con- fiked situation of a clergyman. His talents seem to have fitted him eminently for state intrigue, in which indeed he had no' inconsiderable share j but especially for a career of military ambition. He possessed all the qualifications of a great commasnder; intrepidity, comprehensiveness, prompti- tude of decision, equal fertility and readiness of resources, with ate^mperamentto which repose only was a burden. He reqmred perhaps but a oertaiu opening or combination of eircumstancesv to. have been the Napoleon of his day. It ia; curious; that WiUi-am the Third, whether thrbugh his friendship for Sir WUliam Temple, the relative and patron of Swift, or from whatever cause, ofiered him the post of captaiu in; the. army. All speculations on such points are of coui'se vague, but it is not impossible that had the overture heen accepted, the fortunes of England and of the world might now have been essentially different. That it was not 'so, is at least a happy thing for letters ; his works, which are a library in themselves, and a perfect storehouse of 164 SWIFT. entertainment, being the result, for the most part, of the restless vigour which could find no other outlet ; while the incidents of his life, himself apparently without a tinge of romance, are invested with a deeply romantic and almost tragical interest. Of the country that gave birth to Swift, and formed so long the scene of his existence, it is but justice to say, that numerous as are the claims which she offers to admira- tion, her literature is not the least of her glories, several of the distinguished persons she has produced being of first- rate merit as authors. I need but mention, in addition to this extraordinary man, the names of Berkeley, Sterne, Goldsmith, Burke, and Sheridan. Of the living or later writers that are a credit to the Emerald Isle, including those delightful illustrators of its characters and superstitions, Carleton, author of the Traits and Stories, and Crofton Croker, of the Fairy Legends, it is not my business to speak ; but perhaps I may be pardoned for specifying two as not unworthy to be classed, and whom posterity will assuredly class, with the eminent geniuses before enume- rated — Maria Edgeworth, and Thomas Moore : — the former, it is true, not over-informed vnth the element of poesy, yet wielding powers of observation and humour that only pre- judice or affectation can pretend, to-- disparage ; while the lyrical pieces of Moore, unsurpassed by any of ancient or modern days, are hardly less musical than the strains with which they have been associated, and which offer one of the fairest exemplifications of "music married to immortal verse." * * Miss Edgeworth, whose death occurred at the age of eighty-two, was not, it appears, a native of the sister isle, though by residence, con- nexions, and ahove all, attachment, belonging to that country, hut bom, as it were accidentally, in England, in 1767. * ANATOMY OF FOETUNE ; OR, CLIMBING THE STEEP. I T is in the game of life as in the game of chess ; each strives to gain as much, and to lose as little, as possible. The logicians, in lajing down a Tariety of arguments supposed to be the most effective, as ilie argumentum ad hominem, tiie argumentum ad, vere- m,ndiam, and so forth, have forgotten the most powerful of all, the a/rgumentvMi ad crumenam. Pascal quotes the title of an Italian work, Delia opinione regina del mondo, as containing more than many an entire volume. No doubt; but the true queen of the world, of whom opinion is but the puppet or occasional deputy, is interest; in "vernacular English, selfishness. This is the occult power which, like the principle of electricity, can produce a siingled wavering and brilliance, as in the fantastic play of the northern lights ; or communicate a seeming life and activity to dead forms, as m certain galvanic operations ; which distorts both the judgment of sages, and the vision of the clear-sighted ; giving a wonderful leniency to many who would scorn to uphold a wrong deed for passion's sake, but, like Peachum in the Beggar's Opera, have no objection to a few peccadilloes — " in the way of business." If a person has self-confidence, or only its appearance, few wiU question his pretensions ; while most will be ready 166 ANATOMY OF FORTUNE ; OB, to distrust him who seems to distrust himself. The test however is unfair. Nothing shows so ill as conceit in a book ; nothing will go farther in actual life, — audacity even being enumerated by Lord Bacon among the qualities that contribute to fortune. Many a one begins his career with the notion that intellect, honour, and so forth, are to carry the day, — as is set down in the long list of popular fallacies claiming to be immutable truths : but the discovery soon comes, if he has the visual faculty about him, that the commodities most available ia the market are plausibility and craft. Whether he trims his sails accordingly, depends on his possession of the stamina that enter into the composition of heroes or martyrs. There is, or was, a book entitled, " Character essential to success in Hfe." The title-page is a fiction. A person who can believe it must pass through the world with his eyes shut. There is not a town, scarcely a village iu the kingdom, where the maxim is not practically refuted ; while the perjured occupants of continental thrones may settle its worth on the larger scale. I haye not read the book, nor wish to do so. If a man comes to me professiig to prove that the people in England go on aU fours, I may be excused from paying particular attention to the steps' of the demonstration. The wheel of Fortune, seldom spoken of with reference to its substance, inspected by the curious wiU perchance be found of brass. It is possible, no doubt, to indulge too great contempt for mere success, which is frequently attended with aU the practical advantages of merit itself, and with several advan- tages that merit alone can never command. Something at least were earned in the suffrages of those who discern the indissoluble connexion between failure, and intellectual or moral deficiency; in despite of the fancy that mediocrity and management, as free from the fitfulness of genius, and CLIMBiNG THE STJEEP. I6t the te^lendence which excites eMy, «^ tHe surest pH^spDrts to fortune* The 'self-llelp wMch leads to victory in the coMests of life, to wealth or social distinction, is pretty sure to be applauded —" every man will praise thee when thou doest weU to thyself" — hut the struggles that end in defeat are often more worthy of admiration : while efforts at self- gacrifice rather than self-service; at the spiritual culture which shows itself in superiority to ignoble prejudices, and in unswerving allegiance to truth and duty, though at the eost of interest, friendship, and repute, are among the keroisms which, celebrated or not ini prose or rhyme, the ^^orid can least afford to be without. The great often rise to greatness, though not seldom by concealment of their superiority, Or by traits indicating but a power of flexibility or address. It is astonishing how far a mere spirit of vivacity will cany and befriend a man ia life ; what good- will it procures, and what opposition or coldness it can allay. People in general prefer cheerfulness to more sterling attributes ; and perhaps they are not greatly in the wrong. Good humour and kindness are not only inteUlgible to all, but in the actual circumstances ' of man- kind are most' frequently needed. It requires too more jihilosophy than most philosophers can boast, to appreciate the effect of appearance. Csesar, who had perhaps the most extraordinaiy, and, except Cicero, the most comprehensive genius of all the Romans, must have possessed the accom- plishment ; as may be inferred from his folding his mantle around him before he fell; an action, it is probable, less arising from any particular volition at the moment, than the natural result of that habitual reference to the eyes of others which he carried to so curious a pitch, wearing, according to Suetonius, his toga loose as a mark of effeminacy, to conceal his higher qualities and ambition : a simulation that, eliciting the warning voice of Sulla, is said 168 ANATOMY OF FORTUNE J OB, to have influenced Cicero in espousing the party of Pompey. It is less remarkable that a similar concern to fall decorously in death should appear in -the case of Polyxena, when sacrificed to the shade of Achilles : ^ fie Kai BpTjcrKOVcr Ofims jroXX^v npovoiav ft^fv fv(r}({]fioviiis Tretre^v — Suiip. Hec. 568. a trait probably not unknown to the great Roman com- mander, acquainted as he was with the writings of Euripides, and often quoting the verses expressive of the sentiment, so agreeable to his own ambition, that if right may ever be violated, it is for the sake of empire. So long as mankind are more governed by sight than by intellect, attention to external minutiae may hardly be disdained by any to whom what are called golden opinions, though yielded by leaden brains, are an object. On many occasions small things are more important than great ones; the maxim of Aristotle, in relation to the laws of a state, being applicable to a variety of other cases : Aei iioKurra to fUKpov v\a.TTeiv — im- porting that minor points should be- guarded with special solicitude. If we wait for what we may conceive the most favour- able season to engage in any enterprise, or tiU the time when we imagine we shall be best qualified for successfiil exertion, life will probably be spent with little effect. It is a remark equally sound and important of Lord Bacon, that " a wise man will make more opportunities than he finds." Perhaps too he shows his wisdom als much in embracing them when offered, as in seeking them when absent. The Greeks represented Occasion with a razor in her hand, to signify that if we would avail ourselves of her presencie, we must cut off intervening obstacles. It is sometimes a misfortune, though occasionally no doubt a main cause of superiority, to have energetic minds CLIMBING THE STEEP. 169 with contracted spheres of operation. Yet more persons have scope for action who are destitute of the impulse, than such as have the impulse without the scope. The reason perhaps is, that where the means of activity abound, there are commonly the means of self-indulgence or luxury; in consequence the love of pleasure conquers the love of enterprise. Though with regard to' his capabilities and aptitudes Swift was not in the most appropriate sphere as an ecclesiastic, he was far more so than in later times was that prince of diplomatists, Talleyrand, when a bishop; or probably than Lord CUve would have been, had he worn out his days in the civil capacity in which he first went out to ludia. It is remarkable that after retiring from scenes of excitation and bustle to the ordinary walks of life, neither Olive, nor another famed oriental leader, Warren Hastings, exhibited much token of the abUity which had won them celebrity. Not so the illustrious exile of St. Helena, who, though his position there was but a species of entombment, ia comparison with his former eddy and bril- liance of affairs, retained his sleepless activity of intellect to the last, employed in commenting on the great events of his career, and dictating memorials of them for the service of posterity. Ambitious spirits rarely concern themselves deeply with the affairs or curiosities of ancient times; and those who provide materials for history, often know little of history themselves. Theirs is the living world, which contains scope for their activity, and supplies the elements of their advancement. It is chiefly persons of passive character who are most interested by the researches of antiquarian lore. The mind often practises illusion on itself, when, after the defeat of some favourite enterprise, self-congratu- lation is indulged on accoimt of the benefits associated with 170 ANATOMY OF FORTUNE ; OB, the disappointment; while the advantages of success, supposing it had been attained, are entirely overlooked. Thus also the jud^enta of men frequently err on a larger scale. The suppression of Catiline and his accomplices excited the exultation of multitudes in the Roman common- •wealth; yet, nefarious as the conspiracy is described to have been, who can affirm that in case he had succeeded,' "the condition of the citizens would have been materially worse ? or that convulsions and miseries would have ensued lat all comparable to those of the second triumvirate, or to such as at intervals afficted the state during the centuries of nuHtaiy rule preceding the downfall of the empire ? Useful as may be the temper which makes the most of actual results, its occasional oversights are not iU shadowed forth in the story of Diagoras, who, surveying a number of pictures in the temple of Neptune of those who had been saved in shipwreck, and being reminded of the efficacy of invocation in the like peiil, exclaimed. But where are the pictm-es of those who have been drowned ? As to CatiHne, by the by, it is clear that some of the projects attributed to him are too monstrous to have entered the brain of any one with pretensioi;s to sanity ; whUe the connivance or participation of many distinguished men — Caesar himself, it was surmised, being implicated in the earlier scheme,* and his conduct at the close being some- what ambiguous — conspires with other circumstances to throw doubt on the precise character of the enterprise. Though Catiline appears to have been capable of the most flagitious acts in the accomplishment of his designs, yet aU that we know of the nature of his conspiracy is from the testimony and colourings of one side only : nor is the state-' ment of SaUust without significance, that the common people were universally in his favour: — "omnino cuncta plebs . . . Catilinae incepta probabat :"+ a statement that would have more weight if the populace of those times had * Suet, in Vit. Caes. c. 9. f Be Bello Catil. c. 37. CLIMBING THE STEEP. 171 not been so venal and corrupt. There is certainly a mystery about the affair, eyen if contemplated in its most intelligible aspect as an iU-concocted unprincipled attempt at such a,, change in the constitution, or overthrow of the repubhc, as was afterwards effected; though there is no mystery in the circumstance that Catiline, uncrowned with success, would be sure to receive a more rigorous estimate than has attended that selfish despot Augustus, bepralsed by the poets of his reign, and by later writers, in spite of the atrocities through which he ascended to imperial power. Eight comes to most at last, hut generally when the heart is withered, and contemns the boon. Tout vient trap tard, says Voltaire : we may except, however, with Byron, our vices. The picture drawn by Spenser of the miseries of a court-suitor, copied no doubt from the poet's individual experience, is only a counterpart of the lot of multitudes in the more ambitious walks of life : > Full little knowest thou that hast not tried, What hell it is in suing long to: bide : To lose good days that might be better spent. To waste long nights in pensivie discontent ; To speed to-day, to be put bax:t to-morrow ; To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow ; To have thy prince's ^ace, yet want her peers'; To have thy asking, yet wait many years ; To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares. To eat thy heart through comfortless despairs ; To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run ; To spend, to give, to want, to be undone. Mother Hubberd's Tale. As to the efforts of literary genius, whose chief rewards are of an ideal nature, which imagination can so well forestall, it may be some consolation to know, that all that is required to conquer neglect or detraction, is patience and time. " II est arriv6 de cette piece," says Eaciae, alluding to his tragedy of Britannicus, the. most elaborate, and, 172 ANATOMY OF FORTUNE. except Athalie, perhaps the best of his compositioiis, but which had been vehemently decried on its first appearance, " ce qui arrivera toujours des ouvrages qui auront quelque bont6: les critiques se sent evanouies; la pifece est demeur6e." Thus it has been in our own day with no inconsiderable part of the writings of Wordsworth, which are at length beginning to assume their proper station ; as also those of Coleridge, his fine- poem of Christabel included, every line of which is instinct with creative fancy and vigour. ABOUT WORDS AND WORD-BOOKS. UR present dictionaries are of comparatively small utility. We require one purged from the multi- tude of words whicli are neither harmonious nor expressive, and rarely to be found in any classical writer ; although their occurrence in the very best would be no sufficient reason for their adoption. Separate works might contain vocabularies or glossaries of antiquated terms and phraseology. A considerable proportion of the authorities in Johnson, every man of taste and literature would at once refiise to acknowledge; while a number of appropriate words employed by many of our standard authors, especially by such as have appeared siuce the publication of the great lexicographer, are wanting in that and most similar compi- lations. In several of the remoter parts of our island at the present time, we meet with vestiges of our language as it obtained a considerable number of centuries ago, or even in the days of the Anglo-Saxons; that is, we may notice certain terms, or terms employed in certain significations, some of which are not to be found elsewhere, others only in a few of our ancient writers or in glossaries. The circum- stance is curious as illustrating the uniformity of ideas and the primitive seclusion that must have prevailed in those districts. It is observable that native and idiomatic 174 ABOUT WORDS AND WOED-BOOKS. phraseology ever survives the longest among the lower classes of the community. Aliieri is said to have fre- quented the market-place at Florence, that he might become familiar with the genuine old Tuscan idiom. As the progress of style is an index of the progress of a nation, and in less cultivated ages in particular, the most striking features of character and manners are trans- fused into composition, it would be curious to study the intellectual and domestic history of a people through the medium of its terms and idioms, especially its apophthegms and proverbial sayings, traced as far as may be chronologi- cally,, and illustrated with anecdotes culled both from books and tradition. Some contributions towards such a picture of QUE ancient countrymen have been furnished by the erudition and taste of the late Kev. Jonathan Boucher, in his Giossary of Archaic and Provincial words, of which but a small portion has yet been published, of merit enough to make one wish for the remainder ; — by the similar perfijrm- ance of an accomplished living antiquary, Mr. HaUiweU ; — and with regard chiefly to a certain period of our literary annals, by the excellent Glossary of archdeacon Nares. Nor is Richardson's Dictionary, which appears to have been constructed with equal diligence and sagacity, though far from realizing the ideal in question, without its quota, of materials for a continuous sketch of the sort. If a, person were not acquainted with the commercial and scientific character of the English nation, he might ibrm a pretty correct opinion of the fact from the use of certain metaphors and phraseology observable in the ordi- nary dialect of our country. The language of current wrriters and speakers, and not least of our Parliamentary 4ebates,, begins to be strongly tinctured with the tfechnical peculiarities of science, commerce, and th& arts. It is a «urious circumstance which has been noted respecting the ABOUT WOEDS AND WORD-BOOKS. 175' passion of the ancient Greeks for fielcl-sports, that while apparent in the metaphorical parts of their writings in general, it is nowhere more perceptible than in those relating to philosophy. Of course if technical phrases, or those belonging to any class or profession, are adopted in oordinary speech, it is but fair to expect that they be used in conformity with their special signifloation. Yet we occasionally meet in autihors- of credit with the most notoriouis violations of this rale ; with the phrase ' at fault," for example, in the sense of in erro? oj in the wrong ; though the expression, taken from the chase, denotes, merely to be nonplussed, or in doubt- which way to proceed, being applied to the hounds when they have lost the scent. The mistake could hardly seem less barbarous to the sportsman than to the classical scholar would appear the employment of the Horatian precept, Smpe stylum vertas, to iaculcate a frequent variation of style, instead of a frequency of blotting or correction, the stylus being an instrument pointed at one end for writing on wax, and flat at the other for obliteration. It can scarcely be necessary to notice a common perversion of another phrase in the same poet, omne tulit punctwm, as if intended, to describe a writer who has succeeded in every particular, not one who has gained imiversal applause ; HteraUy, carried every suffrage, the allusion being to the method of counting- the votes at the Eoman comitia, by affixing a point or dot to the name of the candidate approved. It would seem as if the bard of Venusia was destined to be more frequently misapphed than most others of the fraternity. I once heard a medical practitioner quote to one of his patients the well-known passage, Neque semper arcum tendit Apollo, to dissuade from too close application to study; a citation that, except as a badinage, or play upon the figure, was about as pertinent as if he had stated that times of severity or punishment on the part of Heaven are succeeded by those of benignity ; which the cdnnexion shows to be 176 ABOUT WORDS AND WORD-BOOES. substantially the meaning of the words, — the divinity not always shooting his arrows, that is, wreaking his anger or exercising displeasure, but, as portrayed in the Carmen Sseculare — condito mitis placidusqiie tela — sometimes awaking the lyre, or exhibiting a placid and faTOurable disposition towards mortals : a sense sufficiently remote from any imagined connection with the adage about bending the bow till it breaks. So the nil admirari of this poet philosopher, which would be a sad creeping maxim if intended to disparage the sentiment of admiration, in which the wisest and loftiest intellects ever most indulge, denotes nothing more than a, habit of equanimity, or a state of mind free from immoderate wishes and fears. SANS SOUCI ; OE, THE PHILOSOPHY OF HAPPINESS. HERE are three principal sources Of happiness ; the imagination, the affections, and the under- standiag or judgment. The first is casual and fugitive ; the second Uable to counteraction or failure ; the last, though less deep or delicious than either, is the most certaiu and durable. A combination of aU, under the ennobling sway of principles that look beyond the sphere of the risible, would form the acme of human feHcity. The mind must already be somewhat happy, before it is open to miscellaneous sources of gratification. Persons, accordiugly, with diseased bodies, or of unfortunate circum- stances, fix attention chiefly on things the contemplation of which is calculated. to increase unhappiness; as, their own distresses, or the vices and calamities of others. The satirist is commonly created by illness, melancholy, or disappoinir ment. On the other hand, one pleasure frequently begets a thousand, by putting the mind into a -state which leads it to extract enjoyment from a multiplicity of sources. Had the Almighty appointed man to subsist on the spontaneous products of the earth, vice and misery would have been much more prevalent. They who have to pursue some daily occupation for a livelihood, seldom imagine that 178 SANS souci ; ob they are happier than they prohahly would be, if their time and amusements were more at their own command. It is the principal aim of fashionable Kfe to provide a substitute for a business or profession. A ETiLiNG passion excludes from a number of incidental or secondary delights, although the want of them is not felt. Unless certain pursuits or scenes, which to a person exempt from the influence of that propensity would be so many springs of satisfaction, have a bearing not very remote on the object in view, they are slighted and neglected. If there- fore a ruling passion be not gratified, a man is less happy under its control than without it ; perhaps so even when gra,tified, unless the object be very noble and commanding. Cheerfulness originating in buoyancy of disposition, is more graceful and more permanent than such as arises- from the reception of particular benefits. The latter may be compared to a sudden gush of water, which is soon exhausted or dried up. The former is hke a perennial foun- tain, and equivalent to the efi'ect occasioned by the continual reception of benefits each time augmenting in value ; for nothing less would maintain in ehesriulness a temperament natm'ally phlegmatic. Whbke the understanding is of a subtle and active turn, it vrill often be employed in analysing, separating, and distinguishing. In proportion to clearness and depth of judgment, will frequently be acuteness or sensibility of feel- ing, The consequence is obvious : pain will be apt to arise as the result of discrimination. Eeason disjoins, as philo- sophically opposed, what in life and society are too generally combined. A passive disposition, for the most part a concomitant of intellectual mediocrity, seems the surest guarantee of a tranquiUity which philosophy as often perhaps distm-bs as promotes. To discern error or folly with per- THE PHILOSOPHY OF HAPPINESS. 179 spicacity ; to hate it on that account the more ; and to feel correspondent regret at its prevalence, are things not seldom united. EvEKY man that would have peace, must he content to let the world go on in its folly, "^et he that would not have bis better nature mastered by selfishness, must often make a sacrifice of peace, and do good to others in spite of themselves. Certainly conflict with evil in the shape of false beliefs, institutions, usage's, or the Hke, would seem no unfitting preliminary to the ValhaUa of the Blest.* Leo the Tenth well illustrated the species of maxim which governs but too many, when, urged with the necessity of correcting the abuses of the Church, he pointed to a crucifix, exclaiming. Behold the fate of reformers ! It has been remarked by a writer who was no less distinguished for sagacity than poetic genius, that the romance of Don Quixote is the most melancholy of tales ; the views of the hero being entirely disinterested and praiseworthy, yet con- tempt or opposition his reward. The observation, while embodying a truth which all history confirms, that mankind are little apt to appreciate efforts to which an aii* of brilliance, though veUiug but the mercenary or ignoble, is not attached, appears more cynical than correct. It is not so much the beneficent aims of the worthy Knight of La Manoha, as the eccentric and absurd methods of their display, which occasion the ridicule associated with his name. Sismondi, irom whom probably Lord Byron derived the fancy, has been, though not the first, yet among the most conspicuous, in misinterpretation of the purpose contemplated by Cervan- tes in the composition of his immortal work. His object, I * According to Scandinavian mytholo^, Valhalla or Paradise is entered by none who die at ease in their beds, but only by such as fall fighting in battle : — a martial creed akin to the old Spartan spirit, so :^ oharacteristically expressed in the well-known speech of the matron to lier son, when going to war, — ^ ray, tj inl tos — "either this, or upon this;" that is, either bring back this shield, or be brought upon it a corpse 180 SANS SOTICi; OE take it, was of no esoteric or refined import, nor, as is sometimes alleged, to explode the fictions of chivalry ; but to give a good story or series of adventures, which he chose to engraft on the wanderings of a gentleman become a monomaniac by that species of reading. It is a main thing in happiness whether the follies of men excite mirth or irritation, ridicule or regret. Of the two philosophers of antiquity, Democ^itus, who laughed at human vanities and cares, and Heraclitus who wept over them, there can be little doubt which had a preponderance of agreeable feehng ; though neither would have displayed less philosophy, to say nothing of philanthropy, if they had endeavoured to mitigate the ills which they contemplated in so dissimilar a manner. These worthies scarcely differed more from each other than Fontenelle' from both ; a unique genius who, living till the patriarchal age of a hundred, ' professed irever to have either laughed or wept. He had the merit, however, by the brilliancy of his wit and collo- quial talents, of making many others laugh. So far as the complexion of the mind is concerned, those are perhaps the happiest who blend more of the Epicurean in their nature, than of the Stoic or the Cynic ; who are free from immoderate ambition, especially the ambition of fame ; and disposed to partake the gifts and pleasures of Time as it passes. Lucian, in one of his inimitable Dialogues, inculcates a like sentiment iu the advice given to Menippus, who, distracted by the conflicting opinions of philosophy, and the strange aspects of human affairs, had sought a solution of his perplexities in the shades below. After affirming a private existence to be the best, the sage exhorts hi-s interrogator to abandon all the subtle and ambitious speculations of the schools, and regarding the generality of thiqgs with a smile, to limit his chief concern to a right management and use of the present. The doctrine is THE PHILOSOPHY OP HAPPINESS. 181 perhaps somewhat too indulgent to human indolence, hut embodies no smaU portion of practical wisdom. To be pleased with trivial things, is a sure means of attaining considerable satisfaction. Yet in proportion as the understanding becomes enlarged and refined, it is less disposed to receive gratification froni minor causes, or to entertain itseK with the rippling of waves on the shore, ■when accustomed to the depths and magnificence of the ocean. If we look at facts, we shall perhaps discover reason to suspect, that the most gifted minds are often the least happy. Mental eminence sometimes does little more for its possessor, than debar from a multitude of subordinate pleasures. In such a case we may be tempted to exclaim, with the blind prophet in the (Edipus Tyrannus of Sophocles, $eC, ^eO' pov€w ws Sfivov, ev6a /iri tcXt; Xu« (ppovovvn — " AlaS ! how dire a thing is wisdom when it yields no profit to its owner!" It reminds one of the stories respecting the old necromancers, as Faust and Michael Scott, who with all their sMll iu occult science and their power over evil sph-its, were the most vrretched of mortals. But assuredly it is a man's own fault if intellect either contracts the circle or abates the ardour of his enjoyments. The most rigid philosophy, and the most careless mirth, are intimately related, insomuch that the latter is fi'equently but the offspring of the former. The one discovers the vanity of human pursuits and wishes ; the other seizes present enjoyment to compensate the calam- ity. A mixture of the two composed the essence of the Epicurean system. It has been the fortune of many a contemplative and melancholy genius besides Swift, to adopt for motto, Vive la bagatelle. At almost every successive stage of being, mankind are looking forward to something ulterior, or endeavouring 182 SANS souci ; oe to provide for the happiness of a future period ; but in the meanwhile the current of life ebbs away, or the suscep- tibilities of enjoyment become extract. If we cannot he happy now, there is little probability that we shall ever be so. " II faut rire avant d'etre heuxeux," says La Bruyere, " de peur de mourir sans avoir ri." When I part with any thing to which I have long been accustomed, I part with associations belongiug to it, which to me are perhaps far more valuable, in point of interest, than the object by which it is replaced, though in itself much superior. I recoUect a considerable time back reading the plays of Shakspeare, several of them again and again, in a common, almost paltry edition of six or eight pocket volumes, yet which gave the text on the: whole faithfully, with brief marginal explanations of the obsolete phrases ; — the way, by the by, in which our old poets, as Chaucer and Spenser, ought to be annotated, except where more extensive elucidations are required. I have since fui-nished myself with a far more beautiful and correct edition, enriched with ample glossarial notes and other matter ; but though I may incur the imputation of weakness, I own that I have less satisfaction in per- using these immortal fictions in their present attractive shape than in the former ; chiefly, no doubt, from the greater novelty attending the previous perusal — as the bee and the butterfly leave the flowers they have rifled, though as beauteous as before — but also, I incline to think, on account of the fondness we imbibe for the minutest accompaniments of a high-wrought pleasure. Ornament is a poor substitute for utility, and to feast the eyes, or even the understanding, a less powerful charm than to regale the imagination. In turning over the newer copy, my thoughts insensibly revert to its predecessor, the loss of which I almost feel as that of an old and agreeable companion. THE PHILOSOPHY OF HAPPINESS. ' 183 It is astonishing with how few external resources a person may live in a state of comfort and intellectual pro- gression. The catalogue of human desiderata is certaioly not very extensive, if we are to admit the opinion of Alphonsus, the wise king of Arragon, who was accus- tomed to say, that among the various things which man- kind either possess or seek, aU are baubles except " old wood to burn, old wiae to drink, old friends to converse with, and old books to read." The Eoman populace, in the time of Juvenal, somewhat Hke the Parisian at present, required only panem et Circenses. As a general rale, where there is much physical satisfaction or repose, there are not many compHcated or artificial wants. The inhabitants of sunny and delicious climes are usually satisfied with a small number of gratifications: for if the body be at ease, the mind is eonamonly so too ; while most of the pursuits and cravings of people in colder countries arise from the necessities imposed by their local situation. It demands no trivial fortune, expended on the accommodations which ingenuity can procure, to match the luxurious independence of those who live in a benign and cloudless region. People often refer their discomfort to unpropitious events, when the true cause is more 'properly the state of the atmosphere, or some physical distemperature ; a feeling of satisfaction being occasioned less by the accidents of fortune, than by circumstances which operate on the material structure or the senses. The natives of Andalusia, living in a luxurious cHme, and conversant with tranquil and pic- turesque scenes, are strangers not only to fretful discontent, but to that undefinable species of uneasiness which, without any perceptible derangement of health, embitters the enjoy- ments of multitudes in less favoured regions. Mr. Walker in his Original speaks of the sensations produced by the climate of Italy as almost enchanting, and utterly inde- scribable. Nothing more tends to soothe and recreate 184 SANS souci ; oe the imagination than a beautiful prospect on a fine sum- mer's evening, when the sun gilds every object with his parting beams, while a few solitary clouds travel slowly along the sky, and aU creation smiles before sinking into repose. The gratification of fancies and foibles is often pro- ductive of more pleasure than substantial benefits afibrd. People must be allowed to be happy iu their ovm way; though the wantonness of caprice in the matter is some- times sufBciently amusing. Goldsmith would probably have been more elated by admiration of the fantastic finery in which he delighted to array himself, than by the legacy of a hundred a-year. Justice however may add, that his satisfaction would have been higher from an opportunity of performing a generous action to a friend, or even an unfortunate stranger. Dictatiag to others the selection of their pleasures is something like the curious freak related of an old lord of Crichton Castle, who was so exasperated at a certain chieftain travelling by vrithout stopping to partake of its hospitalities, that he pm-sued and east him into the dungeon. So fantastic is the mind of man, that when surrounded with a profusion of resources, it will sometimes abandon them almost entirely, and seek its entertainment in some minor indulgences, on which fancy or caprice has bestowed an artificial value. Yet it does not foUow that ia the absence of such profusion, the choice would have been the same ; for often the sole effect of access to numerous gratifications, is the latitude which it affords to select those which are trivial. A person is seldom aUured by secondary or factitious pleasm'es when no others are at his command ; as the owners of lordly mansions and demesnes find a special charm in occasional retirement to a rustic cot, unfm-nished with the appliances of luxury THE PHILOSOPHY OF HAPPINESS. 185 or elegance : but divest them of their possessions, and where would be the attractions of the cottage ? The phantasy is not less curious in cases of a different kind. Xerxes wept when in the zenith of his glory: — I question whether he had much melaneholy after the discom- fiture of his forces. They who are most impetuous in the pursuit of happiness, commonly meet with the severest disappoiat- ments. Happiness enters most freely into the heart which is the most tranquil in its desires^ The ancient Stoics, one would imagiae, who bent so much effort to acquire the mastery of passion, must, even with aims but imperfectly successful, have been no strangers to the rare privilege of calm contemplative serenity. Such, I am willing to believe, was the case with not a few of the monks and anchorets of former times, notwithstanding the trite aphorism about the world filling the thoughts in cloisters ^s ia cities ; and such, I doubt not, is in many instances the attainment of those belonging to the Society of Friends, with whom it seems a principle to repress all tendencies to the indulgence of strong emotion. There is something in the very name Sans Souci, given to one of the palaces of the kings of Prussia, that soothes the imagination; for though the reality may little correspond to the title, yet the mere suggestion of ideas of placidity and repose is pleasing; as to turn away the eyes from a desolate or troublous scene, to a painting of rural peace and beauty, is not without a charm, though the landscape be but a picture. Charles Lamb, in one of his delightful Essays of Elia, informs us that the sight of a quakeress, beaming with the purity and cheerfulness often so conspicuous in the fair sex of that comniunity, never failed to enliven him for the rest of the day. The feeling is far from unknown to a benevolent mind in relation even to the lower creatures, many of them 186 SANS souci ; on appearing, if not blithe as the lark, yet as free from all «are as my friend madam Puss, now sitting in placid mood before the fire, and, as beseems a philosophress of her cast, watching with benign cmiosity the fantastic freaks of a meiTy flame or two flickering about the grate. It seems not improbable that a considerable proportion of the happiness of childhood arises from its involuntary restraints. If people of mature years would be more happy, they must practise more self-denial and discipline, even where no circumstances otherwise impose the necessity of restriction. As it is the symptom of a feeble mind to employ every attainable facility for the accomplishment of its purposes, so it is the symptom of an Ol-regulated mind, to make us^ of every accessible enjoyment. It belongs to those of inner masteries to taste the luxury of mental epicurism in the self-concentred pleasure, more satisfying than all iadulgence, of not going the length of the tether. He is but a spendthrift in happiness who squanders away feeling in unrestricted gratification, which is sure to leave the heart wasted and impoverished. The tide that rises the highest wiU sink the lowest, and leave but a naked and desolate scene behind. A moderate influx of pleasure is best for man, whether he consult his interest or his duty. It is the sparkle of divinity in human nature that gives to the partial denial of wishes a higher zest than their com- plete fulfilment, which afi'ords no latitude for the indefinite exaggerations of hope or fancy, — Hesiod's paradox in praise of temperance applying emphatically to enjoyments that owe their chief attraction to ideal colourings : wXhv ijnuru sravTos — " half is more than the whole." If you would see a person in his most agreeable mood, it should be when he is about to obtain some object of his desire; seldom or never afterwards, when reality is substituted for imaginative aspirations. Had Vanessa been married to Swift— I do THE PHILOSOPHY OF HAPPINESS. 187 not mean as Stella, his other tmfortunate innamorata, is said to have been — the spell of her romantic . passion, nourished amidst so much that was extraordinary and heart- withering, would speedily have been dissolved. Fame, and an accumulation of outward advantages, are feeble securities against melancholy; in part because the mind is capricious, and turns from enjoyments when lavished upon it in profiision; in part because possession leaves no scope for ideal embellishment, and to intellects of the noblest order suggests the disparity which ever subsists between their acquisitions and their capabilities. It is not in the midst of long-continued suffering that the mind is most conscious of its severity. Familiarity with pain diminishes its aeuteness, by blunting the sensi- bihties ; or depth of sorrow, by absorbing the feelings, prevents any lively apprehension of a much happier state. The partial return of enjoyment, suggesting ideas of contrast, occasions a more accurate estimate ; as the shining of the sun after a temporary obscuration, produces a more vivid impression of the previous dark- ness. Present feelings, of whatever nature, are apt to be overrated, and the importance of prior feelings to be dis- paraged in proportion. The bKss of a few moments is some- times regarded as a compensation for a thousand pains ; or a brief paroxysm of sorrow, as a counterbalance to a thousand ■ pleasures. Yet former happiness was not the less valuable because it is now succeeded by misery ; nor was former misery the more tolerable, because it is now replaced by happiness. The illusion, which is one of sentiment rather than reflection, seems owing to that principle of om* con- stitution ^hich forbids the co-existence of strong opposite emotions in the same mind ; the weakness being where the 18$ SANB souci; OE transition from one state of feeling to the other occurs without adequate reason. Cicero could represent the day on which the senate and people of Kome welcomed his return from exile, as worth an immortality. To a mind of independent resources, or not blind to the inconstancy of fortune, such a circumstance, we might imagine, would have appeared sufficiently trivial, compared with the ac- cumulated sufferings — the griefs, the perturbations, the agonies, which had attended his banishment. The same cause, however, which made him at once pusillanimous and wretched while absent from his country, occasioned, no doubt, so exaggerated an appreciatioii of the honours that crowned his return. We frequently extract most enjoyment, sometimes also most benefit, from things which cost us the least effort or expense. The remark, so far as the former particular is concerned, receives abundant confirmation in cases where a taste for external beauty, and the variegated phenomena of nature, has been acquired. Augustine, ia his celebrated work de Civitate Dei, has some excellent observations, enlivened by a straia of poetic enthusiasm, when descanting on the multiplied displays of divine benignity observable in the objects and vicissitudes of the material universe. In a section (lib. xxii. cap. 24) which seems to anticipate the track so extensively pursued, with whatever philosophic insight or result, by the natural theologians of modem times — a line of thought, however, traceable not only in Lactantius, CyrU, Theodoret, and others of the Christian Fathers, but in the discourses of Socrates, and stiU earlier in Hebrew literature — after noticing the structure of the human frame, as well as the endowments and capabilities of the miud, as evincing benevolent contrivance, he adverts to that combination of utility and embellishment which appears in every part of the visible creation, and which forms the source of so many refined and agreeable emotions. THE PHILOSOPHY OF HAPPINESS. 189 The passage reminds me of an admirable paper by Bishop Berkeley in the Guardian, illustrative of that unbounded variety of cheap pleasures which is every where open to a grateful and unsophisticated mind. A PEESON of an avaricious or repining temper, connects in his mind his economical gains with his occasional losses ; and is apt therefore to cherish dissatisfaction, from an idea that the former are useless. A man of better mould con- nects his economy rather with the pleasures which it assists him to procure, and is in consequence less affected by: the occurrence of unavoidable disasters. So different an effect, with regard to happiness, is produced by a difference in the association of ideas. An excess of joy, as weU as an excess of sorrow, renders the eye insensible to the attractions of beautiful scenery and the like. Both these extremes of feeling, when occasioned by unexpected or extraordinary reverses of fortune, endanger the stability of the intellect ; but a rapid influx of good fortune is more perilous than the contrary. It is related of those who were concerned in the South Sea speculation, that a greater number became insane from acquiring immense riches on a sudden, than in consequence of sustaining the wreck of their all. One of the highest mental pleasures is that 'which is derived from the most concentrated thought. It is a pleasure which the greater part of mankind never know, and of which they can form no adequate conception. With diffusion of the powers, or considerable variety in their , exercise, it is incompatible, and requires profound and exclusive occupation of intellect. The gaiety or excitation which aiises from a number of miscellaneous ideas floating before the fancy, is not to be weighed against the deeper fahjess of such a delight. 190 SAKS souci; ok ♦ The repose of many is considerably dependent on the favourable opinion which they entertain of their mental character. If that opinion is not injurious to others, why attempt its removal, since happiness is so rare a conmiodity? The reader may remember the instance of monomania described by Horace, of a person who used to fancy himself present at the representation of the most admirable tragedies. His friends, who exerted their good offices for his recovery, and at length succeeded in driviag away the distemper with hellebore, were reproached as having ruined instead of cured him, by robbing him of so agreeable an illusion : —Pol, me occidistis, amici, Non servastis, ait ; cui sic extorta voluptas, Et demtus per vim mentis gratissimns error. It is related of ClenneU, the engraver of the exquisite wood-cuts in some of the earKer editions of Rogers's poems, that during the melancholy prostration of his powers, amounting to absolute fatirfty, which marked so long a course of years before his death, — besides making verses of the most incongruous kind, with which however he seemed charmed, he employed himself in occasional sketches and engravings, which, though indicating .but the wreck of his faculties, he regarded as models of art. The goddess of Delusion, moved perhaps by Pity, often luUs with similar dreams her favomites, unscathed with any special visitation; the difference between their case and ClenneU's being, that with the artist imbecility had to be produced— with them it is innate. Since man has been banished the primitive Eden, it were hard to envy him a Fools' Paradise. The circumstances which most contribute to a man's happiness, usually make the least figure in his history or general reputation. Happiness is dependent on ordinary things, which have nothing therefore conspicuous or brilliant THE PHILOSOPmr OF HAPPINESS. 191 about them ; on a number of minute influences constantly acting in immediate proximity ; on feeling, in short, rather than intellect. A person eminently happy would be the worst subject possible for biography ; a fact of which novelists and poets seem to be aware, for after conducting their hero to the summit of felicity, they commonly leave Mm. The illusion of joy iS diminished by minute examina- tion of its ingredients or causes. The reason is, that feehng or emotion predominates in pleasure ; intellect, in the discrimination of its elements ; and emotion must of course be somewhat dissipated, ere the faculties can acquire the coolness necessary for investigation or analysis. The latter observation may elucidate the fact, that persons of metaphysical or speculative genius, accustomed to scrutinise and decompose their sensations, are seldom remarkable for warmth of sensibility. In their case feeKng' no sooner arises than, arrested for the purpose of analytic inspection, it subsides or expires under the process. Bewabe of letting your comforts become means of pain; nor make yourself miserable for the sake of being happy. Amono the many influences which contributed to those singular events, the Crusades, I doubt not that the Hmited, undiversified existence both of barons and their vassals was one of the principal. It is not very easy, in a complex condition of society, to estimate the attraction of adventure and travel to those whose ideas and experience have been confined within the narrowest bounds ; commotion and excitement, even when pernicious, being sources of pleasure where life is stamped with monotony ; whUe the dead calm of the soul is less tolerable than its tempestuous agitations. Few of the revolutions which have overturned thrones and. 192 SANS souci; ob new-modelled the face of nations, can be adequately appre- ciated without reference to this circumstance. Hence also the chief interest of dramatic representations, and of the narratiyes of history and fiction. To a similar cause is attributable the passion for gaming, which prevails not only among the idle and luxurious classes in civiKzed coinmunities, but among various savage tribes. It was a favourite pastime, or rather a serious pursuit, vdih the ancient Germans, and with the aborigines of America. If noblemen and other wealthy landowners, instead of aban- doning their estates to the sole management of a steward, would take a more active concern in their superintendence — a species of care which Lord Bm-leigh, though immersed in as multitudinous affairs as ever perplexed statesman, could practise to an amusing extent — ^.they would introduce a little salutary variety into their habit's, and save themselves from ennui, the parent of so many expensive and ruinous vices.* Man is so singularly constituted as sometimes to experience the most vivid and sublime pleasure under the excitement occasioned by circumstances of imminent danger, as amidst the tumult and perils of battle. This is par- ticularly the case with persons of genius, who in general are more susceptible of deep emotion than others, and whose imagiaation can picture more powerfully the romantic * Whatever may te the evils of gaming, of which it would be difficult to speak in terms of too great severity, there is not the shadow of truth in a remark of Mr. Landor, that the practice belongs only to mental mediocrity, and is incompatible with genius. I do not know whether he would class Roger Ascham, or the late Mr. Colton, among men of genius ; hut the names of Goldsmith and of Guido, the latter of whom was passionately devoted to play, would alone be sufficient to refute his opinion. — I feel the less hesitation in offering this minute criticism as relating to an author whose works, whatever their faults of wilfulness or exacerbation, of panegyric or censure, abound with passages among the most beautiful of modern literature, and who is indisputably ono of the best writers of the age. THE PHILOSOPHY OF HAPPINESS. 193 associations or the moral results connected with stimulating scenes or occurrences. It is commonly supposed that there is a general equahty of happiness ; but this would be at least contrary to analogical presumption. Health, beauty, strength, intel- lectual endowments, influence, are aU distributed in endless proportions. Besides, only let two persons be placed together in contrast, one of whom has a countenance Hghted up with cheerfulness and gaiety, the other an aspect in which a settled melancholy reigns. Is it possible to imagine that both possess an equal share of enjoyment ? — It may however be admitted, that rank or circumstances occasion little di6Ference in happiness, which is more or less dependent on bodily constitution — on the nerves, blood, and temperament. There is much truth in the lively remark addressed by a foreign lady to BosweU : " Ma foi, Monsieur, notre bonheur depend de la faqon que notre sang circule." The amount of sensible pleasures is perhaps pretty equal among the several orders of mankind; for in pro- portion to the paucity of these pleasures is commonly the zest which they afford. The case is otherwise in regard to those of the understanding, which are' enhanced by multipHcity and variety. The great difference in men's respective shares of happiness, however coloured or moulded by material causes, lies in points which relate to fancy, opinion, friendship, and intellect in general. It is much easier to purchase intellectual than physical gratifications. The former are also infinitely more diver- sified, as well as susceptible of more frequent repetition. Tte means of delight afforded by the accumulated treasures of other minds, are always at command in days like our own, when books are in every body's hands, with their store 194 SANS souci; or of imagery and thought, of humour or narrative, suited to all mental wants and varying moods. " No entertainment," says Lady Wortley Montagu, "is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting :" a sentiment which, if it had not an echo in every book-loving heart, might appeal to her own charming correspondence, which often, under a veil of levity, conceals a more penetrating insight into life and character than superficial wits may conceive. "If relays of eyes were to be hired like post horses," she writes in her old age, and when living in a species of exile abroad, "I would never admit any but silent companions." No wonder that Pope was enamoured of so extraordinary a woman, whose beauty was surpassed only by her genius. — The pleasures of reason and the understanding have this recommendation, that they constantly increase with time; while those of fancy, friendship, and the senses, a,re proportionally im- paired by the same cause. The possession of numerous and varied desires in- dicates a portion of mental enlargement, as the most contracted minds have always the fewest wishes, however importunate. It also implies the participation of some degree of enjoyment; for to sorrow or despondency, desire is almost unknown. The same circumstance, however, is an evidence of partial unhappiness, because it presupposes the existence of real or imaginary wants. It were im- possible to conceive a state of being that should so combine the element of bHss with the imperfection belonging to every thing finite, and the expansibility inseparable fi-om an intellectual nature, as utterly to exclude the operation of desire. Weee no intervals to elapse between the gratification of our several wishes, the resom-ces of the present state ViTould speedily be exhausted ; and if the enjoyments which it comprises were lavished upon us as rapidly as we are THE PHILOSOPHY OF HAPPINESS. 195 capable of receiving them, a very few years would suffice to sum up the date of mortality. As happiness is to be measured, not by years, but by the number, extent, and refinement of the pleasures ipceived, it is probable that many who die early, have a much larger amount of enjoyment than the greater part of those who linger to the extremity of old age. Who indeed that is wise, would hesitate in choosing between a short life filled with delight, and a long one darkened with suffering ? The sentiment expressed ia an ancient poetical fragment is not less true than melancholy : K/jelcro-oi/ t6 /i^ fgv ia-rw, ij CH" dBKias — " It is better to die than to live in misery." They who have only chance pleasures to depend on, obtain perhaps, on the whole, an equal amount of delight •with those who draw from more uniform and permanent sources. The reasons are numerous : 1, No great care or difficulty is required for the attainment of casual gratifi- cations. 2. Their suddenness prevents the miud from exhausting them by anticipation or fancy. 3. They com- monly include a wider range and larger variety. 4. Their zest is enhanced by the intermixture of less agreeable circumstances. Gipsies, whose longevity bespeaks some- thing on the point, appear not less happy than the mass of our artificers or peasantry ; as the Neapolitan lazzaroni, who subsist on the merest trifle, acquired in whatever fortuitous manner, are well known to pass their days in perpetual gaiety. It may be doubted whether Fielding and Goldsmith, amidst the chequered and often bitter scenes of their lot, had not snatches of bHss which more than counterbalanced an exemption -from the fluctuations of fortune. The wandering, adventurous life of a Scottish mendicant seems to- have presented no trivial charms to the poet Bums; as a similar course did to the famous Bamfylde Moore Carew, whose history, it has often struck 196 SANS soTJOi; ok me, wotild have formed an excellent theme for the pen of Scott. It is remarkable that a taste for a roving, desultory existence, with its comparative idleness and independence, is hardly ever, when the practice has once taken root, abandoned for the most tempting opportvmities of settie- ment in a more creditable way. The pastoral Laplanders, like the Tartars of the Asiatic plaijis, who continue the same migratory habits which have been transmitted in un- broken succession from their Scythian ancestors, would not easily relinquish their nomadic condition, diversified as it is by change of scene, attention to their flocks, hunting, and fishing, any more than the Bedouin Arabs could be readily seduced fi-om their deserts, to follow the pursuits of men in cities.* Even Lord Edward Fitzgerald, when rambling among the forests of America, could question, what few now-a-days would be inclined to dispute, the preponderance of civihsed over savage Ufe, with respect to enjoyment.f The fascination of adventure and hazard certainly forms one of the most powerful spells on human feeling; a fact strikingly illustrated in the frequent confession of the chamois hunters of the Alps, that with the full prospect of death before them, they are unable to forego the prose- cution of their perilous sport. * ^achyluB's description of the ancient Scythians is an exact sketch of their descendants the Tartars of the present age : ^KvOas a<^i^eL j/ofiddasy ot TrXeicray oreyas sreSapcrioj valov<7 eV evKVKkois oxois.-~ Prom. VJnct, 709. It must he acknowledged that a space of two or three thousand years is a tolerahle proof of attachment. t The circumatanoes that contrihuted tpthe feeling will he found elucidated in the heautiful biography of this unfortunate nohleman by Mr; Moore : heautiful in many ways, hut most of all for the artless, affectionate, and truly charming letters of its memorable subject,— the whole enhanced by gUmpaes of the sentiments that marked and knit together the members of the illustrious family to which he belonged, including a patience, kindness, consideration for others, and heroic self- sacrifice at the call of duty, that do honour to human nature. THE PHILOSOPHY OF HAPPINESS. 19T Childeen have Kttle or no sympatliy with sadness, and turn away ahnost instinctively from its appearance. Perhaps it is because they are possessed of so much enjoyment themselves ; for it may commonly be observed that they who are happy feel small disposition to enter into the grievances or sufferings of others. Sympathy is for the most part the growth of years, and of personal familiarity with sorrow. The ebullitions of grief arise not so much from any cii'cumstance at the time, as from the accumulation of bitterness before restrained, but which then meets with an occasion for its overflow. Thus, in Homer, the lamenta- tions of the female captives at sight of the dead body of Patroclus, are touchingly described as originating in a suggested sense of their own misfortunes : 'Qs £(j)aTO itKaioviT' ori 8e oTfvdxovTo yvvaiKes, UaTpoicKov np6s dvSpau ycvfrj, fj jicv cjivci, fj 8' airoK^yet. II. f. 146. a sentiment of which a counterpart is presented in the words of an ancient sage, that niay serve for a translation : "As of the green leaves on a thick tree, some fall, and some grow ; so is the generation of flesh and blood : one cometh to an end, and another is born."* Alas ! it is not so much that we die, as that our memory dies with us, that makes tlie heart weep : for the tribes of humanity are almost as soon forgotten as the leaves ; or, like the scenery of a tropical clime when the sun sets, are at once, or with the briefest intervention of twiHght, shrouded in darkness. — Even alliance to genius by con- sanguinity, with the distinction of social rank, wUl not always ensure remembrance with posterity. How many have heard of Sir Christopher Milton ? Yet he was brother to the poet, and a judge of the Common Pleas under James the Second. Between the mightiest of the dead, and the vestiges they have left behind, there is httle more connexion than between the foot-prints recently discovered in certain sand-stone, r-eferable to a remote epoch of our globe, and the animals that produced them. A NAME is not less seldom preserved by indirect association with genius or enterprise, than by the most * One of the many teautiful passages interspersed in the ethical parts of the writings called apocryphal; that is, hidden; to -wit — by Protestant and sectarian prejudice. But for this it might be unnecessary to say, that not a, few of these utterances are quite equal, in pith and comprehensiveness, some in poetic grace superior, to most in the collection of oriental proverbs that pass under the name of Solomon. 216 FAME. splendid achievements or personal qualities. The guide or attendant of a celebrated traveller is. often linked insepar- ably with the adventures of his master; some of the companions of Columbus and of later voyagers having reached us in this manner. La Fleur has been immor- talised by entering the service of Sterne. So Fletcher, the " staunch yeoman " of Childe Harold's Good Night, and Tom Purdie, the forester or factotum of Sir Walter Scott, may thus be carried down to distant ages. Nor is it the least curious particular in relation to fame determined by other causes, that it commonly depends on the most trivial or accidental circumstances, and that probably as many persons who deserve and might secure it, die without its attainment, as those who share the distinction. Had Chatterton not made so premature an end, he would per- haps have equalled any of his contemporaries not merely in talents but in glory ; and if his extraordinary endowments had been properly appHed, our literature might have received sorne accessions worthy of its brightest epochs, the pre- cocity of his genius being scarcely mpre remarkable than its fecundity and vigour. Thebe is something mysterious as well as melancholy in the circumstance so beautifully illustrated by Gray, of the slumbering faculties of the village patriot or hero or bard, whose destiny on earth is obscurity and oblivion. Yet the difiiculty may in part be solved by the reflection, that minds which m this world have never been disclosed, or have manifested themselves only in the bud, will no doubt be developed in a future state, — the inner sense awakening responsive to the light of Eternity, as the statue of Memnon emitting sounds when struck by the rays of the rising sun. Nor is it a little remarkable that when the intellect has been drawn out to a certain extent, the exhi- bition of its full capabilities is often dependent on the most casual incidents. Though we can hardly suppose that FAME. 217 Lord Byron, if he had written at all after the appearance of the " Hours of Idleness," would not have soared much above mediocrity, yet he might not have repeated his attempts at authorship, but for resentment inspired by the sneering criticism of the Edinbm-gh ; as Can-el, the famous French joumaKst, might have continued his cool and equable, not to say vapid style of composition, unconscious of the resources that lay within him, had he not been appointed chief editor of the National, when he at once displayed an elasticity and a copiougnes, a freshness and brilliance, as inexhaustible as they were surprising. Some of the best and ablest men the world has produced, have lived in obscurity, and been scarcely men- tioned after death. Others who once occupied the pinnacles of fame are brought down to its base. " Men," says Antoninus, "grow out of fashion, as well as language." The column of Trajan is surmounted by the statue of St. Peter. Time effects on human reputations what distance occasions in the apparent magnitude of bodies ; and his progress, like that of a traveller, continually presenting new objects to the view, the nearest commonly seem the largest, while those long passed dwindle to undeflnable specks, or are lost in dimness and shadow. It might not be amiss if a similar custom existed among ourselves, to that which was practised by the ancient Greeks, who on certain occasions called over the names of their deceased ancestors^ for the purpose of keeping them in remembrance. To a like cause may in part be ascribed the fact, that so many different races, as the Moslem Egyptians, the Copts, the Chinese in particular, are noted for the punctuality and solemnity with which they repair to the sepulchres of their relations. The omission of such a rite is what makes the prospect of dying childless so bitter to the latter people. The lares domestici, or 218 FAME. household deities of the Romans, appear to have been the manes of their ancestors, represented by small waxen or other images; while ia addition to the tribute awarded to these supposed guardians of the family, an annual festival was celebrated ia commemoration of departed souls in general. A sacred regard to the memory of the dead is also stated to prevail among the Indian tribes of North America, described as visiting the tombs of their fore- fathers who have been buried more than a century.* The circumstance is remarkable as exhibiting a correspondence of feeUng in the opposite state of society to that of the Greeks and Eomans. We may conceive the effect on remiaiscences of those now lost to human converse, as well as on the whole range of fancy respecting the iavisible realms, of the Romish mass for the dead, performed with the most touching strains of music, and sometimes amidst a som- bre spectacle resembling a funereal array; a ceremonial which seems to have acted almost as a spell on the imaginative author of Vathek, if we. may judge from the admirable sketch which he has given of a service of the kind, on the eve of his departure from Portugal. However this may be, there is little poetry or beauty, and perhaps less truth, ia an order of sentiment that would abolish all relation between ourselves, and those who have passed before us into the world of spirits. It requires more heroism for a person of enterprising nature to die ia obscurity, than amidst the excitements of battle, or in any situation which attracts admiration or * Campbell's Gertrude of Wyoming, note to the second part. The strength of ancestral attachment in these primitive tribes is well illustrated in the reply of a Canadian chief to certain Europeans who had proposed to him the cession of his territory ; " Shall we say to the bones of our fathers, Arise, and go with us into a foreign land ? " a sentence justly praised by Voltaire as equal to any of the fine sayings in Plutarch. FAME. 219 sympathy. Pliny, in a beautiful epistle to his friend Nepos, speaks with mingled pathos and sublimity of Arria's suppressing her anguish for the loss of her son, that his father, then afflicted with a dangerous malady, might be spared the bitterness of the discovery, as a nobler effort than she afterwards displayed, when, to re-assure the sinking courage of her husband, condemned to die, she plunged the dagger into her own breast, and presenting it to him exclaimed, Paetus, it gives no pain. In the latter case, he suggests, she might be sustained with the prospect of glory through all time, though not in the silent repres- sion of sorrow, and the performance of duty under the severest deprivations. To a nature, however, capable of the former heroism, I should be disposed to impute a less calculating motive than the plaudits of remote ages, and think the impulse of an overmastering passion, prepared for any sacrifice in behalf of one whose love and honour she valued above life, a sufficient key to her magnanimous behaviour. If the votaries of celebrity knew how seldom the most conspicuous names form the subject of thought or discourse, they would scarcely be so eager in chase of the phantom. The highest and most renowned genius fills but an inconsiderable space in the reflections or feelings of his contemporaries. Suppose a few minutes are devoted to him each day, which ia general is all that could be affirmed even of Shakspeare or Milton, how j[n significant is such a tribute, and how small the number of those who allot so much attention to the qualities or achievements of distant mmds ! The majority even of the admirers of intellectual greatness are for the most part engrossed with much more ordinary concerns; as, providing for the wants of life, maintaining the intercourses of society, getting or spending money. The minute but ever-recurring interests attaching to personal situation or duties, afford little room for 220 FAME. contemplation of the pre-eminence attained by others, whatever, may be the fancy or aspirations of the literary or ambitious. It has been alleged, by certain moralists and metaphy- sicians, that fame, ancient or remote, is merely nominal; that when it is said, for instance, that ' Csesar conquered Pompey,' the expression is equivalent to, ' Somebody conquered somebody ; ' and it seems to be argued that if we have not perceived those who have acquired celebrity, we are not acquainted with the persons themselves.* A little reflection, however, may satisfy us that the notion is incorrect. Men, even as living and observed, are known only ^x5s tarpeiov — "medicine for the miad."* There are few intellectual diseases for which they do not offer a remedy or an alleviation. It may be added, that they are often also a person's best comforters and fiiends, supplying the place of almost every other gratification. But they are now perhaps employed for too great a variety of purposes, as many things in the departments of science and letters might be acquired with much more effect from observation or discourse. To certain subjects in particular the Spanish proverb is not iaapplicable, that conversation is better than reading. Socrates would seem to have adopted the colloquial and interrogative method of in- struction, in preference to the written, that his disciples, while obtaining a fuller grasp of his meaning, might have their faculties brought more directly into play. I QUESTION the maxim, broached somewhere I believe by Dr. Johnson, that works of genius are characterised by a power of universally pleasing. This is improbable ; for the productions, no less than the capacities of some, are * Literally, a dispensary for the mind. Such, according to Diodorns, ■was the inscription over the first library of which we have any account, erected ly Qsymandyas, a remote king of Egypt. 304 BOOKS AND THEIR USE. quite aboYe the sphere of the multitude. That which would delight beiugs of understanding superior to men's, might faU to be comprehended or relished by human intellects of the first order. Who could dispute the- genius of Butler's Analogy, or of Edwards' disquisition on the Will ? — treatises that, unlike the philosophic ones of Bacon, are not only without the slightest colouring of an imagiaative kind, but unadorned with the more ordinary graces of composition ; so that few persons, untrained to abstruse speculation, are so far attracted by those remark- able performances as to give them even a cursory perusal; muflh less to master their principles, or test the validity of their reasonings : a thing which perhaps not one in one hundred of their encomiasts has ever done ; else the praises would be more qualified and discriminatiug. — The majority are struck only with the most obvious beauties, and are utterly iacapable of appreciating the loftier or more original species of merit. It is a very inaccurate notion that only poetry, or subject^ of imaginatioi;,, are adapted to the exercise of genius, a variety of works, in other depart- ments, displaying invention and mental excellence no less adniirable than rare. We get the quintessence of men in books, the best of which are much more interesting and agreeable than their authors ; and are beautifully d,escribed by Milton as "the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life." It may nevertheless be questioned whether silich men as Sheridan, Mackintosh, and Coleridge, however brilliant in authorship, were not better talkers than writers, as Johnson is ac- knowledged to baye been by Bm-ke^, and as the bard of Ayr was thought by Dugald Stewart and others. Even Lord Bacon is said to have been more distinguished among his contemporaries for his colloquial powers than for his productions. On the other hand, if accounts be true, BOOKS AND THEIB USE. 305 Goldsmith supplies a marked illustration of the general aphorism ; though no doubt more pearls were scattered in his conversation than his Hterary associates seem wilhng to own. It is not a little remarkable, that while speaking with so much disparagement of his luck- less observations, most of those which they recor.d evince the highest merit. Of Charles the Second it has been affirmed, that he never =said a foolish thing, and never did a wise one. With others the proposition may be reversed : but though Goldsmith did many things, and perhaps uttered some, that were not over-wise, he never wrote a foolish thing. A character such as Goldsmith oUght to have met with the utmost leniency and indulgence from his associates and contemporaries. It was wrong in Johnson, and others of the Hterary club to which he belonged, to take advantage of his foibles, and make him their butt. His weakness and petulance and eccentricities should all have been spared. He had a right to vanity and all his peculiari- ties. I question whether any statesman that Bjitain has produced can justly be considered so great a benefactor to his countrymen as Goldsmith ; that is, if we look at the amount of enjoyment which they have respectively occasioned. Nor wiU this eulogiuni appear extravagant when we remember that by the Eoman people, so proud of their conquests and political glory, the genius of Cicero was thought worthy of being weighed with their empire : ingenium par imperio. It would require a good many laws, and those of no ordinary excellence, to create so much real pleasure as is afforded by the Traveller, the Deserted Village, and the Vicar of Wa^eld. All affect to applaud the repeated perusal of the best productions, yet few adopt the practice. It may be doubted whether the omission is deserving of censm-e, and whether the understanding is not more expanded and 306 BOOKS AND THEIB USE. enriched by entering on new fields of research, than by minute familiarity with any subject or any writer. Desul- tory and immethodical reading is not without its advantages, and seems preferable to such as, however select or syste- matic, is confined to a particular walk of speculation. Pope, Scott, Byron, Johnson, with other of our great writers, indulged in a wide range of miscellaneous reading, especially in early life ; while Sonthey was one of the most oranivorous readers as well as prolific writers that modem times at least can show. No doubt the tendency, and too often the result of such a practice, is the neglect of close thinking : a fault, however, common enough with those whose reading is sufficiently meagre. The author of the " Curiosities of Literature " quotes the adage, Cave ah homine unius libri, to Ulustrate the benefit of thorough acquaintance with one distinguished work. Against the principle propounded by the ingenious essayist I have nothing to allege ; btit the citation afibrds it no countenance. "Beware of a man of one book" may signify, not that he will prove an overmatch for your powers, but that you wiU find him to be a pedant or a fool. There is a difference between addiction to one book, and confinement to one. The saying may be classed, for its partiality, with an observation I have somewhere met with, that the works of Homer and Virgil comprehend aU the learning of their respective periods : as to which it may suffice to remark, that of the times to which the composition of the Homeric poems is referred, nothing historical ig known, and there- fore nothing can be affirmed beyond the particulars to be gleaned from the productions themselves ; but with regard to the age of Virgil, there is ample evidence that not one tenth, perhaps not a fiftieth of the learning it embraced, is presented, directly or indirectly, in his performances, however pregnant with matter, and the results of intel- lectual culture. BOOKS AND THEIR USB. 807 The effect of an extensive acquaintance with books, and a concomitant of intellectual expansion, is a freedom from extravagant or exclusive admiration of any. It is rare for a person of small reading to be without some literary idols, whose worship, even if excused by their merit, is pretty sure to be litUe tolerant or catholic. We may apply in this case what Johnson said of London, that a man is much less likely to form an injudicious matri- monial choice there than in the country, from the greater latitude and variety presented by a metropolis. The history of some minds is varied only by the successive idols of their devotion. Such appear incapable of existing without subjection to others, and destined never to act for themselves, or secure any intellectual achievement. To this servile adoration, even genius often bends in its earlier and more enthusiastic days ; but as the faculties ripen, its gods die away. I- will add however one qualifying remark, which may be extended perhaps to a few other instances — Milton, and some of our old -dramatists in particular — that never has mind of superior mould, and lettered tastes, made any advance in comprehension or power, without an increase of admiration for the matchless, resplendent creations of Shakspeare : a feeling far different from the unreflecting idolatry which, blind to every flaw, confounds the extravagances of a prodigal fancy, revelling in freaks of caricature, or of witticism in contradistinction to wit, with the perfection of genius. It is chiefly the literature or works of the passing day by which the sentiments and taste of the generality of readers are moulded ; only men of letters, or the superior class of cultivated persons, being much conversant with the immortal productions of preceding ages. Yet the evil is not without its attendant good. Whatever veneration a wise man may feel for the great luminaries of his species 308 BOOKS AND THEIR USE. some centuries ago, he will take care to be pretty well versed in tlie literature of his own times. There are a thousand associations connected with living or recent authors, which not only awaken deeper interest, but assist in entering more fuUy into the spirit and compass of their writings ; just as in perusing the history of our own country, there are certain local traits, or traditionary colour- ings, which mix themselves insensibly with the narrative, and of which a foreigner could have scarcely the least conception. The observation extends to works far different from such as Butler's Hudibras, the. Dunciad, and others of a satirical kind, which were of course much more relished as well as understood at the season of their appearance, than they can possibly be in the present or any future age, and which are now chiefly preserved by those sparkles of wit; or condensed masses of thought, which no time can impair. There are several compositions of recent origin, in little esteem among our literary antiquaries, but which display a force and variety of invention that would quite enrapture them if expressed in quaint phraseology, and believed to have been produced at the distance of two or three centuries. What interest was excited among the black-letter class of critics by the poems of Eowley, so long as the circumstances of their origin were unknown ! but those effusions, beautiful and vigorous as they are, have long since been abandoned except by minds that can appreciate the fruits of genius in whatever form. It is the practice of some however to praise the old writers, but to read the modern. Many writers are much celebrated but little read, either because they have performed too much, or what they have produced is too learned or profound for popular appreciation. The remark applies to Erasmus and a host of others, whose compositions are replete with thought. BOOKS AND THEIR USE. 309 erudition, and genius ; but being of a bulky and elaborate form, or in a dead language, are unknown to the mass of readers, and are prized and used only by a few solitary scholars. Though no one can justly coniplain of a paucity of valuable books in our language, in any department of wit or learning, yet to receive the highest advantage and pleasure which they are capable of imparting, an acquaintance with the hteratiire of antiquity is necessary. The compositions of our best English writers are much im- pregnated with classical allusions, and with the style and imagery of the ancient models. • What is termed light reading is sometimes censured without reason. If the expression be employed to designate poetry, fictitious compositions, biographical or miscellaneous memoirs, essays, anecdotes, books of travels or natural history, or, ia general, such as open out glimpses of the beautiful and true, it would be desirable to know the departments of Kterature which are either so agreeable or instructive. Cicero, philosopher as he was, disdained performances untiuctured with amusement. Lectionem sine ulla delectatione, negligo, says he. There is a spiritual meditative wisdom in the effusions of poesy, not only wanting in the more scientific parts of learning, but of which there is commonly but the skeleton or distorted semblance in the systems of the schools : while mind, which sparkles ia the emanations of wit, and the picturesque delineations of thought, is a dim or attenu- ated thrug in the majority of didactic treatises. Milton, in that most eloquent of pieces, the Areopagitica, illustrating an argument by one of the allegories of the Faery Queen, displays as well his penetration as pleasantry in asserting, that Spenser is " a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas;" as Horace, fresh from the 'perusal of the 310 SOOES AND THEIR USE. magic minstrel of Greece, prefers his lessons to those of the professed sages of philosophy : Qni, quid sit pnlchmm, quid tnrpe, quid utile, quid non, Planins ac melius Chiysippo et Crantore dicit. I for my part, says Montaigne, care for no books but such as are pleasant and easy, adapted to, my entertainment, or those which comfort me, and teach me how to regulate my life and death. Where mental acumen or power of abstraction is the chief object of pursuit, no works perhaps are comparable to those of the logical kind, or such as deal with that province of research which most even of cultivated persons abjure^the metaphysical. The best way, however, to ac- quire a well balanced and healthy tone of the faculties, is to exercise them aU in degree, and accustom them to alternate tension and relaxation. Niebuhr who, if ingenious conjecture could supply the place of proof, might be called the discoverer of Roman history, and whose prodigious stores of knowledge scarcely surpassed his perspicacity and powers of combination, was, as so many commanding intellects are recorded to have been, not insensible to the charm of lighter study, diversifying his profound researches with the perusal of novels, and particularly delighted with those of Sir Walter Scott. The misplaced reverence or precision of those who make a poiat of reading the whole of the productions which they undertake, is apparent from the circumstance that it is often a matter of chance or caprice with authors them- selves, whether so much or more is prepared for perusal. In works especially of narrative or reflection, and above all in those of mere science, the best rule is, to examine only such parts as comprise what is original, or new to ourselves. Althoxigh to the immense advantages resulting from the present facilities for publication, is joined the evil of BOOKS AND THEIR USE. ,311 myriads of worthless performances, it is not the wise who suffer from the circumstance. They take effectual care to preserve themselves from the infection, and reap the benefit whUe they escape the injury. Such a one, inspecting a large collection or catalogue of books, would perhaps remember the saying of an ancient philosopher on witness- ing a display of costly articles, and be ready to exclaim, though with a feeling somewhat different from a philosophic contempt of acquisitions. How many things are here which I do not want !* If the merit of books is to be determined by the test of new or vigorous ideas, or a power of invention depicting ideal scenes or characters with vraisemblance and effect, there are not many which deserve nluch attention. The omissions of some writers are more instructive than the remarks of others ; as those who teU us what to unlearn are not the least valuable of teachers. Of the majority of Works, the essence might be reduced to the compass of a few pages. Leave out the trappings, the obvious or admitted truths, and the repetitions — to say nothing of the fallacies and the fictions, which make up the staple of so many books — and what will remain ? A mind even moderately stored with literature and thought, or any mind intent on some equivalent for the payment of time, may well dispense with the perusal of such performances, or peruse them in the way attorneys examine deeds of law, who only glance at the leading points of a document, to ascertain its purport and general provisions; — a method similar to that adopted by Magliabecchi, the famous Floren- tme librarian, who was accustomed to inspect the title, preface, and principal chapters of a volume, and then, except on rare occasions, when he scrutinised the treatise or some particular part with care, lay it aside, assured that * Socrates, in pompa cum magna vis auri argentique ferretur, ' Quam multa non desidero ! ' inquit. — Cio. Tasc. Qneest. lib., v. cap. 32. 312 BOOKS AND THEIR USE. he was in possession of its contents. This, one may pre- sume, would fairly match the accomplishment which the witty and delightful Fuller ascribes to Perkins, of " riding post through an author." What Goldsmith remarks with so much humour respecting the writers of his day, has lost none of its significance by, the lapse of a century. " The body of the learned," says that most ingenious and entertaining of essayists, " may be com- pared to a Persian army, where there are many pioneers, several sutlers, numberless servants, women and children in abundance, and but few soldiers." Any work has merit which brings the faculties of the reader into play; but tame, unimpeachable common-place, which only puts them to sleep, is one of the worst forms that dulness can assume. A bad book is like a bad engraving,, where nothing stands out prominently. Thebe seems no great wisdom in the modem practice of reprinting the works of authors entire. Voluminous writers generally comprise much that is worthless; and life being so short, and excellent books so numerous, only the best productions of the best authors should be presented to the public. At all events there is little sense in raking together the most trifling pieces ever thrown off for the purpose of the moment, and annexing them to editions which are styled the best, chiefly, it would seem, as con- taining the greatest quantity of inferior matter. Nor will the method, I take it, so much in vogue at present, be much longer tolerated, of appending to the posthumous editions of poets especially, a mass of notes and criticisms not at all required for the elucidation of the text, and which seldom fail to break in upon and sully the pure stream of the narrative or fable. The usage, though partly owing to the stiU unsatisfactory state of the copyright law, which, in harmony with the material bent of the age, accords less protection to the produce of a man's brains than to that BOOKS AND THEIE BSE. 313 of his hands, is an approximation to the old variorum plan of dealing with the classics, which have heen well nigh buried beneath the lucubration^ of critics and com- mentators. I question too the desirableness of introducing, at least beyond a sample or two, the first sketches or various readings of particular passages. No doubt it is curious, and sometimes instructive, to vritness such traces of the laboratory and the lima labor of genius ; but these are precisely the things which the writer would have been most anxious to conceal; as a sculptor who has wi-ought out some exquisite specimen of his art, would hardly care to have the rude models and successive shapes exposed which preceded the beautiful result. There is a danger also of the mind blending by association the rough draught with the finished picture, and thus weakening the impres- sion intended to be made. In general the less attention a person pays to the dress or adventitious accompaniments of literature, the better. A fondness for elegant typography and splendid embeUishments may supersede a regard to the ideas them- selves; and a fastidious predilection for those editions which are eminently correct, may be attended with a similar result; — as admiration of the tombs of sages or philanthropists, unconsciously substituted for the cultiva- tion of their excellences. The really valuable contents of 'almost any production may be appropriated from a very inferior edition : though in these times, it is true, cheap- ness is combined with accuracy, and beauty with utility. I would rather have a copy of Shakspeare such as may be ; purchased for a few shilHngs, than BoydeU's imposing folios : the one would stand a fair ©hance of being read ; the other would probably sleep on the shelf, too magnificent or too ponderous to be used. The passion for books, especially of the antique or curious class, is apt not only to assume the character of a hobby,, but to interfere with 314 BOOKS AND THEIR USE, the more native workings of the mind. Among the higher grade of bibliomaniacs, indeed, as that facile princeps of the tribe, Dr. Dibdin, there is commonly something better than a taste for the mere rarities or ornamental adjuncts of the press : while to certain explorers of our early litera- ture in particular, as the late Mr. George Ellis and Sir Egerton Brydges, belongs far higher praise than that of accomplished bibliographers. The delightful autobiography and other original pieces of the last named writer, make one regret that he should have spent so much of the vigour of his days, — though his faculties held out wonderfully to the close, — in pursuits too befitting the antiquarian plodder : a labour which he performed with sagacity and skill, so as to confer a benefit on letters, but which was far beneath the range of his excursive and vivacious genius; as is amply attested by the delicious banquet of thought, well suited to nourish the more refined intellectual aspirations, which has been famished by his imaginative and glowing pen, ia most of the volumes that record his own impressions and literary opinions, and not least in his charming " BecoUections of Foreign Travel." The more I read of this author, — of his prose, that is, for his poems I have scarce seen, except those interspersed in his autobiography, including the exquisitely beautiful sonnet on Echo and Silence, — the more am I filled with admiration of his extraordinary endow- ments, — the fineness and beauty of his perceptions, and the exceeding justness of his taste. Though I should be sorry to miss such a book as Johnson's Lives of the Poets, hard and unimaginative as it is, yet I heartily wish the task had fallen to Sir Egerton instead, or at least in addition to Johnson. The estimate would have been much more poetic, and with that more fair ; even if somewhat deficient ia the geniality and raciness that Leigh Hunt would have been sure to throw into a similar production of his pen. BOOKS AND THEIR USE. 315 Books scarcely answer their legitimate end, when appropriated to the ephemeral contests or passions of man- kind. One of the most delightfol effects of literature is to beguile the imagination from the passing scenes of existence, and replenish the understanding with abstract subjects or contemplations. An influence of the kind forms a special charm of our elder writers in general, especially the drama- tists, with Shakspeare as the chiefs; and to specify an instance from our own era, of that genuine admirer of their exhaustless treasures, the late Charles Lamb, whose quaint and humorous essays, with those of Leigh Hunt, and the best of Hazlitt's, are among the most delicious in the language. Nor, though England cannot claim him for a native, will I omit the right English and racy effusions of another pleasant wit, and lover of our ancient worthies, the author of the Sketch Book and Bracebridge HaU, Reading productions of this kind, after those of a controversial or fugitive nature, is like turning away from the dust and noise of a great city, to the fresh fields and pure air of the country. — The mixture of politics with literature, a union which has introduced so much of distemperature into the latter department, is not traceable to a very remote period of our annals, though specimens of an older date may not have come dovm to us ; for it is the nature of politics to act somewhat as the dry rot on the pieces with which they are associated, — a few rare instances excepted, where the vis vitce of genius triumphs over every constitutional disad- vantage, as in the splendid though erratic effusions of Aristophanes. Let the imagination receive ah early tincture from such works as Gulliver's Travels, and the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, that its notions of possibility may not be bounded by the ordinary course of incident, much less by the limited customs or maxims of any particular country. For capacities more advanced, especially those of meta- 316 BOOKS AND THEIR USB. physical turn, the writings of Berkeley which comprise his beautiftd ideal theory, so beautifully propounded, might not be without effect in precluding that impatience of every thing novel or speculative, which is so serious a barrier to freedom and expansion of thought. It is a remarkable trait of the Thousand and One Nights, that while the main texture of the stories presents the wildest marvels of oriental fiction, the work abounds in faithful delineations of the manners and superstitions of the Arab tribes, as for the most part they exist at the present hour. The circumstance might surely claim for the collection the good graces even of the most punctilious lovers of fact ; the staple of truth which runs through the tales being enough, we might suppose, to have preserved them from Bishop Atterbury's disparaging remarks in one of his letters to Pope. If that prelate had not seen them for the first time in old age and in sickness, it were diiBcult to conceive a more decisive proof of his radical destitution of a taste for the imaginative, than the slight, not unmixed with aversion, which he betrays for the fine fables and colourings of these wondeiful performances. I dare say he admired the Odyssey, the Arabian Nights of antiquity. The fashion of cramming the infant mind with scientific lore, instead of feeding it with those poetic and fictitious narratives which nourish the fancy, and awaken without tasking the slumbering sensibilities, is at length, one may hope, rather on the wane. It is not less true of intellect than of the body, that premature exertion occasions mal- conformation or disease. Some of the sagest observers of human nature have entered their protest against a system which, beginning with children as men, bids fair to end in their becoming, not men but children. I might mention the names of Coleridge, Sir Walter Scott, Charles Lamb, the excursive and variously gifted author of that work so saturated with Attic wit — the Doctor; and others among the choice spirits of the age. The admirable nursery tale BOOKS AND THEIR USE. 317 of Goody Two Shoes, whose title is no doubt sufficient to provoke the contempt of many grave pretenders to wisdom, has been attributed with considerable plausibility to Oliver Goldsmith, the most fascinating prose writer in our lan- guage. Dr. Johnstone, in his Life of Parr, relates an amusing anecdote of the venerable scholar buying at Shrewsbury a large number of old nursery stories, as Tom Hiokathrift, Bed Eiding Hood, etc., to the no small delight of Dr. Butler (afterwards bishop of Lichfield) and his pupils. The origin and transformations of these ancient popular legends, for the most part of Scandinavian descent, form a subject of philosophic as well as literary curiosity. The doctrine is applicable to other periods besides the earliest. Sterne, in alluding to a story of two lovers whose tomb was feigned to be in the neighbourhood of Lyons, and which he describes as having remained with him better than any thing else he had read in the account of that celebrated city, remarks, with his not unfrequent mixture of gaiety and penetration, that " there is a soft era in every gentle mortal's hfe, where such a story affords more pabulum to the brain than aU the frusts, and crusts, and rusts of antiquity, which travellers can cook up for it." The fine sarcastic vein which sparkles through the works of this extraordinary vrit, who made so merry with the solemn fopperies of his time, would not be amiss in our own, amidst the empirical conceits which Dulness engenders, and Folly is pleased to patronise. It has been somewhat the vogue, among certain readers and critics, to abuse this eccentric writer, whose genius displays the vivacity and brilliance of Eabelais, with a power of the pathetic which that mirth-loving, deep-thinking, though gross and licentious satirist, never possessed, for an affectation of sensibility, covering but a selfish or cold- hearted nature ; an imputation which I, for one, will never believe, any more than that the slightest insincerity of the kmd is to be traced in the character or productions of 318 BOOKS AND THEIK USE. Eousseau. Something more than the epigrammatic flip- pancy of a Walpole, or the flippancy or idiosyncrasy of any, touched or untouched vdth the finer impulses of humanity, is necessary to convince me that the effusioiis of poor Yorick betray the symptoms of a morbid sentimen- tality ; however I may regret that feelings so exquisite as his were combiaed with unworthy conduct, or that his com- positions should be stained with passages calculated to offend purity of moral taste, if not piety. A heart capable of conceiving such a character as Uncle Toby, to say nothing of the episode of Le Fevre, and many a beautiful fragment besides, could not have been without stamina essentially estimable. MENTAL FORMATION. |HETHER the mind is mortal or immortal, it is worth cultivating; — ia the one case, because its culture has a consequence proportionate to the interests that make up the weal or woe of the present state ; in the other, a consequence commensurate with the interests of eternity. In general it is no douht gifted with a capacity of high progression, STen under circumstances little favourable to its developement. It was a maxim of that extraordinary and iU-fated genius,, Chatterton, that man is equal to any thing, requiring but industry and self-denial to achieve whatever he pleases. The notion is in sub- stance perhaps correct ; though few have their faculties so far awakened or stimulated as to resolve on signalising themselves, and still fewer to maintain the resolution unimpaired, amidst the sacrifices and toils exacted by its performance. To do so would argue the possession of no vulgar endowments ; a determination to excel being seldom found apart from a correspondent ability for success. Perhaps we should make a nearer approach to accuracy in saying, that not many things are impossible to a mind capable of entertaining a fixed and prolonged passion for their attainment. Men hope, by systems and rules, to shape difierent minds according to one established model ; but nature and the accidents of life intervene to thwart the design, and 320 MENTAL FORMATION. thus keep up the infinite diversity of intellect and attain- ments, corresponding to the equally varied tempers and fortunes of mankind. The levelling process may suit well enough the notion that aU minds are originally equal ; or the fancy, surely not less preposterous, that it depends hut on position or exterior influences whether a man of high intellectual capacity shall be a distinguished mathematician, or poet, or active moulder of the destinies of his species. In second-rate qualities, no doubt, there may be much of this pliability ; but all lofty genius seems characterised by a special innate bias, which, even if it may be repressed or subdued by circumstances, can never be supplanted by an impulse essentially different. "What extrinsic causes, for example, could occasion a marked developement of the imaginative faculty ia certain persons of otherwise pre- eminent endowments ? Who could dream of Newton, under any outward system or agencies, becoming a great poet, or a poet at all? Johnson, it is true, could broach such an extravagance, which a few with slight pretensions to his sagacity may patronise at present ; though we might suppose that his theory of genius, as strong mental power accidentally turned to a particular walk, was by this time sufi&cieutly exploded, had not some recent declaimers re- vived the dogma in more than its prifaitive absurdity. It were a superficial fancy that the mass of mankind, who pass their lives in ordinary and active pursuits, are always least trained intellectually. Most of the objects and affairs which come under their notice, demand the exercise of some judgment and discrimination ; so that the faculties are often more iavigorated and sharpened by this species of education, than by that which is obtained almost exclusively through the medium of books. There is one accomplishment in particular, observable in men of busiaess and the world — they are in general no contempti- ble physiognomists. A practised mendicant in one 6i our MENTAL FORMATION. 321 large towns is as good a judge of countenances as Lavater himself, though without his rules. Some intellects gather strength from slight and im- perceptible causes, as trees occasionally flourish almost on the naked rock. In both cases, however, the nutrition actually received is less inconsiderable than might be supposed. Trees, in the circumstances mentioned, derive supplies of air, as of moisture, through the medium of their leaves — the latest researches in vegetable physiology- demonstrating that the principal food of plants is drawn from the carbon of the atmosphere : and with regard to the understanding, its nourishment may appear scanty merely because extracted from objects, or appropriated in ways, little obvious or common. The study of languages has given a character to modem minds by the habits of discrimination and analysis which it requires, and has partly contributed to the present advancement of science and reasoning. To represent it as nothing but a criticism of words, or an exercise of memory, is utterly erroneous. It demands no trifling 'perspicacity and judgment; admits the operations even of fancy, picturing things of which words are but the symbols; and tends to promote quickness and depth of apprehension. A good linguist is always a man of considerable acuteness, and often of pre-eminent taste ; while the structure and modifications of language afford no small insight into the history and the laws of human thought. >V It seems unadvisable to attempt composition in early hfe, as the understanding is then almost whoUy unfurnished with ideas as well as expression, and not possessing the requisite materials for composing, would only waste in the effort the time and attention which had better be occupied with surrounding objects, or other sources of information. w 322- MENTAL FORMATION. Milton might well censure as a "preposterous exaction," what he calls "forcing the empty wits of children to compose themes, verses, and orations, which," says he, "are the acts of ripest judgment, and the final work of a head fiUed hy long reading and ohserving with elegant maxims and copious invention." The remark, though directed especially against juvenile essays in the learned languages, applies no less to similar attempts in our own tongue. As a formula, open to the modifications helonging to few things more than to rules for the precise course of intellectual effort, may be offered the following: — In youtii study ; in maturity compose ; in old age correct. Amidst the multiplicity of books and sciences that invite our curiosity, the most compendious and effectual method is to study any particular topic in works where it is systematically and fuUy treated. There wiU afterward be Httle occasion to consult other performances on the subject, as a slight inspection of those parts only which profess to contain any new discoveries wiU be amply sufficient. The advice is unsound as well as impracticable, which recommends that our time be always occupied, with some industrious, or at least specific pursuit. After laborious mental efforts, the attention should be diverted to the lightest things possible ; and as a general rule, it is best to leave the intellect a good deal free to its ovm opera- tions, and to the entrance of casual reflections. Hobbes attributed his superiority to the moderation of his reading, affirming that if he had read as much as the philosophers, he should have been as ignorant. The fact is, he read less than he meditated. This, the great secret of all vigorous creative thought, is a prime requisite in constructing the durable monuments of genius. MENTAL FORMATION. 323 Of literary acquisitions, those are often found the most useful as well as agreeable, which have not been secured in the regular path of study ; yet the very ability to appreciate and apply these stores has perhaps been communicated by the more direct and less captivating in- quiries. It is remarked by Dugald Stewart, that in tracing the histoiy of the moral sciences, including such as are least akin to metaphysics, the greatest improvements ap- pear to halve been made by men whose faculties had b^en trained in that salutary school. The sciences of which the study affords the greatest exercise to the imderstanding, are not those whose prin- ciples are the most fixed and demonstrable, as, for instance, natural philosophy, or mathematics; but such as involve a degree of fluctuation, and require the balancing of pro- babihties, as political or mental philosophy, ethics, or human nature in its individual manifestations. To borrow an illustration from the fine arts, the former may be com- pared to the capitals of Corinthian columns, or friezes of regular proportions, which, however necessary or orna- mental, demand no invention or fancy in the architect, but only adherence to a model, with a certain amount of mechanical skiU. The latter resemble the arabesque or old Gothic embellishments, the draperies,-and more intricate combinations of beauty, which require not merely a wider range but a loftier order of talent. The chief recommendation of mathematical studies consists, perhaps, in their tendency to discipline the mind. But that end can be accomplished with equal advantage by the perusal of any abstract argumentative performance, which, exacting concentrated thought, fulfils the purpose of intellectual gymnastics. In this case also the under- standing will be storing itself with fresh ideas, so as to' receive more benefit than the study of mathematics can 324 MENTAL FORMATION. afford ; although the science may deserve attention on ac- count of the mental enlargement likely to result from acquaintance with a new branch of inquiry. Pbofound and unintermitted application of intellect is frequently more injurious than beneficial, as it tends to repress the excm-sions and impair the elasticity of its powers. The cultivation of a logical cast of mind in particular, is apt to estabHsh a habit of too connected and uniform a train in the association of ideas. The affairs of Efe, and the production of originality, demand remote and varied, rather than intimate or consecutive combina- tions of thought. A man may be a good logician, yet a very poor philosopher; to say nothing of capacity for the vivid and beautiful, though undefinable perceptions of im- aginative genius. While some kind of agitation is indispensable to the health and vigour of the mind, the species of commotion occasioned by events, or external causes, appears less favourable than that which is produced by its spontaneous efforts or reflections. An aptitude for what may be called self-evolved thoughts and feelings, Ib indicative of native power; and when applied to certain general subjects, is, accordiag to Wordsworth, a mark of the poetic tem- perament. Wheee the understanding is vigorous and rapid, the chief requisite is not profound information, but such a general and attractive view of subjects as may excite the faculties to the performance of their functions. For popu- lar purposes at least, the aim of literary artists should be similar to that of Rubens in his landscapes, of which, without neglecting the minor traits or finishing, he was chiefly solicitous to present the leading effect, or what may be called the inspiration. MENTAL FORMATION. 32,5 Mental chiaracter ma,y in great part be determined by the nature and extent of the speculative curiosity enter- tained. Persons of the lowest class of intellect have scarcely the smallest tincture of the feeling; while the portion which they possess is exercised about objects the most trivial and barren. A man of pre-eminent powers is usually distinguished for a curiosity at once comprehen- sive and insatiable. No kind of study or inquiry into fact, is a proper object of contempt. It is not unfrequent to possess a passion for particular species of knowledge, but the under- standing is scarcely in a proper tone unless information or truth, of every description, be seized with avidity. What Cicero describes as essential to the finished orator, acquaint- ance with the whole circle of learning, is not less desirable for all who aspire to the distinction of combined or com- .prehensive thought. Variety of studies and speculations, so far from weakening the faculties, is a powerful means of promoting their activity and growth. You seldom meet with persons of eminent capacity, whose range of reflection has been chiefly restricted to one department. Yet non multa, sed multum, say the advocates of a limitation which may indeed boast the authority of a PUny; though a maxim that, wise enough in its application to certain instances, would, taken absolutely, make the excep- tion the rule. Minute accuracy indeed is requisite in few branches of contemplation or learning, and can never be put in competition with extensive and diversified attain- ments, much less with Sowings from the weU-head of thought. For whUe the principles that lie at the basis of -any subject intended to be mastered should be thoroughly .explored in their import and relations, beyond this the freer the range of inquisition the better, though of necessity with slighter depth ; as in general the attempt to combine profound and critical con-eetness of detail, with a wide 32& MENTAL FORMATION. expatiation in the realms of knowledge, were about as rational as to expect in the same eye a far-reaching and a microscopical power of vision. Many seem to consider a taste for luxury as involved in a taste for literature, and bring against the latter objections which belong, if they apply at all, only to the former. Mere refinement, apart from correspondent means, may not be very desirable; but is totally distinct from enlargement of views, which can never, under any circumstances, be of itself injurious. The possessors of knowledge have in some instances, perhaps, more errors than the vulgar ; but they have also a thousand times more truths. The ignorant have few errors since they have but few notions of any sort. Who would disparage the faculty of vision, because, with the myriads of beautiftd objects and scenes which it discloses, it occasionally reveals such as are deformed or unsightly ? Mere exemption from error in general is within the reach of an ordinary genius. The characteristic of a powerful one is to grasp after new or vigorous ideas, though it may hold them in connexion with several minor inaccuracies. How many crude fancies are scattered over the speculations of Montaigne ! how many extravagant or doubtful positions disfigure those of Jeremy Taylor ! Yet where wiU you meet with greater discursiveness of thought than in both these vmters, the latter also gilding every subject with the brightest hues of imagination ? There are not a few errors and false assumptions in the works of Lord Bacon ; but what majesty, profoundness, poetry, and inven- tion ! Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy is invaluable, not so much for any precise information, as for its ample range of reflection and allusion, added to the wit and the varie- gated, recondite lore which saturate its pages. One might MENTAL FORMATION. 327 safely affirm that in ninety cases out of a hundred, a mind above the common is more distinguished by comprehension and variety than by unimpeachable correctness of view, which is compatible enough with poverty and sterility of intellect. What is the reason that deep investigation for the most part inspires so much attachment to the subject ? Not because other subjects are less fertile or propitious, but the whole world of matter and of mind being peopled with captivating truths, we require only to have our eyes opened to any particular department, to discover the wonders which it contains. The principle is much akin to that by which parents deem their children possessed of innumerable fascinations; a supposition seldom perhaps erroneous, — habits of daily converse and affection ensuring the observ- ance of attractions which are unperceived by less interested spectators. Geneeal knowledge, as distinguished from that which is limited to certain subjects, may be compared to the posses- sion of numerous senses. Profoundness in particular branches is sinular to a few senses, but those more acute. The former is more desirable to the individual ; the latter, where the communication of ideas is attempted, to others. Barrow, who held that a diversified range of study is the most pleasant, yet the prosecution of particular walks more serviceable to the community, seems to have struck the balance for himseK in favour of utility ; for notwithstand- ing his scholarship and ample miscellaneous acquisitions, he applied his chief attention to mathematical researches, in which his proficiency made him the worthy predecessor of Newton, and during the latter part of his life especially, to divinity. Perhaps he found that pleasure and benefit had but changed places, or rather coalesced. The result at least appears to have sanctioned his choice ; for his mathe- 328 MENTAL FORMATION. matical works, though practically superseded by subsequent ones, are excellent, and his theological productions have a massiveness and vigour, which the interspersion of thought outgrown by a larger and more penetrating philosophy, will hardly soon cast into shade. No doubt it would be easy to adduce exceptions to the position.^ It was a wise saying of Sir Matthew Hale, that a man cannot be thoroughly master of his own profession without a tincture of other sciences ; a notion which may be traced to his friendship with Selden, by whose advice he first extended his inquiries beyond topics of law, to the wide field of universal learning. The thorough investigation of any one region of thought vsdU qualify the mind for success in a different line of study; in part because there is great similarity, in all matters of research, as to appearance, operation, influ- ence, or the like; and also because the understanding acquires strength and enlargement from the exercise itself. To a person therefore aiming at general expansion or acuteness of intellect, almost any subject wiU be equally beneficial, if examined with patience and impartiality. It is worth while to master sofne kinds of learning, were it only to arrest the impertinence of scioHsts and pe- , dants, who assume an air of mystery and elevation on account of their attainments in those branches. Perhaps it would be a sufficient compensation for joining the society of Freemasons, to discover, what one of the uninitiated will scarcely be pardoned for terming, the emptiness of their rites and cabbalistic jargon ; thoughj as with associations of higher pretence, the weaknesses may show themselves chieily in the formulas or the surface, and the worth in the permanent elements that underlie them. The system of masonic brotherhood is characterised by one circumstance at least, almost unique in the history of private con- federations, as offeiing the spectacle- of a society, or bond MENTAL FOBMATION. 329 of union and kindly recognition, on principles that, wide as humanity itself, have no reference either to rank or pro- fessional pursuits, to political or religious creed. The possession of knowledge is less likely to foster vanity than the possession of riches. A man may abundantly augment his stock of ideas, yet have very Httle to show for his paias. Knowledge is apt to nourish pride rather than vanity ; wealth, vanity rather than pride. At the same time, pride is often fortified by abstaining from the investigation of difficult topics : for when the attention is withheld from subjects requiring close or diver- sified reflection, no mental infirmity or incompetence is perceived, and self-complacency is therefore easily indulged. Niebuhr, the famed historian of Rome, is said to have escaped all feeling of the kind, from early years, by a radical distaste for superficial research, as well as by the high models of excellence which had fixed his admiration. There have been few thorough scholars or deep thinkers who were proud. Bentley and some other names may occur as apparent exceptions to the remark, several of the literary and argumentative pieces of that renowned critic being dis- figured in tone, if not cramped or distorted in the reasoning, by an insolence and assumption oft^n affected by inferior polemics in the absence of a good cause, or of ability to defend it : but in the case of this remarkable man, more eminent for controversial acumen and vigour, than for any tincture of philosophy or profound thought, a species of native asperity, amounting almost to diseased idiosyncrasy, ought to bear the chief blame ; certainly not learning, wMch probably acted in mitigation ; Or if otherwise, would be but an instance of a good perversely misapplied. With the existing profusion of excellent works on miscellaneous topics, it seems undesirable for any but pro- fessional men, or those of peculiar aptitude, to enter 330 MENTAL FOEMATIOK. profoundly into scientific researches. Extensive attain- ments ia these branches are Httle beneficial to the under- standing, being apt to subtilise or contract rather than dilate the contemplative faculty ; . and are for the most part incompatible with proficiency in more important, as ■well as more interesting investigations. To excel in the sciences or in languages requires almost exclusive appHca- tion during life ; but to excel in the walks of polite literature, the more diversified the subjects of inquiry, the better. There are certain regions of study, indeed, which com- bine with what is scientific so much that is practical, and besides affording scope to a rational curiosity, are so intimatiely connected with the questions of morals and happiness, that to be ignorant of them were a discredit to any one with pretensions to education. Such are the subjects so ably expounded by Dr. Southwood Smith in his Philosophy of Health ; a book which, while intelligible to an ordinary capacity, embodies the most valuable dis- coveries in physiology, presenting views alike clear and comprehensive on the points it is intended to elucidate. An acquaintance too with the leading principles of science, in whatever depai-tment — an accomplishment which the Preliminary Discourse of Sir John Herschel has rendered so inviting — may be cultivated with advantage ; among other reasons because most subjects, as well as truths, have a mutual affinity, more or less blending with each other ; and because a habit of minuteness is necessary to correct and modify aU general speculations. One of the most important parts of what Bacon might call intellectual husbandry, is the culture of the affections and the fancy, though in general it is entirely neglected. It would indeed require a widely different order of instruc- tors from those that commonly abound. The character if not the degree of a man's happiness depending in no slight measure on the colour and force of his imagination, it MENTAL FORMATION. 331 argues little wisdom to cultivate with so much assiduity the more mechanical principles of our nature, or the ai-ts of mere secular advancement, while the fine faculty which often determines the whole complexion of our heing is allowed to run waste, without the least effort at training. Among the wiser philosophy may justly be ranked what would receive no inappropriate designation as the philosophy of daily life ; in one form or other more essential as an accomplishment than most of the subjects included in the prevalent systems of education ; according to which, the best recommendation of a study would often appear to be its remoteness from the ordinary affairs of men and of society : so that classifications of vegetable or mineral products, the succession of ancient and semi-mytho- logical dynasties, or the abstract properties of numbers, assume an aspect of greater consequence than the living world, or any of the circumstances in which mankind are personally interested, or over which they have actual con- trol. It is an unpleasing symptom in literature when its efforts are lavished on scientific or abstruse disquisitions, to the comparative neglect of life, imagination, and the feelings. Except for professional or particular pm-poses, those kinds of knowledge are the most valuable of which the interest increases with life : a trait pre-eminently charac- teristic of theology; not indeed the scholastic and tradi- tional dogmas which often pass under that name, and which, more or less a mingled product of Greek and mediaeval metaphysics, too frequently pervert or narrow the heart, but the science that is conversant with man's noblest intellectual and spiritual relations, and as presented, with- out distortion or spurious intermixture, in those multipKed revelations of the Deity that appeal to the deeper instincts of om- nature. 332 MENTAL FORMATION. To preserve the understanding healthful, frequent variations in the trains of thought are necessary. The wits of the schoolmen, as Lord Bacon has well noted, became diseased from the confined circle of their reading and meditations ; and it may be observed in examples of regular madness, as in partial approaches to that state, that the mind is almost constantly running on the same theme. The ancient practice of allowing land to remain fallow for a season is now exploded, and a succession of different crops found preferable. The case is similar with regard to the understanding, which is more relieved by change of study than by total inactivity; — though not many, perchance, are like the excellent Bishop Sanderson, who when wearied -with, subtle and perplexing researches, used to betake himself for recreation to heraldry and gene- alogies. Paley, but with too little allowance for diversity of mental organisation, especially for those of imaginative temperament, so different from his own, conceives that a mind well- disciplined can turn from the perusal of a poem or light essay to a piece of abstruse reasoning, without any feeling of abrupt or unnatural transition. Let the study of intellectual philosophy be combined with that of political economy, as the former is . concerned chiefly with speculative abstractions, and the latter with practical details. The exertion of the faculties in opposite directions appears to have been a favourite principle with Plato, who joined to the culture of poetic taste the severer researches of geometry, and in whose writings we discover so remarkable a union of subtlety and imagination. They whose general intellectual occupation is of an abstruse or little imaginative nature, often feel more interest than others, at least find no trivial entertainment, in the efforts of fancy, or the lighter productions of letters; MENTAL FOEMATION. 333 perhaps because contrast and novelty are thus brought into more direct and pleasing operation. Brown the metaphy- sician, and with higher results Boseovich, so noted for his mathematical and scientific genius, cultivated the art of poeti-y; as, though not with equal enthusiasm, did Koscoe, the accomplished historian of Leo the Tenth and of Lorenzo de' Medici. Grotius united to his many other distinguished Rapacities, that of votaiy of the muses ; and the same may he said of Malebranche, Leibnitz, and other subtle thinkers. Galileo had a remarkable taste for similar studies, and for aU the more elegant parts of literature. One of the gravest and deepest divines in our language. Bishop Hall, was in his earlier days a wit, and a brilliant writer of satire ; which, as composed while he was a student at the University, and published when about twenty-three, .may doubtless be as- signed to intervals of relaxation fi-om severer pursuits. Montesquieu could amuse his old age with the love verses of Ovid. Gray, the scholar, critic, antiquary, philosopher, as well as bard, facetiously prefers to the paradisiacal en- joyments of the Koran, the reading of new romances. If he could hazard such a panegyric in reference to the novels of Marivaux and CrebiUon, what woiild he have said to the dazzling miracles of our Northern Magician ? It is worthy of notice, that to the perusal of the class of fictitious com- positions, the acute and incomparable Berkeley was much addicted. The best way of acquiring most branches of knowledge^ is to' study them, if possible, for some particular object or occasion. This wUl supply the curiosity with a powerful stimulus, and communicate to the search a practical char- acter essentially beneficial. In mental as in most other efforts, excitement is half the battle. Pope, we are told, obtained his acquaintance with the classics by reading them solely for the sense. On the same principle, the culture of foreign languages were best essayed through the medium of 88i MENTAL FOBMATION. fictitious or otheJ: entertaining performances ; as in French tie Adventures of Gil Bias ; those of T6l6maque ; or what is as captivating as any romance, though with aU the re- commendations of substantial truth, Voltaire's splendid historical sketch of Charles the Twelfth. Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield is one of the first hooks used by our G^Uican neighbours in learning the English. How much misceUaneous information, and in how short a time, is often accumulated by members of the bar, to equip them- selves for a particular cause. There is a freshness too and vivacity about knowledge amassed from such directness of purpose, which seldom fails to evince its superior efSciency. Perhaps the education intended to render a person most active and skilful in practical affairs, should be conducted in the main without the intervention of books,, which are chiefly serviceable in situations requiring rather the exercise of brain than of hand, or for objects outside the routine of ordinary existence. Thus the training of sol- diers, like that established in the Spartan state, which was only an extensive military organization, and where the use of written laws was forbidden, is effected by oral instruction, example, and practice. In this manner too, according to Xenopbon, the ancient Persians appear to have been disciplined for the pursuits of civil as well as martial hfe. The way to inteUectnal proficiency is the comparative disregard of what is acquired, and the pursuit of what is original' or unknown. A person who aims at the expan- sion of his faculties, will be careful to exact information or stimulus from every subject of his research, and esteem no work of particular value which fails to suggest some new reflections. To invigorate and excite the powers, the best course is, not so much to urge them with a multitude of motives,, MENTAL FORMATION. 335 as to bring some great subject before the attention, es- pecially a work impregnated with the conceptions of genius, or illuminated with the bright images of fancy. Nothing is a more pleasing incitement to intellectual ambition, than the biography of men of letters. ' Yet it were a narrow philosophy, or narrower benevolence, which should persuade people generally to aim at high mental distinction. The enlargement of the domains of Uteratnre or science, and the nobler products of imagination, are com- monly the work of those rare gifted spirits that appear but at intervals, and burst through every barrier ; while for mere entertainment in the walks of poetry or prose, an ample amount of literary wealth has been already contributed. Nor will it be alleged that pre-eminent culture is required in the ordinary occupations of life, for which a very moderate share of understanding is sufficient. What is most desirable is a fund of practical sense, in conjnnction with principle ; quahties that, compatible with the possession of various elevating tastes, seem to prevail for the most part aipong the Swiss, though with few or no instances of brilliant genius or profound lore. Peofessions of universal education are as ludicrous as professions of universal cure, the obliquity and inaptitude of some minds being absolutely incurable. It is remarked by the philosophical historian of the Eoman Empire, in contrasting the elaborate nurture bestowed on Commodus with his subsequent demeanour, that "the power of instruc- tion is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it almost surperfluous." Yet it is with mental as with bodily distempers; few are unsusceptible of mitigation. It is curious to observe how, son|etimes, those qualities in our nature which usually require to be counteracted, become in effect the occasions of our advantage. We are MENTAL FOBMATION. prone, for example, to neglect whatever is imposed as a task ; yet this disposition is not seldom a preservatiTe from considerable injury in education, where the subjects or modes of study prescribed are, in numbers of instances, more suited to contract and deaden the opening faculties, than to foster their expansion or sensibility. The mis-trained are perhaps more numerous than the untrained. Milton not more quaintly than justly describes the repast too commonly provided for the satisfaction of juvenile appetites, as a "feast of sow-thistles and brambles;" articles, methinks, stiU less inviting to the palate than the potations of water-gruel often dealt out to people more advanced in years and patience, if not in wit. A rigid, Procrustean-like system of treatment in particular, whether applied to intellect or habits of life, is little favourable to elasticity or luxuriance of thought, and sometimes operates as a blight to every thing imaginative or original. Of all the states of antiquity, Sparta, which was governed by the strictest institutions, produced the fewest genuises. It has been remarked by an accomplished critic, that from the schools of the Jesuits, eminent as they were in merit, yet, being conducted on one imvaryiag plan, scarcely a single mind has arisen, that has decisively enlarged the boundaries of any great branch of research. Descartes however should in fairness be excepted; for though he retired to Holland with a view to enter on his career of bold philosophic speculation, he had long before adopted his principles of independent reflection, having resolved when but nineteen to lay aside aU books, and endeavouring to obliterate the notions he had received, investigate for himself the founda- tions of knowledge. The deduction would merely be, that some minds are of so vigorous and irrepressible a cast, that no species of discipline can quell their inherent capabilities. Schiller astonished the world with that eccentric outburst of fancy and enthusiasm, the Bobbers, in which he sought MENTAL FORMATION. 337 relief from the stifling emotions of a. perplexed and medita- tive brain, when a student in a ducal academy, the organis- ation of which was in every part adjusted but to the dead level of a well-working piece of machinery. It were a topic hardly less worthy of curiosity than some which occupy the schools, how many a divine genius has been slain by education. What a fund of various and interesting lore has been accumulated by some persons, who die without having ren- dered it available to themselves or others. In many instances, the best part of a man of letters goes down with him to his grave. Such appears to have been eminently the case with the poet Gray, and more recently with that prodigy of erudition, the celebrated Dr. Parr, — of stamina well able to bear the attempts of vntlings or partisans at his depreciation. Let the attainment of knowledge give place to its application and use. Speculation is subordinate to action, and learning to its employment. Some allowance is doubtless to be. made for the effect of contemplative pursuits on the intellect and pleasures of the party concerned, even where the fruits of meditation extend no further. If expanded views, elevation of sentiment, ex- quisite tastes and associations, have been acquired, shall reproach be administered with severity, or at all, because the resists of these accomplishments have been little diffused ? Is it nothing to imbue one immortal mind with the graces of literature ? to ennoble it with the lights of science ? to animate and charm it with the visions of truth and beauty ? Rather, one of the diviner ends of individual •existence is thus to be attained; nor were it easy to perceive how the cidture of those faculties which most bespeak the grandeur of our nature, can fail to have an important bearing on the con- dition of the spirit through all its future stages. POLITICAL PAINTING— PA^TISANSHIP- EEFORM. iJT would be easy to di-aw such a picture of tte laws and institutions of almost any country, as, with- out iacluding a single circumstance decidedly incorrect, might induce a person unacquainted with the actual particulars of the case to imagine, that scarcely the slightest grievance or misery existed among the community. The suppression of some facts, and a certain arrangement or colouring in the exhibition of others, may hare aU the effects of positiT6 falsehood in misleading the judgment. There is hardly indeed a species of polity or administration that may not boast some peculiar excellences or beneficial results. An array of these alone would furnish a plausi- ble defence of the most obnoxious establishments ; and in such unfair methods of deUneation, Paley, though with consummate ability, has too much indulged in his political speculations. Admitting that some of the worst institutions or forms of government in theory, are combined with several advantages in practice, and that some of the best theoreti- cally are connected with considerable practical evils, the question occurs, AVhich has a 'preponderance of recommen- dations in its favour ? Though men are perhaps more apt to modify systems than systems to influence men, yet certain systems afford least scope or inducement to the perverting operation of humanity. The maxim inti-oduced POLITICAL PAINTING— PABTISANSHIP—REFOEM. 839 by Johnson towards ihe close of Goldsmith's Traveller, that the happiness of nations is little affected by their laws or political constitution, may justly be classed with those poetic illusions which, however agreeable to the fancy, a slight acquaintance with fact, apart from reasoning, would be sufficient to dissolve. The separation of men into distinct parties, which seems to be an effect of the exercise of judgement, is more frequently occasioned by impatience of that ex- iiercise. It is much easier to adopt the opinions, or rather the watchwords, of any particular body in the gross, than to think for oneself, or select truth out of different bodies. One cause of political party is the ideal connexion with distinguished characters or events by which the mul- titude of subordinate adherents beguile their imagination. They who possess no personal importance, and have no method of communicating notoriety or effect to their indivi- dual sentiments, may in a sense attain all by proxy; for the adoption of a certain system of politics gives them an imaginary identity with its most illustrious supporters, •and a kind of participation in their success or glory. The circumstance may explain the fact, that while many are content enough to hear their friends or acquaintances dis- ]paraged, few bear with equanimity disparagement of their own faction. Of the former they are a sort of rivals; of the latter, an integral portion. . The effect of party, in legislative asseriibh'es, resembles that of the division of labour ; the merits and defects of ■a measure being more fuUy developed in consequence of different minds employing attention oh the one or the other, than if all were equally occupied with the consideration of both. 340 POLITICAL PAINTING — PARTISANSHIP REFORM. Dependence is mostly in vain, where the union of many for a considerable period is requisite. Almost all failures in political confederacies, as well as private associa- tions; have been owing to tiie dissensions or jealousies of their members. One period or race is so linked with another, that extensive political or ecclesiastical reformations are always accomplished slowly. The taint of national prejudice, hke the cobur of the darker tribes who have intermarried with the white, is effectually removed only after transmission through several generations. By long familiarity, men become so attached to the existing order of things, that any alteration, however advantageous in the end, has almost the effect of tearing away the fibres of the heart. It may reconcile us to some of the evils attendant on political revolutions to know, that with the subversion of several things truly valuable, is commonly connected the overthrow of many vain idols of the mind. The opponents of national or political innovations are not seldom those who ai-e equally adverse to alteration in the state and sentiments of their own minds. A person will hardly dread the thought of exterior or public change, whose ideas in general aje undergoing a process of inces- sant change or augmentation. Yet this is certainly the case with every thinking or excursive mind; for what is intellectual advancement but a series of intellectual innova- tions? It is natural that they whose understandings are stationary should wish pohtics to be so, and, not over- bm-dened with wisdom themselves, repose on the wisdom, real or imaginary, of their predecessors. By a curious perversity of nature, however, were the wisest systems of polity, national or domestic, to be established, they would be only of brief duration : changes would in- evitably arise, because mankind are changeable ; and their POLITICAL PAINTING — PAETISANBHIP — RKFOEM. 341 lestlesness alone wlU ever ensure an abundance of innova- tions. Are we therefore to lament because the mntations incident to mortal things attend also laws and public insti- tutions ? Only in this respect, that people are often more disposed to encroach on what is good than what is evil. Abuses and inanities are allowed to continue long without • molestation ; while arrangements adapted for beneficial pur- poses are soon displaced or impaired. The qualifying reflection, appHcable to many a perplex- ing problem in ihe history of the race is, that on a comprehensive estimate, or in reference to ulterior results, the resemblance is perhaps but to the retrocession of waves amid the general advance of the tide; to the reverses, through false or precipitate moves, which more or less precede a mastery of the game of chess; or to the trips and other casualties of childhood in its progi-ess towards maturity. In such a view at least it may be said, with some appearance of truth, that the history of mankind is the history of blunders. Men of comprehensive and penetrating genius are often more vehement in reprobating erroneous or foolish acts of legislation than to others seems necessary. The truth is, they have a deeper insight into the absurdity or Ipemicious tendencies of what they oppose, than the gene- fraiity dream of. Mankind appear to be in league against their own interests, and betray the same spirit in matters_ of secular concern as in those relating to reHgion. Let a wiser and better course of things be exhibited ever so clearly, or enforced with the utmost cogency, no practical alteration is admitted, or only after repeated struggles against its adoption. The battle with error or apathy must be fought .again and again ; and often those, who make the most strenuous eiforts in the cause, never live to witaess its 342 POLITICAL PAINTING PAETISANSHIP BEFOEM. triumpli, or reap the ffuit of their exertions. Fox, Sheridan, Grattan, Romilly, expired amid contests which then seemed all but hopeless. It was with no little diffi- culty, and in no short time, that Frederick the Second of Prussia, though an absolute monarch, was able to extinguish servitude in his dominions ; being opposed not only by the lords of the soil, but by the serfs themselves, who enter- tained a morbid dread of the innovation, though their con- dition was so wretched that they could neither marry, nor possess any kind of property, vrithont the consent of their feudal superiors. — In affairs of legislation and politics, there is often the same antipathy to change, as among the semi- civilised orders in reference to their untutored habits ; such a repugnance, and for reasons about as substantial, as is so well delineated in the " Cottagers of Grienbumie;" a work that exhibits a picture of manners not yet extinct in other classes besides the peasantry, whether Scotch or English. The remains of political prejudice ever linger the longest in remote towns and villages, where the possession of only a moderate degree of intelligence, added to a prevalent system of dependence and exclusion, is apt to nourish sentiments of servility on the one hand, and of assumption on the other. Public reformations are sure to an-ive, sooner or later ; but who can estimate or atone for the countless sufiferings occasioned by the delay ? or answer for their effectual opera- tion after they have so long been denied ? It is too late to repair the house when crumbling into ruins. NOTUL^ LITEKARIiE; OR CRITICAL GLANCES. S youth is the period for exaggeration, and suscepti- bility of external impressions, the opinions which persons of geaius may at that season have formed, respecting the merit of works then in a meridian of popu- larity, are entitled to httle deference. The contagion of admiration is then easily caught, and the feehng once imbibed is often fondly retained through Hfe. It would be affectation, or blindness, or worse, to deny the critical talents of Gifford, wanting as he was in the finer percep- tions of fancy, and in those generous impulses which warm to original worth, associated with whatever creed or party, or with strange anomahes and eccentricities ; — ^but to hear the reverential terms applied to him by the author of Childe Harold, we might imagine the late editor of the Quarterly to have been, not a, person of no invention and of narrow taste, but, if hardly among the brightest luminaries of the world of letters, at least a match for any whose productions he undertook to decry. A more remarkable instance, perhaps, is to be found in Robert HaU's extravagant eulogies of Mrs. More; a lady whose moral excellences it were superfluous to praise, and whose writings betray no penury of rarer endowments, but of whom it would be idle to affirm, that in a literary or intellectual estimate, she cannot bear comparison with 344 NOTULa; LITBBARI^ J OK CRITICAL GLANCKS. Joanna BaiOie or Maria Edgeworth ; not to mention Mrs. Hemans, or Mrs. Jameson — so admirable for purity and fineness of observation — or the late Miss Austen, whose truth and delicacy of colouring in the delineation of every-day Ufe, though with sHgh't tincture of romance or wit or vein of poetic imagery, and stiU less of the deeper or more original combinations of passion, are paralleled by few. Madame de Stael was a foreigner, and therefore need not be brought into the controversy; otherwise her briUiaucy of intellect, heightened by a glow of enthusiasm and fancy, would far eclipse any rival pretensions of Mrs. More. Many a fair writer however of our own country, besides those just specified, would have no occasion to shiink from the competition ; or rather, might scruple the honour of such a rivalship, I may instance Mrs. Barbauld; Mrs. Hamilton, authoress of the " Cottagers of Grlenbumie;" the right genial and country-loving Miss Mitford; Mrs. KadcHffe, with her mysterious old mansions and castles and forests ; Charlotte Smith, neither as a poetess nor a noveUst sufficiently appreciated ; Anna Maria and Jane Porter ; Mrs. Inchbald, so touching and truthful a story-teUer; the dehghtful Caroline Bowles — (so would I still call her) ; and not to swell the list, as might easily be done with a number of Uving names, the late Miss Jane Taylor, whose " Essays in Rhyme," if not always pervaded by the most expansive tone, would yet scarcely do discredit to Crabbe, and may rea,dily be deemed equal, in nature and force, to anything of Mrs. More's. The celebrity of this lady, whose conventionalisms, not to say common-places, are abeady consigning her perform- ances to oblivion, seems atti-ibutable in great degree to her acquaintance vpith Johnson, and her consequent appearance in Boswell. She afterward became the proteg6e of a class possessing considerable infiuence and repute ; and dis- tinction once secured, with special feeling enlisted in its support, applause is as much a matter of course as a man's NOTULJB LITEEAEI^ ; OR CRITICAL GLANCES. 345 arrival in London when he is a passenger for it by the railway. But the weight of HaU's panegyric, or of his opinions on subjects of literature beyond a very Hmited range, is sufficiently balanced by his avowed contempt for all modem poetry, and his estimate of Coleridge generally as a mere ignis fatuus ! Correct mediocrity will succeed better, at least for a while, with the public at large, as well as with a certain class of critics, than the most extraordinary merit, combined with some conspicuous foibles or peculiarities. Witness Bentham m jurisprudence and legislation ; in poetry, Cole- ridge and Wordsworth. As to the two latter, by the by, posterity will learn with surprise that "these illustrious intel- lects, worthy of the most inventive ages of poesy, were long held up to ridicule by contemporary criticism, as little better than simpletons or dreamers ; but will scarce need to be told that the simplicity and the dreaming, not to say the per- versity or malice, belonged exclusively to their defamers. Even Christopher North, unHcked genius as he was, could say of Wordsworth that he is " in all things the reverse of Milton — a good man, and a bad poet :" an opinion which, however qualified and in a sense atoned for by the sub- sequent views of the writer, stands recorded against him ia one of his "Noctes Ambrosianas," where he appears scattering the crudest fancies in the least genial of moods, and vrith a levity more befitting an empiric or a bufi'oon, than one affecting the functions of a literary or other judge. It has sometimes, I believe, been made a reflection upon Coleridge, that he has produced so little even of the miscella- neous kind of compositions that mostly occupied his pen. But if the question of quantity had any thing to do with the question of literary value, or if for every piece worth reading the public were not so far in debt to the writer, without any ground of complaint for the want of more, 346 NOTULiE LITEEAEI^ ; OR CRITICAL GLANCES. it would be a sufficient answer to those who represent Coleridge as an idler, if not a dreamer, that the works which he has left behind amount to some twenty volumes. Idle indeed it was impossible for such a brain to be ; but rather its boundless activity, combined with an excess of subtlety that often, I imagine, played tricks with its owner, giving to transcendental phantasms the colour of reality, contributed to limit its expression in definite results. Idiosyncrasies and strangenesses are conceivable enough in a person like Coleridge, though scarcely any that could surpass, in perversity, the charges of plagiarism brought against him by Mr. De Quincey, which, faii-ly enough rebut- ted long ago in a paper by archdeacon Hare, to say nothing of the masterly vindication in the recent edition of the Biographia Literaria, have been since reproduced, with little or no modification, and without an approach to a satisfac- tory defence, in a collection of the Opium-Eater's writings, published under his own superintendence and revision. If he knew of that reply, especially the remarks about the essay from Schelling, he was bound to notice it, and either to recant, or give his reasons for not recanting. If unac-