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THOUGHTS OF THE TIMES; 
 
 MEN AND THINGS. 
 
 BY 
 
 T. B. BROWNE, ESQ. 
 
 Per lo gran Mar del essere. — Dante. 
 Je ne veois le tout de rien. — Montaigne 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PRINTED FOB. 
 
 LONGMAN, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, & LONGMANS, 
 
 PATEllNOSTER-ROVV. 
 
 1838. 
 

 g RMC r^ 
 
 47 N- 
 
 London' : 
 
 Printed bv A. Spottiswoode, 
 
 NewlStrcct-Square. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 Of History 1 
 
 Of Religion 43 
 
 Of Poetry 76 
 
 Of Utilitarianism 139 
 
 Of Imagination and Fancy, Humour and Wit 200 
 
 Of the Advantages of living in stirring Times 212 
 
 Of Absenteeism 220 
 
 Of the Men to be loved, and the Men to be ad- 
 mired , 236 
 
V«' 
 
 THOUGHTS OF THE TIMES: 
 
 MEN AND THINGS. 
 
 OF HISTORY. 
 
 The school of example is the world : and the masters of this 
 school are history and experience. — Bolingbroke. 
 
 History has been cultivated in our time -with more 
 than ordinary diligence and success. Historians 
 have become more accurate in their facts, sounder 
 in their principles, and certainly not less picturesque 
 in their narrative. Here, however, as elsewhere, 
 the mechanical spirit of the age has obtruded itself; 
 forgetting that many parts, without union, will not 
 ma,ke one whole, we must have our division of 
 labour, and forthwith issue from divers intellectual 
 mills histories picturesque which do not amuse, 
 and histories philosophical which do not instruct. 
 A bundle of laborious essays and exaggerated 
 romances tied up together, is a poor substitute for 
 a living, comprehensive history. 
 
 Yet this mischievous and disagreeable separation 
 of the picturesque and the philosophical, in the 
 
2 OF HISTORY. 
 
 present instance, is not altogether without excuse. 
 The difficulties with which the historian has ,to 
 contend are many and various. One, not the least 
 important, is inherent in the very nature of language, 
 for the same words do not convey the same ideas to 
 the men of different periods ; and there are, perhaps, 
 few words in different languages, beyond the names 
 of physical objects, which exactly correspond. The 
 historian should combine the ardour of the active, 
 with the somewhat chilling reflection of the contem- 
 plative mind : he should describe events like the 
 epic, sympathise with his actors, and lay bare their 
 feelings like the dramatic poet : he should, as it 
 were, live among men with whom he can only 
 become acquainted through the lifeless medium of 
 books, and know their capacities for acting, and the 
 nature of the materials with which and on which 
 they had to act, before he can perfectly appreciate 
 what they did or left undone, or convey a profitable 
 lesson to his own and future ages. He should be 
 cautious in generalising, acute in sifting evidence, 
 neither obtrusive nor meagre in his reflections, 
 quick to comprehend, and discriminating to pour- 
 tray character. Lastly, without being rhetorical, 
 he should cultivate force and beauty of expression 
 and harmony of periods, almost as diligently as 
 those writers whose chief object is style. 
 . After all, the natural difficulties of the historian 
 
OF HISTORY. 3 
 
 are, insuperable. He sees always " through a glass 
 darkly," and therefore it is that Aristotle has 
 called poetry, that is dramatic poetry, " something 
 more philosophical and real than history*," for the 
 poet can give a complete picture of his own crea- 
 tions, the historian can trace but the meagre outline 
 of imperfect knowledge. This last view of the 
 subject, however, shews history too much like one 
 of the fine arts, with which it has little relation : it 
 has far higher practical uses. 
 
 History, without a change in the faculties of man, 
 which we can neither foresee nor understand, can 
 obviously never become a science. With facts we 
 are but imperfectly acquainted, with men still less, 
 yet to determine with any degree of certainty what 
 men will do from what men have done, we must 
 know not only the facts and the men, but the dif- 
 ferent influence which the same facts would have 
 on differently constituted minds. If it could ever 
 be demonstrated that all men would act in the same 
 manner under the same circumstances, our faith 
 would be fearfully shaken in that personal and in- 
 ward circle, which is " above three hundred and 
 sixty," and in respect of which "theearthisapointf." 
 
 If we cannot have both, the picturesque history 
 
 * ^iKoffocpdiTspoV Kol ff-irovSaiorepoy Troirjcris Icrropias iariv. — • 
 Poetica. 
 
 t Sir Thomas Browne. 
 
 B 2 
 
OF HISTORY. 
 
 is, perhaps, preferable to the philosophical, or as 
 the Germans would say, the objective is better than 
 the subjective. It is observable that the men, who 
 at various periods have made the greatest impression 
 on society, have been distinguished for strong feel- 
 ings, a sanguine temperament, and a vivid imagi- 
 nation. Liither and Calvin moved men's minds, 
 not so much because they argued well, as because 
 they felt and spoke strongly. To measure such 
 men accurately, it is necessary to sympathise with 
 them, and as few combine in so high a degree 
 powerful intellects with strong passions, the more 
 simple and less ambitious mode of describing them 
 is commonly the more satisfactory. 
 
 Again, to give a living picture of a departed age, 
 the historian must understand its language. Now, 
 the natural language of mankind even in a refined 
 age, and yet more decidedly in a barbarous one, is 
 figurative. Figurative language soonest excites our 
 passions, gratifies our tastes, and impresses itself 
 upon our memories ; yet it is a dangerous tool 
 to meddle with. Many pseudo-philosophers, not 
 feeling themselves equal to its management, have 
 inveighed loudly against it, as if the fault were in 
 the machine, and not in the workman. Logical 
 inaccuracies, however, are quite as common as 
 metaphorical, and more mischievous. The logical 
 mind is, indeed, the most imperfect, for it is easier 
 
OF HISTORY. 5 
 
 for the merely imaginative man to understand logic 
 than for the mere logician to understand the pic- 
 turesque. 
 
 Professedly philosophical histories are often im- 
 pertinent. A skilful narrative will suggest reflections. 
 Who would not learn more from Herodotus or 
 Froissart, than from the speculations of the philoso- 
 phers of the last century on what kind of death a 
 nation must die ? As if the political death of a 
 nation were a necessary event I The confounding 
 of nations with individuals has led to strange mis- 
 takes. 
 
 There are many nations in whose histories the 
 facts, and the conclusions to be drawn from them, 
 are so exceedingly uniform, that to know one is to 
 know the whole class. Such is the case with oriental 
 histories ; where we have a great despot in the 
 capital ; a number of petty despots in the provinces, 
 individually rebelling, whenever any one of them is 
 strong enough; no respect for life or property; no 
 privileged classes ; free trade ; a revenue collected 
 almost exclusively from land ; and unvarying man- 
 ners and customs. European despotisms, modified 
 and counteracted by a great variety of circum- 
 stances, deserve to be studied separately, though not 
 with equal attention. But the histories, beyond 
 comparison the most fertile in moral phenomena, 
 and therefore the most interesting and the most 
 B 3 
 
6 OF HISTORY. 
 
 valuable, are those of nations under constitutional 
 governments. Each of these has its peculiarities, 
 not only because no two constitutions were ever 
 framed precisely similar in all respects, but because 
 circumstances of time and place would alone be 
 sufficient to produce differences in the results, 
 though there were none in the systems. 
 
 The history of ancient Greece is eminently bio- 
 graphical : never were great men so numerous and 
 so powerful, never did genius shine with so much 
 brilliance. Yet there was little tranquillity, much 
 injustice, much national and private calamity. 
 Neither did liberty, imperfect as it was, or, to speak 
 more correctly, independence, last long. Many offices 
 were filled by large classes of citizens in rotation, 
 and thus, as Sismondi observes, in speaking of the 
 republics of Italy, so similar to those of Greece, 
 each man was induced to submit to considerable 
 restraint as a subject, that he might be less restrained 
 in the exercise of his " brief authority " as a magis- 
 trate, when his turn arrived. Such a state of 
 things, however favourable, from incessant competi- 
 tion, to the development of talent, was unstable in 
 the extreme, and naturally tended to despotism, 
 none being really free, and the classes ineligible to 
 the higher offices of the state ready to acquiesce in 
 any change, inasmuch as no condition can be worse 
 than that of the servant of a thousand masters;. 
 
OF HISTORY. 7 
 
 The history of Rome is the progress to empire of 
 an ambitious people, and yet perhaps their ambition 
 was rather accidental than systematic. The patri- 
 cians, threatened with a diminution of their power 
 at home, sought, by acquiring consideration abroad, 
 to divert the plebeians from turning their attention 
 to the privileges of an exclusive class. Hence per- 
 petual wars. For the people in every country, from 
 restlessness, love of excitement, national vanity, or 
 whatever cause, like nothing better than fighting, if 
 the nobles are but ready to lead them : and the 
 noble Roman was no laggard. The plebeian soldier, 
 when he returned to tell of his battles, in speaking 
 of some more resolute charge of the enemy, which 
 made victory for a time doubtful, could say 
 
 " Caedunt Lepidos, cseduntque Camillos, 
 Corvinosque simul, Torquataque nomina legum *." 
 
 The policy of the Romans, in acquiring their 
 empire bit by bit, and by incorporating the con- 
 quered nations with themselves, has been often 
 remarked, and is not without its imitators in our 
 own day. The sound and truly philanthropical 
 system of the balance of power, seasonably and 
 vigorously acted upon by the more civilised states, 
 will prevent the less civilised from profiting by the 
 Roman example, however well-inclined. 
 
 * Lucan. 
 B 4 
 
O OF HISTORY. 
 
 No age, perhaps, that had gone before or that 
 has followed has so great an affinity with our own as 
 the last century of the Roman republic. The great 
 men of those times, and they were many, were em- 
 phatically gentlemen, men of the world, distin- 
 guished for their acquaintance with all classes of 
 society, shrewd, sensual and refined, little susceptible 
 of strong emotions, and indifferent to human suffer- 
 ing, provided it was a means of accomplishing their 
 ends. We have here too the first recorded age of 
 terror, as Sylla and Marius successively gained the 
 ascendancy, which each employed to proscribe the 
 other's adherents. Sylla's was a character not 
 common in history. Never was man more un- 
 scrupulous in his mode of attaining power, or sooner 
 tired of it, when attained. Sylla was no favourite 
 with the fawning Romans of the empire, because 
 Caesar, his more renowned imitator, belonged to the 
 opposite faction ; but there must have been some- 
 thing about him more than commonly grand, or 
 the unlimited power, which he dared to resign, would 
 have debased, instead of ameliorating his nature. In 
 this respect he resembles Cromwell, rather than 
 Alexander, Caesar or Napoleon, all three of whom 
 proved themselves unequal to the weight of their 
 fortunes ; and Caesar was the least excusable of 
 all. Alexander, the sovereign of an obscure pro- 
 vince of northern and barbarous Greece, had 
 
OF HISTORY. 9 
 
 conquered the whole country from the Egean Sea to 
 the Indus before he was thirty years of age. Na- 
 poleon, in the course of a very few years, from the 
 humble rank of a subaltern officer, raised himself 
 to that of emperor of the French, and virtual ruler 
 of half Europe. But Caesar was born a noble 
 Roman : the highest dignities of his country, the 
 mistress of the civilised world, were by birth within 
 his grasp : he arrived at supreme power by steps, 
 and at an age when the passions have generally 
 cooled, yet in its exercise he w^as sometimes as 
 extravagant, as vain, and even as impolitic as 
 a boy. 
 
 The fall of the Roman empire, that greatest of 
 all revolutions, gave rise to the notion, that nations, 
 like individuals, must decay ; a proposition equally 
 needless and extravagant, if the ruin of the Romans 
 can be accounted for on more simple and obvious 
 grounds, namely, their own corruption and moral 
 degradation, the result of a combination of un- 
 favourable circumstances. It would be strange 
 indeed, if there were a law in the economy of man- 
 kind, limiting the prosperity of nations to determinate 
 periods. France counts more than thirteen centuries 
 from the age of Clovis ; England more than ten 
 from that of Egbert ; the shortest period, exceeding 
 in all probability, notwithstanding the twelve vul- 
 tures and their typified centuries, the entire duration 
 
10 
 
 OF HISTORY. 
 
 of Rome as an independent state. Yet the in- 
 dependence of England and France cannot be said 
 to be in any very imminent danger, however am- 
 bitious Cossacks and Calmucks may be of rivalling 
 Goths and Huns. The power of both nations never 
 was greater than at the present moment. There is 
 little danger of national decay where governments 
 let the people alone, and a free constitution gives 
 them something to do. The Romans had no 
 stimulus to exertion, it was in fact dangerous ; 
 consequently, pleasure was the chief object of their 
 lives. They had a sensual and brutal religion, and 
 no press : literature, therefore, v/as inaccessible save 
 to the few, and was, moreover, exceedingly cir- 
 cumscribed. Women were despised and degraded 
 - — no element of civilisation remained. Even their 
 refinement, continually on the decline, served only 
 to reveal to them the insipidity of innocence. In 
 no period perhaps with which we are historically 
 acquainted was the amount of wickedness and base- 
 ness so great among a given number of human 
 beings. Such a state of things required a tempest 
 to purify the moral atmosphere, and when it came 
 it was tremendous. 
 
 But, it may be asked, why did not Christianity 
 regenerate mankind ? Real Christians, alas ! have 
 been in all ages few : and Christianity, incumbered 
 with an imperial convert, lost its early simplicity in 
 
OF HISTORY. 11 
 
 the folds of the purple. The corruptions of the 
 church seem to take their date from the conversion 
 of Constantine, 
 
 Of modern histories, those of England, France, 
 Venice, and the United States of America, seem to 
 have the higliest claims on our attention. Among 
 the great nations of antiquity, civil liberty, always 
 imperfect and ill -understood, commonly degenerated 
 before civilisation had reached its highest pitch. In 
 England, on the contrary, liberty and civilisation ad- 
 vanced with equal steps through many centuries, 
 and even, when liberty was apparently retrograde 
 under the Tudors, the firmest foundations wpre laid 
 for future progress by the emancipation of men's 
 minds from the priestly yoke. It seems peculiar to 
 England that great benefits have flowed from great 
 national calamities. Thus, the wars of the roses, 
 deluging the country with blood on a question of 
 title utterly insignificant to the mass of the people, 
 caused the destruction of the greater part of the 
 ancient nobles. Those, who remained, were too few 
 to form a privileged class, and too weak to resist the 
 subsequent attempts of prince and people to curb 
 their pride and power. 
 
 The European rank of England, from the time 
 when the Plantagenets lost their continental pos- 
 sessions, to that of Henry VIII., was low. The 
 
12 OF HISTORY. 
 
 energy of Henry's character, fickle tyrant as he was, 
 his fortunate position as umpire between Charles V, 
 and Francis I., and the reformation in religion, 
 greatly increased the national importance. The 
 prudence of Elizabeth, and her successful rivalry 
 with the most powerful of her contemporaries, 
 raised it still higher. But to develope fully the 
 resources of England was reserved for Cromwell. 
 Historians have been scarcely just to this extraor- 
 dinary man. Even Mr. Hallam seems to think him 
 inferior to Napoleon. Cromwell, indeed, could not 
 or would not talk like Caesar or Cicero, yet he sur- 
 passed both them and all others in the art of 
 concealing his thoughts under a cloud of words. 
 He was ambitious, hypocritical and unscrupulous ; 
 such have been all usurpers. But he certainly loved 
 his country. He realised his proud boast, that he 
 would make the name of an Englishman as much 
 feared and revered as ever was that of a Roman. 
 His mind was comprehensive and grand, and at the 
 same time so definite, energetic and sagacious, that 
 he never attempted what he did not accomplish. 
 He possessed courage, both moral and physical ; he 
 was acute and discriminating in his perception of 
 character, and, in particular, of the character of his 
 times ; and, Avhat can be said of very few under 
 similar circumstances, he never seemed so great as 
 
OF HISTORY. 13 
 
 on a throne. It is strange to see, how much may- 
 be done by one man, and how much more may be 
 undone by his death. 
 
 Common sense and indignation against oppression 
 are the most favourable points in the national cha- 
 racter of the English. The second of these valuable 
 qualities triumphed at the expense of the first, when 
 the nation, disgusted with puritan tyranny and 
 hypocrisy, flung down its liberties with besotted 
 loyalty at the feet of Charles II. The Stuarts, as 
 if determined to show that kings are not improved 
 by exile, abused the public feeling in their favour 
 to the utmost ; and the result was the dethronement 
 of James II., the least irregular precedent in history 
 for the treatment of an unconstitutional king. 
 
 A distinction is observable in the character of 
 the two great revolutions of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury ; the first was eminently popular, the second 
 aristocratic. At the commencement of the civil 
 war the great body of the nobility and gentry was 
 unquestionably on the side of the king. On the 
 other hand the popular cause derived its energy 
 from religion and liberty, sources more inspiring 
 than feudal supremacy and illustrious names. But 
 the leaders of the Long Parliament went too far for 
 stability ; a truth which the experience of an age of 
 revolutions has now induced most thinking men to 
 recognise. Much of what they did was consequently 
 
14 OF HISTORY. ,, 
 
 undone. The following reign, the most disgraceful 
 in our annals, was of some service, as it opened the 
 eyes of the nation ; and when James attempted 
 to change the national religion by unconstitutional 
 means, and what such an attempt by such a man 
 necessarily implied, to restore its confiscated pro- 
 perty to his own church, he frightened the wealthiest 
 and least revolutionary class of society ; the lower 
 classes were either passive, or joined with his ene- 
 mies, and he was finally ejected without a struggle. 
 The period from the revolution of 1688 to the 
 American war is the most barren and uninteresting 
 not only in English, but in European history. 
 There were the usual quarrels of princes among 
 themselves for the usual objects, but the people 
 fought only for the choice of masters. The great 
 statesman of this period was certainly Sir Robert 
 Walpole. Like Pitt, and the younger and greater 
 Cecil, that hunchback Salisbury, who had " no 
 superior as a courtier, no equal as an orator for 
 dignity and grace*," he possessed in an eminent 
 degree the peculiar kind of sagacity and adminis- 
 trative talent, which the anomalous constitution of 
 England requires in a minister. Walpole has been 
 attacked with much warmth for governino- by cor- 
 ruption, or rather for his carelessness of appear- 
 ances; for though less decent, he was not more 
 * History of England, Lardner's Cab. Cycl. vol. iv. 
 
OF HISTORY. 15 
 
 corrupt than other men of his time. But in truth the 
 charge against Walpole, whether of being or of only- 
 seeming corrupt cannot be more than partially sus- 
 tained. His ministry was long popular, never 
 perhaps unpopular : in the great object of his life, 
 the preservation of the throne to the Protestant 
 house of Hanover, he was completely successful ; 
 and he gave no inconsiderable degree of attention, 
 the more meritorious as it was not compulsory, to 
 the interests of the middle and lower classes of tho 
 community. 
 
 The venerable antiquity of English liberty, its 
 successive and hard-won victories over the tyranny 
 of kings, priests and nobles, have added something 
 definite and practical to the English character not 
 observable among the other nations of Europe. In 
 politics Englishmen are less prone than others to 
 mistake words for things, because, from the House 
 of Lords to the parish vestry all classes are habi- 
 tuated to self-government. And where shall we 
 find so solid a security for civil freedom as habit ? 
 In charters ? Men in power unaccustomed to such 
 a restraint will observe them no longer than they 
 are compelled to do so ; and the people soon tire of 
 watching them. In education ? The mass of man- 
 kind has never yet been more than half-educated at 
 the utmost in any country, and half-education only 
 blinds men to difficulties, and sets them aiming at 
 
16 
 
 OF HISTORY. 
 
 impracticabilities. Hence it is that reflecting Eng, 
 lishmen value prescription so highly, and continental 
 speculators not at all. The former have learned, 
 what the latter have not, that the effects of changes 
 are always different from, and generally less bene- 
 ficial than what was j)reviously anticipated, and that 
 the risk of innovation is worth incurring only to 
 remove a substantial grievance, not to establish a 
 barren principle. There will never in this country 
 be a king of the English. 
 
 How little could a reflecting German, under the 
 brilliant dynasty of the Hohenstauffen, have fore- 
 seen the existing condition of Germany and France I 
 Superstition destroyed the most splendid race of 
 monarchs that ever sate on a throne. The gran- 
 deur of Frederic Barbarossa, had he been born a 
 century later, would have done all, and more than 
 all for Germany, that the craft of Philip Augustus 
 did for France. But Frederic unhappily appeared 
 when men's minds were at the darkest, and popery 
 prevailed. France became concentrated, as Germany 
 divided. How early might European society have 
 been established on a secure basis, how many wars 
 might have been spared, if the wretched dupes of 
 the popes had not overthrown the Hohenstauffen ! 
 
 The real founder of the French monarchy was 
 Philip Augustus ; before his time, with the exception 
 of one great event, not peculiar to France, there is 
 
OF HISTORY. 17 
 
 little to interest in French history. Philip Augustus 
 had the merit of seeing the true policy of a French 
 king, and of acting upon it systematically through 
 a long reign, — the destruction of the great feuda- 
 tories, finally completed by Louis XL 
 
 France is distinguished by the establishment of 
 the wide-spread feudal system in its most perfect 
 form. If it be true, as some have thought, that the 
 history of a nation is best learned from its laws, how 
 wretched must have been the state of society, — how 
 unprotected the life and property of the subject, at 
 the period of the conversion of allodial into feudal 
 tenures ! The precise date of this remarkable event 
 does not appear ; the change was probably gradual. 
 But the empire of feudalism endured long; its traces 
 still subsist, after the lapse of nine or ten centuries. 
 The feudal polity must have been wise in its gene- 
 ration, or it would not have struck such deep roots; 
 but it should serve to show us what little reason we 
 have to envy our ancestors. 
 
 Chivalry, as well as feudalism, flourished chiefly 
 in France. With much mummery, characteristic of 
 the times, it must have originated in the generous 
 eff"orts of a few noble minds among the privileged 
 classes to protect the weak against the strong and 
 the violent. Ridiculed as it has been, for the most 
 part, by vulgar-minded men who could not believe 
 in disinterestedness, it did good service to humanity, 
 c 
 
18 OF HISTORY. 
 
 In our own time, doubtless, the objects proposed 
 are far more completely attained, but the means 
 employed have a less ennobling effect on the mind 
 of the instrument. 
 
 France had its full share of the calamities which 
 desolated Europe during the middle ages. To the 
 English wars of Edward III. succeeded, after a very 
 short interval, the still more disastrous civil wars of 
 the wretched reign of Charles VL, followed, without 
 breathing time, by another and more ruinous Eng- 
 lish invasion under Henry V. Yet, although war, 
 and more especially civil war, be the greatest of 
 national calamities, we must not conclude that the 
 misery was altogether without mitigation, even of 
 those miserable times. If the constant sense of the 
 insecurity of life and property brutalises but too 
 many, to some inaction is the worst of all evils. 
 Though the licence with which war was then carried 
 on was extreme, yet that very licence afforded a 
 wider scope for generous actions, and gave oppor- 
 tunities which were not always neglected by the 
 fantastic spirit of chivalry. Circumstances per- 
 mitted some men to become heroes. The resem^ 
 blance between the men of the world of the last 
 century of the Roman republic and the men of 
 the world of the present day, is not more striking 
 than that between the heroes of chivalry and the 
 heroes of the Homeric age. The general diffusion 
 of knowledge, caused by the invention of printing 
 
OF HISTORY. 19' 
 
 seems to make the return of such times altogether 
 •impossible ; and they are therefore the more inte- 
 resting, not only because the aspect they oiier of 
 human nature is one we can ourselves never expect 
 to see, but because it is difficult to comprehend 
 how they could be so near to us and yet so 
 different in character. 
 
 Louis XL of France and Henry VII. of England, 
 two of the three royal Magi of Lord Bacon, fol-^ 
 lowed the same policy, of exalting monarchical 
 at the expense of aristocratical power. But aristo- 
 cracy is far more tenacious of life than either mon- 
 archy or democracy. Within a century from the 
 death of Louis XI , during the religious wars of 
 the sixteenth century, aristocracy again threatened 
 the crown. It was curbed by the dauntless energy 
 of Richelieu, and finally subdued by Louis XIV.> 
 in the only way in which aristocracy can be sub- 
 dued, by compelling the great landed proprietors 
 to continue in constant attendance upon his person, 
 and thus making them strangers on their own- 
 estates, and holding out to them every inducement 
 to dissipate their fortunes in the folly and profusion 
 of his court. The Spanish nobles were not suffered 
 to reside on their estates from a similar raotivea- 
 Louis XIV,, hovvever, went beyond his object. He 
 destroyed aristocracy, but he did not care to fore- 
 see that monarchy would not therefore necessarily br 
 c 2 
 
^0 OF HISTORY. 
 
 a gainer. There was another alternative ; the middle 
 and lower classes, ignorant and oppressed, and 
 totally estranged from the territorial aristocracy, 
 became at the Revolution of 1789 the ready dupes 
 of men of their own order, who abused their unex- 
 pected elevation to the uttermost. 
 
 There were so many circumstances which might 
 have prevented the French Revolution, that it seems 
 the most wonderful thing in the world it ever hap- 
 pened at all. Had the king been a man of common 
 sense or common firmness ; had he even been an 
 obstinate fool, and persisted in any system, no mat- 
 ter what ; had the ministers limited the number of 
 electors by a reasonable qualification, and not 
 plunged a nation, utterly unaccustomed to self- 
 government, into universal suffrage ; had the con- 
 stitutional assembly adopted a system of tactics 
 which would have prevented the passing of mea- 
 sures of the greatest importance on the impulse of 
 the moment, without deliberation ; had the members 
 of the first assembly not voted themselves ineligible 
 to the second ; had the nobles, weak as they were, 
 remained at their posts, and not deserted their 
 country, there never would have been a reign of 
 terror. Nothing can be more contrary to the truth 
 than the doctrines of the wicked and absurd school 
 of fatalist historians, who maintain that the enormous 
 crimes of the Revolution were necessary. A neces- 
 sary crime is an impossibility, But the crimes of 
 
 
OF HISTORt. 2i 
 
 the Revolution prodviced nothing but evil to the 
 French. They lamentably diminished the amount 
 of the good which would otherwise have resulted 
 from the wiser measures of the period. And after 
 all they have seen and suffered there is not much to 
 be envied in the present state of the French. He 
 must be a profound admirer, indeed, of the "juste 
 milieu " who could say, 
 
 " Quod si non aliam venture fata Philippo 
 Invenere viam, magnoque aeterna parantur 
 Regna Deis ;...... 
 
 Jam nihil, O Superi, querimur ; scelera ipsa nefasque 
 Hac mercede placent*." 
 
 As far as a man can be chargeable with events 
 which happened eighty years after his death, and 
 which might have been so easily prevented, Louis 
 XIV. is chargeable with the crimes of the French 
 Revolution. He incumbered the revenues with an 
 enormous debt, and he left no class in the country 
 capable of resisting, or even of controlling a popular 
 outbreak. He was thoroughly selfish in his policy, 
 as in all the actions of his life. He desired to 
 increase his own power and the splendour of his 
 court, and cared not for the consequences to his 
 successors or to France. 
 
 The experience of an age of revolutions tends to 
 
 * Lucan. 
 G 3 
 
22 OF HISTORY. 
 
 shew that the people cannot be roused in the first 
 instance without just cause *, that they cease to be 
 formidable, and that their interest in politics lan- 
 guishes on the timely concession of reasonable 
 demands, and that extravagant proposals may be 
 resisted with perfect safety from first to last. In 
 the French Revolution the contemptible cowardice 
 of the Jacobins at the dissolution of their club 
 shews with what ease those frantic miscreants might 
 have been put down from the first, had a few 
 rational men withstood them with resolution and 
 calmness. No people, perhaps, understand liberty 
 less than the French. A fine-sounding Avord is to 
 them what a scarlet rag is to turkeys. They roar 
 for a republic, and care not for a habeas corpus. 
 Religion and morality are the real wants of France. 
 An immoral and irreligious people cannot long be 
 free, because they are essentially selfish ; they are 
 incapable of comprehending any other motive of 
 action than self-interest, and freedom requires self- 
 sacrifice. 
 
 The best guides to the opinions and feelings of 
 any period are the popular works of the period. 
 And this applies to our own as well as to past ages, 
 for no man can become intimately acquainted with 
 more than a very limited number of his contempo- 
 raries. If this be true, and we are to judge of the 
 
 * The rebellion in Canada seems to be an exception to this 
 rule. 
 
OF HISTORY. 23 
 
 f 
 
 French by the tone of their popular books, their 
 public mind must be diseased to a degree almost 
 unprecedented. Every thing seems unsettled and 
 unstable, and there is a feverish craving after 
 excitement, which will be gratified at any cost. 
 
 The most remarkable by far of modern French 
 laws is that enforcing the division of landed pro- 
 perty among all the children at the parent's death, 
 and in proportion to their number diminishing the 
 amount which he has the power of devising. There 
 is probably no law which could effect so great a 
 change among all classes of society. The whole of 
 its results no man can foresee, as they must be dif- 
 ferent in every generation. Territorial influence 
 under such a system is impossible, and therefore as 
 there remains no class in society naturally con- 
 servative, the stability of all existing institutions 
 becomes exceedingly precarious. The smaller the 
 social particles, with the greater facility are they 
 agitated and made to change places, until tranquil- 
 lity becomes the exception and not the rule. It is 
 doubtful whether liberty, in a country long peopled, 
 can be maintained without an aristocracy. The 
 question is one to which history gives no satisfactory 
 answer. Setting aside the more obvious contin- 
 gency, the restoration of aristocracy, it may be 
 worth while to speculate for a moment on the pro- 
 bable course of events under such a system. Let 
 
 c 4 
 
2-$ OF HISTORY. 
 
 society be a vast plain, with one abrupt eminence 
 whereon shines a constitutional crown. We have 
 supposed aristocracy excluded at all hazards ; either, 
 then,the existing system of a constitutional monarchy 
 must continue, or be subverted by the despotism of 
 one, or by that of the majority. A monarchy with- 
 out an aristocracy, as it affords peculiar temptations 
 and opportunities to the king, requires more than 
 common watchfulness from the controlling powers ; 
 widely diffused as those powers must necessarily be, 
 from the numbers who exercise them, and timid and 
 irresolute as electors exercising such powers will be 
 frequently found, on account of the great distance 
 which separates them from the executive. The 
 masses, besides, in all countries, unless their misery 
 be extreme, soon tire of political agitation. They 
 soon discover, not only that a man's private affairs 
 are of infinitely greater importance to him than the 
 affairs of the nation, but also that political agitation 
 checks the buying and selling by which they live. 
 They see too through a mist of unmeaning words 
 and false pretences the real cupidity and baseness 
 of demagogues. In such a state of public feeling 
 let there be a selfish man of an enterprising cha." 
 racter on the throne. Is it a difficult task for him, 
 having on his side the " prestige " of authority and 
 the forms of law, to avail himself of a moment of 
 national indignation against the authors of those 
 extraordinary excesses and outrages which occur 
 
 i 
 
OF HISTORY. 25 
 
 occasionally in all countries, to increase his own 
 power at the expense of the liberties of his people ? 
 Such seems to be the course of events in France ; 
 liberty contracts continually, and, if the king pleases, 
 may go on contracting until there is as little left of 
 it as of the " peau de chagrin." We shall have 
 occasion more fitly to consider the case of the 
 despotism of the majority in speaking of America. 
 
 The effect of the French law of inheritance in 
 diminishing the number of great capitalists comes 
 within the province of political economy. If it is 
 desirable that the wealth of a nation should increase 
 rapidly, individual accumulation should be encou- 
 raged as much as possible, because money attracts 
 money. Speaking loosely, it may be said, that the 
 attraction increases directly as the mass. But this 
 rule seems commonly to be confined to the case of 
 the first accumulator, for in practice we see that 
 enormous wealth is seldom retained in the same 
 family for many generations. The wealth of indi- 
 viduals is not too great in a country where one man 
 in the course of his life can accumulate as much in 
 trade or a profession as the richest proprietor has 
 inherited. 
 
 A large capitalist, it may be said, frequently 
 squanders immense sums in a comparatively unpro- 
 ductive manner, and he has less inducement to 
 employ his money productively than other men. Be 
 it so. But the power of a large capitalist, when he 
 
26 
 
 OF HISTORY. 
 
 chooses to employ his wealth in a manner beneficial 
 to society, is far greater than that of a nnmber of 
 inferior capitalists, the aggregate of whose incomes 
 equals his own. Notwithstanding the knowledge 
 men have gained of the power of combination, the 
 great improvements of the late Duke of Sutherland 
 in the north of Scotland would certainly not have 
 been made so soon, perhaps not made at all, if his 
 estates had been divided among a number of small 
 proprietors. 
 
 Looking at the French law of inheritance in the 
 most favourable point of view, and supposing, what 
 its advocates contend for, to be the case, that it 
 would not cause the division of properties below a 
 certain amount, and fixing that amount very high, 
 still it must materially increase the number of the 
 less productive labourers, and consequently check 
 the increase of capital. Let an estate of one hundred 
 thousand a year be parcelled out among fifty pro- 
 prietors. The fifty small proprietors would employ 
 more servants, horses, and carriages than the single 
 large proprietor ; but the aggregate of the sums 
 which they could together afford to lay out in the 
 improvement of their several estates would fall far 
 short of what the single large proprietor could 
 appropriate to the same purpose. 
 
 Another consequence of an extensive division of 
 property is, that many labourers are employed to do 
 imperfectly what, through the agency of large 
 
OF HISTORY. 27 
 
 capitalists, a few labourers might do effectually ; and 
 thus the labour of a country, which is the main- 
 stay of its capital, is wasted. About two thirds of 
 the population of France, and about one third of 
 the population of England, is employed in agricul- 
 ture ; yet English agriculture is beyond comparison 
 superior to French. 
 
 The state of a country without a large spending 
 class is unfavourable to manners, to literature, and 
 the arts, of all which the multitude are coarse and 
 contemptuous judges. The advantages of these 
 matters are not sufficiently obvious to the money- 
 making, uneasy class of society. In works of art 
 they require effect rather than truth and delicacy, 
 and from poets and orators, vehemence rather than 
 elegance and philosophy. The most successful 
 popular orator is usually the man who talks 
 strongest, loudest and longest. 
 
 The most important, point of view under which a 
 law can be contemplated is its moral effect, its 
 object being not so much to make people happier, 
 as to make them better. A law enforcing the 
 division of property on the death of the parent must 
 increase, at least for some generations, the number 
 of idle men. If all the sons find enough to support 
 them without exertion, in ordinary cases they will 
 not exert themselves, particularly in a country 
 where there is no higher caste to be attained. Few 
 men can live without some occupation,; the occu- 
 
28 OF HISTORY. 
 
 pation easiest to be had, most obvious and most 
 interesting to the idle, is gaming, which always 
 therefore abounds where they abound. In France, 
 though there are none who play for such large 
 sums as a few do in England, because, indeed, there 
 are none so rich, yet the proportion which the 
 gamblers bear to the whole population is, unques- 
 tionably, much greater. If it be said that the 
 want of moral and religious principle in France is 
 the cause of the extensive prevalence of this vice, 
 and not the law of inheritance, it is answered that 
 the law of inheritance increases the number of those 
 who have the means of gaming. In England the 
 same law would not produce the same results, for 
 the habits of the people differ materially. A French- 
 man looks for his amusement to the town, an 
 Englishman to the country, and gaming is a town 
 rather than a country vice. But that great evils in 
 England would flow from a compulsory division of 
 property, few require to be convinced. 
 
 A sentimental advocate of this most arbitrary 
 law would say, that a man's younger children are 
 as dear to him as his eldest, and that, therefore, he 
 is bound by natural affection to provide equally for 
 the happiness of them all. But this is not stating 
 the case correctly. Idleness and happiness, employ- 
 ment and misery, are not synonymous terms. A 
 younger son, in a profession which calls all the 
 energies of his mind into action, is a happier and 
 
OF HISTORY. 29 
 
 a more useful member of society than a listless 
 haunter of cafes and gaming-houses, or a dog-and- 
 horse-loving squireen. This, it may be said, is 
 proving too much. It follows from what has just 
 been stated that the eldest son is worse off than 
 the younger ; and so he certainly is, unless his 
 estate is large enough to occupy his mind in the 
 improvement of it, and of the condition of those 
 who live upon it, and to give him a determinate 
 position in society. 
 
 As by the French law money paid by the parent 
 in his life-time for the advancement in the world of 
 any one of his children is considered part of that 
 child's inheritance, (it is difficult, indeed, to con- 
 ceive how a law compelling the division of property 
 could be effectually carried into execution without 
 such a provision,) a wide door is obviously opened 
 for family disputes. 
 
 It is hazardous to speculate on the great expe- 
 riment working out in France through this remark- 
 able law ; but it appears probable that it will in 
 the end be found impracticable, and consequently, 
 sooner or later, be repealed. That the division of 
 landed estates does go on, is proved by the rapid 
 diminution of the number of electors. 
 
 Venice was established the first, and destroyed the 
 last, — with the exception, indeed, of San Marino, — 
 of the modern republics of Italy. The inhabitants 
 
^0 OF HISTORY. 
 
 of the lagunes seem to have enjoyed a sort of 
 doubtful independence for more than two centuries 
 before the accession of the first doge, and the 
 ducal form of government lasted eleven. As men 
 commonly make little allowance for the influence of 
 circumstances, and attribute effects to their most 
 obvious causes ; as the idea of superior wisdom is 
 naturally annexed to institutions which have endured 
 long ; and as the Venetian government, from the 
 commencement of the fourteenth century, was the 
 most aristocratic which ever existed ; it is not sur- 
 prising that the constitution of Venice should have 
 been thought wise, and that to aristocracy should 
 liave been ascribed the general stability and absence 
 of intestine discord which distinguished the Vene- 
 tians amidst their greatest disasters. Yet this is far 
 from being the whole state of the case. The 
 Venetian nobles, in proportion to the rest of the 
 population, were exceedingly numerous, they were 
 without territorial influence, and they lived vmder a 
 constant reign of terror, effectually controUed by the 
 most mysterious and arbitrary of all tribunals, 
 which struck no one knew how, when, or where. 
 Free from all responsibility to the nation at large, 
 their responsibility to a very limited number of their 
 own body,— first ten, and afterwards three, — armed 
 with an authority above all laws, was as complete 
 as human ingenuity could devise. An aristocracy 
 
 J 
 
OF HISTORY. 31 
 
 SO rigidly exclusive could not otherwise have con- 
 tinued so long without becoming odious to the 
 people. The crimes of the nobles were punished 
 for the most part as severely, perhaps more severely 
 than those of other men. Without an exclusive 
 aristocracy the council of ten and the inquisition 
 of state would not have been necessary ; with an 
 exclusive aristocracy those tyrannical institutions 
 saved the Venetian citizens from a worse tyranny. 
 
 Admitting that the Venetian institutions did pro- 
 duce stability and internal harmony, disturbed 
 however, by several rude shocks, yet those advan- 
 tages were dearly bought at the price of general 
 insecurity of life and property. The system, too, 
 crippled the national energy, drove men to dissi- 
 pation as a solitary resource, and clipped and pared 
 down every thing great to the same stunted level. 
 The relentless decemvirs imprisoned thought and 
 action, and thereby prepared the way for that most 
 inglorious fall, which, as a spectacle of national 
 degradation, has few parallels in the history of 
 mankind. The illustrious families of Loredano, 
 Veniero, Gradenigo, and Cornaro, the most ancient 
 nobles of Europe, in the hour of danger could 
 furnish nothing but sonorous names. Aristocracy 
 is intolerant of individual excellence. The only 
 great historical characters of Venice were 
 
 " Blind old Dandolo, 
 Th' octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe," 
 
32 OF HISTORY. 
 
 Zeno, and Pisani, the heroes of the war of Chioggia, 
 and Morosini, the defender of Candia, and the 
 conqueror of the Morea. This is a scanty scroll 
 indeed, and three out of these four were treated by 
 their countrymen with the grossest injustice. 
 
 It is observable, that from the time the aris- 
 tocratic system was fairly established in Venice 
 every successive change in the constitution tended 
 to diminish the number, and increase the authority 
 of the depositaries of real power. In all struggles 
 between aristocracy and democracy, aristocracy has 
 immense advantages. Men of rank and wealth 
 naturally look upon themselves as entitled to power, 
 and the inferior classes, from various causes, are 
 commonly but too ready to admit their claims. 
 Popular effervescence, aroused occasionally by 
 flagrant acts of oppression, commonly soon sub- 
 sides. The people have neither the means nor the 
 leisure constantly to watch over the political con- 
 duct of their superiors ; but aristocracy never 
 sleeps, and is at all times prepared to seize what- 
 ever the remainder of the community does not 
 understand, or does not value. 
 
 Democracy predominates to as great an extent 
 in the United States of America as aristocracy did 
 in Venice. There are no two countries whose in- 
 stitutions appear, at first sight, more dissimilar ; yet 
 it may be doubted, whether both are not eqtially 
 
 I 
 
OF HISTORy. 33 
 
 unfavourable to the moral and intellectual develope- 
 ment of man. The aristocratic experiment may be 
 said to have been fairly tested in the course of five 
 centuries in Venice ; the democratic experiment in 
 the United States is but begun. The Venetian 
 'erritory was limited by nature to a few acres of 
 barren sand, for the provinces were all conquests ; 
 the territory of the United States is of immense 
 extent and fertility ; yet, notwithstanding these 
 numerous and important moral and physical dis- 
 crepancies, there is a resemblance between the con- 
 dition of Venice in the last century, and that of 
 America now. The government of Venice was 
 despotic, both in form and substance ; that of 
 America is not formally despotic, but the tyranny 
 of the majority is more absolute and far more search- 
 ing even than that of the Council of Ten. In some 
 respects, the comparison is to the advantage of the 
 Venetians, for their oligarchs did not deny justice 
 to the citizens, whom they shut out from political 
 power; the despotic middle classes of America, 
 exercising the triple functions of legislator, judge 
 and jury, do deny not only political power, but jus- 
 tice to their slaves. Both countries seem equally 
 ill-suited to a man who likes to think for himself, 
 and to say what he thinks. A Venetian who chose 
 to write or speak publicly against aristocracy, did 
 so with the prospect of disappearing for ever from 
 
 D 
 
34 OF HISTORY. 
 
 the eyes of his friends, in the course of twenty-four 
 hours. The punishment of an American, who dared 
 to condemn democracy, would be less cruel, for 
 men are become more civilised, but it would be the 
 severest which society could inflict without call- 
 ing in the assistance of law. Occasionally, there 
 may be popular tumults endangering the property 
 and life of an obnoxious person, but the punishments 
 of society usually consist in a series of petty morti- 
 fications, inflicting the tortures of martyrdom without 
 its dignity. In America too, as all political distinc- 
 tions are conferred by the people, an ambitious 
 man, honest and courageous enough to oppose a 
 popular prejudice, effectually bars his own path to 
 power. The gay Italians did easily without think, 
 ing, and made pleasure the only pursuit of their 
 lives. The graver Anglo-Americans, true to their 
 northern origin, and influenced by the great physical 
 advantages of their country, interest themselves in 
 little save electioneering and making money, and 
 listening to the incense daily offered up to their 
 national vanity by their public orators and public 
 press. Democracy and aristocracy are equally 
 jealous of talent : aristocracy would look down upon 
 it from some lofty eminence; democracy would 
 not suffer it to rise above the plain. Under both 
 systems thought is proscribed as dangerous. We 
 have seen that Venice produced few great men • the 
 
OF HISTORY. 35 
 
 existing system in America cannot be said to have 
 produced one, for Washington, Jefferson, and Frank- 
 lin were formed in another era. 
 
 It seems to be an evil inherent in the nature of 
 pure democracies that, in cases which strongly in- 
 terest the masses, there is no security for the due 
 administration of justice. In England, the popular 
 tendencies of the jury are counteracted by the aris- 
 tocratic feelings of the judge, but in America judge 
 and jury are equally in dread of the tyrant ma- 
 jority. It is easy to bear the frown of a prince ; in 
 such contests, a man of spirit and integrity is often 
 supported by a powerful class, and is never without 
 friends. But a contest with the majority is a con- 
 test with society, with a tribunal from whose sen- 
 tence there is no appeal, and whose punishments, 
 without injuring the body, as Tocqueville expresses 
 it, " go straight to the soul." To enable him to 
 stand up against a superior power, a man must 
 find sympathy somewhere, but in this case he meets 
 with nothing but discouragement on all sides, even 
 those who agree with him dare not betray their 
 opinions, lest they should be denounced in the same 
 manner. 
 
 No men are fit to enjoy unlimited power, and to 
 
 feel that they enjoy it. Various recent outrages 
 
 in the United States, arising out of the excitement 
 
 of the slave question, seem to render it doubtful 
 
 D 2 
 
36 OF HISTOKY. 
 
 whether the majority will continue to obey the laws, 
 as they become better acquainted with their own 
 strength and the real weakness of the executive. 
 
 " Je ne connais pas de pays", says Tocqueville, 
 in one of his striking chapters on the tyranny of the 
 majority in the United States, "ou il regne en general 
 moins d'independance d'esprit et de veritable liberte 
 de discussion qu'en Amerique." If this sentence 
 had been published in America, by an American 
 author, the fact of its publication would have 
 augured the approach of better days ; as it is, the 
 works of living Americans will, we suspect, be 
 searched for such an opinion in vain. And yet 
 matters were differently ordered in the ancient re- 
 publics of Greece. The Athenians had their syco- 
 phants, base men, who, in other circumstances, would 
 have cringed as eagerly to kings and nobles as they 
 did there to the populace, yet that populace could 
 endure to be told disagreeable truths, and even to 
 be laughed at. The Athenians applauded the satire 
 which Aristophanes showered on themselves and 
 their demagogues. Would the Americans do the 
 same ? If not, why should the American democracy 
 have less greatness of mind than the Athenian ? 
 The reason is perhaps to be found in the undue 
 predominance of the middle class in America. 
 
 In all countries the men of the middle classes are 
 the most satisfied with themselves, and the least 
 14 
 
OF HISTORY. 37 
 
 disposed to admire intellectual excellence. The 
 higher orders, more cultivated, are interested by an 
 appeal to their taste ; the lower, more warm, by an 
 appeal to their feelings. But the middle classes, 
 though more regular in their moral conduct than 
 either of the former, are, from the nature of their 
 pursuits, more sordid and calculating, and at the 
 same time more vulgar, because they are perpetually 
 attempting to appear what they are not. To make 
 money, the great object of their lives, mental culti- 
 vation is not necessary, nor indeed mental power, 
 " for riches are not always to men of understand- 
 ing;" their self-love is not exposed to the same 
 mortifications as that of the higher classes in a con- 
 stitutional country, for they do not compete with 
 each other in trials of intellect, nor is their convic- 
 tion of inferiority, though felt, so constant and so 
 galling as that of the lower classes. There is also 
 another reason for the want of humility observable 
 among the middle ranks. Every man naturally 
 thinks that kind of knowledge most important which 
 is most beneficial to himself. A tradesman is 
 necessarily better acquainted with his own trade 
 than his customers can be, among whom his life is 
 spent; their ignorance is his triumph, and furnishes 
 him with continual matter for self-applause. Thus 
 his habits are singularly unfavourable to self know- 
 ledge, to "setting his mind at a distance and making 
 D 3 
 
38 OF HISTORY. 'M 
 
 it its own object * ;" and without self-knowledge nb 
 man can bear reproof. 
 
 In matters of taste it would be very unfair to 
 compare the Americans with the Athenians, the 
 most distinguished of all the nations of the earth 
 for their vivid perception of " glorious beauty ", who 
 forgave the satire for the sake of the point ; but 
 deficiencies of taste will not account for moral in- 
 feriority. 
 
 Next to the tyranny of the majority, instability 
 is the greatest evil of democracies. Constitutional 
 changes are made continually in the United States, 
 as was also the case in Athens and Florence. Such 
 changes are pernicious, as they accustom men to 
 consider all existing institutions unsettled, and de- 
 stroy reverence. There is something interesting 
 and poetical in the continuance of the same laws, 
 dress, manners, and customs through thirty centuries 
 in the east, as there is something irritating and 
 prosaic in the arrogant assumption of superiority 
 Avith which sciolists of the present day think them- 
 selves entitled to look down upon the Avorthies of 
 old. 
 
 The United States of America have been inde- 
 pendent for so short a period, the phenomena they 
 present are so novel, and their circumstances so 
 peculiar, that it is perhaps impossible to refer any 
 * Locke. '^ 
 
OF HISTORY. 39 
 
 given result exclusively to its real cause, or combi- 
 nation of real causes. The Americans, as an inde- 
 pendent nation, are little more than half a century 
 old, their form of government is the most democra- 
 tic that ever existed, while a large portion of their 
 population, irrevocably distinguished from the re- 
 mainder by colour and feature, is held in the most 
 abject slavery; their territory, in proportion to their 
 population, is of such extent and fertility that no 
 man need be poor who has health and strength, and 
 they have no aristocracy, or hereditary spending 
 class. A conspiracy of the slaves, the separation of 
 the southern states from the northern, differing as 
 they do in character and interests, and the forma- 
 tion of an aristocracy, seem to be the chief convul- 
 sions which the United States have to dread, unless 
 indeed anarchy should result from excessive relaxa- 
 tion of the powers of the executive. Slavery is the 
 great blot of the American character, an anomaly 
 which the tyrant majority has hitherto shewn no 
 peculiar anxiety to remove. If it is not speedily 
 either abolished or mitigated, there will probably 
 sooner or later be a servile war in the slave states, 
 attended, like the insurrection of the Moors in the 
 Alpuj arras, by all the horrible outrages which men 
 may be expected to commit who have endured 
 enormous wrongs. The Union has been seriously 
 threatened already, and can hardly continue after 
 D 4< 
 
40 OF HISTORY. 
 
 the population becomes dense, even if it lasts so 
 long. Aristocracy is natural to man ; proscription 
 only increases the temptation to pluck the forbidden 
 fruit. How can it be otherwise, when, putting the 
 advantages of birth out of the question, men are 
 equal in nothing; health, strength, opportunities, 
 body or mind. Travellers give abundant proofs of 
 the fondness of the Americans for such titular dis- 
 tinctions as their system permits. A class has begun 
 to appear which votes politics vulgar, and abandons 
 them with a certain contempt, which in time will 
 make itself felt, to its shoemakers and tailors. 
 Advances may be made gradually, social distinc- 
 tions may be set off against political, thus the many 
 may cease to value what the few affect to despise, 
 and in some moment of national apathy aristocracy 
 may rise like " a giant refreshed with wine." Aris- 
 tocracy we suspect is less hated in America than 
 in France ; the Americans have not smarted under 
 its lash like the French; their law of inheritance 
 does not enforce the division of property ; it leaves 
 the parent the power of devising the whole as he 
 pleases, and only provides for its equal distribution 
 among all the children in the absence of a will. 
 
 No single individual since Luther has exercised 
 so great and extensive a moral influence on mankind 
 as Jefferson. His object, which he pursued through 
 life with a relentless energy which gives him a dis- 
 
OF HISTORY. 41 
 
 tinguished place among the worthies of history, was 
 the establishment of a pure democracy in the United 
 States. Eminently favoured by circumstances, he 
 was completely successful in his design. His saga- 
 city may be questioned, his political honesty cannot. 
 The American Revolution introduced a new era: 
 as the first in the order of time, it may be termed 
 the parent of the revolutions of our revolutionary 
 age; and America still stands, a living, and to a 
 certain extent a successful precedent, an inexhausti- 
 ble theme for the declamations of all the advocates 
 of change. It is most desirable thaF so grand an 
 experiment should be fairly tried, and it is to 
 Jefferson, more than to any other man, that we are 
 indebted for the trial. They who expect much from 
 mankind, who maintain that their vices are the 
 result of unfavourable circumstances, misgovern- 
 ment, delusion or ignorance, may look for the day 
 when tlie bright sun of human regeneration shall 
 rise in the west ; generous minds, whose candour 
 has not been fettered by systems, will acknowledge 
 that hitherto their dreams have not been realised, 
 that increased civilisation and increased liberty have 
 sometimes introduced new moral diseases, while they 
 did not always destroy the old; and that though 
 progressive improvement appear to be on the whole 
 the law of our social existence, contemplating the 
 
42 OF HISTORY. 
 
 future, not only through the dark register of the 
 past, but through our own more impressive expe- 
 rience, we are not justified in auguring any thing 
 peculiarly brilliant from the selfish and base nature 
 of man. 
 
43 
 
 OF RELIGION. 
 
 Das Zeichen sieht er prachtig aufgerichtet, 
 Das aller Welt zu Trost und Hoffnung steht, 
 Zu dem viel tausend Geister sich verpflichtet, 
 Zu dem viel tausend Herzen warm gefleht. 
 Das die Gewalt des bittern Tods vernichtet. 
 Das in so mancher Siegesfahne weht : 
 Ein Labequell durchdringt die matten Glieder, 
 Er sieht das Kreuz und schlagt die Augen nieder. 
 
 Goethe's Geheimnisse, 
 
 As the present is comparatively a religious age, 
 and as science seems more popular than literature, 
 it is not surprising that there should be a redund- 
 ance of works on natural theology, the link between 
 religion and science. It is an interesting question, 
 which each man will probably answer according to 
 the peculiar character of his mind, whether natural 
 theology has been of service to Christianity. Works 
 on this subject are particularly addressed to atheists, 
 did they ever convert one ? Are they not based upon 
 the vain fancy that the source of infidelity is the 
 understanding, and not the heart? They do not pro- 
 fess to make men Christians, but to prepare the way 
 for Christianity, often, it is to be feared, inducing 
 
44 OF RELIGION. 
 
 them to linger so long on the threshold, that ihey 
 never enter the temple. 
 
 But the great objection to most books on Natural 
 Theology is their want of candour ; they are emi- 
 nently one-sided. They tell us that there are in 
 every thing marks of design, and design must have 
 had a designer ; and from these premises they seem 
 tacitly to assume that the design is benevolent. 
 Large classes of animals must from their physical 
 organization subsist by devouring other animals ; 
 can this be eflFected without inflicting pain, and is 
 not pain an evil, and is not evil then designed ? 
 Paley speaks of the happiness of flies sporting in the 
 sunshine ; are the same flies less happy when settled 
 on the raw of a galled horse ? What would a heathen 
 think, M'ho, lulled for a time by the smooth periods 
 of some of these declamations on supposititious 
 benevolence into forgetfulness of his own experi- 
 ence, turned at length for the first time to the Bible, 
 and there found that the majority of mankind would 
 be miserable for ever ? What harmony could he 
 discover between the two systems, and would not 
 so fearful a discovery most probably drive him into 
 despair and total unbelief? 
 
 The argument from analogy that " it is not so 
 clear a case that there is nothing in it *," is a pre- 
 sumption, a strong presumption it may be, but no 
 * Butler. 
 
 1 
 
OF RELIGION. 45 
 
 more. And here again, the natural theologians give 
 us but one side. Lucretius has argued from analogy 
 against the immortality of the soul in verse, with 
 almost as much force as they have done in favour 
 of it in prose. 
 
 " Praeterea gigni pariter cum corpore, et una 
 
 Crescere sentimus, pariterque senescere mentem ; 
 Nam velut infirmo pueri teneroque vagantur 
 Corpore, sic animi sequitur sententia tenuis : 
 Inde ubi robustis adolevit viribus aetas, 
 Consilium quoque majus, et auctior est animi vis : 
 Post ubi jam validis quassatum est viribus aevi 
 Corpus, et obtusis ceciderunt viribus artus, 
 Claudicat ingenium, delirant linguaque, mensque, 
 Omnia deficiunt, atque uno tempore desunt ; 
 Ergo dissolvi quoque convenit omnem animai' 
 Naturam, ceu fumus in altas aeris auras, 
 Quandoquidem gigni pariter, pariterque videmus 
 Crescere, et ut docui simul aevo fessa fatiscit." 
 
 It is not easy on the same ground to meet these 
 noble lines, equally remarkable for closeness of 
 reasoning and poetical beauty. 
 
 However, the argument against atheism from 
 natural theology is certainly irresistible as far as it 
 goes : it can hardly be put in a more pithy and 
 convincing shape than the following : — 
 
 " Dans la societe du Baron d'Holbach, Diderot 
 proposa un jour de nommer un avocat de Dieu, et 
 on choisit I'Abbe Galiani. II s'assit, et debuta ainsi : 
 
46 OF RELIGION. 
 
 " Un jour a Naples, un homme de la Basilicate 
 prit clevant nous six des dans un cornet, et paria 
 d'amener rafle de six. Je dis cette chance etoit 
 possible. II I'amena sur-le-ehamp une seconde fois; 
 je dis la meme chose. II remit les des d^ns le cornet 
 trois, quatre, cinq fois, et toujours rafle de six. 
 Sangue di Bacco, m'ecriai-je, les des sont pipes j et 
 ils I'etoient. 
 
 " Philosophes, quand je considere I'ordre toujours 
 renaissant de la nature, ses lois immuables, ses revo- 
 lutions toujours constantes dans une variete infinie; 
 cette chance unique et conservatrice d'un univers 
 tel que nous le voyons, qui revient sans cesse, mal- 
 gre cent autres millions de chances de perturbation 
 et de destruction possibles, je m'ecrie : Certes la 
 nature est pipee /" — Stewart's Dissertation on Meta- 
 physical Philosophy, Encyc. Britan. : Note T.T. 
 
 The best argument for the immortality of the 
 soul, independent of revelation, seems to be that 
 derived, not from outward things, but from the 
 nature of the mind itself, from the desire and the 
 capacity for a better world than this ; felt by Cicero 
 when he wrote that fine sentence, which its uncer- 
 tainty renders so touching ; " but if I err * in this 
 matter, in believing the souls of men iminortal, I err 
 
 * " Quod si in hoc erro, quod animas hominum immortales 
 esse credam, libenter erro, nee mihi hunc errorem qu6 delector, 
 dum vivo extorqueri volo." rm 
 
OF RELIGION. 47 
 
 willingly, nor would I that this error, which delights 
 me, should be extorted from me while I live." The 
 same longing after immortality must be felt by every 
 man of fine moral perceptions, particularly if he 
 has acquired a knowledge of the world, and pre- 
 served them unimpaired through that dangerous, 
 yet necessary trial. Not the mechanism of plants 
 and animals, but the wide-spread and deep-rooted 
 diffusion of evil, and the incomprehensible dispensa- 
 tion of rewards and punishments in this life, drove 
 the wise ancients to look for a better. How earnestly 
 would Plato and Cicero have condemned the apathy 
 with which we listen to things near and clear to us, 
 when they felt so deep an interest in them, though 
 they saw them not, even from afar off ! With what 
 delight would they have contemplated the sole un- 
 mixed proof of the divine benevolence, the atone- 
 ment of the Son of God for the sins of men ! If all 
 else be dark and dubious, here at least there is light. 
 Strange that this mighty fact, the most perspicuous 
 and least entangled point in the whole moral and 
 physical system, the vital principle of Christianity, 
 constituting the essential difference between it and 
 all other religions, without which it is no more than 
 " sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal," should be 
 a stumbling-block to any man before whom it has 
 been fairly laid? 
 
 It has been well shown by Abercrombie, in his 
 
48 OF RELIGION. 
 
 admirable and unpretending work on the Moral 
 Feelings, that the Deity, speaking even philoso- 
 phically, cannot forgive. Forgiveness implies either 
 an acknovk'ledgment that the law is unjust, sympathy 
 with the criminal, or doubt of his guilt. Neither of 
 these can be predicated of infinite knowledge and 
 infinite goodness without a contradiction in terms. 
 It would be well for many did they reflect that, 
 when they profess to trust in the mercy of God, it 
 is not mercy they expect from him but weakness ; 
 mercy, which is inconsistent with the purity of the 
 divine nature. God indeed is merciful ; the death 
 of the Son of God on the cross for the sins of men 
 is an instance of mercy beyond what tongue can 
 express or mind conceive ; but he is also pure, and, 
 being pure, he cannot pardon sin without atone- 
 ment. 
 
 Christianity differs essentially from all other reli- 
 gions, and from all human moral systems in this, 
 that it teaches us how abominable all sin is in the 
 sight of God, and as a consequence the necessity of 
 humility, a doctrine not to be found in the works of 
 heathen philosophers. Repentance can refer only 
 to the future ; the sin committed has already become 
 a portion of the irrevocable past. Sin cannot be 
 forgiven without repentance, because sin is in the 
 mind, and therefore lasts mentally from the moment 
 of the commission of the act to the moment of 
 
OF RELIGION. 49 
 
 repentance ; an unrepentant state of mind is sin ; 
 but repentance can in many cases make little or no 
 atonement to injured man, and in no case can it 
 make atonement to the offended holiness of God. 
 It follows then, that if the purity of the Deity be 
 admitted, an atonement for sin is indispensable ; and 
 that atonement, we are taught by the Bible, was 
 made by Him, who, being without sin himself, was 
 alone capable of expiating ours. 
 
 The doctrine, that a man has no control over 
 his belief, and consequently is not responsible for 
 it, is so agreeable to the supineness and carelessness 
 of our nature, so suitable to the vulgar latitudi- 
 narianism of our times, which its professors fancy 
 philosophical, that it is not surprising it should be 
 popular. No man who has read the Bible requires 
 to be told that this doctrine is unscriptural ; it 
 remains to be seen whether it is rational. Admitting 
 that perfect sincerity in the investigation of truth, 
 whatever result it may arrive at, deserves reward 
 rather than punishment, where, we ask, is such 
 sincerity to be found ? Our love of truth, like every 
 thing human, is imperfect; it is not unmixed with 
 alloy even in the noblest and purest minds ; and if 
 any man who knows any thing of his own heart, of 
 the world of men, or the world of books, can per- 
 suade himself that it is his in its utmost integrity, 
 he must possess an intrepidity of self-deception of 
 
 E 
 
50 OP RELIGION. 
 
 which it is to be hoped there are few examples. 
 None love truth thoroughly, most men only so far 
 as it suits their purposes ; and the only reasons why 
 there could be a moment's doubt on the subject are, 
 that the love of truth differs in degree, and that the 
 same temptations have not the same effect on dif- 
 ferent minds. Pride has perverted some, vanity 
 many more. Of five of the most remarkable of 
 modern infidels, Voltaire, Rousseau, Bolingbroke, 
 Hume, and Gibbon, the ruling passion was vanity. 
 They liked to shew that they were above thinking 
 with the crowd. The cause of the unbelief of many 
 ancient heathen philosophers seems to have been 
 pride. The religion of the cross was to them, as 
 the apostle expresses it, " foolishness." Many, per- 
 haps the majority of mankind, do not feel interest 
 enough in the subject to examine it with the atten- 
 tion it requires. They are " infidels as dogs are 
 infidels *" they have never thought on the subject. 
 
 But it is incumbent on those who maintain that^ 
 man is not responsible for his belief, not only to 
 find instances of perfect sincerity in the investiga- 
 tion of truth, but also of indefatigable zeal. Not a 
 single opportunity of discovering the truth must be 
 neglected, and each individual opportunity must be 
 not only not neglected, but improved to the utmost. 
 
 • Johnson. 
 
OF RELIGION. 51 
 
 Who can say that he has done this? Where is the 
 man who has sought religious truth with perfect 
 sincerity and unwearied earnestness ? If there be 
 none such, it is clear there can be none who are 
 irresponsible for their belief. 
 
 It will readily be conceded that diflferent minds 
 require different degrees of evidence, but to justify 
 infidelity a great deal more must be done. The 
 man who assumes that - his mind is incapable of 
 being convinced by the existing evidence for Chris- 
 tianity must prove that his mind is what he asserts 
 it to be, by never acting throughout his life in any 
 important affairs on evidence inferior in credibility 
 to the evidence for Christianity. Here, again, is a 
 test which no infidel can stand. The credulity of 
 many religious sceptics in all matters save religion 
 has reached such a pitch as to become absolutely 
 ludicrous. They are ready to believe that the brain 
 secretes thought, or any other absurdity, to escape 
 the immortality of the soul. Does it not then follow 
 that there must have been some other motive than 
 what they choose to call inadequate evidence for 
 their rejection of Christianity ? The truth is, the 
 man whose understanding only is convinced is no 
 Christian. There can be no humility, no conviction 
 of sin, no rejection of self-dependence, no trust in 
 God, in the scriptural sense of the word no faith, 
 without tie interference of the heart. In this 
 E 2 
 
52 OF RELIGION. 
 
 matter all observation, all experience of our common 
 nature tend to confirm the language of the Bible, 
 " with the heart man believeth unto righteousness." 
 The repugnance of many to take their notions of 
 the Deity from the Bible, their predilection for 
 supplying the place of his positive revealed character 
 with a vague abstraction of their own fancy, though 
 sufficiently common in the present, appears to have 
 been far more frequent in the last age. The lati- 
 tudinarian reaction, caused by the austerity of the 
 Puritans, lasted indeed throughout the whole of the 
 eighteenth century. Now, however, it seems nearly 
 worn out ; existing latitudinarianism is of a different 
 school, and does not require to be attributed to so 
 remote a source. There are many symptoms tend- 
 ing to show that religion has really advanced among 
 us. Places of worship are better attended, the 
 Sabbath is better observed, the number of religious 
 and charitable societies has increased beyond all 
 precedent, a considerable portion of the population 
 takes a decided interest in the conversion of the 
 heathen, which has now for many years been carried 
 on with much zeal and some success ; and great 
 numbers are to be found in all classes to whom 
 religion is the most interesting of all subjects, and 
 who feel no shame or hesitation in expressing strong 
 religious sentiments whenever an opportunity oc- 
 curs. Infidel publications are few, and little noticed. 
 
 J 
 
OF RELIGION. 53 
 
 No formal attack on Christianity has been made for 
 a long period by any author of name. Infidels there 
 are many, but public opinion discountenances them, 
 and compels them to observe some decency of ex- 
 ternal deportment. No candidate for a seat in 
 Parliament dares avow himself an infidel on the 
 hustings. Men highly eligible in other respects 
 have even been rejected on the solitary ground of 
 real or supposed infidelity. 
 
 So far all is vrell, yet the picture is not without 
 its shades. There is danger in making religion 
 popular, as we have already begun to experience. 
 There is something too much of outward profession, 
 and many religious persons are disagreeably distin- 
 guished by certain peculiarities, the absence of any 
 one of which reduces the delinquent to the state of 
 an officer on parade without his epaulettes, and inca- 
 pacitates him for the enjoyment of the title of 
 " serious ;" as extravagant asceticism, a canting 
 phraseology, and indiff'erence to all secular subjects. 
 Their asceticism is shown in a sweeping condemnaj'- 
 tion of all amusements ; among women, by a 
 studied plainness and even coarseness of dress, 
 requiring, perhaps, as much or more trouble to 
 select than the customary frills and flounces of 
 their stations ; but, like the cloak of Diogenes, 
 possessing the advantage of making the Avearers 
 more conspicuous. The canting phraseology, or 
 E 3 
 
54 OF RELIGION. 1 
 
 unnecessary use of religious language in the ordi- 
 nary occurrences of life, sometimes approaches the 
 nauseous ostentation of the Puritans. A natural 
 result of indifference to secular subjects is ignorance 
 of them ; and this, with many religious people, is 
 gross, particularly with respect to history and mis- 
 cellaneous literature. Physical science, as treating 
 of the works of the creation, and therefore con- 
 nected with religion, they do not entirely neglect. 
 The taste of the religious world is such as might be 
 expected, for taste there can hardly be without cul- 
 tivation. The number of editions which the point- 
 less ill-nature and tumid verbosity of Pollok, and the 
 elaborate nonsense of Robert Montgomery have run 
 through, is a sufficiently striking proof of " serious" 
 notions of poetical excellence. Add to these an 
 immense variety of religious prose publications, 
 circulated in all directions, written in the most 
 grov.elling style, and totally devoid of literary 
 merit, which indeed the authors sometimes take 
 the very unnecessary trouble formally to disclaim, 
 as if they thought it sinful. It is strange that 
 men with so noble a model as the Bible before them, 
 and human hearts in their bosoms, should know 
 
 " So little of the springs that move mankind."* 
 
 But they seem anxiously to avoid contemplating 
 
 the Bible in a literary point of view, and this is 
 
 * Philip van. Art£velde« 
 
OF RELIGION. 35 
 
 probably one reason why so few clergymen read it 
 well. 
 
 Men who do not love knowledge seldom really 
 love either thought or liberty ; they are the slaves 
 of a system themselves which they want the courage 
 or energy to examine, and it mortifies their self-love 
 to see others emancipated from the same trammels. 
 The spirit of the Church of England of the present 
 day is widely different from that which animated 
 the reformers of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries. Circumstances threw the reformers into 
 the arms of civil freedom, but their case is not 
 ours. The popish hatred of dissent, incident not 
 only to popery, but to all religious establishments, 
 has again] raised its head, and extended its perni- 
 cious shoots far and wide. Hence the superstitious 
 jargon of apostolical succession, a distinction to 
 which one Protestant sect cannot possibly be en- 
 titled to the exclusion of all the rest, the doctrine 
 of the inalienable nature of ecclesiastical property, 
 and other similar absurdities. A still more un- 
 fortunate result of this resurrection of exploded 
 intolerance is the air of restraint and consequent 
 mediocrity which is insensibly creeping over the 
 writings of our divines. The works of clergymen 
 are easily discernible from those of other men. 
 
 Yet it would be unjust to say that the English 
 clergy do not love knowledge. It is necessary to 
 E 4 
 
56 OF RELIGION. 1 
 
 distinguish between the Arminians and Calvinists, 
 the two classes into which they are divided. The 
 Arminians are many of them deeply learned, yet 
 they dislike freedom of thought and action, and it 
 is from them that the most nauseous displays of 
 political and religious bigotry have recently pro- 
 ceeded. Though the piety of many of them is 
 unquestionable, they are a political rather than a 
 religious body ; they preach without scruple against 
 the articles to which they compel others to sub- 
 scribe; they make religion political, not politics 
 religious. The Calvinistic clergy, on the other 
 hand, though they love not thought and dread 
 liberty, which they confound with licence, though 
 they look upon knowledge as a snare, tempting 
 men to wander from the simplicity of scriptural 
 truth, are not a political body. Their political 
 principles are substantially the same with those of 
 the Arminians, their sympathies are rather with 
 the oppressors than the oppressed, but religion is 
 with the majority of them the mainspring of their 
 actions. They are the chiefs of what is emphati- 
 cally styled the religious world, the idols of women, 
 the promoters of missions, tracts, Sunday-schools, 
 temperance societies, and a vast variety of insti- 
 tutions, few or none of which do not produce more 
 good than evil, at the moderate expense of certain 
 periodical confusions of tongues, where the quantity 
 12 
 
OF RELIGION. 57 
 
 of nonsense uttered is not upon the whole more 
 inordinate than might be expected. The mis- 
 fortune is that regular attendances at these con- 
 venticles, together with the peculiarities before 
 enumerated, are converted into sectarian badges, 
 and made the means of thrusting those who want 
 them out of the sacred pale. Hence spiritual pride, 
 presumption and un charitableness, some of the 
 worst features of our religious state. 
 
 It is remarkable that, whenever we hear of a 
 clergyman celebrated as a popular preacher, he is 
 almost certain on inquiry to prove a Calvinist. 
 The Calvinists have indeed done much to redeem 
 the character of the English pulpit, degraded as it 
 was by the miserable, lifeless, worn-out, Goody- 
 two-shoes comparisons of virtue and vice of the 
 last century, which make one long to praise vice at 
 virtue's expense. They have at least laid the 
 foundation for a better order of things ; they have 
 knowledge of Scripture and piety ; they want, with 
 some brilliant exceptions, literature and philosophy, 
 and perhaps courage. Yet Robert Hall left little 
 to be desired. Nothing in its kind can be more 
 beautiful than his observations on humility : — " The 
 devout man loves to lie low at the footstool of his 
 Creator, because it is then he attains the most 
 lively perceptions of the divine excellence, and the 
 most tranquil confidence in the divine favour. In 
 
58 OF RELIGION. 
 
 SO august a presence he sees all distictions lost, and 
 all beings reduced to the same level. He looks on 
 his superiors without envy and on his inferiors 
 without contempt, and when from this elevation he 
 descends to mix in society, the conviction of 
 superiority, which must in many instances be felt, 
 is a calm inference of the understanding, and no 
 longer a busy, importunate passion of the heart" 
 In this exquisite passage we hardly know what 
 most to admire, the pure devotion of the thoughts, 
 the eloquent propriety of the language, or the rich 
 and flowing melody of the periods ; and why will 
 not the Calvinists believe that religion, clothed 
 with eloquence and philosophy, will, to use the 
 words of Sir Philip Sidney in his unanswerable 
 " Defence of Poesy," " more constantly inhabit both 
 the memory and the judgment?" If men are to be 
 moved by empty wordiness, ignorance, and childish 
 sophistry, such as we often hear from the pulpit, 
 why is the Bible so full of poetry and pathos, 
 pregnant aphorism and nervous argument? It 
 would be absurd to blame the Calvinistic preachers 
 for not possessing the powers of Robert Hall ; but 
 they do deserve to be blamed for neglecting intel- 
 lectual culture, and not making the best use of the 
 powers they have. 
 
 As religious people have commonly a much 
 greater horror of shocking the true believers, 
 
OF RELIGION. 59 
 
 armed, as they often are to the teeth, with preju- 
 dices of all kinds, than of disgusting worldly men, 
 and thereby deterring them from becoming religious, 
 so the Calvinistic preachers seem to think very 
 little of the effect their discourses may have on 
 those who are not of their own flock. They will 
 not see that their random' assertions, truisms and 
 fallacies are highly injurious to the cause of truth. 
 What intolerable stuff" have we not heard uttered 
 respecting the ancient philosophers by men who 
 probably never read a line of them ; what impos- 
 sible effects attributed to Christianity, what extra- 
 vagant exaggerations of Paganism I Rubbish of 
 this sort seems to form the staple of most speeches 
 at Bible meetings. To sum up the whole matter in 
 plain phrase, if men would be useful they must 
 first learn to speak the truth. " Whatsoever," says 
 Hooker with his habitual wisdom, " is spoken of 
 God or things appertaining to God otherwise than 
 as the truth is : though it seem an honour, it is an 
 injury." 
 
 Yet many of the offensive peculiarities of the 
 modern Calvinists arise from well-founded fears. 
 Let us not run into the contrary extreme, and try 
 to compound between God and mammon. This is 
 the rock on which millions have split, the insolent 
 and audacious experiment we are almost all of us 
 trying, as if our object was to see who could sail 
 
60 OF RELIGION. 
 
 nearest the wind. It is impossible to draw a broad 
 line between the pale boundaries of right and wrong 
 which will equally suit all circumstances ; the best 
 test, perhaps, of conversion, of real religion, is an 
 habitual reference to the Deity in all we think and 
 in all we do. An habitual reference it must be 
 to have any effectual influence on the character, for, 
 in proportion as it becomes more feeble and less 
 constant, do men fall off from Christianity. It is 
 only by thus living mentally in the presence of the 
 Almighty that a reflecting man can become resigned 
 to his will, the last and most difficult conquest over 
 itself of an inquiring mind. 
 
 Among the deficiencies of our age, which are 
 little likely to be supplied, may be numbered a good 
 commentary on the Bible. It is not that there is 
 any scarcity of pious and learned commentators ; 
 on the contrary, there is no end of them ; but they 
 all labour under the same defect, want of imagina- 
 tion and want of knowledge of mankind. Lord 
 Bacon in his beautiful " Wisdom of the Ancients," 
 so admirably translated by Sir Arthur Gorges, has 
 given a meaning to the most extravagant fables of 
 the Greeks, in many instances probably never 
 suspected by the inventors themselves. 
 
 Though a scriptural commentary, conceived in a 
 spirit equally fanciful, would be exceedingly 
 dangerous, it must be remembered that we are 
 
OF RELIGION. 61 
 
 not likely to attribute too much meaning to the 
 Bible. From its very nature, there can be in it 
 nothing redundant and nothing deficient ; not only, 
 therefore, must something profound lie hid under 
 the many passages in which hitherto no peculiar 
 import has been discovered, and in the many others 
 distinguished by their obscurity ; but we have every 
 reason to believe that we have not even approached 
 to an exhaustion of the meaning of those passages 
 which are known to contain " more than meets the 
 ear." At the same time the obvious and peculiar 
 necessity for judgment and caution must not be 
 for a moment forgotten, a reflection which has, 
 doubtless, in many instances, shortened the excur- 
 sions of the more enterprising from the beaten 
 track. The Bible is the history of the redemption 
 of the world by the death of Christ ; and though 
 every thing else seems subservient to the unity of 
 this grand design, never lost sight of from the first 
 book to the last, it is, we should remember, the 
 work of an infinite being, and must therefore be 
 susceptible of infinite interpretation. To give an 
 instance, there appears at first sight nothing pecu- 
 liarly striking or uncommon in the story of Hagar. 
 The expulsion of a female slave from the Harem, at 
 the instigation of her offended mistress, can be no 
 rare occurrence in the East ; yet St. Paul expressly 
 declares that these "things are an allegory;" the 
 
62 OF RELIGION. c«H 
 
 bond-maid and the free-woman are types of the 
 two covenants, of works and of grace. Again, 
 Lord Bacon thus explains our Saviour's words, 
 " Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the 
 power of God ;" " teaching that there are but two 
 fountains of heresy; not knowing the will of God 
 revealed in the Scriptures, and not knowing the 
 power of God revealed, or at least made sensible i:i 
 his creatures." In the same manner a spiritual and 
 moral meaning may be extracted from every story 
 or maxim in the Bible, and ample scope afforded for 
 the display of ingenuity and fancy, hitherto almost 
 shut out from religious discussions. Such a mode 
 of scriptural exposition could not fail in able hands 
 of arresting attention, not merely from its novelty, 
 but from that unconquerable love of apologue, 
 which has never yet deserted, and we are persuaded 
 never will desert mankind. 
 
 In the pulpit the introduction of a more fanciful 
 and lively style of preaching would surely succeed. 
 Why should not religion avail herself of every 
 weapon ? Is it not something to get the ear of a 
 congregation? It is natural that clergymen should 
 impute the listlessness of many who hear them to 
 any cause rather than their own dulness ; but 
 whether it be exclusively owing to the depravity of 
 human nature or not, certain it is men will not 
 listen with profound attention week after week to 
 
 i 
 
OF RELIGION. 63 
 
 discourses which tell them nothing they do not 
 already know. 
 
 The knowledge of human nature, exhibited by 
 scriptural commentators, is generally too coarse to 
 be accurate. An inexhaustible theme for fine and 
 subtle remark is not to be dismissed with a string of 
 truisms from which time has long since stripped all 
 the gloss. Besides, too many write rather what they 
 suppose they ought to think than what they do 
 think. Works of this sort are easily dis cover-able, 
 and never readable. Analysis of character when 
 candid, and not exaggerated or one-sided, is always 
 interesting. The Bible abounds with portraits 
 slightly sketched, which, if accurately and fairly 
 worked out, would solve many difficulties; and 
 though this has been often attempted, it has been 
 done for the most part without freedom, with little 
 previous acquaintance with great historical charac- 
 ters, and little knowledge of the world. 
 
 The liturgy of the Church of England is among 
 the sublimest, the most pathetic, and the most 
 appropriate to its object of all human compositions. 
 When we consider the slight alterations necessary 
 to render it consistent with itself, more free from 
 repetitions, and conformable to Scripture and the 
 Articles, it seems for a moment surprising that they 
 have never been made. To some the divisions of 
 opinion among the clergy themselves, their natural 
 
64 OF RELIGION. 
 
 disinclination to all change, and more especially to 
 liturgical or doctrinal change, may be sufficient 
 reasons why this has not been done, though nothing 
 remained behind. But when we look at the con- 
 stitution of the Church of England, particularly as 
 it has been left by the disuse of convocations, we 
 do not perceive that it has within itself any mode 
 of effecting internal reforms. Whatever changes 
 are made in the church must come from without, 
 and perhaps it is better that it should be so, yet the 
 practical difficulties either way are great. If the 
 liturgy is to be revised, is it to be done publicly by 
 a large assembly, or privately by a few individuals? 
 And whether the revisers be few or many, how are 
 they to be appointed, from what class are they to 
 be taken, clergy or laity, either or both, and bow 
 far are their powers to extend ? The difficulty of 
 answering these questions would appear to make 
 the prospect of change exceedingly remote, were 
 there not an extensive and deep-rooted schism in 
 the church itself, dividing nearly the whole body 
 of the clergy into two distinct classes, hitherto 
 receding from, rather than approximating to, each 
 other, but at present manifesting some inclination 
 to combine their forces in the common cause of 
 ecclesiastical privilege. 
 
 Among the many subjects on which these two 
 parties entertain conflicting opinions is that of 
 
OF RELIGION. 65 
 
 baptism. The Arminians, supported by the baptis- 
 mal service, maintain that baptism and regeneration 
 are synchronous ; which the Calvinists, leaning on 
 the Article on baptism, altogether deny. Both 
 parties appeal to Scripture, but the Arminians 
 with less confidence than the Calvinists, and with 
 a certain popish and learned hankering after the 
 Fathers, whose works they seem to look upon as a 
 sort of intermediate stage between the inspired 
 writings and those of ordinary men. We can afford 
 to smile, at the present day, at the would-be popish 
 extravagances of the Oxford schismatics, and at 
 the impotent fury with which the high-churchmen 
 strive to run counter to the opinions and feelings of 
 their times ; but it may be interesting to see, whether 
 Tillotson's unanswerable argument against transub- 
 stantiation does not equally apply to their doctrine 
 of baptismal regeneration ; thus shewing, by the 
 way, how hard it is for men to be reasonable, in 
 whose heads their own imaginary orthodoxy is the 
 most prominent idea. 
 
 Tillotson argues against transubstantiation as an 
 assumed miracle, contradicted by the evidence of 
 our senses, which satisfy us that no change takes 
 place in the wafer on consecration. Either then we 
 must admit a miracle against the evidence of our 
 senses, the only avenues of our knowledge, an ad- 
 mission which must reduce a reflecting and con- 
 
 F 
 
66 OF RELIGION. 
 
 sistent mind to utter scepticism, or transubstantia- 
 tion becomes a mere word without an idea attached 
 to it, a sound without a meaning. How will the 
 Arminians extricate their doctrine of baptismal 
 regeneration from the same dilemma ! If they 
 assert that regeneration uniformly accompanies 
 baptism, they are contradicted by facts, which 
 abundantly prove, that many who have been baptised 
 have afterwards lived profligate lives, and died 
 avowed infidels. If a man may be regenerate 
 without being a Christian even in name, then 
 regeneration, the absence of which, Christ himself 
 has declared, in the most express terms language 
 admits of, excludes a man from the kingdom of 
 heaven, is in Arminian mouths a mere pleonasm, 
 signifying nothing. Should the Arminians say, that 
 their doctrine of baptismal regeneration would be 
 sufficiently proved by the fact of persons baptised 
 having at any subsequent period lived the lives of 
 Christians ; it is obviously incumbent upon them to 
 shew, that all persons baptised, without one excep- 
 tion, have at some period lived such a life, which, 
 of course, they cannot do, nor would the explana- 
 tion even then be satisfactory. 
 
 The want of a good system of ecclesiastical dis- 
 cipline has long been felt by the real friends of the 
 Church of England. As the attention of the legis- 
 lature has been already directed to the subject, it 
 
OF RELIGION. 67 
 
 is to be hoped, this crying evil, certainly one of 
 the main causes of dissent, will speedily be re- 
 medied. 
 
 The various psalms and hymns used in our 
 churches are unworthy to be placed for a moment 
 by the side of the liturgy. A few only of the best 
 are much above mediocrity, and the great majority 
 far below it. There seems to be no reason, why it 
 should be harder to write good devotional poetry 
 than good devotional prose. In fact, it has been 
 4one in the case of the Latin leonine hymns of the 
 Roman Catholics. The " Dies irse" and the " Stabat 
 Mater "* are hardly inferior to the " Te Deum." 
 Some years since an excellent article on the subject 
 of psalmody was published in the Quarterly Review, 
 in which the requisites of a hymn were laid down 
 with great accuracy and discriminating taste, yet 
 there has been no improvement. The finest and 
 the safest hymns will undoubtedly be those couched 
 almost exclusively in scriptural phraseology ; but the 
 
 * The Stabat Mater has been recently very well translated in 
 Fraser's Magazine. How touching and simple is the stanza : 
 " Eia Mater ! fons amoris ! 
 Me sentire vim del oris 
 
 Fac, ut tecum lugeam ; 
 Fac ut ardeat cor meum 
 In amando Christum Deum, 
 Ut illi complaceam !" 
 F 2 
 
68 OF RELIGION. 
 
 peculiar intractability of the Hebrew poetry renders 
 it impossible to select any single passage, and 
 follow it closely in English verse. If Milton failed, 
 who can hope to succeed ? But this difficulty 
 might perhaps be obviated by making hymns, not 
 metrical translations, or even paraphrases of in- 
 sulated passages, but rather centos from the Bible 
 generally, compilations of scriptural thoughts, scrip- 
 tural images, and scriptural phrases, selected at 
 pleasure. At all events, the experiment, as far as 
 I know, has never hitherto been fairly tried. 
 
 The question of the observance of the Sabbath 
 has recently engaged much attention in the religious 
 world, and many legislative attempts have been 
 made to enforce it, some of them of the most pre- 
 posterous description. All that the legislature can 
 do in such a case is to compel men to preserve a 
 decent exterior ; it cannot make them pious, and all 
 legislative enactments on such a subject must ne- 
 cessarily and unavoidably affect the poor much more 
 sensibly than the rich. In England there really 
 is a strong and deep-rooted religious feeling among 
 a large proportion of the population, or at all events 
 infidelity is generally looked upon with disgust and 
 abhorrence ; consequently, the question of Sabbath 
 legislation has been met with great cowardice by 
 many public men, through fear of seeming or of 
 being called infidels. We have reached this point : 
 
 14 
 
OF RELIGION. 69 
 
 there is a most marked distinction, as all foreigners 
 bear witness, between the Sabbath and the other 
 days of the week ; severer laws on the subject 
 would be positively mischievous, if they proceeded 
 so far as to be daily evaded or infringed by thou- 
 sands in the present state of the public mind. The 
 government of this country is the strongest in the 
 world, but it will not long remain so, if collisions 
 with the masses are sought rather than shunned, 
 and laws enacted which cannot be executed. In 
 the present instance it has not been proved that 
 severer laws would do good. 
 
 How far divine laws require the observance of 
 the Sabbath to be extended is a very different 
 question from that of the propriety of further Sab- 
 bath legislation ; and, perhaps, rather a matter of 
 feeling than argument. To a devout man, what 
 many would term puritanical austerity on this head 
 is not a task; he has no taste for secular amusements 
 at such a time ; he abandons them not only without 
 an eifort, but it requires an effort on his part to 
 descend to their insipid level, after being engaged 
 in the most interesting and important of all con- 
 templations. Hence, the manner in which a man 
 prefers spending the Sabbath is an excellent test of 
 his religious state. The mind, certainly, must be 
 unbent, and may be unbent in a suitable manner ; but 
 a desire to plunge so rapidly from one extreme to 
 F 3 
 
70 OF RELIGION. 
 
 the Other, if indeed there be an extreme at all, and 
 religion has actually for a short space occupied the 
 thoughts, shews a diseased understanding, and it is 
 to be feared a depraved heart. 
 
 The observance of the Sabbath is a positive 
 command : to make no distinction between that day 
 and other days is clearly a breach of that command ; 
 but what distinction do they make, who spend it in 
 travelling, writing letters, looking over accounts, or 
 similar employments ? The truth is, religion is 
 irksome to them, and they are glad to escape from 
 its irksomeness by wilful disobedience. 
 
 Though the question whether dissent be an evil 
 is as old as Protestantism, or rather as Christianity 
 itself, it seems to be one on which mankind are as 
 far as ever from agreeing. The high-church Ar- 
 minian, after denouncing the doctrines of his own 
 articles and homilies in one sentence, condemns all 
 who dissent from them in the next, though among 
 those very dissenters he is himself to be numbered 
 on his own shewing. He charges dissent with pro- 
 ducing all manner of evils, which, as a little reflection 
 might have taught him, spring not so much from 
 dissent as from the nature of man, from the melan- 
 choly fact that men will not think charitably of 
 those who differ from them in opinion. As Plato 
 remarks in a singularly scriptural sentence, " Con- 
 tentions, and wars, and battles spring from nothing 
 
OF RELIGION. 71 
 
 else than the body and the lusts thereof." * But the 
 high-churchman's hatred of dissent is derived from 
 a lower source than hatred of doctrines believed by 
 the hater to be false and pernicious. He looks upon 
 the church as his property, and dissenters as spiritual 
 poachers and trespassers on the ecclesiastical manor. 
 He cares not for the grounds of dissent ; indeed if 
 he were to be asked what peculiar opinions held by 
 the majority of protestant dissenters he thought 
 mischievous, and why he so thought them, he could 
 not readily give a satisfactory answer; it is the 
 audacity of the act of dissent that excites his wrath. 
 This is the old leaven of Popery, the spirit of the 
 rack, the brazier, and the auto da fe. On the other 
 hand, the charges against the dissenters are not 
 without foundation ; many among them are not slow 
 to repay harshness and injustice with malice and 
 envy, to exaggerate real grievances, and invent 
 others. 
 
 If this picture be accurate, it will be said, can 
 any man doubt that dissent is an evil ? There could 
 be no doubt, if it could be shewn that assent is not 
 an evil also. Neither dissent nor assent are neces- 
 sary evils ; the sinfulness of either must depend upon 
 their respective motives ; both have their tempta- 
 tions ; and as hatred and strife are often incident to 
 
 * " Kal yap TToKe/xovs Kal crraffeis Koi fidxas ohSev &\ho ■7rape;)(et 
 '*/ rh cru/xa koI at rourov iTnOvjxiai." Phaedon. 
 F 4 
 
i 'i' OF RELlGION^. 
 
 dissent, so is indifference often incident to assent. 
 A variety of sects is in many points beneficial to 
 religion. As the members of each are severe critics 
 of the doctrine and practice of all the rest, a species 
 of mutual responsibility is created, by which all, 
 though it is a truth few are willing to own, are in 
 some degree controlled. Many excesses are pre- 
 vented by the dread of active malevolence and 
 honest indignation, strengthened by the spirit of 
 religious partisanship. Sectarianism has done for 
 Protestantism what monasticism did for Popery, it 
 has kept it alive. 
 
 The church of Rome early discovered that reli- 
 gious zeal soon wore out, the languishing flame 
 constantly required fresh fuel ; if one age was ascetic 
 and superstitious, the next was lukewarm and licen- 
 tious; the policy of the popes, therefore, always 
 encouraged the formation of monastic orders. St. 
 Francis and St. Dominic were the Whitfield and 
 Wesley of their times. Monasticism made Popery 
 more comprehensive and elastic ; the fervour, the 
 self-denial, and the energy of the founders of the 
 various orders, gave it a hold upon the affections of 
 the multitude, which the Church of England at least 
 has never yet been able to obtain. 
 
 Whether Protestants have done right in utterly 
 condemning monasticism " may admit of doubt." 
 The vow, indeed, is altogether bad. Such is human 
 
OF RELIGION. 7$ 
 
 nature, that we feel an irrepressible desire to escape 
 from any prison, whether moral or physical, whether 
 our imprisonment be our own act, or that of others. 
 To have taken a vow is enough to make us long to 
 violate it. This the Reformers saw ; and the world 
 was then rife with stories, true or false, — but as all 
 felt who knew their own hearts, never improbable, — 
 of enormities perpetrated beneath the irrevocable 
 gloom of the cloister. But why can we not have 
 monasticism without vows, monasticism, temporary 
 or lasting, according to the inclination of the re- 
 cluse? " This world is too much with us," cares 
 and pleasures make us offend in our hearts, and 
 society makes us offend in our tongues. Surely reli- 
 gious houses, where men and women might retire 
 separately for a time, live on simple fare, and devote 
 themselves to contemplation, works of charity and 
 prayer, would have a beneficial effect on mankind. 
 The notion that austerities are meritorious, one of 
 the worst evils of popish monasticism, would not 
 exist in such institutions, as austerities would not 
 exist themselves. The great obstacle to such a 
 scheme would in this country be found in the arti- 
 ficial distinctions of society. In northern climates 
 generally, and especially in England, the line be- 
 tween the rich and poor is too broad to admit of an 
 harmonious social union under any circumstances. 
 Their tastes, habits, sympathies, are all distinct : the 
 
74 OF RELIGION. 
 
 outward man differs much, the inward still more. 
 On the other hand, to have separate establishments 
 would be invidious, and look as if we expected to 
 find gradations of rank, riches, talents, and acquire- 
 ments, even in the next world ; yet this, it should 
 Seem, would be in England the unavoidable alter- 
 native. Monasticism has always prevailed most in 
 the south, for there the rich and poor readily amal- 
 gamate ; the peasantry have an aptness for imitation, 
 a native taste, and a nobility of aspect which soon 
 places them on a level, and frequently on more than 
 a level, with their superiors in station, who are 
 indeed far from equalling the corresponding class 
 in this country. If the principe Doria marries a 
 Roman contadina, she is as complete a prin- 
 cipessa in mind and manner in a fortnight as if 
 she had been born one, though she may not be able 
 even to read. Thus the facilities for monasticism 
 are natural ; poverty requires less self-denial and 
 wears a less sordid air, and wealth does not stand on 
 so lofty a pedestal. 
 
 In England the social obstacles to monasticism 
 are hardly to be overcome, but the common objec- 
 tion, that it is a selfish desertion of our post, does 
 not seem to apply to a state of religious seclusion 
 without the vow. And what post after all have 
 many to desert ! The family man, the man of large 
 landed property, the statesman, the active profes- 
 
OF RELIGION. 75 
 
 sional man, all have their respective paths chalked 
 out for them ; but how many are there not included 
 under any of these heads ? If such were to retire 
 from the world, would the world miss them ? Alas 
 no ! In the selfish whirl of modern society the purest 
 and the mightiest minds are when they sink down 
 but as wounded soldiers in a disastrous retreat, the 
 crowd rushes on and forgets them. It is, indeed, 
 now in more senses than Sir Thomas Browne 
 intended, " too late to be ambitious." Let us not, 
 as some perchance have done, puffed up with vain- 
 glory, led away by dreams of fancied usefulness, 
 measuring ourselves not by the just dimensions of 
 our meridian shadows, but by the deceitful lengthen- 
 ings of the world's evening sun, neglect the great 
 purpose of our habitation in our earthly tabernacle, 
 the salvation of our own souls. Things here are to 
 be accounted evil or good, so far only as they unfit 
 or prepare us to meet that day, which shall make 
 " pyramids pillars of snow, and all that's past a 
 moment." * 
 
 * Hydriotaphia. 
 
16 
 
 OF POETRY. 
 
 " Not empire to the rising sun, 
 By valour, conduct, fortune won ; 
 Not highest wisdom in debates, 
 For framing laws to govern states ; 
 Not skill in sciences profound. 
 So large to grasp the circle round ; 
 Such heavenly influence require. 
 As how to strike the Muse's lyre." 
 
 Swift, 
 
 There seems little foundation for the complaint we 
 sometimes hear made, that the present is not a 
 poetical age. It would be a strange anomaly in the 
 history of mankind, if it were the fact, that an age, 
 so full of experiment, so fertile in every species of 
 moral phenomena, throwing light over so many of 
 the darker mysteries of our nature, had produced 
 no one capable of presenting its character to pos- 
 terity in the most permanent and magnificent form. 
 The truth is there are poets ; but whether it be that 
 the public taste naturally oscillates from admiration 
 to neglect, or that the realities of life are become 
 more interesting, strange and various, there never 
 
OF POETRY. 77 
 
 was a period when poets found more difficulty in 
 obtaining a hearing. Another serious obstacle to 
 the progress of the privileged few is the innumerable 
 host of pretenders, who choke up all the avenues to 
 the public ear. To notice these would be a trial of 
 temper and a waste of time, but if we consider what 
 poetry really is, and measure some of our poets by a 
 fair standard, we shall find that there have been, 
 and still are those among us who will endure the 
 test. 
 
 Poetry seems to be the art of clothing sublime 
 and beautiful ideas in figurative and impassioned 
 language metrically arranged. If in this definition 
 the word rhythmically were substituted for metri- 
 cally, there would be no sufficient distinction be- 
 tween poetry and prose, since there is rhythm or 
 melody in the periods of all fine prose writers. It 
 will include the parallelism of the Hebrews, which 
 may surely be considered a species of metre. It 
 will also include pathos, because pathos is beautiful, 
 though poetical only so far as it is beautiful, as it 
 may trench upon what the Greeks called " the 
 hateful," which excites disgust ; or the misery de- 
 scribed may be so overwhelming as to excite an- 
 guish ; in either case the bounds of poetry are 
 passed, for in the depth of beauty there is ever a 
 principle of repose. Thus iEschylus, not less 
 philosophically than poetically, calls Helen " the 
 
78 OF POETRY. 
 
 spirit of a breathless calm." * Again, Shakspeare 
 has been sometimes blamed for not terminating his 
 tragedy of Romeo and Juliet according to the ver- 
 sion of the story by Luigi da Porto and Bandellc 
 who make Juliet awake after Romeo has poisoned 
 himself, and before he dies. Now whether Shaks- 
 peare had read this version or not, a man who has 
 studied the character of his mind will hardly believe 
 that so obvious a conclusion did not suggest itself 
 to him, but, as I once heard a German remark, such 
 a scene would have been " trop dechirant," the ideal 
 would have been lost in the natural. 
 
 The Germans, during the latter half of the last 
 century, broke up new ground in literature ; the 
 impulse they gave to the mind naturally communi- 
 cated itself first to the English, as the people who 
 in character and language most resembled them, 
 and latterly, within the last few years, to the French 
 and Italians. The old vein was indeed everywhere 
 exhausted ; the Germans have the merit of priority 
 in point of time, and also of invention, as they had 
 a literature to create, but they did but what the 
 English, in a great measure at least, would have 
 done, had the former delayed much longer. English 
 writers began in fact to revert to their ancient 
 models long before German literature was exten- 
 sively known in this country ; but though few were 
 * " ^p6vr]fj.% yriveixov jaKavas." Agamemnon. 
 
OF POETRY. 79 
 
 aware of it, the influence of Germany was felt not- 
 withstanding. To this influence, combined with the 
 natural tendency of mankind to run from one ex- 
 treme to another, from the depth of the definite to 
 the heighth of the ideal, many of our faults, as well 
 as of our excellences, must be attributed. From 
 these two causes spring our besetting sins of senti- 
 mentality, vagueness, transcendentalism, and aifec- 
 tation ; our worst literary feature, writing without 
 thought, and without taking pains, seems chargeable 
 upon the bad habit we have got into of being always 
 in a hurry. 
 
 The most diflBcult task of a poet is to unite the 
 ideal and the definite in just proportions, so that one 
 shall not swallow up the other. Goethe may be said 
 to have entirely succeeded in amalgamating these 
 discordant elements in the first part of Faust ; but 
 as the bent of his mind was to soar too high, in two 
 others of his best works, Iphigenia and Tasso, he 
 seems to have been compelled to tie himself down 
 to the simple forms of the Greeks. 
 
 Though the subject of this chapter is English 
 poetry, it will not be inconsistent with the design, 
 for reasons which will presently appear, to say a few 
 words on the first part of Faust, the most remarkable 
 work of the most remarkable man of our times. 
 
 If we compare Goethe with Shakspeare, and there 
 are few who can endure such a comparison better. 
 
80, OF POETRY. 
 
 there appears to be this, among other essential dis- 
 tinctions between them, that Shakspeare is the poet 
 of all countries and of all times, " broad and general 
 as the casing air," he incloses universal humanity 
 within his mantle ; Goethe, though comprehensive 
 and various, is more peculiarly the poet of his age, 
 and in this his master-piece he has drawn a portrait 
 of his age, its philosophy, literature, hopes, fears, 
 and desires, never equalled in breadth and truth. 
 Faust is not, nor was intended to be, a man of the 
 fifteenth century. Some critics have blamed the 
 want of individuality in his character, not under- 
 standing the author's design. It is just as reason- 
 able to blame De Foe for the want of individuality 
 in the character of Crusoe. Faust is an aggregate 
 of the men of the author's age, but not of common 
 men, and here lies the difficulty of comprehending 
 him ; the profoundness of his thoughts, and tlie 
 magnificent harmony of his language, belong alone 
 to Goethe. He would " see, suff'er, and enjoy," much 
 more than this world can afford, though he is sensi- 
 ble that it will end in his being " tired of it all." * 
 Of whatever the world can aff"ord he is tired already ; 
 hence the sweeping emphasis of his curse, 
 
 " So fluch' ich Alles was die Seele 
 Mit Lock und Gaukelwerk umspannt," u. s. w. 
 
 * History of Rome. Lardner's Cab. Cycl. 
 
OF POETRY. 81 
 
 and the almost insane wildness of his desires, 
 
 " Dem Taumel weih' ich mich, der schmerlichsten Genuss, 
 Verliebtem Hass, erquickendem Verdruss," u. s. w. 
 
 still he is human ; how beautifully are we convinced 
 of his participation in our common nature, when he 
 puts down the poisoned cup on hearing the paschal 
 song, and reverts to the associations of his childhood 
 in these exquisite lines, 
 
 " Diess Lied verkiindete der Jugend muntre Spiele, 
 Der Friihlingsfeyer freyes Gllick, 
 Erinnrung halt mich nun mit kindlichem Gef iihle 
 Vom letzten, ernsten Schritt zuriiek : 
 O tbnet fort, ihr siissen Himmelslieder, 
 Die Thrane quillt, die Erde hat mich wieder." 
 
 Faust, distracted by the want of harmony between 
 his capacity and his desires, descends to the common 
 level of mankind ; hence the episode of Margaret, 
 for, notwithstanding the marvellous beauty and pathos 
 of the execution, it is but an episode, and only so 
 far furthers the author's design, as it tends to deve- 
 lope the character of Faust more completely. Earlier 
 in his history, to shew that his object is not so much 
 to know as to feel, he is contrasted with the mere 
 bookworm Wagner, " nur des einen Triebs be- 
 wusst." 
 
 For the sake of relief and variety, the scenes of 
 "Auerbach's Keller" and the " Spaziergang"arein- 
 
 G 
 
82 OF POETRY. 
 
 troduced, displaying the accuracy of Goethe's ob- 
 servation, and his general knowledge of mankind. 
 
 The magic of Faust, though very good, and 
 forming a necessary part of the poem, is not alto- 
 gether satisfactory ; but the character of Mephisto- 
 philes is incomparable. He is the best, or rather 
 the solitary portrait of the Devil. His lip curls 
 with an eternal sneer ; one would think Goethe must 
 have had certain fiendish philosophers in his eye. 
 How finely and naturally does the innocent Mar- 
 garet recoil from him, with what unconscious pro- 
 foundness does she exclaim, 
 
 " Es steht ihm an der Stirn geschrieben, 
 Das er nicht mag eine Seele lieben." 
 
 In one solitary instance Mephistophiles bursts 
 into an eloquent rhapsody, which seems foreign to 
 his character, 
 
 " Wenn sich der Mensch, die kleine Narrenwelt 
 Gewbhnlich fiir ein Ganzes halt, 
 Ich bin ein Theil des Theils der Anfangs Alles war, 
 Ein Theil der Finsterniss, die sich das Licht gebar." 
 
 However, if he is to be eloquent at all, it cannot be 
 denied that his eloquence is most appropriately em- 
 ployed in vaunting himself. 
 
 Faust is imperfect, necessarily imperfect, and that 
 from the nature of the subject, and not from any 
 defect in the author. To complete it, would require 
 faculties men do not possess, and cannot compre- 
 
OF POETRY. 83 
 
 hend. But we sympathise witli Faust, because we 
 feel that his presumption and his weakness are our 
 own. The moral, for there is a moral, may be given 
 by slightly varying the fine and well-known adage 
 of Scaliger, Virtutis humanae magna pars est, quse- 
 dam aequo animo sentire nolle.* 
 
 Of the second part of Faust, I am not at present 
 qualified to give an opinion. 
 
 The germ of the abominable violations of sense 
 and propriety by the modern French romantic 
 school is to be found in Faust. But Goethe was a 
 consummate artist, who understood and followed, 
 in this instance at least, simple truth and tranquil 
 beauty; the French romanticists have only woven to- 
 gether a sickly fantastic tissue of horrors and crimes. 
 
 John Paul Richter is reported to have said that 
 " the empire of the Germans was the air ;" thus 
 indirectly confessing the justice of the charge of 
 mysticism, long ago brought against them by plain 
 people, and mystically rebutted by Mr. Carlyle. 
 They seem to take as much pains to wrap up their 
 thoughts in an uncouth garb as the ancient Egyp- 
 tians did their mummies ; and after all the unwrap- 
 ping and unfolding is over, they are sometimes 
 found to be nearly as old. Their perverseness in 
 refusing to say a common thing in a common way, 
 
 * " Sapientiae humanae magna pars est, queedam aequo animo 
 nescire velle." 
 
 G 2 
 
84 OF POETRY. 
 
 1 
 
 is as provoking as the unsuccessful obslinacy of 
 some of our English poets in attempting to illustrate 
 the feelings ; an exotic style, also imported from 
 Germany, though considerably modified and im- 
 proved by the study of our own early writers. 
 
 Of the poets of the feelings the chief is Words- 
 worth. His friends, Coleridge and Southey, touch 
 upon the same ground, but only incidentally, and 
 their merits and defects are in many respects very 
 unlike his. The term Lakists therefore applied to 
 all three is incorrect, as they differ materially, and 
 Wordsworth alone among them is the founder of a 
 school. Neither can Wordsworth be called a meta- 
 physical poet, for he treats of the feelings only, and 
 not of the intellectual faculties. The intolerant 
 idolatry of his disciples would tempt one to speak 
 of him with more harshness than he deserves, for 
 though not without obligations to others, he is un- 
 questionably a man of original mind. But he thinks 
 too much of himself to love truth with all his heart. 
 Thus having published poems of a peculiar charac- 
 ter, he could not leave them, as a high-minded man 
 Avould have done, to their fate, satisfied that in time 
 they would be appreciated as they deserved, but he 
 must argue the public into admiration in prose ; he 
 must endeavour to shew that his poems, whether 
 admired or not, ought to be so ; and he must give a 
 theory of poetry based on the defects of his own 
 
 14 
 
OF POETRY. 85 
 
 mind, and condemning what possibly he found it 
 easier to condemn than to imitate. 
 
 Mr. Wordsworth tells us that his object is to 
 write in "language really used by men;" it would 
 seem on the antiquary's principle, when he recom- 
 mended Lovel to write in blank verse, as being the 
 easiest. He denounces poetic diction, by which he 
 chooses to understand, not the language of imagi- 
 nation and fancy, but the conventional tinsel of 
 third or fourth rate versifiers. Now we maintain, 
 let the Wordsworthians prove the contrary if they 
 can, that there is not and cannot be good poetry in 
 " language really used by men," excepting on very 
 rare and extraordinary occasions. Naked nature is 
 intolerable, and by a great artist is invariably ideal- 
 ised. A more favourable authority for Mr. Words- 
 worth's position cannot be quoted than the wonderful 
 passage in Lear, beginning 
 
 " I am a very foolish, fond old man, 
 
 Fourscore and upward, and, to deal plainly, 
 I fear I am not in my perfect mind." 
 
 It would appear at first sight that this is the lan- 
 guage of common life, but it is only apparently so. 
 A man in the situation of Lear, though he might 
 have been touching, would infallibly, like all mad- 
 men, have mingled the disgusting and the absurd 
 with the pathetic. It is absolutely impossible that 
 G 3 
 
86 OF POETRY. 
 
 he could have spoken with such exquisite pro- 
 priety of character, adjusted to an ideal rather than 
 a real standard. The same remark applies to the 
 poetical passages of Scripture, of Homer, Chaucer, 
 or any other great poet. Their simplicity is not 
 nature, but above it.* 
 
 Mr. Wordsworth is not absolutely without pathos, 
 but his pathos is only in part what he intended it 
 should be ; it is exckisively of the contemplative 
 kind, in the higher and passionate kind he has 
 egregiously failed. He must be a man of many 
 tears, " tioXvhdKpvToi; avrjf" who could weep at his 
 description of the death of Francis Norton — 
 
 " He from a soldier's hand had snatched 
 A spear, — and with his eyes he watched 
 Their motions, turning round and round : — 
 His weaker hand the banner held ; 
 And straight, by savage zeal impelled. 
 Forth rushed a pikeman; as if he. 
 Not without harsh indignity 
 Would seize the same — instinctively 
 To smite the offender — with his lance 
 Did Francis from the brake advance ; 
 But, from behind, a treacherous wound f 
 Unfeeling, brought him to the ground, 
 
 * Since writing this, I have seen the same thought in Cole- 
 ridge's Literary Remains. 
 
 t The expression " unfeeling wound " is obviously incorrect. 
 
OF POETRY. 87 
 
 A mortal stroke : oh, grief to tell ! 
 
 Thus, thus the noble Francis fell : 
 
 There did he lie of breath forsaken ; 
 
 The banner from his grasp was taken. 
 
 And borne exultingly away ; 
 
 And the body was left on the ground where it lay." 
 
 This is "the language really used by men" 
 beyond all doubt. A witness at a coroner's inquest 
 could not have told the story in a balder or tamer 
 way, nor the parish bellman have versified it in 
 more halting lines. 
 
 Of Wordsworth's contemplative or philosophical 
 pathos, perhaps no better instance can be given 
 than these two stanzas : 
 
 " My eyes are dim with childish tears, 
 My heart is idly stirred. 
 For the same sound is in my ears. 
 Which in those days I heard. 
 
 Thus fares it still in our decay. 
 
 And yet the wiser mind 
 Mourns less for what age takes away, 
 
 Than what it leaves behind." 
 
 The first stanza is very beautiful, but not charac- 
 teristic ; in the second a fine thought is but imper- 
 fectly expressed. 
 
 It will be found that Wordsworth seldom or 
 never writes well without violating his own theory, 
 and that when he writes best, the same subject has 
 G 4 
 
ob OF POETRY. 
 
 been generally better treated by others. There is 
 depth in his thoughts, but his powers of expression 
 are, like his passions, feeble, he has neither fire nor 
 energy, little inventive imagination, neither wit nor 
 humour, and he fails in one of the most essential 
 requisites of a poet, harmony of numbers. He is 
 not remarkable for his knowledge of mankind, he 
 has no "wise saws or modern instances," and he 
 never can go on long without affectation, but his 
 purity is great, and he has a thorough and genuine 
 love of nature. 
 
 It is difficult to understand how a man who has 
 written so much as Wordsworth should fail so 
 frequently in expression and harmony of numbers, 
 unless the reason be that he undervalues their 
 importance. To elucidate this point fully would 
 involve an inquiry into the nature of the pleasure 
 produced by poetry, or, to go still deeper, by the 
 contemplation of beauty in all its forms. This 
 would be beside our present purpose, and neces- 
 sarily occupy much time and thought. Suffice it to 
 say that expression and harmony alone are beauty, 
 and though perfect beauty be somethmg more than 
 either or both united, still without them it cannot 
 exist. Mere poetical pleasure is seldom produced 
 by the thought alone, often where the thoup-ht is 
 valuable, the pleasure resulting from it is not 
 poetical, but expression and harmony always give 
 
OF POETRY. 89 
 
 poetical pleasure, though the thought be worthless. 
 To take an instance from Horace, 
 
 " Plerumque gratae divitibus vices, 
 Mundaeque parvo sub lare pauperum 
 Coenae, sine aulaeis et ostro, 
 
 Solicitam explicu^re frontem." 
 
 What is the value of the thought here ? What 
 is the value of the thought in songs, even in those 
 incomparable specimens which Shakspeare has 
 scattered but too sparingly through his dramas, or 
 in the inferior but still very beautiful lyrics of 
 Beaumont and Fletcher and Shelley ? We cannot 
 forbear giving one instance, taken at random from 
 the best of modern song-writers, Goethe ; it seems 
 perfect, but there is little thought in it. 
 
 NACHTGESANG. 
 
 " O gib vom weichen Pf iihle 
 Traiimend ein halb Gehbr, 
 Bei meinem Saitenspiele 
 Schlafe ! was willst du mehr? 
 
 Bei meinem Saitenspiele 
 Segnet der Sterne Heer 
 Die ewigen Gef iihle ; 
 Schlafe ! was willst du mehr ? 
 
 Die ewigen Gefiihle 
 Heben mich hoch und hehr 
 Aus irdischem Gewiihle : 
 Schlafe ! was willst du mehr ? 
 
90 OF POKTRY. 
 
 Vom irdischen Gewiihle 
 Trennst du mich nur zu sehr, 
 Bannst mich in diese Kiihle ; 
 Schlafe ! was willst du melir ? 
 Bannst mich in diese Kiihle, 
 Gibst nur im Traum Gehor, 
 Ach auf dem weichen Pf iihle 
 Schlafe ! was willst du mehr." 
 
 The labour of a week would not be ill bestowed 
 in translating this charming trifle, though the only 
 thought in it is lent to, or borrowed from, two lines 
 in Faust, 
 
 " Die uns das Leben gaben herrliche Gef iihle 
 Erstarren in dem irdischen Gewiihle." 
 
 But is it therefore the less beautiful ? 
 
 An exquisite collection of poems from different 
 languages might be made on the subject of sleep 
 alone, there would be great variety of imagery, 
 great sweetness of versification in them, but very 
 few ideas. 
 
 The affectation of Wordsworth chiefly consists in 
 his exalting common things, not occasionally like 
 other poets, but studiously and systematically. 
 The genuine artist speaking of a poet sayS; 
 
 " Oft adelt er was uns gemein erschien, 
 
 Und das Geschiitzte wird fiir ihm zu nichts." 
 
 But this happens often only, not always. Words= 
 worth puts the same thought thus, 
 
OF POETRY. 91 
 
 " To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
 Thoughts that do often he too deep for tears." 
 
 Unlike Goethe, however, he has fairly hunted it 
 down ; his taste did not tell him where to stop, and 
 thus he pesters us to death with his eternal daisies, 
 scrubby thorns, idiots and pedlars. Such subjects 
 may sometimes excite philosophical and poetical 
 trains in the mind, but to suppose that they must do 
 so necessarily and always, is fantastic and absurd. 
 
 Wordsworth has succeeded in nothing so well as 
 in his sonnets. They are among the best in the 
 language, quite as good, if not better, than Milton's, 
 and decidedly inferior only to Shakspeare's. In 
 this species of poem, the most appropriate poetical 
 vehicle for philosophical thought, the defects of his 
 mind are less apparent. He cannot be so easily 
 diffuse as in blank verse ; the sonnet does not 
 require the ardour and energy of the lyric, and its 
 harmony is peculiar, and flows naturally from the 
 loftiness of the thought. How very beautiful are 
 the first five lines of this sonnet ! The rest is 
 scarcely so good, but no part of it is in the 
 " language really used by men." 
 
 " It is a beauteous evening, calm and free ; 
 The holy time is quiet as a nun 
 Breathless with adoration ; the broad sun 
 Is sinking down in its tranquillity ; 
 The gentleness of heaven is on the sea." 
 
92 OF POETRY. 
 
 There is nothing in inanimate nature so pathetic 
 as the sea at sun-set in complete repose. No one, 
 perhaps, has described it more finely than Shelley 
 in his " Cloud." 
 
 " And when sun-set may breathe from the lit sea beneath 
 Its ardours of rest and of love. 
 And the crimson pall of eve may fall 
 From the depth of heaven above, 
 With wings folded I rest on mine airy nest 
 As still as a brooding dove." 
 
 In the following sonnet Wordsworth is, what he 
 very rarely is, imaginative. 
 
 " Methought I saw the footsteps of a throne 
 
 Which mists and vapours from mine eyes did shroud — 
 
 Nor view of who might sit thereon allowed ; 
 
 But all the steps and ground about were strown 
 
 With sights the ruefullest that flesh and bone 
 
 Ever put on ; a miserable crowd. 
 
 Sick, hale, old, young, who cried before that cloud. 
 
 Thou art our king, O Death ! to thee we groan ! 
 
 I seemed to mount those steps, the vapours gave 
 
 Smooth way ; and I beheld the face of one 
 
 Sleeping alone within a mossy cave. 
 
 With her face up to heaven ; that seemed to have 
 
 Pleasing remembrance of a thought foregone ; 
 
 A lovely Beauty in a summer grave." 
 
 This is also picturesque, but a sonnet of Tenny- 
 son's in the same stile is more nervous, and richer 
 in diction — 
 
OF POETRY. 93 
 
 " The pallid thunderstricken * sigh for gain, 
 Down an ideal stream they ever float, 
 And sailing on Pactolus in a boat, 
 Drown soul and sense, while wistfully they strain 
 Weak eyes upon the glistening sands that robe 
 The understream. The wise, could he behold 
 Cathedralled caverns of thick-ribbed gold. 
 And branching silvers of the central globe. 
 Would marvel from so beautiful a sight 
 How scorn and ruin, pain and hate could flow : 
 But hatred in a gold cave sits below. 
 Pleached with her hair in mail of argent light 
 Shot into gold, a snake her forehead clips, 
 And skins the colour from her trembling lips." 
 
 I do not know any sonnets of Wordsworth supe- 
 rior to the two following ; others may, perhaps, find 
 several they like better, for it is hard to determine 
 the comparative merit of sonnets. 
 
 Composed upon Westminster Bridge, 
 " Earth has not any thing to show more fair : 
 Dull would he be of soul who could pass by 
 A sight so touching in its majesty : 
 The city now doth like a garment wear 
 The beauty of the morning ; silent, bare, 
 Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie 
 Open unto the fields and to the sky ; 
 All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. 
 Never did sun more beautifully steep 
 In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill ; 
 
 * Why thunderstricken ? 
 
94* OF POETRY. 
 
 Ne'er saw I, never felt a calm so deep ! 
 The river glideth at his own sweet will : 
 Dear God ! the very houses seem asleep ; 
 And all that mighty heart is lying still." 
 
 This is very true and noble ; nevertheless the twelfth 
 line is affectedly worded, the expression " Dear 
 God !" introduced to fill up the thirteenth line, is 
 both affected and profane, but the last line is grand. 
 
 " A Parsonage in Oxfordshire. 
 
 Where holy ground begins, unhallowed ends. 
 
 Is marked by no distinguishable line ; 
 
 The turf unites, the pathways intertwine ; 
 
 And, whereso'er the stealing footstep tends, 
 
 Garden, and that domain where kindred, friends, 
 
 And neighbours rest together, here confound 
 
 Their several features, mingled like the sound 
 
 Of many waters, or as evening blends 
 
 With shady night. Soft airs, from shrub and flower. 
 
 Waft fragrant greetings to each silent grave ; 
 
 And while those lofty poplars gently wave 
 
 Their tops, between them comes and goes a sky 
 
 Bright as the glimpses of eternity. 
 
 To saints accorded in their mortal hour." 
 
 The legitimate sonnet admits but of four rhymes, 
 Wordsworth does not always grapple with its 
 difficulties. Lord Byron wears its shackles with 
 ease, in the beautiful sonnet to the Countess 
 Guiccioli, but in powers of expression he surpassed 
 
OF POETRY. 95 
 
 all our modern poets, excepting Shelley in his hap- 
 pier moments. 
 
 Wordsworth's conceited and affected sonnet to 
 his own portrait is only worth alluding to for the 
 sake of observing how gracefully Alfieri has avoided 
 both faults in these two beautiful lines : — 
 
 " Qualche cent' anni oltra il mio fral, poi fia 
 Ch' anche tu rieda al nulla, o imagin mia." 
 
 Enough of sonnets, an unsatisfactory sort of poem 
 after all. The song is a better test of the genuine 
 poet. 
 
 The two odes on the " Recollections of Child- 
 hood," and " On the Power of Sound," are, perhaps, 
 Wordsworth's best and most characteristic efforts. 
 It may be interesting to compare the first with 
 Schiller's Ideale, particularly as the advantage is 
 not wholly on either side. The best, or at any rate 
 the most faultless stanza in Wordsworth's ode is 
 the first : — 
 
 " There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, 
 The earth, and every common sight, 
 To me did seem 
 Apparelled in celestial light, 
 The glory and the freshness of a dream. 
 It is not now as it hath been of yore ; 
 Turn wheresoe'er I may, 
 By night or day. 
 The thinss which I have seen I now can see no more." 
 
96 OF POETRY. 
 
 Schiller begins thus, — 
 
 " So willst du treulos von mir scheiden, 
 Mit deinen holden Phantasien, 
 Mit deinen Schmerzen, deinen Freuden, 
 Mit alien unerbittlich fliehen 1 
 Kann nichts, dich, Fliehende, verweilen, 
 O meines Lebens goldne Zeit ! 
 Vergebens ! deine Wellen eilen 
 Hinab ins Meer der Ewigkeit !" 
 
 So far it is hard to say which has the advantage, 
 for if the march of the German is more rapid and 
 musical, that of the Englishman is more solemn and 
 majestic. But as Wordsworth advances, his cus- 
 tomary affectation, Avith its accompanying " par- 
 turient throes," soon makes its apjiearance : — 
 
 " Shout round me, let me Jiear thy shouts, thou happy shepherd 
 boy !" 
 
 If any man can tolerate this line he has not a 
 poetical ear : but want of melody is not its only 
 fault. There is not the slightest reason for suppos- 
 ing shepherd boys to be happier than other boys, 
 on the contrary, from living so much by themselves, 
 they are probably duller and more stupid. 
 
 In hardihood of language, Wordsworth will bear 
 no comparison with Schiller : — 
 
 " So schlang ich mich mit Liebesarmen 
 Um die Natur, mit Jugendlust, 
 Bis sie zu athmen, zu erwarmen 
 Begann an meiner Dichterbrust." 
 
 1 
 
OF POETRY. 97 
 
 Nor in sweetness, 
 
 " Da lebte mir der Baum, die Rose, 
 Mir sang der Quellen Silberfall, 
 Es fiihlte selbst das Seelenlose, 
 Von meines Lebens Wiederhall." 
 
 The Platonic notion, 
 
 "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting , 
 The soul that rises with us, our life's star. 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting. 
 And Cometh from afar." 
 
 is better put by Sir Thomas Browne, with a saving 
 clause, omitted by the poet : — 
 
 " Would truth dispense, we could be content with Plato that 
 knowledge were but remembrance ; that intellectual acquisition 
 were but reminiscential evocation, and new impressions but the 
 colorishing of old stamps which stood pale in the soul before." 
 
 Wordsworth, though inferior to Schiller in ex- 
 pression, is superior to him in depth of thought. He 
 derives his consolation from the conviction of im- 
 mortality, Schiller from friendship and occupation, 
 an inadequate climax, hence the concluding stanzas 
 of " Die Ideale" are somewhat poor, and disappoint 
 the expectation ; but Wordsworth is always heavy, 
 Schiller rushes on like his own mountain-torrent, 
 
 " Ein Regenstrom aus Felsenrissen." 
 
 The ode " On the Power of Sound" is quite as 
 
 H 
 
98 OF POETRY. 
 
 good as that " On the Recollections of Childhood," 
 It has the same merits and the same defects, the 
 same affectation, want of melody, powerless expres- 
 sion, and depth of thought. Here the " happy 
 milk maids " enact the part of the " happy shepherd 
 boy." These lines are musical to a degree very 
 uncommon with Wordsworth : — 
 
 " For the tired slave, song lifts the languid oar. 
 And bids it aptly fall, with chime 
 That beautifies the fairest shore, 
 And mitigates the harshest clime." 
 
 In the following passage the three last lines, the 
 least characteristic, are the best : — 
 
 " For terror, joy, or pity. 
 
 Vast is the compass and the swell of notes : 
 From the babe's first cry to voice of regal city. 
 Rolling a solemn sea-like bass, that floats 
 Far as the woodlands ; with the trill to blend 
 Of that shy songstress, whose love-tale 
 Might tempt an angel to descend. 
 While hovering o'er the moonlight vale." 
 
 The two first lines are not remarkable ; the third 
 would not have been written by a man with a 
 poetical ear; the voice of the city floating far as the 
 Avoodlands is an inaccurate expression, because it 
 implies that woods are an invariable appendage to a 
 city : the three last lines are beautiful, but Coleridge 
 
OF POETRY. 99 
 
 has some verses far more picturesque and imagina- 
 tive on a subject nearly similar : — 
 
 " But oh, that deep, romantic chasm which slanted 
 Down the green hill, athwart a cedarn cover ! 
 
 A savage place, as holy and enchanted 
 
 As e'er beneath the waning moon was haunted 
 
 By woman wailing for her demon lover !" 
 
 The noblest stanza in Wordsworth's ode is the 
 twelfth: — 
 
 " By one pervading Spirit 
 
 Of tones and numbers all things are controlled. 
 
 As sages taught, where faith was found to merit 
 
 Initiation in that mystery old. 
 
 The heavens, whose aspect makes our minds as still 
 
 As they themselves appear to be. 
 
 Innumerable voices fill 
 
 With everlasting harmony ; 
 
 The towering headlands, crowned with mist, 
 
 Their feet among the billows, know 
 
 That ocean is a mighty harmonist ; 
 
 Thy pinions, universal air, 
 
 Ever waving to and fro, 
 
 Are delegates of harmony, and bear 
 
 Strains that support the Seasons in their round ; 
 
 Stern Winter loves a dirge-like sound." 
 
 " Si sic omnia !" Yet Goethe has given all this and 
 more in seven glorious lines : — 
 
 " Wie Alles sich zum Ganzen webt ! 
 Eins in dem Andern wirkt und lebt. 
 H 2 
 
100 OF POETRY. 
 
 Wie Himmelskriifte auf und nieder steigen, 
 Und sich die goldnen Eimer reichen I 
 Mit segenduftenden Schwingen 
 Vom Himmel durch die Erde dringen, 
 Harmonisch all' des All durchklingen !" 
 
 V/ordsworth's "Laodamia" has been mucK ad- 
 mired. It is elegant, pure, and somewhat feeble, as 
 any one may satisfy himself who will take the 
 trouble to compare the meeting of Protesilaus and 
 Laodamia with that of Ulysses and his mother in the 
 Odyssey, or the parallel passage in Virgil. Words- 
 worth can draw no tears. " Poetry," said Milton, 
 " is simple, sensuous, passionate ;" Wordsworth is 
 certainly not the last, and his claim to the two first 
 is very doubtful. 
 
 The " Excursion " is a long poem in blank verse, 
 of that class which gods call philosophical, and men 
 didactic ; there are fine things in it, but as a whole 
 it is exceedingly tiresome. As an instance of one 
 of Wordsworth's most provoking faults take the 
 opening of the third book : — 
 
 " A humming bee, a little tinkling rill, 
 A pair of falcons, wheeling on the wing. 
 In clamorous agitation, round the crest 
 Of a tail rock, their airy citadel ; 
 By each and all of these the pensive ear 
 Was greeted." 
 
 This is no more poetry than an auctioneer's cata- 
 
OF POETRY. 101 
 
 logue is poetry. Numbers of physical objects 
 strung together, just as they may be seen any day 
 by any man, do not constitute poetry, nor scarcely 
 painting. To become poetical and picturesque they 
 must be made to depend upon each other, not left 
 disjointed and unconnected as they really are, or at 
 least appear to be to liuman eyes, incapable of 
 taking in at a glance more than an infinitesimal 
 portion of the universe, but so arranged as to form 
 parts of one harmonious whole. This is one of the 
 first rules of art, which is ideal as well as imitative, 
 and Wordsworth sins against it perpetually. 
 
 Among our early poets, Wordsworth most re- 
 sembles Lord Brooke, Henry More, Chamberlayne, 
 Sir John Davies, and Sir William Davenant, who 
 all say fine things occasionally, and have consider- 
 able depth of thought, but want liveliness, ease, 
 perspicuity, vigour, terseness, and harmony of num- 
 bers ; consequently they are now known, and deserve 
 to be known, only to the curious. Compare any of 
 them with Spenser, or with Drayton's Nymphidia 
 or Eclogues, or even with Herrick, Carew, or Love- 
 lace, and how inferior is the poetical pleasure they 
 produce ! Among the moderns something of Words- 
 worth's cast of mind may be discovered in Akenside 
 and Cowper. The poem on " The Pleasures of 
 Imagination " is neither much more, nor much less, 
 H 3 
 
102 OF POETRY. 
 
 heavy than the " Excursion ; " the same thing may 
 be said of Cowper's blank verse, but Cowper had 
 exquisite humour, and spirit too sometimes, as in 
 the fine lyric on the foundering of the Royal 
 George. 
 
 In Chorley's Life of Mrs. Hemans, in an account 
 of an interview between Wordsworth and the 
 Poetess, it is said that the conversation happened to 
 turn on Moore's nonsense in his Life of Byron, that 
 great poets must make bad husbands. Wordsworth 
 observed that the fault of such men was, not that 
 they had too much genius, but too little, and dwelt 
 wyith edifying complacency on his own domestic 
 happiness. If he had thrown what was passing 
 in his mind into a syllogism would it not have 
 run thus? 
 
 The greatest poets are those who are happiest in 
 their families : 
 
 I am happier in my family than Byron was; 
 
 Therefore, I am a greater poet. 
 
 Wordsworth's own conceit and affectation, and 
 the sectarian idolatry of his intolerant worshippers, 
 have made him perhaps a worse poet than nature 
 intended him to be. It may be said. Why not 
 give him credit for what he has good, and keep the 
 bad out of sight, since it is certain he will not mend ? 
 The answer is, that art must suffer, if the admira- 
 
 1 
 
OF POETRY. l03 
 
 tion due only to excellence be frittered away on 
 mediocrity, or if the strength of an original mind 
 so far dazzle men's eyes as to make them suppose 
 its faults merits. We forget, in our morbid craving 
 for novelty, that it is not hard for men to be 
 original who are careless of overstepping the truth 
 and propriety of art. 
 
 When Mackintosh once found fault M'ith Words- 
 worth's poetry, Coleridge said to him, " He travels 
 on so far before you that he dwindles in the 
 distance." This is only begging the question 
 through the help of a splendid metaphor. Mackintosh 
 had soul enough to admire Shakspeare, Homer, 
 Dante, Milton, or any other imperial mind, why 
 then should he not have admired Wordsworth, if 
 he deserved it ? 
 
 The poems of Coleridge have not been the 
 subject of so much literary controversy as those 
 of Wordsworth. They are too purely imaginative 
 to be popular, but those who do admire them will not 
 greatly differ as to their merits. There is a rich 
 melody in the versification of Coleridge peculiar to 
 himself, and his treatment of the supernatural is not 
 less striking and original. The mysterious lady in 
 Christabelle is altogether new. Some of the best 
 supernatural ballads ever written were the produc- 
 tions of Coleridge's contemporaries ; yet no one, 
 H 4 
 
104! OF POETRY. 
 
 perhaps, has succeeded better than he has done in 
 his Ancient Mariner and Christabelle, though the 
 last is disfigured by affectation. Burger's Lenore, 
 Goethe's Bride of Corinth, Mery and Barthelemy's 
 Revue de Minuit, are very different, both from each 
 other and from the Ancient Mariner and Christa- 
 belle, yet all excellent in their kind. Burger is the 
 more definite and vigorous ; the homely vividness 
 of the scene, and the terse simplicity of the 
 language, extort from us a deeper quasi-belief than 
 any poetical ghost -story whatever. The Bride of 
 Corinth is like a drama with a plot well-unfolded ; 
 stanza after stanza the interest accumulates upon 
 us till we arrive at the prodigious catastrophe. All 
 is told with a severity of style Avorthy of the best 
 ages of Greece, nevertheless such a tale is no more 
 a legitimate subject of art than the prologue in 
 Heaven in Faust. The Revue de Minuit is the 
 most picturesque of ghost-stories ; the language 
 seems too pure and terse for a translation, but the 
 imaginative splendour and boldness of the fiction 
 has rather a German than a French character. 
 
 Coleridge has allowed himself a far wider range. 
 He touches the very verge of the fantastic, which 
 yet he does not pass. The fine antique air which 
 he has flung over these ballads, and the racy 
 copiousness of his imagination, keep him clear of 
 
OF POETRY. 105 
 
 the rock of " incredulus odi," the destruction of so 
 many similar adventurers. 
 
 Many of Coleridge's minor poems, in particular 
 Genevieve, are distinguished for great beauty and 
 sweetness, but he has left behind him no monument 
 worthy of his powers. Notwithstanding his fine 
 preface to the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, and 
 his beautiful and profound criticisms on Shakspeare, 
 Cervantes and others, imagination, not reason, sate 
 on his mental throne ; he required a rigid dialectic 
 discipline, instead of which he chose to bewilder 
 himself in the labyrinth of transcendentalism, the 
 worst place in the world for finding common sense. 
 
 Southey's contributions to literature are far more 
 extensive than those of Wordsworth or Coleridge. 
 His mind is not less peculiar than theirs. There is 
 a strangely ferocious spirit occasionally apparent in 
 his writings, the more anomalous from its juxta- 
 position with a very amiable character. He is a 
 bitter controversialist ; and in his charming History 
 of the Brazils he dwells upon the subject of canni- 
 balism with such evident gout, that one cannot 
 help suspecting he would have been eminently 
 distinguished for his feats in that line had he been 
 born a savage. Nothing of the kind can be 
 better done than his translations of the peninsular 
 romances, the Chronicle of the Cid, Amadis of Gaul, 
 and Palmerin of England. He has here given a 
 
106 OF POETRY. 
 
 scriptural solemnity to his style, in accordance with 
 the fine taste of Milton, who loved " the deeds of 
 knighthood " told " in solemn cantos." He has 
 trodden with success almost every walk of literature, 
 as translator, editor, critic, biographer, historian 
 and poet. 
 
 There are few of our modern poets who can be 
 charged with having written too little, and Southey 
 least of all. It is owing to this " cacoethes scri- 
 bendi " that his poems, like those of most of his 
 contemporaries, have a loose and disjointed air; 
 they want point and terseness. His epics are ill- 
 digested as a whole, and the execution of the details 
 is often feeble and sloverjy, but they abound with 
 passages of rare beauty. Southey deserves to be 
 numbered among those poets who have identified 
 their style and feelings so completely with those of 
 the age and country where their scene is laid, that 
 their works might actually have been written by 
 a native author, contemporary with the events 
 narrated. Kehama has this merit in a more pro- 
 minent, though it may be not in a greater degree, 
 than any of Southey's poems, and for this among 
 other reasons it is, perhaps, the best. Kehama is 
 purely Hindoo, both in its excellencies and defects ; 
 it is throughout in keeping, excepting one strange 
 and most unnecessary allusion to Niagara. The 
 moral tone of this poem, as indeed of Southey 
 
OF POETRY. 107 
 
 generally, is very pure and noble. Nothing purer, 
 perhaps nothing finer, is to be found throughout 
 the whole range of contemporary English poets, 
 than the well-known lines beginning, 
 
 " They sin who tell us love can die ; 
 With life all other passions fly. 
 All others are but vanity." 
 
 Roderick has been more praised than any of 
 Southey's epics, nevertheless we suspect there are 
 not many who have read it through. The costume 
 is probably quite as accurate as that of Kehama, 
 for there can hardly be a man living so familiar 
 with all that relates to the Spanish peninsula, from 
 first to last, as Southey, but the scene and the actors 
 are less remote and peculiar. The odd monastic 
 turn of Southey's mind had ample scope for dis- 
 playing itself in Roderick, an opportunity which it 
 was not to be supposed he would neglect, and 
 accordingly the cold and austere genius of the 
 cloister casts a shadow over the entire poem. 
 
 Southey's most characteristic works are his Bal- 
 lads. They are perfectly original, have much quaint 
 humour, and are strongly impregnated with the mo- 
 nastic spirit. His devils are excellent ; not men 
 in strange situations, but the real creatures of vulgar 
 superstition, and therefore profound. These Ballads 
 are not unequally written ; two, however, may be 
 
108 OF POETRY. 
 
 mentioned as being quite as good, if not better, than 
 any others. " The Old Woman of Berkeley," and 
 " All for Love, or a Sinner well saved." The last is 
 one of Southey's later productions, yet, though pub- 
 lished some years, it has never, I believe, reached a 
 second edition. " Proh pudor !" 
 
 It is much to be regretted that South ey has not 
 written a history of monasticism, or at any rate of 
 some of the leading monastic orders. Such a work 
 is one of the greatest desiderata in historical lite- 
 rature ; and Avhen we consider Southey's prodigious 
 learning, his delight in the subject, and the ease and 
 elegance of his prose style, no man can soon be 
 expected to arise equally qvialified for the task. * 
 
 Shelley has some affinities with Wordsworth, 
 Coleridge and Southey, but far more fancy than 
 either of them, and a more striking resemblance to 
 the writers of the age of Elizabeth and James. The 
 shadowy and dreamy character of the greater part 
 of his poems, his miserable philosophy, and his in- 
 sane blasphemy, have greatly injured his poetical 
 
 * Whether " The Doctor " be written by Southey or not, let 
 revealers of mysteries determine ; it is certainly written by one 
 who strongly resembles him, perhaps too strongly to be other than 
 himself. Though unnecessarily marred by affectation, it is the 
 book of a ripe scholar and a noble gentleman, full of beautiful 
 thoughts and feelings, conveyed in a sweet and graceful style, the 
 reflection of a pure and harmonious mind. 
 
OF POETRY. 109 
 
 reputation. But if we neglect some three fourths of 
 his writings, replete, nevertheless, with rarely beautiful 
 images, and confine ourselves only to the remainder, 
 Shelley is perhaps the sweetest, the richest, the loftiest, 
 the most genuine English poet of his time. He should 
 never have written any thing but lyrics and dramas. 
 He required to be chained down to the earth, either 
 by the delineation of actual life, as in the drama, or 
 by a species of poem too short to allow him to lose 
 himself in the clouds, as the lyric. The tragedy of the 
 Cenci is one of the finest in the language, excepting 
 those of Shakspeare alone, and the noblest poem 
 which has been published in England since Paradise 
 Lost. Loathsome as the subject is, deeply as it is 
 to be regretted that such powers should have been 
 so wasted, Shelley has treated it with, perhaps, as 
 much delicacy as it was susceptible of, and for the 
 most part avoided "the hateful" with great skill. 
 Compare Ford's tragedy on a similar subject with 
 Shelley's, and though Ford is little, if at all, inferior 
 to any of our old dramatists but Shakspeare, and 
 the tragedy in question, though highly disgusting, 
 is his best work, how poor does he seem beside 
 Shelley ! Looking at the Cenci only as a work of 
 art, and averting our eyes from the subject, we are 
 compelled to admit, that the plot is well conceived, 
 the charactei-s all individuals, consistent with them- 
 selves, their country and their age, and the language 
 
110 OF POETRY. 
 
 throughout the sublime and glorious union of imagi- 
 nation with passion, of clearness with conciseness, 
 of force with beauty. How artist-like, touching 
 and beautiful, is Camillo's first allusion to Beatrice ! 
 
 " Where is your wife, where is your gentle daughter? 
 Methinks her sweet looks, which make all things else 
 Beauteous and glad, might kill the fiend within you." 
 
 Again, what can exceed in sweetness and pathos her 
 first appearance in conversation with her unworthy 
 lover ! 
 
 " Pervert not truth, 
 Orsino. You remember where we held 
 That conversation ; — nay we see the spot 
 Even from this cypress ; — two long years are past. 
 Since, on an April midnight, underneath 
 The moonlight ruins of Mount Palatine, 
 I did confess to you my secret mind. 
 
 Alas, Orsino ! All the love that once 
 
 I felt for you, is turned to bitter pain. 
 
 Ours was a youthful contract, which you first 
 
 Broke, by assuming vows no pope will loose. 
 
 And thus I love you still, but holily. 
 
 Even as a sister or a spirit might ; 
 
 And so I swear a cold fidelity. 
 
 And it is well, perhaps, we shall not marry. 
 
 You have a sly, equivocating vein, 
 
 That suits me not, — Ah ! wretched that I am ! 
 
OF POETRY. Ill 
 
 Where shall I turn ? Even now you look on me, 
 As you were not my friend, and as if you 
 Discovered that I thought so, with false smiles. 
 Making my true suspicion seem your wrong." 
 
 It is peculiarly the business of a poet to observe 
 the workings of his own mind. This internal ob- 
 servation we trace in the words of Giacomo : — 
 
 " Ask me not what I think ; th' unwilling brain 
 Feigns often what it would not ; and we trust 
 Imagination with such phantasies. 
 As the tongue dares not fashion into words, — 
 Which have no words, — their horror makes them dim 
 To the mind's eye. — My heart denies itself 
 To think what you demand." 
 
 With what grandeur does Beatrice first intimate 
 her fatal resolution ! 
 
 " All must be suddenly resolved and done. 
 What is this undistinguishable mist 
 Of thoughts, which rise, like shadow after shadow. 
 Darkening each other? 
 
 Shelley, in his beautiful preface to the Cenci, 
 states, that the description of the chasm in the third 
 act was suggested by a passage in the Purgatorio 
 de San Patricio of Calderon. As this imitation is, 
 perhaps, the most sublime description in modern 
 English poetry, and the great Spaniard far less 
 known than he deserves to be, it may not be unin- 
 teresting to subjoin a portion of the original. It is 
 
112 OF POETRY. 
 
 in the octave stanza, for the Spanish drama, free 
 as air, admits every variety, both of matter and 
 form. 
 
 " No ves ese penasco, que parece 
 Que se esta sustentando con trabajo, 
 Y con el ansia misma que padece. 
 Ha tantos siglos que se viene abaxo? 
 Pues mordaza es, que sella, y enmudece 
 El aliento a una boca, que debaxo 
 Abierta esta, por donde con pereza 
 El monte melancolico bosteza. 
 
 " Esta, pues, de cypreses rodeada, 
 Entre los labios de una, y btra pena, 
 Descubre la cerviz desalinada, 
 Suelto el cabello, a quien servio de grena 
 Inutil yerva, aun no del sol tocada, 
 Donde en sombras, y lexos nos ensena 
 Un espacio, un vacio horror del dia, 
 Funesto albergue de la noche fria." 
 
 It will be observed that both in Calderon, and in 
 Shelley's imitation, the mountain is not described 
 literally, but personified. 
 
 The murder scene in the Cenci is only surpassed 
 by the corresponding scene in Macbeth. The pa- 
 thetic song, 
 
 " False friend, wilt thou smile or weep — " 
 
 is in admirable keeping, and conceived in the very 
 spirit of our old dramatists. In splendour of 
 
OF POETRY. 113 
 
 execution and concentrated depth of interest this 
 most painful and sublime tragedy never falls off for 
 an instant, from the opening dialogue of Camillo and 
 Cenci to the passionate despair and more touching 
 final tranquillity of Beatrice, as she is led away to 
 the scaffold. The more we study it the more sen- 
 sible do we become of the extraordinary power and 
 variety of the author's genius. It belongs, however, 
 rather to the classical than to the romantic drama. 
 
 The Fragment of Charles I. is not only a fragment, 
 but unfinished and imperfect even as far it goes ; 
 the author would obviously have made considerable 
 alterations in it had he lived. Shelley's politics are 
 too transparent ; he wants the glorious impartiality 
 of Shakspeare on this head ; yet there are touches 
 in his Charles I. more decidedly Shaksperian than 
 will readily be found elsewhere. Thus : — 
 
 " Third Speaker. 
 
 See how gloriously 
 The mettled horses in the torchlight stir 
 Their gallant riders, while they check their pride, 
 Like shapes of some diviner element ! 
 
 " Second Speaker. 
 
 Aye, there they are — 
 Nobles and sons of nobles, patentees. 
 Monopolists, and stewards of this poor farm. 
 On whose lean sheep sit the prophetic crows. 
 Here is the pomp that strips the houseless orphan, 
 I 
 
114 OF POETRY. 
 
 Here is the pride that breaks the desolate heart. 
 These are the lilies glorious as Solomon, 
 Who toil not, neither do they spin, — unless 
 It be the webs they catch poor rogues withal. 
 Here is the surfeit which to them who earn 
 The niggard wages of the earth, scarce leaves 
 The tithe that will support them, till they crawl 
 Back to its cold, hard bosom. Here is health 
 Followed by grim disease, glory by shame. 
 Waste by lame famine, wealth by squalid want. 
 And England's sin by England's punishment. 
 And, as th' effect pursues the cause foregone, 
 Lo, giving substance to my words, behold 
 At once the sign and the thing signified — 
 A troop of cripples, beggars, and lean outcasts. 
 Horsed upon stumbling shapes, carted with dung. 
 Dragged for a day from cellars and low cabins. 
 And rotten hiding-holes, to point the moral 
 Of this presentiment, and bring up the rear 
 Of painted pomp with misery ! 
 
 " Speaker, 
 
 'Tis but 
 The antimasque, and serves as discords do 
 In sweetest music. Who would love May flowers 
 If they succeeded not to winter's flaw : 
 Or day unchanged by night ; or joy itself 
 Without the touch of sorrow '> " 
 
 Again 
 
 " King. 
 
 My Lord, 
 Pray overlook these papers. Archy's words 
 Had wings, but these have talons. 
 
OF POETRY. 115 
 
 " Queen. 
 
 And the lion 
 That wears them must be tamed. My dearest Lord, 
 I see the new-born courage in your eye, 
 Armed to strike dead the spirit of the time. ' 
 
 Have you not noted that the fool of late 
 Has lost his careless mirth, and that his words 
 Sound like the echoes of our saddest fears ? 
 What can it mean I I should be loth to think 
 Some factious slave had tutored him. 
 
 " King. 
 It partly is, 
 
 That our minds piece the vacant intervals 
 Of his wild words with their own fashioning ; 
 As in the imagery of summer clouds, 
 Or coals in the winter fire, idlers find 
 The perfect shadows of their teeming thoughts : 
 And partly that the terrors of the time 
 Are sown by wandering rumour in all spirits ; 
 And in the lightest and the least, may best 
 Be seen the current of the coming wind." 
 
 Of Shelley's longer poems, Adonais is perhaps the 
 best. It is a poem of fanciful grief, conceived in 
 the spirit of Milton's Lycidas. Of all Shelley's 
 poems, however, there are none on which we can 
 dwell with such unmixed delight as his lyrics. They 
 display an inexhaustible fancy, extreme sweetness, 
 and a fine air of poetical melancholy, Avhich, how- 
 I 2 
 
116 OF POETRY. 
 
 ever, is of rather too sombre a cast. The best of 
 them are ; the Skylark ; the Sensitive Plant ; the 
 Cloud, which is somewhat fantastic ; the two poems 
 on Mutability ; the lines written in Lechlade Church- 
 yard ; and in dejection at Naples ; Arethusa ; a Dirge 
 for the Year ; Autumn, a dirge ; Lines to Night ; 
 from the Arabic ; the World's Wanderers ; with a 
 Guitar ; to the Queen of my Fleart ; Hymn of Apollo ; 
 and the poems beginning, " When the lamp is shat- 
 tered ;" " Oh there are spirits of the air ;" " The cold 
 earth slept below ;" " Rarely, rarely comest thou ;" 
 and " A Lament," which may be quoted as a fa- 
 vourable and characteristic specimen- There is 
 nothing exceptionable in any of these poems. 
 
 " Swifter far than summer's flight. 
 Swifter far than youth's delight, 
 Swifter far than happy night. 
 
 Art thou come and gone : 
 As the earth when leaves are dead, 
 As the night when sleep is sped. 
 As the heart when joy is fled, 
 
 I am left alone. 
 
 " The swallow summer comes again,' 
 The owlet night resumes her reign. 
 But the wild swan youth is fain 
 
 To fly with thee, false as thou. 
 My heart each day desires the morrov/. 
 Sleep itself is turned to sorrow. 
 Vainly would my winter borrow 
 
 Sunny leaves from any bough. 
 
OF POETRY. ■ 117 
 
 " Lilies for a bridal bed, 
 Roses for a matron's head, 
 Violets for a maiden dead, 
 
 Pansies let my flowers be : 
 On the living grave I bear. 
 Scatter them without a tear. 
 Let no friend, however dear. 
 
 Waste one hope, one fear for me." 
 
 Let the reader compare this sad song with one 
 equally sweet and more cheerful in Beaumont and 
 Fletcher's " Queen of Corinth," and say whether 
 both might not have been written by the same 
 author. 
 
 " ¥/eep no more, nor sigh nor groan. 
 Sorrow calls no time that's gone : 
 Violets plucked, the sweetest rain 
 Makes not fresh, nor grow again : 
 Trim thy locks, look cheerfully, 
 Fate's hidden ends, eyes cannot see ; 
 Joys like winged dreams fly fast ! 
 Why should sadness longer last ! 
 Grief is but a wound to woe. 
 Gentlest fair, mourn, mourn no moe." 
 
 There are lyrics of a very high order in Shelley's 
 Prometheus, and Hellas. The Masque of Anarchy 
 also, recently published by Mr. Leigh Hunt, bears 
 the impress of a genuine poet. There is no man of 
 genius whose life and death were more melancholy 
 than Shelley's. There is every reason for supposing, 
 I 3 
 
118 OF POETRY. 
 
 and it is charity to suppose it, that his mind was 
 partially deranged. His imagination appears to 
 have been so vivid that he could scarcely distinguish 
 its workings from real facts. To use his own lan- 
 guage, 
 
 " He came like a dream in the dawn of life : 
 He fled like a shadow before its noon." 
 
 It would be unjust to Shelley to omit mentioning 
 the extraordinary excellence of his poetical transla- 
 tions. The highest merit of a translation is, that it 
 should be characteristic of the original ; and in this 
 point we have nothing in English superior to his 
 versions of the Walpurgi's Nacht in Faust, and 
 the scenes from the " Magico Prodigioso " of Cal- 
 deron. 
 
 Shelley's reputation is almost exclusively post- 
 humous, and has, probably, not yet reached its 
 culminating point ; Byron's, on the contrary, has 
 declined since his death, the natural fate of writers 
 who are original without being true. Byron's 
 powers of expression were marvellous, his philo- 
 sophy of the sneering and therefore shallow kind, 
 and his characters and sentiments for the most part 
 false, exaggerated and monotonous. Don Juan is 
 his most characteristic work, and nowhere, perhaps, 
 is there to be found so painful and complete a 
 picture of a mind of the same power, so thoroughly 
 debased and polluted. Yet there are intermingled 
 
OF POETRY. 119 
 
 gleams of higher aspirations, and when they 
 appear, with what careless vigour and raciness are 
 they expressed ! 
 
 " And I will war, at least in words, and should 
 My chance so happen, deeds, with all who war 
 
 With thought, and of thought's foes by far most rude 
 Tyrants and sycophants have been and are : 
 
 I know not who may conquer, if I could 
 Have such a prescience, it should be no bar 
 
 To this my plain, sworn, downright detestation 
 
 Of every despotism in every nation." 
 
 Byron's lines to lanthe, and to his Sister, are 
 among the purest of his poems. But the gem of 
 all his lyrics, which glow with not less passion and 
 energy than his longer poems, is, perhaps, the noble 
 Ode on " The Isles of Greece." The wild and 
 imaginative song of Ashtaroth, intended to have 
 been inserted in Manfred, is unlike all his other 
 writings. 
 
 " The raven sits 
 
 On the raven-stone *, 
 And his black wing flits 
 
 O'er the milk-white bone : 
 To and fro, as the night-winds blow, 
 
 The carcass of the murderer swings, 
 And there alone, on the raven-stone. 
 
 The raven flaps his dusky wings. 
 
 * Raven-stone, Rabenstein, is in German a gibbet. 
 I 4 
 
120 OF POETRY. 
 
 " The fetters creak, and his ebon beak 
 
 Croaks to the close of the hollow sound, 
 And this is the tune, by the light of the moon, 
 
 To which the witches dance their round : 
 IVIerrily, merrily, cheerily, cheerily. 
 
 Merrily speeds the ball, 
 The dead in their shrouds, and the demons in clouds 
 
 Flock to the witches' carnival." 
 
 , Byron's great excellence is the racy freshness 
 and fervid eloquence with which he describes the 
 thoughts and feelings excited by the sublimer scenes 
 of nature, and the more beautiful creations of art. 
 His success, after making due allowance for the 
 influence of his rank and social position, was prin- 
 cipally owing to his skill in presenting sentiments, 
 only not insipid because mischievous, in an inex- 
 liaustible variety of vigorous language. 
 
 Goethe did not reign over German literature with 
 more absolute and undisputed supremacy than Scott 
 did over English, during the latter years of his life. 
 On works so universally known, and so long the 
 constant theme of criticism, it would be useless and 
 impertinent to dwell. In prose fiction, Scott excelled 
 all his contemporaries, as decidedly as Shakspeare 
 did his contemporary dramatists; the only fictions 
 superior to his, as Don Quixote, the Arabian 
 Nights, the Romances of Chivalry, the Pilgrim's 
 Progress, and perhaps Robinson Crusoe, are al- 
 
OF POETRY. 121 
 
 together of a different kind. He possessed the 
 enviable art of making every subject he touched 
 amusing, and of charming all his acquaintances by 
 his exquisite " bonhommie." His mind was of the 
 descriptive, rather than of the reflective cast. Pic- 
 turesque rather than philosophical, he delighted to 
 paint nature and men, in German phrase, objec- 
 tively ; to give men's sayings and doings, not to 
 analyse their thoughts, or to trace events to their 
 remote causes. Had he been more profound he 
 would probably have been less popular. Of his 
 poems there are three which seem to have more of 
 the real " oestrum " than all the rest : — the lyric on 
 one of the feats of his favourite Claverhouse : — 
 
 " To the Lords of Convention 'twas Claver'se who spoke," 
 
 which is quite Homeric; the Pibroch of Donald 
 Dhu, and Macgregor's Gathering. Burns has done 
 nothing better, unless it be " the Jolly Beggars." * 
 There is a class in society to whose tastes Moore 
 
 * Mr. Lockhart has grievously diminished our respect for 
 Scott's character, by publishing among his r orks an elaborate 
 article from the Quarterly Review on his great masterpiece, 
 " Old Mortality." The article is just and discriminating, and 
 the praise not at all too lavish, if it had come from any other 
 hand than the author's. Such an artifice was unworthy of an 
 honest man. 
 
122 OF POETRY. 
 
 is better adapted than any poet of his time. He is 
 the poet of the refined, selfish and jaded voluptuary. 
 Not that he can be termed . strictly voluptuous. 
 Strange as it may seem at first sight, there is a 
 depth and a simplicity in that expressive and beau- 
 tiful word, which Moore never reaches. There is 
 -not reality enough about him even for that. He is 
 altogether " false and hollow," — from his love, 
 which is lewdness ; and his politics, which are sedi- 
 tion ; to his imagery, which is tinsel ; and his versifi- 
 cation, which is meretricious ; — in every thing, save 
 in his dislike and dread of people who are honest and 
 serious in their opinions. His poems are for the 
 most pai"t but sweet, lively frippery. Therefore he is, 
 beyond all others, the poet of the unpinncipled, of 
 the bubbles of society ; men whose sort of half-love 
 of literature is almost the only thing human about 
 them ; and who like him as much as they are 
 capable of liking poetry, because he reconciles them 
 to themselves, by persuading them that the principle 
 they are consciovis of wanting is but hypocrisy and 
 pretence in others. There have been writers more 
 immoral than Moore, for he is seldom if ever pro- 
 found, bvit, perhaps, for that very reason not one 
 more calculated to be generally mischievous. He 
 combines immorality sentimentally disguised with 
 the rare talent of accommodating himself closely to 
 
OF POETRY. 123 
 
 the general taste, insensibly corrupting the affections 
 and deceiving the understanding, while he prepares 
 " a primrose way to the everlasting bonfire." * 
 
 Whether Moore has really done much mischief 
 or not it is impossible to say. If he has not, it is 
 no fault of his. He has devoted his powers to 
 vicious objects with as much constancy as could 
 well be expected of him ; if the results have not 
 been commensurate, the reason is, that the influence 
 of books has ceased to be considerable in this book- 
 making age. The race of " homines unius libri " is 
 extinct. 
 
 Moore has not pursued his course without some 
 compunction, and occasional glimpses of better 
 things. His lines on his own birth-day, some of the 
 best he has written, surely shew real feeling. Again, 
 the following verses are not only exquisitely sweet, 
 but also perfectly pure : — 
 
 " Come, May, with all thy flowers, 
 
 Thy sweetly-scented thorn ; 
 Thy cooling evening showers. 
 
 Thy fragrant breath at morn ; 
 When May-flies haunt the willow. 
 
 When May-buds tempt the bee. 
 Then o'er the shining billow 
 
 My love will come to me." 
 
 But these are exceptions only to the ordinary tone 
 
 * Shakspeare. 
 
124 OF POETRY. 
 
 of his poetry, which, not the extraordinary, is the 
 true index to an author's mind. 
 
 The ease of Moore's versification is not to be 
 surpassed. Those who require splendour of diction, 
 rich and various melody, he will not satisfy, but he 
 writes with an entire absence of all appearance of 
 effort. Ovid's celebrated 
 
 " Sponte sua carmen numeros veniebat ad aptos, 
 Et quod tentabam scribere versus erat," 
 
 seems almost poor beside the lines, 
 
 " Pale, broken flower, what art can now recover thee. 
 Torn from the stem that fed thy rosy breath ! 
 In vain the sunbeams seek 
 To warm thy faded cheek, 
 The dews of heaven, that once like balm fell over thee, 
 Now are but tears to weep thy early death." 
 
 Yet even this is but hiding an utter want of real 
 feeling with a sentimental varnish. No one but a 
 boarding-school miss caji avoid seeing that Moore 
 cares not a rush for all the " pale, broken 
 flowers," whether real or metaphorical, which ever 
 were, or ever will be gathered, and left to wither 
 and die. It is but just to Moore to add, after 
 having enumerated his faults, with, it may be, too 
 much harshness, that he is free from self-satisfac- 
 tion, the most hopeless of all. 
 
 Moore has struck out a new path in political 
 
OF POETRY. 125 
 
 satire. His sparkling arrowy showers of wit and 
 sarcasm are as ethereal, and fall as naturally, as if 
 they really came from the clouds. Almost all mo- 
 dern political satires are imitations of Moore, a 
 proof of his originality and excellence. Such pro- 
 ductions are necessarily ephemeral, and lose much 
 of their point as the individuals who are the subjects 
 of them pass away, and their peculiarities are for- 
 gotten. Time makes all personal satire more or less 
 insipid, from Aristophanes, who has received more 
 pedantic than genuine homage, to the Dunciad and 
 the Anti-Jacobin. 
 
 Crabbe is also to be added to the long list of 
 contemporary original poets. He writes occasion- 
 ally with great power and pathos, but the chief 
 portion of his v/orks is but prose tagged with 
 rhymes — Dutch painting, most vivid it is true, but 
 shewing nature just as it is, or rather below than 
 above the reality. Crabbe, like Wordsworth, seems 
 to have mistaken naked nature for poetry. The 
 great master, who, of all the men that ever lived, 
 best understood and practised the poetical art, 
 scarcely drew a single character from mere observa- 
 tion, as Coleridge remarks in his Lecture on Romeo 
 and Juliet. However, the talent of observing ac- 
 curately, though not of itself poetical, is a necessary 
 ingredient in the poetical character ; far from com- 
 mon, and intrinsically valuable on many grounds. 
 
126 OF POETRY. a 
 
 No age since that of Elizabeth has been so pro- 
 lific in poets as our own. The authors already- 
 mentioned are voluminous enough to furnish any 
 man, not more than moderately enamoured of the 
 Muses, with poetical reading for his whole life. Yet 
 how many contemporary poets are still to be named ? 
 Campbell, the author of some half-dozen spirit- 
 stirring lyrics, which are in every one's mouth ; 
 Rogers, neat and terse, and the most popish of the 
 moderns; Milman, gorgeous; Barry Cornwall, ele- 
 gant and fanciful; Keats, who has much of the 
 spirit of Shelley ; Miss Landon, who has of late 
 improved greatly, and written some lyrics not un- 
 worthy of Schiller himself; Mrs. Hemans, sweet, 
 pure and feminine ; Sotheby, one of our most correct 
 and skilful translators, a man whose benevolent and 
 serene old age it was delightful to contemplate; 
 Joanna Baillie ; Alford, a young poet of much pro- 
 mise ; Wolfe, the author of the magnificent lyric on 
 the funeral of Sir John Moore ; Hartley Coleridge, 
 who has inherited no inconsiderable portion of the 
 mantle of his father; Bulwer, who has it in him to 
 do something better tlian he has ever yet done, 
 when he can persuade himself to lay aside his jaunty 
 foppery, and Avrite like a man ; Elliott, who seems 
 to consider the corn laws the cause of all human 
 ills, but who has a vein of real sweetness inter- 
 mingled with his absurd ferocity; James Montgo- 
 
OE POETRY. ■ 127 
 
 mery, the author of one of our noblest hymns; 
 Moultrie, who has of late added considerably to his 
 early reputation as the author of " My Brother's 
 Grave ;" and several others, who might have ob- 
 tained more notice in an age when books were less 
 plentiful, or the versifying talent less common. 
 
 As the world grows older, and literary treasures 
 accumulate, it necessarily becomes more difficult to 
 achieve a literary reputation. Distinction of every 
 kind is indeed less easily attained, from the altered 
 state of society, and the general diffusion of know- 
 ledge, which have increased the number of com- 
 petitors to an enormous extent. But statesmen 
 and professional men have to contend with the 
 living only, and among the living but with their 
 own countrymen ; a literary man both with the 
 living and the dead of all ages and of all climes. 
 To become well acquainted with the authors of the 
 very highest rank only in the principal European 
 languages is a task which must now occupy several 
 years ; therefore each successive generation must in 
 self-defence grow more fastidious, and push the 
 vernier of fame some degrees higher up the intel- 
 lectual barometer. 
 
 There yet remain some poets whose claims 
 to notice are of a high order, though very recent, 
 Mr. Alfred Tennyson, Mr. Henry Taylor, and 
 Mr. Serjeant Talfourd. 
 
128 OF POETRY. 
 
 The poems of Tennyson are too purely imagin- 
 ative, too far removed from the sympathies of the 
 masses, to be popular, even were the age more 
 poetical than it is, but he will not be neglected by 
 those who love to linger over the rich and flowing 
 melodies of Spenser, Goethe, or Shelley. He 
 possesses great fertility both of imagination and 
 fancy, harmony and sweetness, — the five stanzas 
 preceding the choral song in the Lotus-eaters are to 
 thefuU as sweet as Spenser himself, — genuine pathos, 
 and he can be sometimes, though but too rarely, 
 terse and definite. The best of his poems are, I 
 think, Mariana in the moated Grange, and in the 
 South, Oriana, the Palace of Art, a most gorgeous 
 vision, the Sisters, one of the sublimest ballads in 
 the language, the Lotus-eaters, a Dream of Fair 
 Women, and the Death of the Old Year. For the 
 neglect with which he has been treated by the 
 public, he has, it must be confessed, in part to 
 thank his own affectation, in publishing the Darling 
 Room, and other intolerable impertinencies. He is 
 also too ambitious, the common fault of a young 
 author. Great writers, as Goethe and others, often 
 touch upon the very verge of no meaning, but, it 
 will be observed, in the first instance they make 
 themselves perfectly familiar with all the treasures 
 of language, and then, and not till then, do they 
 venture to play with their tools, which are words, 
 
OF POETRY. 129 
 
 in all the security of a master-mind, Tennyson is 
 sometimes not merely obscure, but lie seems to use 
 words on the political knave's principle, as if they 
 were given him to conceal his meaning, or to make 
 people believe that he has a meaning, when in point 
 of fact he has none. The Avorld is too old and too 
 busy to perplex itself with any such poetical puzzles^ 
 Tennyson has as good a chance as any living poet 
 of obtaining the public ear whenever he chooses to 
 employ his rich and various powers on some subject 
 of general interest. 
 
 Mr. Henry Taylor has been the first to introduce 
 the dramatic romance in an original English dress, 
 a valuable service to literature, as the species of 
 poem in question has, in the landscape gardener's 
 phrase, great capabilities, and is exceedingly read- 
 able. Philip van Artevelde is on the whole too 
 elaborate, the art is too apparent, it is stuffed too 
 full of sputtering Flemish names, and occasionally 
 too coarse, but the character of Artevelde is a 
 noble and philosophic conception, and the execution 
 not unworthy of the design. It is the best portrait 
 of a great popular leader that has ever been drawn, 
 and will serve hereafter to throw considerable light 
 on the character of the author's age. The book is 
 of a kind we seldom meet with now-a-days, abound- 
 ing in aphorisms, the repository of a rich store of 
 long-hoarded thought. The two principal female 
 
 K 
 
130 OF POETRY. 
 
 characters, Adriana and Elena, are drawn with a 
 delicate and discriminating pencil. Clara is not so 
 successful. The boy-king is excellent, standing 
 out of the canvass with a few touches. Byron 
 boasted of having written a poem of which 15,000 
 copies were sold in a day, meaning, I believe, the 
 false and mouthy Corsair. Philip van Artevelde, 
 a work of a far higher kind, has barely reached a 
 second edition. How many extrinsic circumstances, 
 wholly independent of merit, must be combined to 
 please the " magnanimos Remi nepotes !" 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Talfourd's Ion is a beautiful and 
 classical drama, and, strangely enough, has been 
 eminently successful on the stage. Without adhering 
 so closely to the Greek forms as Milton has done 
 in Sampson Agonistes, the stifFest and most pedantic 
 of all his works, Mr. Talfourd has so far infused a 
 Greek tone and spirit into his play, as to make it the 
 best English example of the severe fatalism of " the 
 lofty, grave tragedians." 
 
 " Sola Sophocleo tua carmina digna cothurno." 
 
 In some respects it is too Greek. Sophocles or 
 Euripides, fatalists as they were, would scarcely 
 have undertaken a plot so hard, and so remote 
 from all the common sympathies of mankind. It 
 sins grievously against the Horatian maxim, 
 
 " Nee deus intersit nisi dignas vindice nodus." 
 
OF POETRY. 131 
 
 Argos is ravaged with a pestilence for the crimes of 
 its sovereigns. For any thing that appears in the 
 play to the contrary, Apollo might have selected any 
 other town for the same infliction with equal justice. 
 We hear of nothing calling for peculiar vengeance 
 in the case of the Argive monarchs, and Adrastus, 
 the reigning prince, is not even wicked enough 
 to be interesting. The plague at Thebes, in the 
 (Edipus Tyrannus, is certainly caused by the 
 " king's offence," but that king, though ignorantly, 
 had killed his father and married his mother, and 
 therefore some cause is shewn for the divine 
 wrath. When the discovery, gradually evolved 
 with the most consummate art, is complete, CEdipus 
 abdicates his throne and puts out his eyes, but 
 Sophocles does not think it necessary that he should 
 commit self-murder, like the innocent Ion, to 
 appease the gods. The English poet has thus 
 given to the deities of Olympus a much sterner 
 and more repulsive character than the Athenian. 
 The plot of Ion is therefore defective, and also 
 contrary to the eternal principles of truth and 
 beauty, which can never permit us to contemplate 
 self-murder in other than an odious light. 
 
 Ion is occasionally rather sickly and sentimental, 
 
 but the language is highly poetical, abounding in 
 
 beautiful imagery, though not always quite as 
 
 chaste and tei'se as dramatic propriety requires. 
 
 K 2 
 
132 OF POETRY. 
 
 Serjeant Talfourd, as all who have heard him speak 
 well know, has always a rich store of eloquence 
 and fancy at command, and he has lavished it upon 
 this tragedy, but the consequence is that he is 
 sometimes obscure and sometimes diffuse ; the 
 language not being sufficiently simple and subdued, 
 the attention is drawn too much to the details, and 
 the play as a whole is deficient in keeping. How 
 different is the language of the unreasonable and 
 insolent sages, in the third scene of the second act, 
 describing the pestilence to the ill-used Adrastus, 
 from the calm dignity of the priest in Sophocles, 
 addressing CEdipus on the same subject I 
 
 " TioMs yap, Sxnrep Kavrhs eiffopas, ayav 
 ^Stj <TaX.ev€i, KavaKOvcplcrai Kapa 
 fivQwv er' ovx o'la re (poiviov ffd\ov, 
 <p6ivov(ra fxev naKvi^iv iyKap-nois x^ovhs, 
 (j>6lvov(Ta S'ay4\ais ^ovvo/xots, roKoicri re 
 aydvois yvvaiKwV iv 5' o Trvp<p6pos dehs 
 (TKri^pas i\avv€i, Xoifihs ^x^'^'^'^os, iroMv • 
 vcp' ov Kevovrai doo/j-a KaSfieiov, fx€\as S' 
 'AStjs (XTiVay/xols koI yoois TrAovTi^erai. 
 
 'fis eiTrep &p^eis rrjaSe yrjs, ILffTrep Kparels 
 ^hv avdpdcTLV KaWiov fj Kevrjs KpaTeiy, 
 &JS ovSey icTiv, ovre irvpyos ovre yavs 
 ipT]p.os av5pS)V /Li?) ^vvoiKovvTwv effu. " 
 
 Ion came upon the public with all the grace of 
 12 
 
OF POETRY. J33 
 
 novelty, and to that and to the forensic reputation 
 of its author, it appears to be indebted for its 
 theatrical success, rather than to any peculiar fitness 
 for the stage. On the first night of its represen- 
 tation, this magnificent passage in the last scene 
 between Ion and Clemanthe, perhaps the very 
 finest in the whole play, passed unnoticed. 
 
 " Clemanthe, 
 And shall we never see each other ? 
 
 " Ion. 
 
 Yes. 
 I have asked that dreadful question of the hills 
 That look eternal ; of the flowing streams 
 That lucid flow for ever ; of the stars. 
 Amid whose fields of azure my raised spirit 
 Hath trod in glory : all were dumb ; but now, 
 While I thus gaze upon thy living face, 
 I feel the love that kindles through its beauty 
 Can never wholly perish ; — we shall meet 
 Again, Clemanthe !" 
 
 The situation here is highly dramatic. 
 
 Goethe in his Iphigenia inTauris appears rather as 
 a rival than as an imitator of the Greeks. He has 
 certainly far surpassed the play of Euripides on the 
 same subject. Iphigenia is one of the loftiest and 
 purest female characters anywhere to be found. 
 She possesses the art of eliciting from every person 
 she meets the noblest and best feelings of his 
 K 3 
 
134 OF POETRY. 
 
 nature. In a moment of weakness indeed, she 
 consents to the scheme of Pylades for escaping, by- 
 deceiving Thoas, the king of the country, the 
 mode in which Euripides actually manages the 
 escape; but the slightest shadow of falsehood is 
 too repulsive to the purity of her nature to enable 
 her to carry it into execution ; she tells the king, 
 her rejected lover, all ; and obtains from his sense 
 of justice, barbarian as he is, and from his respect 
 for her character, a final permission to depart in 
 peace with her brother and his friend. The cos- 
 tume is of course perfectly Greek, as was to be 
 expected from Goethe. One can hardly believe these 
 dactylics to have been written by a modern : 
 
 " Denn die Unsterbliche lieben der Menschen 
 Weit verbreitende, gute Geschlechter, 
 Und sie fristen das flilchtige Leben 
 Gerne dem Sterblichen, wollen ihm gerne 
 Ihres eigenen ewigen Himmels 
 Mitgeniessendes frohliches Anschaun 
 Eine Weile gbnnen und lassen." 
 
 In one beautiful and pathetic passage Goethe is, it 
 may be, more picturesque than a Greek would have 
 been : Orestes is speaking. 
 
 " Wie oft, wenn still Elektra, meine Schwester, 
 Am Feuer in der tiefen Halle sass, 
 Driingt' ich beklommen mich an ihrem Schoos, 
 Und starrte, wie Sie bitter weinte, Sie 
 Mit grossen Augen an." 
 
OF POETRY. 135 
 
 There is nothing in the Greek tragedians equalling, 
 in sublime simplicity, the song of the Fates, — 
 
 " Es fiirchte die Gotter 
 
 Das Menschengeschlecht ! " — U. S. W. 
 
 It is no slight praise of Mr. Serjeant Talfourd, 
 to admit that his play is not utterly thrown into the 
 shade by one of the master-pieces of this great 
 prince of all the poets of his time. 
 
 The decline of the stage in England is not to be 
 regretted on any ground, whether of morality or 
 taste. There was a time when it was the custom 
 to talk of the stage as holding up the mirror to 
 vice, and so forth. Upon the strength of this doc- 
 trine, for the purpose it would seem of looking at 
 themselves in this moral mirror, many of the most 
 abandoned characters in this vast city assemble 
 nightly at the theatres. The truth is the stage, 
 ever since the Restoration, has been and still is a 
 school of profaneness, immorality and bad taste. 
 The plays written during the earlier part of the 
 eighteenth century, to which Madame de Stael 
 alluded when she said, " Rien ne ressemble moins 
 aux Anglais que leur comedie," still maintain their 
 place. The generalisation would not have been 
 too sweeping, if for the word English she had sub- 
 stituted mankind. There is scarcely a pure or 
 noble sentiment to be found among the great 
 K 4 
 
13b OF POETRY. 
 
 majority of these writers, the very refuse of our 
 literature ; witty, indeed, some of them certainly 
 are, but indecency and low trickery, the easiest 
 and most common-place mode of amusing the 
 vulgar, are their staple, and when they mean to be 
 moral they are only preeminently insipid. 
 
 But Shakspeare still maintains his popularity. 
 Shakspeare, it is true, is as perfect a dramatist as he 
 is a poet ; his situations tell scenically even without 
 the assistance of his matchless language. He 
 reigns on the stage as a dramatist only, not as a 
 poet ; the actoi's mangle his text in the most 
 villainous way, and some of them have had the 
 ineffable conceit to believe they could improve him. 
 In the beautiful concluding scene of the Winter's 
 Tale, Leontes rapturously exclaims, 
 
 " If this be magic, let it be an art 
 
 Lawful as eating." • '^'' 
 
 A stage copy I once saw alters it to 
 
 " Sacred as religion ! " 
 
 translating into the mawkish vernacular of the 
 stage the natural raciness of the poet. To this day 
 it is Dryden's Tempest, not Shakspeare's, which is 
 acted. I remember at Vienna seeing Macbeth 
 translated by Schiller acted line for line as Schiller 
 wrote it ; the German actors had more sense than to 
 
OF POETRY. 137 
 
 suppose themselves greater poets than Schiller and 
 Shakspeare. But who in this country ever saw 
 Shakspeare acted as Shakspeare wrote? Milton's 
 Comus has been travestied for the use of the stage 
 in like manner. The reform of the stage would 
 seem to he hopeless. 
 
 This chapter has been extended to a somewhat 
 disproportionate length. It may be inferred from 
 the whole that the object of poetry is not directly 
 morality, nor yet truth, but beauty in every form, 
 and in the most comprehensive sense. To the 
 developement of beauty all other matters are, poeti- 
 cally speaking, subsidiary ; yet how mighty is the 
 force of this word I It embraces all the glories not 
 only of the external or physical, but of the internal 
 or imaginative world, brighter and serener far. 
 Redeeming whatever is mean and vile, it con- 
 templates humanity under every aspect of interest, 
 whether it be, to borrow an illustration from sculp- 
 ture, the passion of Laocoon, the grace of Venus, 
 or the majesty of Apollo. Immoral, beauty cannot 
 be, for immorality is a disturbing force, violating 
 the repose of harmony. Hence it is that to poetry, 
 as the most comprehensive and plastic of the beau- 
 tiful arts, all ages have attributed something divine. 
 It has served as a medium for transmitting to later 
 generations the most ancient histories and the most 
 ancient laws ; and gratifying equally both the 
 
138 
 
 OF POETRY. 
 
 imagination and the reason, and impressing itself 
 firmly on the memory, it has been chosen by Infinite 
 Wisdom, as a ministering spirit, to convey to man- 
 kind the most vital truths of Religion. 
 
139 
 
 OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 Nihil tarn metuens, quam ne dubitare aliqua de re videretur. 
 
 Cicero de Naturd Deorum. 
 
 The mixture of those things by speech which by nature are 
 divided, is the mother of all error, — Hooker. 
 
 To those, and their number is not small, in whose 
 eyes Utilitarianism and Utilitarians, Bentham, 
 Benthamese and Benthamites, are an abomination, 
 we say with old Ariosto, 
 
 " Lasciate questo canto, che senz'esso 
 
 Pud star I'istoria, e non sara men chiara." 
 
 There are at least four reasons for not thinking 
 Mr. Jeremy Bentham* a philosopher. In the first 
 place, he is an habitual sneerer, who can never 
 argue without grinning ; secondly, he cannot look at 
 both sides of a question, and seldom sees the whole 
 even of one side ; thirdly, he is a dogmatist who 
 denounces all who differ from him ; and fourthly, 
 he has false notions of human nature, and thinks 
 
 * A new edition of Mr. Bentham 's works is now in the course 
 of publication. 
 
HO OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 that all reform is to come from without, and none 
 from within by the purification of the heart. 
 
 The object of this chapter is to consider some of 
 the leading doctrines of the Utilitarians on the 
 subjects of religion and morals, as set forth in the 
 works of their principal writers, Messrs. Bentham, 
 Mill, and Austin ; premising that we altogether 
 disclaim making either of these authors in any way 
 responsible for the opinions of the other two, and 
 that we take their writings as the text-books of 
 Utilitarianism, merely because it is generally sup- 
 posed that they contain a more accurate and com- 
 plete developement of the peculiar doctrines of the 
 sect than is elsewhere to be found. 
 
 On the subject of religion it is easier to ascertain 
 what Bentham's opinions were not than what they 
 were. Incidental allusions to it are scattered 
 through his works, but it is from two of his publi- 
 cations treating of religion exclusively, and therefore 
 it must be presumed deliberately, that it appears 
 safest to infer what he really thought. These are, 
 the book styled " Not Paul, but Jesus," intended to 
 prove St. Paul an impostor, and the examination 
 of the Catechism of the Church of England, in the 
 work to which he has affixed the strange and 
 uncouth, but characteristic title of " Church of 
 Englandism." 
 
 The first peculiarity which strikes us on looking 
 
OF UTILITARIANISM. 14fl 
 
 into " Not Paul, but Jesus," is its total want of 
 method. It professes to be a sort of commentary 
 on the New Testament, a considerable portion of 
 which the author assumes not to be authentic. For 
 this supposition he gives no reason whatever, nor 
 does he anywhere determine how much of the New 
 Testament he believes to be authentic, and how 
 much the contrary, but misrepresents, contradicts, 
 and omits passages throughout his work, just as it 
 suits his convenience. The whole argument, if 
 argument it can be called, is a begging of the ques- 
 tion from beginning to end, united in almost every 
 page with the contemptible fallacy of imputing to 
 an opponent what he never intended to say, and 
 then arguing against the false meaning as if it were 
 the real one. It is in this manner that, by leaving 
 out of sight the distinction made by the apostles in 
 the treatment of Gentile and Jewish converts, he 
 actually, incredible as it may seem, charges St. Paul 
 with perjury ! Chap. xi. 
 
 At p. 283, and indeed everywhere, he displays 
 such deplorable ignorance of Scripture as would 
 almost lead us to suppose that he had undertaken 
 to write a commentary upon it without first read- 
 ing it. 
 
 At p. 299 he says, " Nowhere in the account 
 given of his transactions by the author of the Acts, 
 is he," meaning St. Paul, " in any of his speeches 
 
142 OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 represented as making reference to any one act of 
 his in the character of a miracle." 
 
 " Not by the author of the Acts is he spoken of 
 as being in possession of any such power." 
 
 He might just as well have said at once that 
 St. Paul's name was never mentioned in the Acts. 
 In the Acts, chap. xv. 12, it is said: 
 
 " Then all the multitude kept silence, and gave 
 audience to Barnabas and Paul, declaring what 
 miracles and wonders God had wrought among the 
 Gentiles by them." 
 
 Not only is it said in the Acts generally that " God 
 wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul:" 
 but many of the apostle's miracles are related at full 
 length in the most circumstantial manner. 
 
 Immediately after having asserted that St. Paul 
 is not spoken of in the Acts as being in possession 
 of miraculous powers, Mr. Bentham, p. 302, et seq. 
 goes through his miracles seriatim, asserting them 
 all to be impostures ; not seeing that his two asser- 
 tions cannot exist together, for if St. Paul is not 
 spoken of as being in possession of miraculous 
 powers in the Acts, he cannot be accused of pre- 
 tending to work miracles ; if he can be accused of 
 pretending to work miracles, he must be spoken of 
 as being in possession of miraculous powers. 
 
 Bentham's only arguments against the miracles of 
 St. Paul are, as usual, begging the question and 
 
OF UTILITARIANISM. 143 
 
 contradicting the Bible. One instance will suffice ; 
 the Bible says, Elymas was miraculously struck with 
 blindness : Bentham says, " By an understanding 
 between Paul and Elymas, the sorcerer, for the 
 season that was thought requisite, kept his eyes 
 shut." 
 
 Again, St. Paul says he received the Gospel " by 
 revelation from Jesus Christ ;" Bentham says, " it 
 was made by him out of his own head." p. 368. 
 
 He misinterprets St. Paul's prophecy of the day 
 of judgment to mean that the day of judgment 
 would happen during the lives of some then living, 
 and on this misinterpretation he founds a charge of 
 falsehood against the apostle. 
 
 If a man were to write such trash as this on 
 any other book than the Bible, it would at once be 
 held conclusive of the character of his mind ; but 
 because the book thus grossly insulted is the most 
 sacred of all books, it seems a man may speak of it 
 with the most drivelling sophistry and the most 
 loathsome blasphemy, and yet be a philosopher, as 
 some understand that much- abused word. 
 
 Nothing can be more disgusting than the spirit of 
 " Not Paul, but Jesus." If the reader wishes for a 
 particular instance, let him turn to page 344. It is 
 the work of a mind radically and irredeemably vul- 
 gar, and one continued sneer from the first page to 
 the last, without a particle of wit or liveliness. 
 
14<4 OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 Bentham's book, absurd as it is, is founded upon 
 a common error, that of supposing the Gospels 
 entitled to more respect than the Epistles. Our 
 Saviour, in his last discourse to his disciples, says, 
 " I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye 
 cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the 
 Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all 
 truth." John xvi. 12. It was by this final and more 
 complete revelation of the Spirit of truth that the 
 apostles spoke, and therefore it is that Christianity 
 is more completely developed in their Epistles than 
 in any other part of the Bible. 
 
 Bentham's treatise on the Catechism of the Church 
 of England is of the same character with that on 
 St. Paul. At page 22 he says, 
 
 " In the same instructive prints, which present to 
 his view the devil in the character of a black man, 
 with horns and tail, he will behold a pigeon 
 hovering in a spot of light. This pigeon, which, 
 however, he will be taught to call not by this name, 
 but by its other and more poetical name, a dove — 
 this pigeon it is, that, if any thing, will be the object 
 of his belief." 
 
 We put it to any candid man well versed in 
 infidel writings, whether it has ever been his fate 
 to meet with an instance of such vulgar and revolt- 
 ing blasphemy ! Yet this wretched man, in the 
 very act of blaspheming, is indignant at being told 
 
OF UTILITARIANISM. 145 
 
 the most certain and indisputable of moral facts, 
 that all men are sinners. See p. 53. 
 
 At p. 67. he calls the Lord's Supper " cannibal- 
 ism.' But enough has been said ; it is unnecessary 
 to dwell longer on these loathsome books. 
 
 Bentham's opinions on morals are not much more 
 valuable than his opinions on religion. He begins 
 his " Introduction to the Principles of Morals and 
 Legislation" thus: — 
 
 '^ Nature has placed mankind under the governance 
 of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is 
 for them alone to point out what we ought to do, 
 as well as to determine what we shall do." * 
 
 It cannot fail to strike every reader of common 
 intelligence, that, in thus dogmatically laying the 
 foundations of his system, Bentham substitutes 
 assertion for argument. Two more disputable 
 propositions perhaps were never laid down ; they 
 are not only not proved, but they are not sus- 
 
 * Bentham's popularity on the Continent, so far as it exists, 
 may be accounted for by this, among other circumstances, that 
 Dumont, a man whose judgment and knowledge of the world 
 were far superior to his, has modified his opinions, and omitted 
 much of his vulgarity and absurdity. Though Dumont retains 
 the greater portion of Bentham's fallacies, he is rarely offensive, 
 his original very rarely otherwise. Thus, of these two sentences 
 Dumont has modified the first, and thrown the second into a. 
 different shape. — See Traitts de Legislation Civile et Penak, 
 vol. i. p. 3. 
 
 L 
 
14-6 OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 ceptible of proof; thus enunciated, they merit 
 nothing better than a simple denial, and if denied, 
 the whole fabric of Utilitarianism crumbles in the 
 dust. There is nothing new in this doctrine, it 
 is but a revival of the old fallacies of the Epicu- 
 reans. Pain and pleasure are used in a signification 
 much more extensive than they commonly bear, 
 and this perversion of the meaning of two well- 
 known words is, it seems, a grand discovery. Many 
 false systems have no better foundation ; but the 
 Utihtarian or Epicurean is the worst of all, because 
 it degrades men's minds by making a word, gene- 
 rally applied to the most vulgar and sensual gratifi- 
 cations, the motive of all their actions. 
 
 It is obvious, at the first blush, that to say, one 
 man dies as a martyr at the stake and another 
 drinks a pot of beer from the same motive, is 
 nothing less than to confound all human ideas. Yet 
 this is what Bentham must mean, otherwise pleasure 
 and pain do not " alone point out what men ought 
 to do, or determine what they shall do." Every 
 good man frequently abstains from doing Avhat he 
 would like, because he thinks he ought not to do it. 
 Are we to be told that pleasure is his motive for not 
 doing what he would like to do? Let any indi- 
 vidual examine with candour the secret springs of 
 his own actions, does he not find them many and 
 complicated? Does his observation of other men 
 
OF UTILITARIANISM. 147 
 
 lead him to believe that their motives are two only, 
 and no more ? As Mr. Macaulay well said, in reply 
 to the pother of these sectarians, their favourite 
 dogma, which they choose to term " greatest hap- 
 piness principle," " means nothing more than that 
 all men if they can will do as they please." But we 
 are just as much in the dark as ever as to what all 
 men will please to do. With these words, 
 
 " 'ris oLTOTTov euiKi Ti etvai TovTO o KoKovcriv ol dvdpwiroi t]Sv," 
 
 Socrates, in the Phgedon, commences the famous 
 dialogue on the immortality of the soul. How often 
 are modern infidels put to shame by the wiser and 
 nobler heathens I 
 
 By saying, that it is for pleasure and pain " alone 
 to point out what we ought to do," Bentham 
 indirectly annihilates conscience, the existence of 
 which he afterwards, page 29, expressly denies, 
 under the synonym of a moral sense. 
 
 Though men may differ very materially as to 
 what they think they ought to do, and what they 
 think they ought not, there are still some things 
 which no man can do without internal uneasiness. 
 " I am not bad enough for that," a criminal will 
 say. What is this uneasiness ? We might give it a 
 much stronger name, since it has compelled mvir- 
 derers to disclose their crimes after the lapse of 
 many years, and has driven them to seek an igno- 
 L 2 
 
l^S OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 minious death by their own confession, rather than 
 endure its tortures! If religion be called in to 
 account for it, we find it existing independent of 
 revealed religion, and among men who doubted, 
 and even denied, a future state altogether. 
 
 But we may take a higher ground : what is the 
 " mens sibi conscia recti," the internal approbation 
 which a man feels when he has done what he believes 
 to be right ? Is he gratified because he has procured 
 the maximum of pleasure to himself? Surely not. 
 Here are phenomena, let them be accounted for. 
 To the weight of experience we add the authority 
 of Scripture, and we infer from both that there is 
 an inward witness, serving as an index to right and 
 wrong, which we call conscience ; and that its value, 
 like that of all our faculties, depends in a great 
 measure on the frequency of its exercise, that is, if 
 we neglect its admonitions they will become more 
 faint. Let those who reject this explanation give 
 another, and at the same time remember that no 
 Christian can avoid admitting the authority of the 
 Bible to be conclusive on moral questions; they 
 who deny that authority should have the courage 
 to say so openly. 
 
 No sooner has Bentham thus arbitrarily placed 
 men under the exclusive empire of pleasure and 
 pain, than he substitutes in his second page happi- 
 ness for pleasure, as if the two words were mere 
 
OF UTILITARIANISM. 149 
 
 synonyms. It is by thus perpetually playing with 
 words that he has succeeded in making some people 
 believe that he has made great discoveries. Accord- 
 ing to common use, 
 
 " Quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi," 
 
 the more sensual and vulgar gratifications are 
 termed pleasure, which seems also to imply short- 
 ness of duration ; happiness implies intellectual and 
 moral enjoyment, and that for a considerable space 
 of time. Hooker thus gives whatever truth there 
 is in Bentham's doctrine without the falsehood : — 
 
 " All men desire to lead in this world a happy 
 life. That life is led most happily, wherein all 
 virtue is exercised without impediment or let." 
 
 The reason why men constantly do what is not for 
 their happiness is, because they are weak, unable to 
 resist present temptation, and led astray by their 
 passions, not because they do not know what is for 
 their happiness, or are in want of any new principle 
 to guide them. 
 
 We quote Dumont's exposition of the principle of 
 utility, as being more concise and perspicuous than 
 the original : — 
 
 " Utilite est un terme abstrait. II exprime la 
 
 propriete ou la tendance d'une chose a preserver de 
 
 quelque mal ou a procurer quelque bien. Mal^ 
 
 c'est peine, douleur ou cause de douleur. Bien, 
 
 L 3 
 
150 OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 c'est plaisir ou cause de plaisir. Ce qui est con- 
 forme a I'utilite ou a I'interet d'un individu, c'est ce 
 qui tend a augmenter la somme totale de son bien- 
 etre. Ce qui est conforme a I'utilite ou a I'interet 
 d'une communaute, c'est ce qui tend a augmenter la 
 somme totale du bien-etre des individus qui la com- 
 posent." — Principes de Legislation, p. 3. 
 
 Here we have the same constant fallacy of using 
 common words in a more extended sense than they 
 will bear, and of assuming propositions to be true 
 universally, because they are admitted to be true 
 particularly. Utility and interest are used by Ben- 
 tham sometimes in a sense more extended than 
 common acceptation will allow, and at others re- 
 stricted to their ordinary meaning. This is the 
 well-known fallacy of a doubtful middle term, not 
 distributed in the premises, but distributed in the 
 conclusion, or conversely. Thus it is correct to call 
 some things useful, which tend to procure us some 
 good, or to avert from us some evil ; but it does 
 not, therefore, follow that whatever tends to pro- 
 cure us any good, or avert any evil, is correctly 
 called useful to us. The Psalmist says, " It is good 
 for me that I have been afflicted," not " it is useful 
 for me that I have been afflicted." The utility of 
 any thing commonly signifies its tendency to pro- 
 cure us some temporary advantage, and is, there- 
 fore, opposed with perfect propriety to justice or 
 
OF UTILITARIANISM. 151 
 
 veracity, which often procure us temporary disad- 
 vantage. In the same manner interest is opposed 
 to duty. The meanings of these words cannot be 
 altered without great confusion, and we should lose 
 instead of gaining by it, inasmuch as our motives of 
 action, through the association of ideas with words, 
 wojild become worse. 
 
 Again, pain is not the only evil, pleasure not the 
 only good. Men have always agreed to call some 
 things evil which are not pain, some things good 
 which are not pleasure. 
 
 " La logique de I'utilite consiste a partir du 
 calcul ou de la comparaison des peines et des 
 plaisirs dans toutes les operations du jugement, et a 
 n'y faire entrer aucune autre idee." p. 4. 
 
 The utter worthlessness of this calculation we 
 shall see when we come to the catalogue of pains 
 and pleasures. 
 
 " Pour le partisan du principe de I'utilite, la 
 vertu n'est un bien qu'a cause des plaisirs qui en 
 derivent : le vice n'est un mal qu'a cause des peines 
 qui en sont la suite. Le bien moral n'est bien que 
 par sa tendance a produire des biens physiques : le 
 mal moral n'est un mal que par sa tendance a pro- 
 duire des maux physiques; mais quand je dis joA?/- 
 siques, j'entends les peines et les plaisirs de I'ame, 
 aussi bien que les peines et les plaisirs des sens. 
 L 4 
 
152 OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 J'ai en vue rhomme tel qu'il est dans sa constitu- 
 tion actuelle." p. 5. 
 
 We deny at once that any moral system whatever 
 can be founded on this basis. There never was a 
 man whose mind was large enough to perceive all 
 the tendencies of any one action in all its conse- 
 quences ; but even if there were, such a perception 
 is but as a grain of sand to the whole earth in com- 
 parison with all the qualifications required. Setting 
 aside conscience, which Bentham rejects, though he 
 must have made use of it, it is utterly impossible 
 that any man can ascertain the tendency of every 
 possible variety of human actions in every possible 
 variety of circumstances. And not only is it impos- 
 sible for him to ascertain the tendency, but he can 
 neither catalogue the actions nor the circumstances, 
 though both are indispensable preliminaries to his 
 arriving at a conclusion. 
 
 The word physical is here perverted in the same 
 manner as pain, pleasure, good, evil, utility, interest, 
 have been perverted before. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to observe, that this system 
 cannot co-exist with revelation, which it should 
 seem Mr. Bentham expected to supersede, p. 36. 
 Revelation gives the will of God as the motive of 
 men's actions. Bentham says men have differed as 
 to what that will is. There can be no doubt that 
 
OF UTILITARIANISM. 153 
 
 the divine will may be ascertained so far as is neces- 
 sary to salvation, by all who sincerely desire it. On 
 the principle of utility, very little can be ascer- 
 tained ; and the reason why some men suppose they 
 have ascertained much by it is, that they have 
 availed themselves, though they will not acknow- 
 ledge it, of the assistance of conscience or a moral 
 sense. 
 
 The follewing sentences go to destroy morality 
 altogether. 
 
 " Si le partisan du principe de I'utilite trouvait, 
 dans le catalogue banal des vertus une action dont 
 il- resultat plus de peines que de plaisirs, il ne 
 balancerait pas a regarder cette pretendue vertu 
 comme un vice ; il ne s'en laisserait point imposer 
 par I'erreur generale ; il ne croirait pas legerement 
 qu'on soit fonde a employer de fausses vertus 
 pour le maintien des veritables. 
 
 " S'il trouvait aussi dans le catalogue banal des 
 delits quelque action indifferente, quelque plaisir 
 innocent, il ne balancerait pas a transporter ce 
 pretendu delit dans la classe des actes legitimes ; il 
 accorderait sa pitie aux pretendus criminels, et il 
 reserverait son indignation pour les pretendus 
 vertueux qui les persecutent." pp. 5, 6. 
 
 Who is to decide ? Is every man to make virtue 
 vice, and vice virtue, at discretion ? The Utilita- 
 
154 OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 1 
 
 rians will indignantly answer, no. We say, no man 
 is fit to lay down the law for all mankind in such a 
 matter. 
 
 Bentham is so far entitled to credit, that he works 
 out his principles to their legitimate conclusions, 
 which he gives bluntly, without equivocation or 
 reserve : " Pleasure is in itself a good ; nay, even 
 setting aside immunity from pain, the only good : 
 pain is itself an evil ; and indeed, without exception, 
 the only evil ; or else the words good and evil have 
 no meaning." (He should have added, in his own 
 sense, not in the common acceptation of the words.) 
 '• And this is alike true of every sort of pain, and 
 of every sort of pleasure. It follows, therefore, 
 immediately and incontestibly, that there is no suck 
 thing as any sort of motive that is in itself a bad one." 
 (The italics are Bentham's.) 
 
 " Let a man's motive be ill-will ; call it even 
 malice, envy, cruelty ; it is still a kind of pleasure 
 that is his motive ; the pleasure he takes at the 
 thought of the pain he sees, or expects to see his 
 adversary undergo. Now even this wretched 
 pleasure, taken by itself, is good." — Principles of 
 Morals and Legislation, note, p. 169.* 
 
 Another man, when he found where he had got 
 
 * I cannot find this or the following passage in Dumont. 
 
OF UTILITARIANISM. 155 
 
 to, would have suspected he was wrong in calling 
 pleasure the motive of all human actions ; but the 
 possibility of his making a mistake never seems to 
 have entered Bentham's mind. He goes on, 
 
 '' With respect to goodness and badness, as it is 
 with every thing else that is not itself either pain or 
 pleasure, so is it with motives. If they are good 
 or bad, it is only on account of their effects : good, 
 on account of their tendency to produce pleasure 
 or avert pain ; bad, on account of their tendency to 
 produce pain or avert pleasure. Now the case is, 
 that from one and the same motive, and from every 
 kind of motive, may proceed actions that are good, 
 others that are bad, and others that are indifferent." 
 p. 170. 
 
 According to this reasoning, there is no distinction 
 between murder and accidental homicide, since the 
 effect, the death of a man, is the same in both cases. 
 They who deny a moral sense will hardly account 
 for the distinction between intentional and acci- 
 dental injury, which seems, says Butler, to be 
 peculiar to man. All moralists make actions to 
 depend upon motives, not motives upon actions. 
 But this is what the Utilitarians call making 
 discoveries. 
 
 In Dumont, Chap. VI., we have a catalogue of 
 pleasures, and another of pains, which required, we 
 
}56 
 
 OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 are told, " un grand travail analytique." We have, 
 it seems, fifteen pleasures, and only eleven pains. 
 A comfortable conclusion for the true believers. 
 The eighth chapter, " De I'estimation des plaisirs 
 et des peines," is only to be equalled in solemn 
 absurdity by some passages of Don Quixote. We 
 there find that legislation is but a matter of arith- 
 metic. There is no end to our discoveries. We 
 weigh pleasure, like sugar, by the pound ; and 
 measure out pain, like cloth, by the yard. The 
 answer to all such stuff is, simply, that we have no 
 means of knowing when moral catalogues are com- 
 plete or otherwise, and that moral quantities are 
 indeterminate, and therefore cannot be valued. 
 Else wherefore did Plato and Bacon declare, that 
 they would " revere him as a God that could truly 
 divide and define !" 
 
 Every man, the Utilitarians say, is not to be 
 expected to make this analysis for himself, in all 
 circumstances ; then who has authority to make it 
 for him ? Is Bentham to be his oracle ? He turns 
 to his oracle, ant^ finds a fallacy, which he may do 
 in almost every page. He says, therefore, to him- 
 self, the conclusion cannot be sound because the 
 premises are not ; I may do what I like. Thus, he 
 might justify himself in the commission of any 
 crime whatever. But no man ever did or ever will 
 
OF UTILITARIANISM. 157 
 
 act exclusively on Utilitarian priciples. The utter 
 impracticability of the system is alone its refu- 
 tation. 
 
 How refreshing to turn from these muddy shal- 
 lows to Hooker's broad and deep stream of lofty 
 thought ! 
 
 " Man doth not seem to rest satisfied, either with 
 fruition of that wherewith his life is preserved, or 
 with performance of such actions as advance him 
 most deservedly in estimation; but doth further covet, 
 yea, oftentimes manifestly pursue with great sedulity 
 and earnestness, that which cannot stand him in 
 any stead for vital use ; that which exceedeth the 
 reach of sense ; yea, somewhat above capacity of 
 reason, somewhat divine and heavenly, which with 
 hidden exultation it rather surmiseth than conceiveth; 
 somewhat it seeketh, and what that is directly it 
 knoweth not, yet very intentive desire thereof doth 
 so incite it, that all other known delights and 
 pleasures are laid aside, they give place to the search 
 of this but only suspected desire. If the soul of 
 man did serve only to give him being in this life, 
 then things appertaining unto this life would content 
 him, as we see they do other creatures ; 'which 
 creatures, enjoying what they live by, seek no 
 further, but in this contentation do shew a kind of 
 acknowledgment that there is no higher good which 
 doth any way belong unto them. With us it is 
 
158 OF UTILITARIANfSM. 
 
 otherwise. For although the beauties, riches, 
 honours, sciences, virtues, and perfections of all 
 men living were in the present possession of one, 
 yet somewhat beyond and above all this there would 
 still be sought and earnestly thirsted for." 
 
 Men have chosen many different foundations on 
 which to build systems of morals. Beauty, which 
 has been preferred by some, though less vulgar, is 
 liable as an exclusive principle to nearly the same 
 objections as utility. It may be doubted whether 
 any system of ethics could ever have been dis- 
 covered without the assistance of a moral sense. 
 How can those who deny a moral sense account 
 far the fact, that men see their way so much more 
 clearly in ethics than in political economy, though 
 the natural difficulties of the former are so much 
 greater ? Let a man listen to the dictates of his 
 own conscience, and consult the Bible humbly and 
 sincerely, and he will seldom or never be in doubt 
 as to what he ought to do. 
 
 Bentham's Defence of Usury does not come 
 strictly within the design of this chapter, which is 
 to give some account of the peculiar tenets of the 
 Utilitarians. The Defence of Usury has no neces- 
 sary connexion with Bentham's peculiar opinions, 
 and might have been written by a man who did not 
 profess them. As it is, however, one of his best 
 works, it would, perhaps, be thought unfair not to 
 
 14 
 
OF UTILITARIANISM. 159 
 
 notice it. It is undoubtedly a piece of close and 
 original reasoning, not altogether free from vul- 
 garity, though less vulgar than Bentham usually is, 
 but when its admirers venture to call it exhaustive, 
 they assert what they cannot know. No mind is 
 capable of tracing the effects of a law through all 
 its bearings. In real life there seems to be always 
 some compensating or antagonist force at work, so 
 that the worst laws do not produce all the evil, nor 
 the best all the good, which might at first sight be 
 expected. In the present instance, if the usury 
 laws were totally repealed, without providing for 
 those cases where agreements between lender and 
 borrower left the rate of interest undetermined, 
 great practical evils would ensue from having no 
 fixed legal rate of interest. But Bentham did not 
 know what it was to doubt, when his own theories 
 were in question. Hear Hooker once more : — 
 
 " The wisest are always, touching this point, the 
 readiest to acknowledge, that soundly to judge of a 
 law is the weightiest thing which any man can take 
 upon him." 
 
 It is chiefly on his character as a jurist, that 
 Bentham's reputation rests. This subject is far too 
 wide to be more than slightly alluded to here. 
 There is originality, or rather oddity in many of his 
 views, but the faults of his mind, which was greatly 
 too narrow for the business he undertook, are every 
 
160 OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 where apparent. There is no end of his definitions 
 and divisions, a hollow parade of accuracy without 
 the reality, for nature is too subtle to be thus easily 
 bound ; or of his catalogues of what cannot be 
 numbered, measured or weighed. He looked upon 
 man as a piece of mechanism, hence the worthless- 
 ness of his philosophy. A sanguine theorist, he 
 could see no difficulties in the execution of his own 
 schemes, or anticipate that they could possibly be 
 followed by other than good effects, hence his sneers 
 and his abuse. Believing that what was clear to 
 himself, must be equally clear to others, he con- 
 cluded that all were influenced by selfish motives, 
 who would not agree with him in proclaiming that, 
 " whatever is, is wrong," which is really the sum 
 total of his writings, a sentiment, put by Goethe 
 with perfect propriety into the mouth of a fiend, 
 
 " Alles was entsteht 
 Ist's werth, dass es z\i Griinde geht." 
 
 If this can be said of England, where men have en- 
 joyed greater freedom for a longer time than they 
 ever did elsewhere, what is to be said of all other 
 countries ! But Bentham could never see the good 
 produced by existing institutions. 
 
 If the exclusive principle of utility will hold any- 
 where, it is in law, if of no great value in law, it 
 can hardly be worth much in any other instance. 
 
 It 1 
 
OF UTILITARIANISM. 161 
 
 Demosthenes, in his first oration against Aristo- 
 geiton, gives his views on the objects of laws thus : 
 
 " Ot 5e v6/.ioi rh diKaioi/ kol rh Ka\hu Kol rb ffv/xcpepov fiov- 
 \ovrai, Kai tovto {VjToDct, koI irveiSav evped^, KOivhv Tovro 
 irpSa'TayiJ.a aTredeixdT], iracTLv tffov Ka\ SfMOiov Kol tout' ecrri 
 vSfios, (p irdyras ■KpocrijK.ei TreiOeaOai Slo, xoAAa, koI jxaXiffQ', or 
 ■Kcis eCTi v6jJ.os, evp7]fj,a fxhv icai. SS>pov 6ea>v, 5o'7^a S' a.vdp(airwif 
 (ppovifjLOjv , ewavopOuixa 5e tSiv hKovaiwv koX anovfficcv anapT7)}xa.rwv , 
 ■K&K^uis 5e ffwdriKT] Koiv-i] • KaQ' %v i:a.cn irpocrriKsi ^rjv toTs iy 
 Tp TrdAet." 
 
 Mr. Bentham would strike out the rh Ukmov and 
 the Th Kaxhv, and leave only the rh (rv,a(p4pov. But 
 what is gained by it? The division of Demosthenes 
 is quite as accurate and quite as intelligible as any 
 other. Thus all laws, concerning relations between 
 man and man, might come under the head of " the 
 just ;" those concerning the general obligations of 
 religion and morality under that of " the good ;" 
 financial and constitutional laws under that of " the 
 useful," or expedient. According to this arrange- 
 ment, there would be some difficulty in determining 
 under which head particular branches of law, as 
 criminal law for instance, could with the greatest 
 propriety be classed ; but whatever divisions jurists 
 choose to adopt, the same difficulty, or rather im- 
 possibility, of a perfectly accurate arrangement will 
 be found ; and the matter is of very little practical 
 importance. 
 
 M 
 
162 OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 m 
 
 Bentham is an advocate for a code, which he 
 says has but two classes of antagonists, dupes and 
 impostors.* But by a code he does not mean a 
 digest of the whole mass of existing law, which, he 
 thinks, with his usual contempt for experience, 
 ought to be entirely discarded, and a new system 
 of abstract definitions, accompanied with a new 
 nomenclature, and certain other indispensable re- 
 quisites, substituted in its place. Yet, with his 
 accustomed inconsistency, not seeing that the scheme 
 would in all probability be death to the system he 
 has taken such pains to recommend, he would have 
 the government throw the matter open to public 
 competition, in fact advertise for a code, on the 
 following conditions ; that each competitor should 
 send in a general outline of his plan, together with 
 some particular chapter, complete as a specimen ; 
 that the whole, or at least each grand division, should 
 be the work of one hand ; that all parties should 
 work without pay ; and that, caeteris paribus, a 
 foreigner should be preferred. De la Codification, 
 pp. 393, 4. 
 
 As it does not appear very probable that this 
 plan will be adopted, it is not necessary to make 
 any remarks upon it. Mr. Bentham has been 
 pleased to present us with his own lucubrations on 
 
 * De la Codification, p. 380. 
 
 m 
 
OF XTTILITARIANISM. 165 
 
 the subject of a penal code, which it will be more 
 interesting to consider. Each article of this code is 
 to contain, 1. A definition of the simple crime; 
 
 2. An explanation of the terms of the definition ; 
 
 3. Penalties of the simple crime; 4". Circumstances 
 of aggravation of which it is susceptible, and extra 
 penalty for each ; 5. Circumstances of extenuation, 
 and proportionate reduction of penalty ; 6. A com- 
 mentary justifying the law in the form of questions 
 and answers. Z>e la Codification, p. 435. 
 
 The first questions that arise here are, Whether all 
 these six parts of each article are to be equally law ? 
 Whether the text and the commentary are to have 
 precisely the same weight? If not, what distinction 
 is to be made between them, and- who is to deter- 
 mine how great that distinction is to be? The 
 following is the definition of larceny given by 
 Dumont, which it appears, however, is not Ben- 
 tham's, though in strict accordance with his system -^ 
 — " II y a delit de vol quand un individu soustrait 
 une chose qu'il estime avoir quelque valeur, avec 
 I'intention d'en faire son profit, et sachant qu'il n'a 
 pas le droit de la prendre."— De la Codification^ 
 
 p. 4S7. . 
 
 It would have been shorter to have taken the 
 
 eighth commandment at once. Laid down in these 
 
 general terms this is, probably, the law in every 
 
 civilised country already ; but the eff'ect of abroga* 
 
 M 2 
 
164 
 
 OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 ting all the existing laws against larceny, and of 
 substituting this definition in their place, would be 
 in all but the simplest cases to leave the law entirely 
 in the breast of the judge, who must necessarily 
 decide whether the facts of each particular case 
 come within all the terms of the definition or not. 
 It is also at least wide enough to include swindling 
 and forgery, crimes essentially distinct, and dis- 
 tinguished even according to this system; and it is 
 doubtful, depending upon the construction of the 
 word " soustrait," whether it will not include rob- 
 bery, burglary, and indeed every mode in which a 
 man can appropriate to himself the property of 
 another, knowing that he has no right to it. The 
 important chapters of practice, pleading, and evi- 
 dence, in which many of the chief difficulties of law 
 consist, are also left, here at least, entirely un- , 
 touched, A schoolboy might draw up such a code 
 with ease. 
 
 It is curious that the very evil Bentham com- 
 plains of so bitterly, judge-made laws, would be 
 multiplied a hundred fold, by his system, which is 
 substantially that of the Mahometans, and would go 
 far towards depriving us of laws altogether. If we 
 reverse a well-known maxim we get pretty nearly 
 the character of his code: the worst law is that 
 which leaves most to.the judge ; the worst judge is 
 he who leaves most to himself. Is this the system 
 
OF UTILITARIANISM. 165 
 
 which every man must be a fool or a rogue not to 
 admire ? 
 
 It will be sufficient to give one more specimen, 
 which is Bentham's own : — 
 
 " II y a injure personelle simple negative la ou, 
 sans cause legitime, un individu, en voyant tin 
 autre dans un etat de danger, s'abstient de I'aider, 
 et qu'en consequence le mal arrive." — Traites de 
 Legislation, iii. 97. 
 
 If this were law, every person who happened to 
 see a bad rider on a restive horse, and did not help 
 him to dismount, if that rider were afterwards 
 thrown,, would be liable to punishment. Query, 
 Would the gout- be a legitimate excuse ? All the 
 former objections also apply. We subjoin a specimen 
 of the commentary. Traites de Legislation, iii. p. 109. 
 
 "Pourquoi les debts negatifs en ce genre sont ils 
 rendus punissables comme les debts positifs ? 
 
 " Reponse. Parceque, dans un cas comme dans 
 I'autre, la peine est fondee, elle est efficace, elle est 
 necessaire." 
 
 This, is edifying ! 
 . There are many reasons in favour of a code or 
 digest of the entire law, among which may be men- 
 tioned the immense mass of our law, and the rapid 
 rate at which it is continually increasing ; but to tear 
 up the whole fabric of the law by the roots, inter- 
 secting as it does every portion of the most com- 
 M 3 
 
166 OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 I 
 
 plicated state of society that ever existed, with its 
 minute and interminable fibres ; to throw aside a 
 stock of materials for a code, the richest and the 
 most valuable, as all who are acquainted with them 
 will acknowledge, and as Bentham himself acknow- 
 ledges *, ever possessed by any nation ; to substitute 
 instead thereof a few hundred definitions, if we are 
 to judge from the specimens given, trivial or fal- 
 lacious, or to turn over such a country as England 
 to the tender mercies of some foreigner, ignorant, 
 as comparatively he must be, of our institutions, 
 laws, manners, customs, and national character, is a 
 scheme Avorthy of the author of " Not Paul, but 
 Jesus," and of him alone. 
 
 How far Bentham is entitled to the credit of the 
 recent changes in the law, or whether he is entitled 
 on account of those changes to any credit at all, is 
 a question which it would be idle to discuss, since it 
 cannot be shewn that the law would not have been 
 altered if he had never existed. Evidence is now 
 less rigidly excluded than formerly. Is this owing to 
 the publication of the " Preuves Judiciaires ?" Of 
 Sir Robert Peel's acts for consolidating the criminal 
 law he has spoken in the most contemptuous terms. 
 But admitting that Bentham has the merit of having 
 drawn public attention to the defects of our laws, it 
 
 * De la Codification, p. 339. 
 
OF UTILITARIANISM. 167 
 
 is quite clear that the adoption of his own system 
 would be a far greater evil than the defects he 
 denounces, since it would leave us in point of fact 
 almost without laws. Neither is it by any means 
 certain that all the recent changes in the law have 
 been improvements ; a matter we are as yet far 
 from having sufficient experience to determine. It 
 was recently said by a judge, — ■ 
 
 " There are few acts of Parliament which have 
 generated more controversy, and been productive 
 of more litigation, than the statute 21 James I. c. 16, 
 which was passed (as the preamble of it declares) 
 for the purpose of quieting men's estates, and for 
 the avoiding of suits." — Crompton and Jerviss 
 Reports, vol. i. p. 7. 
 
 Again, new points are continually arising under 
 the statute of frauds, 29 Charles II. c. 3. And 
 though Lord Nottingham said, " every line of that 
 act was worth a subsidy," there are many who 
 doubt whether on the whole it has not done quite 
 as much evil as good. Howevei*, justice undoubtedly 
 may be made cheaper, more certain, and more 
 expeditious ; we contend only that to attain such 
 objects is no easy task. 
 
 But Bentham cannot see these difficulties. He 
 seems to think that he alone must infallibly succeed 
 where all mankind before him have failed. His 
 proposed laws are such, that we can neither deny 
 
 M 4 
 
168 
 
 OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 their excellence, nor doubt their construction. And 
 because lawyers are not disposed to recognise these 
 pretensions, he calls them wolves, sharks, — all 
 the hard names he can think of. He charges law, 
 as other writers, equally accurate and equally pro- 
 found, charge aristocracy, with being the exclusive 
 cause of evils springing rather from the nature of 
 man and the nature of things. 
 
 Bentham's mind was totally destitute of imagina- 
 tion, and it may be doubted whether a man thus 
 deficient can be a philosopher. Where imagination 
 has an undue predominance over reason, the mental 
 character, though very different, is also ill calculated 
 for the discovery of truth. But imagination gives 
 grasp to reason : it enables a man to see much 
 where others can see nothing ; and to find many and 
 deep meanings in things which have but one, and 
 that trivial, for common eyes. 
 
 To the Defence of Usury may be added the trea- 
 tises on Prison Discipline and Punishments, on the 
 Tactics of Legislative Assemblies, and on Fallacies, 
 as Bentham's best works. He gives some praise in 
 his Tactics to the standing orders of the House of 
 Commons ; a very rare occurrence with him in the 
 case of any institution which he found existing. 
 The treatise on Fallacies is ingenious ; but, as the 
 Archbishop of Dublin has remarked in the Ency- 
 clopaedia Metropolitana, eminently one-sided. He 
 
OF UTIIITARIANISM. 169 
 
 gives only the fallacies of the opponents of innova- 
 tion, not the fallacies of innovators, excepting in 
 his examination of the French declaration of the 
 rights of man. 
 
 Such an ardent apostle of change is Bentham, 
 that he will not leave us in undisturbed possession 
 even of our scientific vocabulary. His work on 
 Nomenclature is strikingly characteristic of the 
 thorough system-monger. What Lynceus could 
 recognise his old acquaintance grammar, under the 
 name of " Didactic Coenesioscopic Nooscopics," or 
 rhetoric, under that of " Pathocinetic Coenesio- 
 scopic Nooscopics ?" One merit only these uncouth 
 names possess, that of being equally unintelligible 
 to all classes, learned or unlearned. Bentham does 
 not appear to be very sanguine as to their general 
 adoption, but he thinks he has some chance of get- 
 ting " Physiurgic Somatology " substituted for na- 
 tural history, and " Anthropurgic Somatology" for 
 natural philosophy. 
 
 In religion we have seen that Bentham is not 
 only an infidel, but a blasphemer; in ethics, by 
 disregarding entirely the motives of actions, he 
 takes away all distinction between right and wrong, 
 and lays down an unattainable principle as the soli- 
 tary test of good and evil; in politics, he would 
 have annual parliaments, universal suffrage, no 
 established church, and no House of Lords, or 
 
170 OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 second chamber of any kind * ; in jurisprudence, he 
 would plunge us at once into complete anarchy, by 
 depriving us of all our laws, and substituting for 
 them what in practice would amount to nothing ; in 
 philosophy generally, he is unable to perceive the 
 distinction between moral and mathematical science, 
 and his boasted discoveries are therefore, for the 
 most part, either sophisms, truisms, or mere altera- 
 tions in the meanings of words ; as an advocate of a 
 system, he is most unjust to opponents, not only 
 intolerant and presumptuous, but grossly abusive ; 
 in fine, to sum up his character, he respects nothing, 
 and would change every thing ; — can then the 
 answer be doubted if we ask is wisdom here ? 
 
 If it be thought strange that such a system, and 
 such a man, should ever have obtained a hearing, 
 even from the most limited audience, Bacon and 
 Hooker will explain the cause. 
 
 " If a new sect have not two properties, fear it 
 not; for it will not spread. The one is the sup- 
 planting, or the opposing, of authority established ; 
 for nothing is more popular than that. The other 
 is the giving licence to pleasures and a voluptuous 
 life." — Bacon, — Of Vicissitude of Things. 
 
 Hooker begins his Ecclesiastical Polity thus : — 
 
 " He that goeth about to persuade a multitude 
 
 * See his political pampMets, 
 
OP UTILITARIANISM. lYl 
 
 that they are not so well governed as they ought to 
 be, shall never want attentive and favourable 
 hearers; because they know the manifold defects 
 whereunto every kind of regiment is subject, but 
 the secret lets and difficulties, which in public 
 proceedings are innumerable and inevitable, they 
 have not ordinarily the judgment to consider; and 
 because such as openly reprove supposed disorders 
 of state are taken for principal friends to the 
 common benefit of all, and for men that carry 
 singular freedom of mind, under this fair and 
 plausible colour whatsoever they utter passeth for 
 good and current. That which wanteth in the 
 weight of, their speech, is supplied by the aptness 
 of men's minds to accept and believe it. Whereas 
 on the other side, if we maintain things that are 
 established, we have not only to strive with a 
 number of heavy prejudices deeply rooted in the 
 hearts of men, who think that herein we serve the 
 time, and speak in favour of the present state, 
 because thereby we either hold or seek preferment, 
 but also to bear such exceptions as minds so averted 
 before-hand usually take against that which they 
 are loth should be poured into them." 
 
 Mr. Mill is entitled to far more respect than 
 Bentham, not only because he is a closer reasoner, 
 but because his works are not chargeable with the 
 gross impropriety and vv^ant of gentlemanly feeling, 
 
172 OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 which Bentham constantly manifests in treating 
 philosophical subjects. Mr. Mill's History of 
 British India, though sufficiently dry, and too 
 censorious, is a valuable work, and procured 
 him, I have heard, from the East India Company, 
 unsolicited, the situation which he held at the 
 India House till his death, a fact, if true, equally 
 honorable to both parties. The only portions 
 of Mr. Mill's works we have to consider here 
 are such passages of his Analysis of the Pheno- 
 mena of the Mind, and of the Essay on Govern- 
 ment, as serve to complete the outline of the 
 Utilitarian system. 
 
 The Analysis of the Phenomena of the Mind is 
 the book of no common man ; the chapter on Naming 
 in particular is exceedingly ingenious ; the defini- 
 tion of the abstract, " the concrete with the secon- 
 dary signification dropped," seems to be as correct 
 as it is clear ; but the great defect of the work is, 
 that it does not give the whole state of the case ; 
 throughout, the conviction is forced upon us, that 
 this is not all ; something is perpetually kept back, 
 and we are not satisfied. There is no argument or 
 even express assertion in it in favour of materialism, 
 and yet materialism seems every where to be tacitly 
 assumed. It is natural that the Utilitarian philo- 
 sophy should be peculiarly prone to materialism ; 
 for materialism is the calling distinct things by the 
 
OF UTILITARIANISM. 173 
 
 same name, which, as we have seen, is one of the fun- 
 damental errors of Bentham's system. Materialism 
 may, I think, be disproved in the following manner : 
 What is death ? Thus much at least we certainly 
 know, that in respect of the body it is the cessation 
 of the power of feeling, and of the power of 
 moving. As Plato puts it in the Phoedrus with 
 extreme accuracy, 
 
 " Hay yap aw^w. Si fxlv '^^wOev rh KiViladai, &^vxov, cp de 
 evBodeu avTCf e| avTov, 'ifx-^vxov.^' 
 
 What is the cause of this phenomenon ? The 
 common answer, let those who object to it give a 
 better if they can, is, the separation of the soul 
 from the body. But we can neither see the soul, 
 nor hear it, nor feel it, nor weigh it, nor measure 
 it. The body we can both see, feel, weigh and 
 measure. If then we apply the same epithet to that 
 which we can see, feel, weigh and measure, and to 
 that which we cannot, and call both material, our 
 language is obviously unphilosophical and incorrect. 
 It may be said this is proving too much, the pheno- 
 mena at the death of a beast are similar to those at 
 the death of a man, will it be contended that the 
 souls of men and the souls of beasts are alike ? The 
 answer, without going to Revelation, is, that men 
 have a conception and a desire of immortality, and 
 that beasts have never given the slightest evi* 
 
174 OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 dence of either. But we have no reason whatever 
 for calling even the soul or vital principle of a 
 beast material. As there are distinctions in mate- 
 rial, so also there may be in immaterial things. The 
 soul of a man and the soul of a beast may be alike 
 incapable of being subjected to the cognizance of 
 our senses, and yet be widely different from each 
 other. In fact, to suppose them not different is 
 tmphilosophical ; because, though some of the phe- 
 nomena are the same, othei's are not.* 
 
 It is admitted that our ideas of imm aterial things 
 are negative, and therefore, according to Mr. Mill, 
 we cannot believe in them. He says, vol. i. p. 275, 
 " there can be no belief in any existence without an 
 idea of that existence." Why not ? If this propo- 
 sition be sound it mnst destroy all belief. We 
 know nothing of the essences of things, or how 
 they exist ; we know them only by their effects, — not 
 as they are in themselves. If we deny that the 
 effects exist, we resist the constant evidence of our 
 senses, and it is a waste of words to argue further. 
 If we admit the effects, we must also admit their 
 
 * There Is every reason for believing that the faculty of 
 speech does not depend upon the physical organisation of the 
 larynx. Though vocal organs precisely similar to those of man 
 should be discovered in a beast, he vi^ould still be incapable of 
 connected discourse. • 
 
OF UTILITARIANISM. 175 
 
 causes. But here Mr. Mill has a distinction to 
 take. Cause, according to him, means only " the 
 antecedent of a consequent, where the connexion is 
 constant." — vol. i. p. 264. If so, in a string of pup- 
 pets, where one constantly precedes another, the 
 puppet precedent is the cause of the puppet conse- 
 quent ; at any rate Mr. Mill's definition is completely 
 satisfied. The definition takes a part for the whole. 
 A cause is not only " the antecedent of a consequent, 
 where the connexion is constant," but also the 
 efficient of a consequent, that without which the 
 consequent could not have existed. 
 
 We do not mean to accuse Mr. Mill of holding 
 all the conclusions to which these propositions 
 respecting belief and causation lead. Men are 
 inconsistent in such matters ; even Locke was not 
 always consistent. But it must not be concealed 
 that these two principles are, if strictly worked out, 
 incompatible with the moral responsibility of man, 
 and the existence of God. If a criminal is the 
 mere antecedent, and not the efficient of a crime, 
 he cannot justly be punished for it; if we cannot 
 believe in any existence without an idea of it, we 
 cannot believe in the existence of God, since of the 
 mode of his existence we have confessedly no idea. 
 We believe in the existence of God for the same 
 reason that we believe in any other existences, 
 from the effects thereby produced; as the Abbe 
 
176 OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 Galiani said, " La nature est pipee *," but we 
 cannot be said to know less of his essence than of 
 the essences of things in general, for we know 
 nothing of any. There can be no degrees in total 
 Ignorance. Though " the world be set in man's 
 heart, yet can he not discern the work which God 
 worketh from the beginning to the end." We see 
 God indeed " suspending a golden chain from 
 heaven-f- ;" but a few only of the intermediate links 
 thereof are visible to our eyes, for one extremity 
 is lost in the light of his throne, and the other in 
 the darkness of illimitable space. 
 
 Mr. Mill confounds the mind with its phenomena. 
 His chapters on consciousness and identity are parti- 
 cularly defective. What is it that is conscious, 
 conceives, imagines, classifies, abstracts, remembers, 
 believes, reasons, reflects ? Not my body, for I 
 may lose half my weight by illness, or by ampu- 
 tation of my limbs, and yet afterwards exert all 
 these various faculties as perfectly as before. The 
 sensations of the body and the feelings of the 
 mind are not the same, for the feelings, as Mr. Mill 
 admits, exist after the sensations have ceased ; an 
 idea he defines to be " a copy of a sensation," 
 but a copy must be written upon something ; what 
 
 * See page 66, ante. 
 
 t " 'X^tp^p xpi/crei'rjj' i^ ovpavSdev Kps/j-dcravra." — Homer, 
 
OF UTILITARIANISM. 177 
 
 is it written upon ? Does he really mean to deny 
 the existence of the mind ? If so, it is misleading 
 people, to use the word. If a man is not satis- 
 fied from internal observation that he has a mind 
 as well as a body, how can he ever be satisfied of 
 any thing ? Some things must be taken for granted. 
 " They * that seek a reason of all things do utterly 
 overthrow reason," said Theophrastus. Error is, 
 alas, older than the fable of the Lernsean hydra, with 
 heads more numerous, and more tenacious of life. 
 
 Mr. Mill's Essay on Government is founded, 
 he says, " upon the principle that the acts of men 
 will be conformable to their interests." This is 
 the old fallacy again. If by saying that men will 
 act according to their interests, Mr. Mill means 
 that they will do what they please, he enunciates a 
 truism, far too vague to build any system upon, 
 with very superfluous solemnity ; if he means that 
 they will act according to their interests rightly 
 understood, we take issue with him on the fact at 
 once. Experience proves the direct contrary. The 
 acts of many men are habitually adverse to their 
 real interests, the acts of none are invariably in 
 conformity with them. 
 
 But Mr. Mill does not profess to found his theory 
 on experience. He says, 
 
 " Experience, if we look only at the outside of 
 
 * " 'ATrdvrwv ^7}rovvres \6yov avaipovffi hdyov," 
 
 N 
 
178 OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 the facts, appears to be divided on this subject. 
 Absolute monarchy, under Neros and Caligulas, 
 under such men as emperors of Morocco and sul- 
 tans of Turkey, is the scourge of human nature. 
 On the other side, the people of Denmark, tired out 
 with the oppression of an aristocracy, resolved that 
 their king should be absolute ; and, under their ab- 
 solute monarch, are as well governed as any 
 people in Europe. In Greece, notwithstanding the 
 defects of democracy, human nature ran a more 
 brilliant career than it has ever done in any other 
 age or country." 
 
 These facts are inconsistent with Mr. Mill's whole 
 theory, he makes no attempt to reconcile them with 
 it, and until they can be reconciled what is the 
 theory good for? We give it in Mr. Mill's own 
 words : 
 
 " The very principle of human nature upon which 
 the necessity of government is founded, the pro- 
 pensity of one man to possess himself of the objects 
 of desire at the cost of another, leads on, by in- 
 fallible sequence, where power over a community is 
 attained, and nothing checks, not only to that degree 
 of plunder which leaves the members (excepting 
 always the recipients and instruments of plunder) 
 the bare means of subsistence, but to that degree 
 of cruelty which is necessary to keep in existence 
 the most intense terror." 
 
OF UTILITARIANISM. 17^ 
 
 . This is a promising picture of human nature in- 
 deed I Is there a single period in history when 
 the members of the community generally, excepting' 
 only the tools of tyranny, were plundered of every 
 thing but the bare means of subsistence? But, 
 it will be said, something always did check, then 
 the theory falls to the ground, and is worth nothing, 
 because it supposes a state of things never known 
 to exist. 
 
 It seems never to strike Mr. Mill that human na- 
 ture is inconsistent, both in good and evil, that 
 different men desire different things, and that the 
 same men do not always desire the same things. 
 He assumes three propositions, all equally contra- 
 dicted by experience, that ^all men are perfectly 
 alike, perfectly consistent, and perfectly wicked. 
 The old tragedian has a better theory : 
 
 " T"j8pis (pvTevei rvpavvov, 
 
 'f'fipts, ^v iroKKwv inrepTrAricrSy fxarav." 
 
 Mr. Mill, as was to be expected, calls the balance 
 of power chimerical. " If there are three powers," 
 he says, " how is it possible to prevent two of them 
 from combining to swallow up the third ?" " There 
 is no point of saturation with the objects of desire." 
 He seems to look upon monarchy, aristocracy, and 
 democracy as so many simple chemical elements^ 
 N 2 
 
180 OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 each consisting of a certain determinate volume, 
 and always acting according to certain determinate 
 laws. 
 
 It is not at all essential to the existence of the 
 balance of power, that the strength of each of the 
 three combining elements should be precisely equal. 
 History shews that in England it has existed for a 
 long period ; recent facts shew that it still exists, 
 and also that it oscillates or vibrates from one 
 extreme to another. Thus, at the execution of 
 Charles!., monarchy "flew up and kicked the beam," 
 twelve years afterwards it outweighed aristocracy 
 and democracy combined. Mr. Mill leaves wholly 
 out of consideration the fact that monarchy, aristo- 
 cracy, and democracy are all frequently inconsistent 
 in their policy with what he considers their respec- 
 tive interests. Kings or their ministers are often 
 in their policy anti-monarchical, some nobles join 
 the court, others the democratic party against their 
 own order, many whose social position would com- 
 pel them, according to Mr. Mill, to be democrats, 
 side notwithstanding with the crown or the nobles. 
 Of the three powers aristocracy seems, however, 
 to be the least inconsistent as well as the most 
 vigilant. 
 
 It may be said that the ultimate seat of power 
 must be somewhere, and according to the theory 
 of the balance its position cannot be determined. 
 
OF UTILITARIANISM. 181 
 
 This is another argument infavour of the soundness 
 of that theory. The ultimate seat of power in such 
 a constitution as the British, is constantly shifting, 
 like the sandbanks at the mouth of a great river, 
 under the sway of opposing currents. It depends 
 upon the changeable opinions of a Vast number of 
 individuals, some of whom are continually leaving 
 the scene, while others, altogether unlike them, 
 spring up in their place. 
 
 With certain qualifications, the responsibility of 
 the governors to the governed is no doubt the only 
 permanent and substantial security for good govern- 
 ment. Mr. Mill finds this security where other 
 men do, in the representative system, but his way 
 of determining the numbers of which the elective 
 body should consist is curious. " Each man of the 
 majority, if the majority were constituted the go-^ 
 verning body, would have something less than the 
 benefit of oppressing a single man. If the majority 
 were twice as great as the minority, each man of 
 the minority would only have one half the benefit 
 of oppressing a single man. In that case, the bene- 
 fits of good government, accruing to all, might be 
 expected to overbalance to the several members of 
 such an elective body the benefits of misrule, 
 peculiar to themselves. Good government would, 
 therefore, have a tolerable security." Mr. Mill 
 speaks of the oppression of half a man, as a chemist 
 N 3 
 
182 OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 would speak of the pressure of half an atmosphere. 
 According to his reasoning, which assumes men to 
 be as unlike what they are as possible, the elective 
 body could not be too large. If it be large, that the 
 majority of electors have a greater interest in good 
 government than in the continuance of abuses, so that 
 their interests are identical with those of the whole 
 community, what ground can there be for extending 
 the suffrage? Any farther extension would be a 
 hazardous experiment to no purpose. The objection 
 to universal suffrage is that it would be a monstrous 
 tyranny, as it would throw the chief power into the 
 hands of the most numerous, that is the lowest and 
 most ignorant class, who would choose for their re- 
 presentatives the men who talked strongest and pro- 
 mised most, and also render society liable to perpetual 
 convulsions, as the expectations of such ignorant de- 
 positaries of power must inevitably be disappointed. 
 The elective or representative system has its 
 limits. If we extend it not only to' one legislative 
 assembly, but to both, and also, as the Americans 
 have done, to the executive, we throw uncontrolled 
 power into the hands of the majority ; and as most 
 men abuse power when they feel they possess it, the 
 result is one of the most galling and hardest to be 
 contended with of all tyrannies. So true is it that 
 all legislation and all government are only a choice 
 of evils, and that if we shrink too far from one 
 
 1 
 
OF UTILITARIANISM. 183 
 
 "danger we fall into another. The Americans, deter- 
 mined that the responsibility of all the governors to 
 the governed should be complete, threw aside the 
 British constitution, destroyed the balance of mo- 
 narchy, aristocracy and democracy, mutually check- 
 ing each other, and the consequence is they enjoy 
 much less freedom of thought and action than we do. 
 Their tyranny of the majority is in some respects 
 worse, because more constant and systematic, than 
 the democratic tyrannies of Athens and Florence, 
 where the representative system was not introduced. 
 
 Of the advocates of the exclusive principle of 
 utility, Mr. Austin is by far the ablest, and, as a 
 natural consequence, the least dogmatic. His 
 " Province of Jurisprudence determined," like all 
 the works of the Utilitarians I have seen, though a 
 valuable, is a crabbed book ; they foll'ow the Epi= 
 cureans not only in substance but in manner and 
 form, as if a dry style necessarily implied the "dry 
 light" of Bacon. Our present object is not to 
 examine Mr. Austin's entire work, but to notice 
 such passages only as appear to relate to the peculiar 
 tenets of his sect. 
 
 In his preface, page xiii, Mr. Austin uses an 
 expression which, we may observe incidentally, is 
 very liable to misinterpretation : — 
 
 " Laws coming from God, or from the intelligent 
 N 4> 
 
184 OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 and rational nature, which is the soul and guide of 
 the universe." 
 
 What does this mean ? God is omnipresent, but 
 to call him the soul of the universe is surely some- 
 thing very like pantheism. 
 
 At page 7, Mr. Austin thus gives his notion of 
 duty : — 
 
 " Being liable to evil from you, if I comply not 
 with a wish which you signify, I am hound or 
 obliged by your command, or I lie under a duty to 
 obey it." 
 
 Mr. Austin seems to depart somewhat from the 
 established meanings of words, when he speaks of 
 command and duty as correlative terms. Duty, as 
 a motive of actions, implies not merely the fear of 
 offending, but the disinterested desire of pleasing, 
 and also gratitude for benefits received. He is 
 right in separating from it the hope of reward. 
 
 " When ye have done all that is required of you, 
 say we are unprofitable servants, we have done that 
 which it was our duty to do." 
 
 The theory of a moral sense is not fairly stated. 
 
 " There are human actions which all mankind 
 approve, human actions which all men disapprove ; 
 and these universal sentiments arise at the thought 
 of those actions, spontaneously, instantly, and in* 
 evitably. Being common to all mankind, and inse- 
 
 I 
 
OF UTILITARIANISM. 185 
 
 parable from the thoughts of those actions, these 
 sentiments are marks or signs of the Divine plea- 
 sure. They are proofs that the actions which excite 
 them are enjoined or forbidden by the Deity. 
 
 " The rectitude or pravity of human conduct, or 
 its agreement or disagreement with the laws of 
 God, is instantly inferred from these sentiments, 
 without the possibility of mistake." pp. 33, 34. 
 
 If there be any writer who has thus claimed for a 
 moral sense what cannot be claimed for any thing 
 human, infallibility, Mr. Austin should have told us 
 who he is. We believe that the moral sense may 
 be mistaken, may be perverted, may be seared by a 
 long course of wickedness, that it is naturally im- 
 perfect, like all our faculties, and requires cultiva- 
 tion ; but still that it does exist, teaching us that 
 there are actions which it is wrong to do, though 
 men may differ materially as to what those actions 
 are. If there be no moral sense, on what did Aris- 
 totle and Cicero found their systems of ethics ? How 
 did they arrive at them? Not certainly by the 
 exclusive principle of utility, for they do not admit 
 it, and yet their systems leave little to be added by 
 Utilitarians. This is a question the Utilitarians are 
 bound to answer, because, unless something can be 
 done by their principle which was not done before, 
 it is no discovery. 
 
 It will be observed, that though Mr. Austin's 
 
186 OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 exposition of the principle of utility may be sul)-« 
 stantially the same with Bentham's, it is very dif- 
 ferently worded, and based upon a very different 
 foundation. 
 
 " The benevolence of God, with the principle of 
 general utility, is our only index or guide to his 
 unrevealed law. 
 
 " God designs the happiness of all his sentient 
 creatures. Some human actions forward that bene- 
 volent purpose, or their tendencies are beneficent or 
 useful. Other human actions are adverse to that 
 purpose, or their tendencies are mischievous or per- 
 nicious. The former, as promoting his purpose) 
 God has enjoined. The latter, as opposed to his 
 purpose, God has forbidden. He has given us the 
 faculty of observing ; of remembering ; of reason- 
 ing : and, by duly applying those faculties, we may 
 collect the tendencies of our actions. Knowing the 
 tendencies of our actions, and knowing his bene- 
 volent purpose, we know his tacit commands." 
 pp. 35, 36. 
 
 The theory of utility then, according to Mr. Aus- 
 tin, is to be deduced, not as Bentham deduces it, 
 from the desire of pleasure, and the dread of pain, 
 but from the presumed benevolence of the Deity. 
 This presumption is something too bold. How 
 know we that God is what we call benevolent? 
 Are we even agreed universally among ourselves as 
 
OF UTILITARIANISM. 187 
 
 to what benevolence is? In speaking on such a 
 subject, let us remember that " He is above, and 
 we upon earth, wherefore it behoveth our words to 
 be wary and few." * How will the Utilitarians 
 reconcile this passage of Scripture with their theory? 
 
 " I form the light, and create darkness ; I make 
 peace, and create evil; I the Lord do all these 
 things." 
 
 What would, and what would not, be benevo- 
 lence in the Deity, we do not and cannot know. 
 Such knowledge is incompatible with our finite and 
 imperfect nature. When Mr. Austin says, " God 
 desires the happiness of all his sentient creatures," 
 he makes an assertion too broad to be proved. We 
 know that many sentient creatures frequently suffer 
 pain, and in the case of animals, that suffering 
 can seldom if ever, and in the case of men not 
 always, be traced to faults of their own. Mr. Aus- 
 tin, like all the Utilitarians, leaves out of considera- 
 tion the important point, that the earth is " cursed," 
 and this life a state of trial, a state obviously incon- 
 sistent with that happiness which he supposes to be 
 designed, although never completely attained ; for- 
 getting, that on any other assumption the marks of 
 design, which must be discoverable in morals as 
 well as in physics, would become very faint and 
 
 ^ Hooker. 
 
188 OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 obscure. Happiness rather than misery seems to 
 be the general, though not the universal object of 
 the divine laws, (if it were the universal, where the 
 power of the law-giver is infinite, misery could not 
 exist,) so far as this world is concerned. More 
 cannot well be said without touching on the ques- 
 tion of the origin of evil, which had better not be 
 alluded to, since it cannot be explained. 
 
 How then can the exclusive principle of utility 
 possibly be sound, when its very foundation fails ; 
 and even if it did not, how entirely is the vast 
 analysis of all the tendencies of all human actions 
 which it requires, beyond and above the capacity of 
 man ! 
 
 But, says Mr. Austin, " if utility be our only 
 index to the tacit commands of the Deity, it is idle 
 to object its imperfections."* No doubt; but the 
 Utilitarians have npt proved that it is the only 
 index. They have not even proved its superiority 
 to beauty as such an index. Neither have they 
 proved that there are any tacit commands of the 
 Deity which cannot be inferred from the Bible. 
 Mr. Austin may have demonstrated that the prin- 
 ciple of utility, supposing it generally received, 
 would be the ultimate, not the proximate test of 
 our conduct, though even to this position he admits 
 
 * Page 45. 
 
OF UTILITARIANISM. 189 
 
 there may be exceptions; but against the grand 
 difficulty, the impossibility of making the requisite 
 analysis, he has not advanced a single step. 
 
 Mr. Austin does not attempt to conceal this dif- 
 ficulty, and acknowledges that it " scarcely admits 
 of a solution that will perfectly satisfy the mind." 
 p. 61. It is a satisfaction to turn from the dogma- 
 tism of Bentham to a reasoner who can look at 
 two sides of a question. 
 
 Mr. Austin's first answer to the objection is, that 
 ethics are a science, " formed through a long suc- 
 cession of ages, by many and separate contributions 
 from many and separate discoverers. No single 
 mind could explore the whole of the field, though 
 each of its numerous departments has been explored 
 by numerous inquirers." 
 
 Is this the fact? Mr. Austin has endeavoured to 
 anticipate objections to this answer, but he has 
 omitted the most important. The analogy he con- 
 tends for between ethics and the mathematical and 
 physical sciences, fails in this, that ethics cannot be 
 shewn to be progressive. Almost all, if not abso- 
 lutely all the improvements made in ethics since 
 the days of Aristotle and Cicero are derived from 
 revelation. Mr. Austin would, perhaps, give reli- 
 gious toleration as an exception, but toleration 
 rather belongs to the science of government than to 
 ethics; as far as it forms a portion of private 
 
190 OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 morality, it is included in the precept, which ini 
 deed might be interpreted without violence to apply 
 to every case, private or public, " Do unto others aa 
 ye would that they shguld do unto you." And this 
 boasted principle of toleration, on the strength of 
 which so many assume so much, is but too often a 
 mere cloak for indifference. If it be true, as I think 
 it is, that religion and ethics are not progressive, 
 while the science of government and political eco- 
 nomy are, it is a most remarkable fact, fatal to the 
 exclusive principle of utility, and triumphant for a 
 moral sense. It is remarkable also, that the heathen 
 poet, whose morality is purer and loftier than any 
 other, and who lived, be it remembered, a cen- 
 tury before Aristotle, Sophocles, is also the poet 
 whose belief in a moral sense seems to have been 
 the most firm. What can be found nobler, even 
 among Christian moralists, than these lines ! 
 
 " E"'i fioi avve'iT] (pepovTL 
 fxolpa Tav evffeTTTOv ayveiav ASycov, 
 epywv re TrdvTwv, wu v6/j.ol TTp6KeiVTai 
 
 ^i|/i7roSeF, iipaviav di aldepa 
 
 TeKvocBevres, uiv G'KvfXTZos 
 
 TTUT^p fxSvOS, Ou5e VLV dvUTO, 
 
 (pvcris avepoiv eriKrev, ovSe 
 
 VLV irore \d9a KaTaKOL/xdcrei ' 
 
 fieyas fv TOxjTois @e6s, 
 
 oii5e yrfpaCKei." * 
 
 * Oh that fate would grant me a reverential purity of all my. 
 
OF UTILITARIANISM. 191 
 
 This is indeed, in the words of Scripture, ^< shew- 
 ing the work of the law written on the heart." 
 
 At page 70 Mr. Austin says, " want and labour 
 spring from the niggardliness of nature, and not 
 from the inequality which is consequent on the 
 institution of property." Is this consistent with the 
 presumed and unqualified divine benevolence on 
 which he raises his theory ? The phrase " niggard- 
 liness of nature," which means niggardliness of the 
 Deity, is highly objectionable. For creatures of 
 such limited knowledge and capacity, as compara- 
 tively we are, to predicate benevolence or niggard- 
 liness of a Being who is infinite in all his attributes, 
 is insuiferable arrogance. Have we any standard 
 whereby to measure the actions of God ? When 
 will men learn that " the fear of the Lord is the 
 beginning of wisdom ? " 
 
 " If," says Mr. Austin, " there were a reading 
 public, numerous, discerning, and impartial, the 
 science of ethics, and all the various sciences which 
 are nearly related to ethics, would advance with 
 unexampled rapidity." p. 81. What witch told him 
 that ? Surely Mr. Austin will not confound him- 
 
 words and deeds, over which rule the laws sublime, the offspring 
 of heavenly air, of which Olympus is alone the progenitor, no,, 
 did the mortal nature of man produce them, nor shall oblivion 
 ever lull them to sleep ! God is great in these things, and doth 
 not grow old. 
 
192! OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 self with the quacks who look upon education as a 
 specific for all human ills. 
 
 " The tree of knowledge is not that of life." * 
 
 We find at length that the exclusive principle of 
 utility has no advantage whatever, even supposing it 
 demonstrated, over a moral sense. As an index to 
 the will of the Deity, it is confessedly imperfect and 
 uncertain. " His laws are signified obscurely to those 
 upon whom they are binding, and are subject to in- 
 evitable and involuntary misconstruction." p. 85. 
 Can less be said for a moral sense ? Mr. Austin de- 
 fends the acknowledged imperfection of the principle 
 of utility from analogy, why will he not allow the 
 same analogy to hold good in favour of a moral 
 sense ? One of these adverse theories he says is cer- 
 tainly true. Be it so ; but what necessity is there for 
 totally excluding the other ? " There is in rectitude 
 beauty -j-," and also utility; why may there not be 
 something in it more than either ? We say that 
 revelation distinctly asserts the existence of a moral 
 sense, and we contend that revelation on such a 
 point is conclusive, for the case is wholly different 
 from that of physics ; the inspired writers touched 
 on physical subjects but incidentally, and spoke to 
 be understood; to explain the system of the universe 
 
 • Byron. , t Hooker. 
 
 1 
 
OF UTILITARIANISM. 193 
 
 was not their object ; their business was with man 
 as a responsible being. But, to abandon this high 
 ground, let us place the two theories side by side, 
 omitting that of beauty, which Mr. Austin ought 
 not to have done, and test them by the crucial 
 experiment ; we shall find that the theory of a moral 
 sense will explain phenomena which that of utility 
 alone will not. 
 
 What I understand by a moral sense I have 
 already said, ante p. 185 ; on such a point each man 
 must speak for himself; with what others may 
 understand by it I have no concern. But surely 
 Mr. Austin can nowhere have found expressions to 
 justify him in calling it " instinctive," since it may 
 be improved and may be deteriorated, which, as far 
 as we know, instincts cannot, or at least are not. 
 Birds build their nests precisely as they have been 
 always accustomed to do. 
 
 But we have promised a crucial instance. The 
 case put by Mr. Austin himself will furnish one. 
 
 " That you should feel remorse if you kill in an 
 attempt to rob, and should not be affected with 
 remorse if you kill a murderous robber, is a differ- 
 ence which I readily account for without the sup- 
 position of an instinct." (He has no right to call it 
 instinct.) " The law of your country distinguishes 
 the cases, and the current morality of your country 
 accords with the law." p. 98. 
 o 
 
194 OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 Neither of Mr. Austin's explanations will ade- 
 quately account for his own fact. The prohibitions 
 of the law natural, as murder, robbery, are generally 
 respected ; the prohibitions of the law of the country 
 only, as smuggling, poaching, are very little re- 
 spected. Why is this ? But where does the cur- 
 rent morality of the country come from? Not 
 from revelation only, for it is older, unless it be the 
 revelation spoken of by Sophocles in the passage 
 quoted, which is but another name for a moral 
 sense. If Mr. Austin should say it was discovered 
 by the principle of utility, he is without evidence to 
 prove his assertion, and in such a case morality, as 
 a science at least, would certainly be progressive. 
 Allowing their utmost weight to his explanations, 
 still there is a residuum of the phenomenon unac- 
 counted for. 
 
 It is not candid in Mr. Austin to expect so much 
 more from a moral sense than he does from his own 
 pi'inciple of utility. There is no analogy between 
 a moral sense and hunger or thirst. To say that 
 "' all the parts of our nature which are ultimate, or 
 incapable of analysis, are certain and distinct, as 
 well as inscrutable*," is a very venturous assertion, 
 very easy to make, and very hard to prove. Nothing 
 merely mental can be as distinct to us as what is 
 
 * Page 104, 
 
OF UTILITARIANISM. 195 
 
 present to our senses. The utilitarians cannot see 
 that the evidence for moral and physical truths is 
 not, and cannot be, of the same nature. 
 
 Mr. Austin does but beat the air when he con- 
 tends that the moral sentiments of all men are not 
 precisely alike. Who says they are ? But he omits 
 to give the reason why the moral sentiments of all 
 men are not more alike, which is, that men will 
 not consult the light that is in them. Each man 
 may find out what is right and what is wrong for 
 himself if he chooses, without depending upon long 
 inductions, made from extensive collections of facts 
 in the various branches of ethics, by many philoso- 
 phers, in many ages and countries. But who are 
 the men who have treated ethics after this fashion ? 
 Let the utilitarians name them. 
 
 " The promptitude and decision," says Mr. 
 Austin, " with which we judge of actions are imper- 
 tinent to the matter in question i for our moral 
 sentiments would be prompt and inevitable, although 
 they arose from a perception of utility, or although 
 they were impressed upon our minds by the autho- 
 rity of our fellow men." p. 105. This is a point 
 which Mr. Austin cannot prove. If we had to 
 learn v/hat was right and wrong, just as we have to 
 learn chemistry, for instance, men would be as much 
 puzzled to know what to do in those sudden emer- 
 gencies, dissimilar to all their previous experience, 
 o 2 
 
196 OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 which occur sometimes to most of us, as an expe- 
 rimental chemist is perplexed by the sudden 
 appearance of unexpected phenomena. Let a man 
 study ethics and political economy with equal 
 attention. It is probable that he will find himself 
 called upon to put in practice some principles of 
 political economy quite as frequently as some of the 
 higher principles of ethics ; yet the latter, I think, 
 will recur to his mind with much greater rapidity 
 than the former. 
 
 It was never meant by the phrase " moral sense" 
 to debar reason from exercising its due influence 
 over the mind. The case is similar to that of 
 reason and imagination, which are distinct faculties, 
 mutually acting upon each other. The compo- 
 sitions of a poet who has a vivid imagination and 
 a feeble reason want propriety, just as those of a 
 prose writer who is without imagination want grasp 
 and depth. Reason is the governing or imperial 
 faculty of the mind, but it is not the only one. 
 
 At page 107, Mr. Austin flatters himself he has 
 put us into a cleft stick, which one might suppose he 
 had borrowed for the occasion from Mr. Mill's 
 workshop ; so strong is the family resemblance to the 
 logical weapons there manufactured. 
 
 " Assuming that moral sentiments are instinctive 
 or inevitable, they are either different with different 
 men, or they are alike with all men. To affirm 
 
OF UTILITARIANISM. 197 
 
 *that they are alike with all men,' is merely to 
 hazard a bold assertion contradicted by notorious 
 facts. If they are difterent with different men, it 
 follows that God has not set to men a common rule. 
 If they are different with different men, there is no 
 common test of human conduct : there is no test by 
 which one man may try the conduct of another." 
 
 The truth is men differ in their moral sentiments, 
 not because the light within them is different in kind, 
 but because, like all our other faculties of mind or 
 body, as imagination, reason, strength, beauty, it is 
 different in degree in different men, and also because 
 men differ greatly in the attention with which they 
 cultivate it and listen to its dictates. 
 
 In " the plain and glaring fact " stated by Mr. 
 Austin at page 108, we entirely agree. "With 
 regard to actions of a few classes, the moral senti- 
 ments of most, though not of all men, have been 
 alike. But, with regard to other classes, their 
 moral sentiments have differed, through every 
 shade or degree, from slight diversity to direct 
 opposition." Now surely the theory of a moral 
 sense, such as it has been stated, is a much simpler 
 mode of accounting for the " general resemblance, 
 with infinite variety, in the systems of law and 
 morality which have actually obtained in the world," 
 than that of utility alone, requiring an analysis 
 which it cannot be shewn that any one man ever 
 o 3 
 
198 OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 went through in any one instance, or even attempted, 
 before Bentham, whose failure is utterly ludicrous. 
 
 It is strange Mr. Austin should not see the 
 worthlessness of the exclusive principle of utility, 
 when he finds that " of the writers who maintain 
 and impugn it, three out of four fall into errors.'' 
 p. 112. It is quite clear, on his own shewing, that 
 the being easily attained or understood is not one 
 of its merits. Mr. Austin himself has not con- 
 founded the motive with the measure or test of 
 conduct, but Bentham most certainly has.* 
 
 Mr. Austin may be right in saying that his 
 " theory of utility has no necessary connection 
 with any theory of motives." It is a most dangerous 
 theory, and most liable to be perverted, nevertheless. 
 By the word dangerous, we do not mean dangerous 
 to existing institutions, as Bentham chose to mis- 
 understand Lord Loughborough, when he applied 
 that epithet to his theory, but dangerous, because it 
 tends to debase and corrupt mankind, which was 
 probably Lord Loughborough's real meaning. For 
 the utilitarians there are no mysteries, and, per- 
 haps consequently, no reverence. How incon- 
 sistent is their scientific aff"ectation of impartiality 
 in considering moral questions, with the scriptural 
 doctrine of hatred of sin and love of righteousness ! 
 We can discern too, lurking in their perpetual 
 * Ante, pp. 154, 155, 
 
OF UTILITARIANISM. 199 
 
 confusion of moral and physical evidence, Hume's 
 fatal fallacy of particular experience as the sole 
 test of universal truth ; one of the most pernicious 
 errors ever invented by the perverse ingenuity of 
 man, and to which St. Peter anticipated the answer, 
 at the same time that he foretold the coming of that 
 numerous family of scoffers, who have vexed Chris- 
 tianity in these latter days. Would that such men 
 might be persuaded to apply to themselves the 
 words of that great writer *, so often quoted, who 
 is to our divines what Shakspeare is to our poets, 
 or Bacon to our philosophers! " They which sit at 
 continual ease, and are settled in the lees of their 
 security, look upon them, view their countenance, 
 their speech, their gesture, their deeds : ' put them 
 in fear, O God,' saith the prophet, ' that so they 
 may know themselves to be but men,' worms of 
 the earth, dust and ashes, frail, corruptible, feeble 
 things." 
 
 * Hooker, Sennon IV. 
 
 o 4 
 
200 
 
 Of IMAGINATION AND FANCY HUMOUR 
 AND WIT. 
 
 From thy wardrobe bring thy chiefest treasure. 
 Not those new fangled toys, and trimming slight 
 Which takes our late fantasticks with delight ; 
 But cull those richest robes, and gay'st attire. 
 Which deepest spirits and choicest wits desire. 
 
 Milton to his native language, ■ 
 
 The relation of fancy and wit has been often 
 remarked. It is indeed so striking that the same 
 definition will suit both, with the change only of a 
 single adjective ; wit consisting in the discovery of a 
 ludicrous, and fancy of a beautiful resemblance 
 between things apparently unlike. In both there 
 is always a comparison expressed or implied, and 
 whenever there is a want of propriety in that com- 
 parison, the unsuccessful attempt at either wit or 
 fancy degenerates into oddity or a conceit ; of which 
 last abundant examples may be found in the 
 Euphuists and the Concettisti, Sir Philip Sidney or 
 Marino. Wit and fancy often run into each other, 
 and mutually intrude upon their respective pro- 
 vinces, so that it is sometimes hard to determine, 
 on meeting with a comparison of peculiar liveliness, 
 
OP IMAGINATION, &C. 201 
 
 whether it should be styled witty or fanciful, and 
 thus it happens that both epithets are occasionally 
 applied to the same expression indiscriminately. 
 
 Wit occupies the same subordinate position, with 
 respect to the higher or inventive species of humour, 
 that fancy holds with respect to inventive imagi- 
 nation ; but wit would seem to be a higher quality 
 than the lower or narrative species of humour, 
 while the inferiority of fancy to the lower or verbal 
 imagination is manifest. We come now to the 
 question of the nature of imagination and humour, 
 and the distinction between imagination and fancy, 
 humour and wit. 
 
 Of imagination there appear to be two kinds. 
 The first, which we have called inventive, does not 
 mean an agreeable combination of fictitious occur- 
 rences, termed a story, for this is simply invention, 
 but a delineation of scenes, not in accordance with 
 the common course of nature, so vivid as to pro- 
 duce on the reader or spectator, (for it applies to 
 painting as well as to poetry,) the temporary im- 
 pression of their reality ; and a conception of 
 supernatural beings so definite, as to satisfy the 
 reader, (this last being the province of the poet 
 only, as the painter can describe but a momentary 
 scene,) that such beings, conceding their existence, 
 might with perfect propriety think, act and speak 
 as the author has represented them. Of this species 
 
202 OF IMAGINATION AND FANCY 
 
 of poetical imagination, Homer's Tartarus in the 
 Odyssey, great part of the Inferno of Dante, the 
 two first books of the Paradise Lost, the fairies and 
 witches of Shakspeare, and the Mephistopheles of 
 Goethe are among the most striking instances. The 
 last Judgment and the Sybils and Prophets of Mi- 
 chael Angelo, and the Transfiguration and Madonna 
 di San Sisto of Raphael are equally remarkable 
 instances of pictorial imagination ; although, as one 
 half only of one kind of imagination can be predi- 
 cated of painting, it cannot in strictness be termed 
 more than a semi-imaginative art. 
 
 The second kind of imagination, for the sake of 
 distinction, rather than from any peculiar propriety 
 in the term, may be termed expressive or verbal. As 
 it is the suggestion to the mind of an indistinct image 
 personified, it involves comparison, and is therefore 
 all that fancy is, and something more ; for fancy, as 
 we have seen, is a peculiar kind of comparison of 
 things apparently unlike, without personification. 
 
 Thus we obtain a test whereby the presence oT 
 this second species of imagination, one of the 
 most essential elements of the poetical character, 
 can generally be discovered. The distinction is, 
 however, somewhat subtle, and can hardly be made 
 perfectly clear without illustrations. 
 
 Homer, like most poets of the south, has more 
 fancy than verbal imagination. In inventive ima- 
 
 
HUMOUR AND WIT. 203 
 
 gination no man ever excelled him; but this is 
 beside our present purpose. His similies are almost 
 always merely fanciful, but he is nevertheless occa- 
 sionally highly imaginative, as in his description of 
 E'piy, or strife : — 
 
 " H T oXiyy] fxev trpcara Kopvcrfferai, avrap eweira 
 Obpavcf iariipi^e Ko.pr], kcu eiil x^ovl ^aivei." 
 
 Here the whole of the second line is imaginative, 
 and the words dxiyn and Kopva-crerai in the first. The 
 impression on the reader's mind is that of a grand, 
 increasing, indistinct image. In the fine description 
 of Apollo in the first Iliad the only imaginative 
 expression is, " s S' ijU wktI eoiK<is" " he went like 
 night," that is silently. But the personification of 
 night is faint ; her only attributes are motion, dark- 
 ness, and silence. 
 
 There are two finely imaginative lines in the 
 Hippolytus of Euripides, which may be noticed for 
 their striking resemblance to the scriptural expres- 
 sion, " The stone shall cry out of the wall, and the 
 beam out of the timber shall answer it," 
 
 " OySe <tk6tov (ppiaffovai rbv ^vvepydrriv, 
 Tepejjivd, T oIkoiv, /jLT] wore (pOoyyr]V a<py." 
 
 Here there is a double personification, first of dark- 
 ness as a co-operator or conspirer with the wicked, 
 and afterwards of the beams of the houses, witnesses 
 
204 OF IMAGINATION AND FANCY 
 
 of their crimes, and feeling such horror at them, as 
 to be almost enabled to speak and reveal them. 
 
 The finest passage on darkness I remember is in 
 the book of Job : — 
 
 " A land of darkness as darkness itself, and of 
 the shadow of death without any order, and where 
 the light is as darkness." 
 
 Here darkness and light are both dimly per- 
 sonified, but the grandest personification is that of 
 death, of whom we are only told that he has a vast 
 shadow, which is without shape. 
 
 The following line of Virgil is imaginative, if 
 correct, — 
 
 " Aut conjurato descendens Dacus ab Istro ;" 
 
 but as it is not quite clear who the Danube con- 
 spired with, Claudian's imitation is finer : — 
 
 " O nimium dilecte Deo, cui militat aether, 
 Et conjurati veniunt ad classica venti." 
 
 Again, the last two lines of the following passage 
 are imaginative, — 
 
 " Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, 
 Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum 
 Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari." 
 
 Thus nobly rendered by Sir Arthur Gorges, 
 
 " Happy is he that knows the cause of things. 
 
 And that with dauntless courage treads upon 
 All fear and fate, relentless threatenings. 
 And greedy throat of roaring Acheron," 
 
 1 
 
HUMOUR AND WIT. 205 
 
 And, perhaps, imitated by Calderon in El Magico 
 Prodigioso : — 
 
 " Cadaveres, que encierra 
 La avarienta codicia de la tierra." 
 
 The happiest use of the image of death or the 
 grave, personified as a devouring monster, is made 
 in the follovv^ing scriptural passage : — 
 
 " Who enlargeth his desire as hell, and is as 
 death, and cannot be satis/led, but gathereth unto 
 him all nations, and heapeth unto him all people." 
 
 Shelley has a very grand image of the same kind, 
 
 " Thou unreplenished lamp, whose narrow fire 
 Is shaken by the wind, and on whose edge 
 Devouring darkness hovers." 
 
 Imaginative personifications are by no means 
 always gloomy, as the follovring splendid instance 
 from Shakspeare proves : — 
 
 " For now sits expectation in the air, 
 
 Hidi7ig a sword from hilts unto the point 
 With crowns imperial." 
 
 Another instance from the most imaginative of 
 our prose writers, Sir Thomas Browne, is the more 
 remarkable, as a spirit is seldom illustrated by a 
 cheerful image : — 
 
 " In a word conceive light invisible, and that is a spirit," 
 
206 OF IMAGINATION AND FANCY 
 
 The blending of imagination and fancy has an 
 exquisite effect, as in Romeo and Juliet : — 
 
 " Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night. 
 Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear." 
 
 Here the first line is a double personification of 
 beauty and night ; the second line is a fanciful com- 
 parison of beauty personified to a jewel, and night 
 to an Ethiop : thus Shelley, 
 
 " And gray walls moulder round, on which dull time 
 Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand." 
 
 Time here is first personified, and afterwards com- 
 pared to slow fire. Again, says the same great poet 
 in a passage altogether worthy of Shakspeare, and 
 singularly resembling his style : — 
 
 " His words, like arrows 
 Which know no aim beyond the archer's wit. 
 Strike sometimes what eludes philosophy." 
 
 Here words are personified as striking, and at the 
 same time compared to arrows. One more passage 
 from this, the most imaginative of English poets 
 since Milton, we shall quote, because it ascribes an 
 unusual number of properties to the personified 
 image : — 
 
 " It is a garish, broad, and peering day. 
 
 Loud, light, suspicious, full of eyes and ears ; 
 
 And every little corner, nook and hole. 
 
 Is penetrated with the insolent light." 
 
 1 
 
HUMOUR AND WIT. 207 
 
 It is not necessary to illustrate fancy at such 
 length. The following instance from Tasso is purely 
 fanciful, — 
 
 " Argo non mai, non vide Cipro o Delo, 
 D'abito di belta forme si care ; 
 D'auro ha la chioma, ed or dal bianco velo 
 Traluce involta, or discoperta appare ; 
 Cosi qualor si rasserena il cielo, 
 Dalla Candida nube il sol traspare, 
 Or dalla nube uscendo, i raggi intorno 
 Piu chiari spiega, e ne raddoppia il giorno." 
 
 In the next illustration from Shakspeare, the 
 beauty of the comparison is greatly heightened by 
 a slight intermingling of pathos : — 
 
 " But he his own affections' counsellor 
 Is to himself — so secret and so close, 
 So far from sounding and discovery, 
 As is the bud bit with an envious worm, 
 Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air. 
 Or dedicate his beauty to the sun." 
 
 The last line is also imaginative. The pathos is 
 deeper in that most touching and j)icturesque verse 
 of Isaiah, but there is no imagination : — 
 
 " And it shall be that as a wandering bird cast 
 out of the nest, so the daughters of Moab shall be 
 at the fords of Arnon." 
 
 The distinction between what we have called 
 inventive and narrative humour, and between nar- 
 
208 OF IMAGINATION AND FANCY 
 
 rative humour and wit, is less easily determined. 
 Inventive humour may be confined to the concep- 
 tion of ludicrous characters, definite, marked, con- 
 sistent with themselves, and maintaining amidst 
 their absurdity and extravagance a certain propriety 
 of demeanour, which rarely stoops to buff'ooner)'. 
 Of this species of humour Don Quixote and Sancho 
 Panza, poetry and prose, Falstaff", and the giant 
 Margutte of Pulci, are among the best examples. 
 Margutte is less known than he deserves to be, for 
 Pulci's very original poem, unfortunately not free 
 from indecency and profaneness, is exceedingly dif- 
 ficult, from the numerous idiomatic expressions and 
 proverbs introduced in it, and the poet's extraordi- 
 nary command of his rich Tuscan tongue. Mar- 
 gutte is the antenatal impersonation of a French 
 philosophe and esprit fort of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, and more good-humoured. 
 
 The inferior species of humour is a simple feeling 
 of the ludicrous. It may be both scenic and narra- 
 tive ; but as the latter epithet seems to include the 
 former, we have termed it narrative only. In nar- 
 rative humour comparison is rather implied than 
 expressed, in wit there is invariably comparison ; 
 but as that comparison is frequently far from ob- 
 vious, the difficulty of distinguishing in such cases 
 between humour and wit, and of determining under 
 which head particular expressions should be classed 
 
HUMOUR AND WIT. 209 
 
 becomes considerable, as the distinction between a 
 comparison implied, and one which though ex- 
 pressed is not obvious, is exceedingly minute. 
 
 As instances of the difficulty of making the dis- 
 tinction, we may mention Cowper's John Gilpin, 
 and Portia's description of her suitors in the Mer- 
 chant of Venice. John Gilpin is purely humorous, 
 yet there is an implied comparison of a good and a 
 bad rider throughout. There does not seem, how- 
 ever, to be any comparison in the ludicrous direc- 
 tion of Mrs. Gilpin to the postboy, to stop three 
 doors off, " lest all should say that she was proud." 
 Portia characterising the various absurdities of her 
 lovers, compares them impliedly to Bassanio, who 
 is essentially a gentleman, the conception is there- 
 fore humorous, but the execution for the most 
 part witty, abounding in ludicrous similies. Shak- 
 speare thus blends wit and humour in the same 
 manner as he has blended imagination and fancy ; 
 there is, indeed, no poet or author whatever whose 
 excellencies are at once so numerous and so com- 
 plex. 
 
 The often-quoted expression of Voltaire on the 
 execution of Admiral Byng, " De temps en temps 
 tuer un amiral pour encourager les autres," is witty. 
 The wit consists in the unexpected introduction of 
 the word " encourager," which suggests a ludicrous 
 comparison with the ordinary mode of encouraging 
 p 
 
210 OP IMAGINATION AND FANCY 
 
 naval merit. The witty retort of Beatrice to the 
 Messenger, in " Much Ado about Nothing," is of 
 the same kind. 
 
 " Mess. I see, lady, the gentleman is not in your books. 
 Beat. No : an he were, I would burn my study." 
 
 Humour cannot be so well illustrated by quota- 
 tions as wit, for it is less concentrated, and may 
 pervade the whole of a long narrative. Quotations 
 illustrating the distinction between humour and wit 
 are, indeed, insipid without the context, because in 
 this case the lustre of the gem depends much upon 
 the setting, the flower is delicate, and often withers 
 on transplanting, circumstances of time and place 
 entering largely into the composition both of wit 
 and humour. Painting may be, and often is, hu- 
 morous, but can never be witty, because wit re- 
 quires a succession of ideas, and succession is 
 beyond the province of painting. Wit in society is 
 less common than humour, for a humorous impres- 
 sion may be conveyed without effort in the simplest 
 phrases ; wit requiring comparison is more far- 
 fetched, and demands more thought. Wit is the 
 keener, colder, and more polished quality; humour 
 the more gentle, arch, and amiable, for the subject 
 of humour is man, it is essentially personal ; wit 
 treats with the same indifference of pei-sons and 
 things. Of men possessing great wit with little or 
 
HUMOUR AND WIT. 211 
 
 no humour, Butler and Byron are among the most 
 remarkable instances; Hudibras is even tiresome 
 from the want of humour. Wit is the more bril- 
 liant, humour the more interesting quality. The 
 wit of Cervantes is less prominent than that of 
 Butler, but Don Quixote abounds with humour of 
 both kinds in every page, and this is one of the 
 reasons why it is so much more interesting than 
 Hudibras. There is in humour much of the milk 
 of human kindness ; it implies sympathy even witli 
 the ridiculous. A bad man may be witty, but can 
 scarcely be humorous. 
 
 The subject might be pursued much farther, but, 
 perhaps, enough has been said to point out the 
 distinction. This slight analytical sketch may not 
 be uninteresting to those, who, loving and honouring 
 the works of the great literary artists, like some- 
 times to turn from the magnificent and brilliant 
 effects to the examination of their tesselated and 
 intertangled causes, and who feel some hesitation 
 even in this mechanical age in agreeing with the 
 profound Bentham, that poetry is as unprofitable as 
 the " jeu d'epingles." 
 
 P 2 
 
212 
 
 OF THE ADVANTAGES OF LIVING IN STIRRING 
 
 TIMES. 
 
 La disunione della plebe e del Senate Romano fece libera e 
 potente quella reppublica. 
 
 MachiavelU. 
 
 We hear little in these days of the old pedantic 
 classification of the golden, silver and iron ages of 
 literature. The truism, " omnes aurese aetatis scrip- 
 tores non aurei," needs -no argument ; modern cri- 
 ticism has gone farther, and discovered that even 
 an iron age has its gold. Admitting, however, what 
 it would be vain to deny, that there is a decided 
 superiority in the works, whether of literature, 
 science or art, of some periods over those of others, 
 it does not therefore follow that there was an es- 
 sential difference in the amount of intellectual power 
 which existed in the world at any two given periods. 
 We see a difference in the results, but that difference 
 may, in part at least, be ascribed to the more or 
 less propitious disposition of circumstances, operat- 
 ing favourably or unfavourably upon individuals, 
 according to the adjustment of their characters 
 thereto ; as well as to an excess or diminution of the 
 aggregate of mental endowments parcelled out by 
 
OF THE ADVANTAGES OF, ETC. 213 
 
 nature at distinct periods among equal masses of 
 mankind. We can certainly trace the influence 
 of circumstances in all human productions : there 
 is no man, however great or original, of whom we 
 can safely say that he would not have been made 
 greater or less by being transplanted out of his own 
 into another age. 
 
 Our idea of the force of circumstances grows 
 upon us, when we consider what apparently trivial 
 occurrences often cause an entire change in a man's 
 character and life. Yet, it would be false and dan- 
 gerous to say that men are therefore absolutely 
 the creatures of circumstances ; all who have ob- 
 served children know that character shews itself 
 from the earliest dawn of intellect, and the different 
 influence of facts, often partially or apparently, 
 but seldom entirely the same, confirms the idio- 
 syncracy of each individual. Every man is in him- 
 self a microcosm, not one of a genus, but a species, 
 distinct from all others ; nevertheless, the entire 
 amount of mental power distributed among men at 
 various periods may be nearly equal, though sus- 
 ceptible in the distribution of indefinite inequality. 
 It does not follow that different ages are unequal 
 in mental powers, because individuals are. 
 
 " I cannot," says Gibbon, " reflect without plea- 
 sure on the bounty of nature, which cast my birth 
 in a free and civilised country, in an age of science 
 p 3 
 
214 OF THE ADVAKTAGES OF 
 
 and philosophy, in a family of honourable rank, and 
 decently endowed with the gifts of fortune." There 
 is a line spirit in this remark, and yet it is perhaps 
 rather the sentiment of a scholar than of a philoso- 
 pher, of a man who delighted more in " lettered 
 leisure" than to seek truth through good and evil. 
 Tranquillity is a fine thing, but it may be loved too 
 well. Men whose passions are feebler than their 
 intellects are ungratefully impatient of an age of 
 experiment, forgetting how much they are indebted 
 for their generalisations to the abundant supply of 
 facts, which might perhaps have been wire drawn 
 through centuries, crowded into the space of a few 
 years, and furnished them by the very activity they 
 denounce. The love of tranquillity is in the first in- 
 stance the result of temperament ; bitterness is often 
 superadded from another cause. The man of action, 
 finding it an obvious and agreeable course of pro- 
 ceeding to despise what he does not readily under- 
 stand, ridicules the pursuits of the contemplative 
 man as frivolous ; the latter retorts, not without 
 some show of reason, that the objects of the busy 
 blusterer are at least equally frivolous ; but the 
 world is against him, for the world has neither leisure 
 nor capacity to understand his argument. Hence 
 that unphilosophical zeal against the zealous, partly 
 springing from a consciousness of unjust treatment, 
 partly from mortified vanity, sometimes observ^ble 
 
 1 
 
LIVING IN STIRRING TIMES. 21b 
 
 in men who have never betrayed zeal in any other 
 cause. Had Gibbon lived now, he would probably 
 have been, like Goethe, a conservative ; both be- 
 cause he would not have anticipated much benefit 
 to mankind from political changes, and because re- 
 volutions would have put him out of his way. The 
 heart and not the head is the source of men's 
 opinions on vital points. Gibbon hated Christianity, 
 not because he was convinced of its falsehood, but 
 because he felt that it was a religion of ardent 
 emotions, because it had destroyed that ancient and 
 beautiful faith, which peopled with " forms of things 
 unknown " every fountain and tree. Goethe loved 
 to think, his age was an age of action, he was thus 
 apparently in a false position ; imaginative, he loved 
 the magnificence of courts, his age desired freedom, 
 which has at all times a stern countenance. 
 
 It is remarkable that of those, who either in lite- 
 rature, the fine arts, or science, have exercised the 
 most extensive empire over men's minds, by far the 
 greater number lived either in or immediately after 
 times of political or religious convulsion. Such 
 were the ages of Pericles, and Demosthenes, of 
 Cicero, Horace, and Tacitus, of Dante, of Ariosto, 
 Raphael and Michael Angelo, of Cervantes, Shaks- 
 peare and Bacon, of Milton, Newton and Locke. 
 These moral tempests cannot therefore be un- 
 favourable to contemplation ; on the contrary, they 
 p 4 
 
216 OF THE ADVANTAGES OF 
 
 feed it with facts. There is an analogy between 
 our intellectual and physical wants. The mind like 
 the body must languish without food and exercise. 
 No work of any value was ever produced by a 
 hermit. It may be said that it is easy for an 
 inventive mind to suggest to itself facts in in- 
 exhaustible variety, and to draw conclusions from 
 them almost as profitable as those of actual expe- 
 rience ; but such facts want life, a deficiency not 
 to be supplied. Our minds are not large enough 
 to deduce principles from supposed facts ; besides, 
 facts which seem probable to one man are absurd 
 to another ; thus all works of fiction sin more or 
 less against probability, and yet, as it has been often 
 said, truth is stranger still. We cannot even foresee 
 all the bearings of one fact ; so in our own time 
 there have been many and important changes in the 
 laws, and the results have never been precisely 
 what was previously anticipated. The moral go- 
 vernment of the Avorld is an inexplicable problem. 
 The sum of these speculations is briefly this ; revo- 
 lutionary times open new chapters in the book of 
 man's nature, and present it in a greater variety of 
 aspects, they therefore increase our knowledge ; but 
 we cannot be wise a priori, without knowledge ; 
 therefore from increased knowledge commonly, 
 though not necessarily flows increased wisdom. 
 But we have the experience of the generations 
 
LIVING IN STIRRING TIMES. 217 
 
 who have gone before us recorded in history ; the 
 answer to this is, that it is scarcely possible to know 
 the whole truth in any transaction in which many 
 men were concerned, particularly if it be long past ; 
 and that, as contemporary history necessarily excites 
 a more vivid interest in men than that in which they 
 could not have been actors, it is therefore more 
 suggestive of thought. It is only from the mental 
 ferment produced by the combination of real interest 
 in the facts, and an accurate knowledge of them, 
 that the stream of philosophical reflection can vigo- 
 rously and purely flow. From this deficiency of 
 interest it happens that ages, like individuals, seldom 
 gain experience by deputy. 
 
 It appears, therefore, that stirring times are not 
 unfavourable to our intellectual education, and still 
 less are they to our moral. " In the drama of 
 human life," says Lord Bacon, " it is only for God 
 and angels to be spectators." Action then is our 
 province, provided always that we do not suffer it 
 to absorb us so entirely as to stifle contemplation. 
 Each of the two sisters in Dante would have gained 
 by borrowing from the other : 
 
 " Per piacermi alio specchio qui m'adorno : 
 Ma mia suora Rachel mai non si smaga 
 Dal suo miraglio, e siede tutto il giorno. 
 Eir e de suoi begli occhi veder vaga. 
 Com' io deir adornarmi con le mani ; 
 Lei lo vedere, e me I'ovrare appaga." 
 
218 OF THE ADVANTAGES OF 
 
 Men are not sent into the world to slumber at 
 their posts, but to be tried, — to develope all the ener- 
 gies of their several characters in their utmost extent. 
 Accordingly, when questions are afloat which excite 
 a deep interest in all classes of society, questions of 
 religion or politics, men shew what they are, and 
 the results are intellectual and moral greatness, both 
 in word and deed, accompanied frequently it must 
 be owned, with crimes, which, however, do not 
 denote so depraved and corrupted a state of the 
 public mind as the vices of more polished and tran- 
 quil ages. Neither is such a state of things at all 
 incompatible with the cultivation of the domestic 
 virtues, as the beautiful characters of Mrs. Hutchin- 
 son and Lady Fanshawe bear witness. Men must 
 have both employment and excitement. If their 
 age is dead to religion, and a despotic government 
 shuts out politics, vice becomes the only resource of 
 the great majority of those who are not compelled 
 to earn their bread by the sweat of their brows. 
 The love of art, which the idiosyncracy of artists 
 might propose as a substitute, is a stimulus far too 
 feeble and too limited in its range. Hence the sub- 
 jects of despotic governments, where no counter- 
 acting cause intervened, have always been peculiarly 
 vicious. Never probably was profligacy so universal 
 as in Rome under the emperors, and during the later 
 times of modern Venice. Under the military des- 
 
LIVING IN STIRRING TIMES. 219 
 
 potisms of northern Europe at the present day, a 
 variety of causes are in operation tending to rescue 
 men from extreme debasement : but what are the 
 higher classes of Italians and Spaniards, who care 
 neither for religion nor liberty ! Adam Smith some- 
 where says, with great truth and boldness, " despot- 
 ism is more destructive of the-energies of the human 
 mind than even anarchy itself." The perpetual 
 tendency of our nature is to corrupt ail things. 
 Quiet we may not endure. It is therefore not in- 
 consistent with the general dispensation of Provi- 
 dence, that our moral as Avell as our physical 
 atmosphere should require to be purified by occa- 
 sional storms. 
 
220 
 
 OF ABSENTEEISM. 
 
 Absentem rodit. 
 
 Horace. 
 
 Recent as the origin of political economy is, its 
 uncertainty is almost proverbial. There seems to 
 be no moral science in which it is so difficult to 
 arrive at a conclusion universally true. The causes 
 of this appear to be twofold. The first and principal 
 is the difficulty, or rather the impossibility, of ascer- 
 taining facts in every instance precisely as they 
 occur, of determining the separate importance of 
 each fact individually, the aggregate importance of 
 many facts collectively, the relative importance of 
 each link of a long train of facts, and the relative 
 importance of different trains : the second cause is 
 the mode of treating political economy adopted by 
 some writers, namely, of arriving at conclusions 
 rather by reasoning a priori, than by patient and 
 cautious induction from observation and experience. 
 They are in too great a hurry to contradict received 
 opinions. 
 
OF ABSENTEEISM. 221 
 
 There are many instances in the history of scien- 
 tific discovery of antiquated opinions, scoffed at by 
 successive generations of sneerers, yet demonstrated 
 at last to be true ; it is not therefore absolutely im- 
 possible but that in some of the modern dogmas of 
 political economy, time will prove us not so very 
 much wiser than our ancestors as we suppose. 
 
 Few men have cultivated political economy with 
 more diligence and success than Mr, M'Culloch. 
 No one perhaps has done so much towards increas- 
 ing our stock of statistical knowledge. Yet he is 
 the principal supporter of one of the most startling 
 paradoxes which the political economists have as 
 yet ventured to broach. 
 
 Mr. M'CuUoch contends that the injury supposed 
 to be occasioned to the tradesmen, labourers, and 
 industrious people of any given country, by the 
 landlords spending their incomes abroad instead of 
 on their own estates, is altogether imaginary. His 
 general argument is briefly this. — Let Ireland be 
 the country in question. An Irish agent wishes to 
 transmit to an absentee landlord, resident in London, 
 the rents he has received on his account. For this 
 purpose he purchases a bill of exchange of a Dublin 
 merchant, who, to enable him to draw upon London, 
 must have previously sold to a London merchant a 
 certain quantity of Irish produce. The actual rent 
 therefore is not exported, but the produce only. 
 
222 OF ABSENTEEISM. 
 
 which enabled the Dublin merchant to draw upon 
 London. The Dublin merchant thus stands in the 
 landlord's place, and lays out the rent he received 
 from the agent " in the purchase of Irish commo- 
 dities, just as the landlord did when he was at 
 home." * But what equivalent does Ireland receive 
 for the Irish produce exported by the Dublin mer- 
 chant ? Suppose the landlord to have been resi- 
 dent ; in that case the London merchant, instead of 
 transmitting a bill of exchange, would have shipped 
 goods for Ireland equal in value to the Irish pro- 
 duce exported by the Dublin merchant. The non- 
 residence of the landlord therefore causes an excess 
 of Irish exports over Irish imports, and a loss to 
 Ireland of the difference ; an excess which, as we 
 shall see presently, is very considerable, and pro- 
 bably large enough to include the whole amount of 
 the rents, forwarded in the manner Mr. M'Culloch 
 supposes, to absentee landlords. In the particular 
 case the London merchant liquidates his debt to the 
 Dublin merchant for exported Irish produce, by 
 paying the amount of the bill of exchange to the 
 absentee landlord, which amount is exactly what 
 Ireland loses by the transaction. 
 
 It appears from the tables of Irish imports and 
 e.vports printed in the Appendix, No. 8. of Sir Henry 
 
 * Edinburgh Review, vol. xliii, p. 57. 
 
or ABSENTEEISM. 2^3: 
 
 Parnell's valuable Avork on Financial Reform, that 
 the annual average amount of the Irish imports for 
 the three years ending January 1826 was 7,491, 890Z ; 
 the annual average amount of exports for the same 
 period, 8,454<,918/. ; leaving a balance of the exports 
 over the imports of 963,028/. As the record of the 
 cross-channel trade was discontinued in January 
 1826, we have no means of ascertaining the amount 
 of Irish imports and exports since that period. There 
 does not appear to be any good ground for doubting 
 these facts, nor does Mr. M'CuUoch deny them, or 
 the inference we draw from them, that this excess of 
 exports over imports is caused by remittances to 
 absentee landlords. 
 
 To a pla?n understanding these facts appear con- 
 clusive of the question. Mr. M'Culloch's mode of 
 getting over the difficulty is curious. In his evi- 
 dence before the Select Committee of the House of 
 Commons on the state of the poor in Ireland, in 
 June 1830, we find the following question put to him: 
 
 " Can you say what is given in return to Ireland 
 for that portion of the produce which goes to the 
 expenditure of absentee proprietors resident in 
 England ? " 
 
 " The return is that she gets the absentees kept 
 in England ; she gets those persons kept here, who, 
 if there were a stoppage of their remittances she 
 
224 OF ABSENTEEISM. 
 
 would be obliged to keep at home ; and she keeps 
 them cheaper in England than she can keep them 
 at home, a fact which is evinced by the circum- 
 stance of their coming over here." — Minutes of 
 Evidence, p. 599. 
 
 Now this is really nothing more than an asser- 
 tion, and a most startling assertion too. Surely 
 Mr. M'Culloch will not contend that Ireland keeps 
 the Duke of Devonshire cheaper at Chatsworth than 
 she could keep him at Lismore Castle ; and yet this 
 is a necessary inference from his position that Irish 
 landlords are kept cheaper in England than at home. 
 Do Irishmen come over to England to live cheap ? 
 Mr. M'Culloch argues in a circle ; Irishmen come 
 over to England because they are kept cheaper in 
 England; Irishmen are kept cheaper in England 
 because they come over to England. It is neces- 
 sary to prove that Irish landlords are kept cheaper 
 in England than in Ireland by statistical facts, 
 which Mr. M'Culloch has not done, and, we are 
 satisfied, cannot do. England is generally supposed 
 to be the dearest country in the world. The rea- 
 sons why Irishman come over here are sufficiently 
 obvious. They come over for pleasure, for profit, 
 to enjoy themselves, to advance their fortunes ; for 
 any or all of the reasons which induce men to leave 
 a poor country for a rich one ; some too perhaps 
 
OF ABSENTEEISM. 225 
 
 for no better reason than that a man who goes to 
 sleep in England has a fairer prospect of awaking 
 alive than in the sister island. 
 
 Mr. M'Culloch seems to look upon rent as a 
 sort of pill for landlords to swallow, not indeed 
 remarkably unpleasant, but altogether disappearing 
 with the act of deglutition, and that therefore it 
 cannot signify on what spot of earth that act takes 
 place. He admits that by sending abroad capital*, 
 nations are impoverished and ruined, but denies 
 that any such effect is produced by sending abroad 
 revenue. It is in this unsound distinction that the 
 main fallacy of the argument lies. 
 
 Money may be spent, we are told, productively 
 or unproductively. Money invested in trade or 
 agriculture, and returning a percentage to its 
 employer over and above all expenses, we call 
 capital, and the returns, profits or income, usually 
 spent in necessaries or luxuries, or in wages of 
 servants who manufacture nothing that can be sold. 
 Capital, it is said, is money employed productively; 
 income, or at least that portion of it Avhich is not 
 added to the capital, is money employed unpro- 
 ductively. This distinction may suffice for common 
 purposes, but it is not strictly accurate. It is a 
 distinction not of kind, but only of degree. There 
 
 * Edinburgh Review, vol , xliii. p. 57, 
 Q 
 
226 OF ABSENTEEISM. 
 
 is no antithesis in the case. Money spent in neces- 
 saries is not absolutely spent unproductively, 
 because without necessaries we could not exist, and 
 existence is a condition precedent to our receiving 
 profits from capital. It is but a question of less 
 and more. 
 
 When it is said that money may be spent unpro- 
 ductively, what is meant is that it may be so spent 
 with reference to the capitalist. That a man may 
 spend money in such a manner as to become poorer 
 by spending it, or in other words treat his capital as 
 if it were his income, is undeniable, but unless it 
 can be shewn that he may so spend it as altogether 
 to avoid giving a stimulus to production, Mr. 
 M'CuUoch's argument falls to the ground, and 
 absenteeism is an evil. Money circulates rapidly 
 through a great many hands in a short space of 
 time. Supposing the first possessor to spend it 
 unproductively in the strongest sense of the word, 
 that is, to impoverish himself by spending it, or 
 even to give it away, or lose it at the gaming-table, 
 is it reasonable to infer that the second, third, fourth 
 and fifth possessors will all do the same ? Money 
 cannot circulate through many hands without being 
 employed, in some one instance at least, as capital, 
 and the exportation of capital Mr. M'CuUoch 
 admits to be an evil. If the absentee landlord does 
 not employ it as capital, his tradesman does. And 
 
OF ABSENTEEISM. 227 
 
 though of course that particular sum of money is 
 employed most beneficially to society which is most 
 frequently employed as capital ; and it may occa- 
 sionally be some time before the exported rent of 
 an absentee landlord is so employed, still it is but 
 a question of time, the capital of some person it 
 must become sooner or later, sometimes in a few 
 weeks, sometimes in a few days, so that the im- 
 porting country gains exactly what the exporting 
 country loses, that is, the use of a determinate sum 
 of money for an indeterminate length of time 
 without an equivalent. 
 
 Suppose an Irish absentee landlord to be paid 
 his rent, not through the medium of a bill of 
 exchange, but by the actual produce of his own 
 estate. As soon as he received this produce, as but 
 a very small part could be consumed by himself, he 
 would naturally sell it, and the proceeds of the sale 
 would be his income. It matters nothing to Ireland 
 (unless the price of specie happen for the moment 
 to be higher there than in England, an extrinsic 
 circumstance,) whether money or commodities are 
 exported, the loss is the same either way, and the 
 case Mr. M'Culloch puts equally impossible. He 
 supposes an Irish landlord, resident in Dublin, to 
 have there paid 300/. or 400^. a year to his coach 
 and harness makers. Afterwards he supposes him 
 to have removed to London, and there to have paid 
 Q 2 
 
228 OF ABSENTEEISM. 
 
 the same sum for the same purpose. Yet he con- 
 tends that Ireland loses nothing by the change, 
 because the money paid in the first instance to the 
 Dublin coach aud harness makers " must now be 
 paid to the producers of those articles that suit the 
 English market," Ed. Review, vol. xliii, p. 66. 
 How can this be ? To take a simple case, let 
 the absentee's tenants be linen-manufacturers, and 
 send him their liner^ as rent. He pays them 
 nothing in return. While he remained in Ireland, 
 they had to sell their linen before his rent could be 
 paid, and they do no more now. The quantity of 
 linen sold is the same, or if increased, it must be 
 owing to extrinsic circumstances. No stimulus 
 can therefore possibly be given to Irish production 
 generally by the non- residence of the landlords. 
 If exports are increased, the home demand must 
 be proportionally diminished, because the tradesmen 
 and labourers, formerly employed by the landlords, 
 have now less money to spend. The linen manu- 
 facturers cannot gain anything by the residence of 
 their landlord in England, and the Dublin coach 
 and harness makers lose his custom ; but this last,. 
 says Mr. M'Culloch, is no evil, for tradesmen " live 
 by means of their own capital and industry, and 
 these would support them though their customers 
 Avere annihilated." Ed. Revieiv, vol. xliii. p. 61. If 
 this be so, the people who sent skates to Buenos 
 
OF ABSENTEEISM. 229 
 
 Ayres, and did not sell them there, could not have 
 lost any thing by their freak. If any of them were 
 ruined by it, they had the satisfaction of knowing 
 it was quite contrary to all rules, for though they 
 had no customers, their capital, the skates, re- 
 mained. The theory is, that if a man has unfor- 
 tunately invested his capital in an unprofitable 
 trade, he sells off his stock and invests it in a trade 
 which brings higher profits. But how can he sell 
 off if there is nobody to buy ? And when he has 
 sold off, which in real life he is sure to do at a loss, 
 if it should happen that a sufficient number of other 
 tradesmen invest their capital in the more profitable 
 trade at the same time, its profits immediately fall ; 
 then comes a glut of the article, which means that 
 people will either not buy it at all, or only buy it at 
 a very low price, and tradesmen leaxn from fatal 
 experience whether they are dependent on their 
 customers or no. 
 
 It is never safe to look upon men as insulated 
 beings. We are affected in an endless variety of 
 ways by the actions of our fellow- creatures. Tiius 
 competition of capital lowers profits, competition of 
 labour lowers wages, competition of tenants raises 
 rent : but if there were no customers there could 
 be neither of the three, profits, vt^ages or rent. 
 Several elements go to make up profits, as capital, 
 Q 3 
 
230 OF ABSENTEEISM. 
 
 labour and customers, profits could not exist without 
 either, but it is not therefore at all necessary to take it 
 for granted that one man can only gain by another's 
 loss ; on the contrary, both parties may gain by the 
 same transaction, as we shall presently endeavour 
 to shew. 
 
 But we have not yet done with Mr. M'CuUoch's 
 doctrine of the uselessness of customers. Let us 
 test it by the reductio ad absurdum, and see where 
 it will carry us. Within the universal must be 
 comprised the particular. If it matters not to Irish 
 tradesmen whether Irish landlords spend their 
 incomes at home or abroad, it cannot matter to 
 particular tradesmen whether their customers con- 
 tinue to deal with them or employ others, provided 
 they continue in some shape to spend the same 
 sums. The bugbear of exclusive dealing, as unreal 
 and unmeaning as any of his brother shadows of 
 the nursery, is, like them, fit for nothing but to 
 frighten children. Petitions for custom are on 
 the part of tradesmen a labour of love ; bankrupt- 
 cies, wilfulness. Money expended in any particular 
 place cannot promote the prosperity of that place. 
 Bath and Brighton would continue to flourish 
 equally if deserted by all their visitors to-morrow. 
 Extensive trade is of no importance to an indi- 
 vidual, to a town, to a country, as long as the trade 
 
 1 
 
OF ABSENTEEISM. 231 
 
 of the whole world is extensive. If money is 
 spent, so that it be not spent unproductively, it 
 matters not where it is spent, nor to whom it is 
 paid. Briefless barristers will henceforward doubt- 
 less take a more comfortable interest in the welfare 
 of their seniors, since the guineas of Mr. Serjeant 
 Wilde or Sir William FoUett could not be of 
 greater sei-vice to them even if they passed through 
 their own fee-soliciting fingers. Again, if Irishmen 
 are in no degree injured by the exportation of a 
 part of the revenues of their landlords, neither 
 would they be injured by the exportation of the 
 whole of those revenues ; if they are injured, 
 though slightly, by the exportation of a part, they 
 would be grievously injured by the exportation of 
 the whole, and the extent of the evil of absenteeism 
 will be in proportion to the amount of the Irish 
 property of the absentees. 
 
 In ordinary cases there can be no very material 
 difference between the value of the imports and 
 exports of a country, because the imports must 
 necessarily be purchased by the exports. But to 
 this rule the rents of absentees create an exception, 
 as they are exported without an equivalent ; and 
 they must raise the amount of exports above that 
 of imports, because they are usually transmitted 
 through the medium of bills of exchange. But this 
 has nothing to do with the exploded mercantile 
 
232 OP ABSENTEEISM. 
 
 theory, which assumed the balance of trade * be- 
 tween two countries to be in favour of that country 
 which exported a larger amount of goods than it 
 imported, and consequently received the difference 
 in specie. The real balance of trade is determined 
 in a very different manner. Let a certain quantity 
 of English cottons be purchased with a certain, 
 quantity of French wines. Let it be supposed that 
 the English cottons and the French wines are of 
 equal value in their respective countries. If the 
 English cottons are sold in France by the French 
 importer for a larger sum than the English im- 
 porter can get for the French wines in England, the 
 balance of trade is in favour of France, and con- 
 versely. But the trade between two countries must 
 always be advantageous to both, as long as the net 
 profit upon goods produced in one country and sold 
 in the other is not inferior to the net profit upon 
 the same goods if sold at home. If the net profit 
 upon home produce sold abroad is inferior to the 
 net profit upon the same produce sold at home, it is 
 obvious that foreign trade must cease. All trade, 
 therefore, between two countries must be advan- 
 tageous to both, otherwise it would be discontinued ; 
 but the profits upon that trade in both countries 
 are not necessarily eqvial. The balance of trade is 
 
 * Edinburgh Review, vol. xliii. p. 58. 
 
OF ABSENTEEISM. 233 
 
 determined in favour of either, by the excess of the 
 value of its imports over the value of the imports of 
 the other country : that is, by the difference be- 
 tween the prices obtained by the importing mer- 
 chants for their respective imports in their respec- 
 tive countries. It is surely obvious that the question 
 of absenteeism is quite distinct from this of the 
 balance of trade. 
 
 There does not appear to be any other argument 
 in favour of absenteeism which it is necessary to 
 examine. The paradox has certainly not tended to 
 advance the progress of political economy. As to 
 the moral evils of absenteeism, Mr. M'Culloch 
 seems to admit that the residence of a landlord on 
 his own estate is generally beneficial to the character 
 of the neighbourhood ; and so surely it must be, 
 unless the landlord happen to be either more foolish 
 or more wicked than men commonly are. There 
 may possibly be a country where so many counter- 
 acting circumstances are at work, that the residence 
 of the landlord would produce evil rather than 
 good, and that country may be Ireland. If it indeed 
 be so, which is not however made out satisfactorily, 
 such a state of things cannot too soon be changed. 
 The relation of landlord and tenant has in it some- 
 thing patriarchal, and ought to be made the means 
 of promoting good feeling on both sides. 
 
 The effects of absenteeism in diminishing the 
 
SS^ OF ABSENTEEISM. 
 
 wealth of a country cannot well be separated from 
 its moral effects. The two diiferent divisions under 
 which the subject may be considered, unavoidably 
 incroach upon each other. Thus absenteeism is a 
 source of poverty, and from poverty result misery 
 and crime ; crime again causing alarm, by a natural 
 reaction reproduces absenteeism. 
 
 But though absenteeism be in every point of view 
 an evil, it would be folly and quackery to charge it 
 with being the cause of all, or even of a very con- 
 siderable portion of the peculiar evils of Ireland. 
 These evils do not spring from one source, nor can 
 they be removed by one remedy. If we must 
 broach a nostrum of some kind, we would say, raise 
 the Irish standard of comfort, an object which poor 
 laws promise fairest to realise. They who blame 
 the Irish for suffering themselves to be so easily 
 made the tools of selfish and unprincipled agitators, 
 should remember their unhappy circumstances, and 
 consider, that though it is easy for people who look 
 at the matter coolly from a distance, to see that the 
 measures proposed by such men can in no degree 
 tend to promote the ends nominally held out by 
 them to their dupes, we might ourselves, in the 
 place of the Irish peasants, be ready enough to 
 grasp such shadows as they do. In Ireland we see 
 not only religious and political dissensions, not only 
 a minute subdivision of land, with a system of mid- 
 
OF ABSENTEEISM. . 235 
 
 dlemen, interposing between the landlord and the 
 cultivator of the soil, and goading the last into 
 madness by exactions not in his power to satisfy, 
 but a large proportion of the population filled with 
 prejudices adverse to their own interests, reckless of 
 human life, miserably clothed, miserably housed, 
 and subsisting on the cheapest possible food in the 
 smallest possible quantity. What can we expect 
 from a state of things so monstrous ! But it is not 
 new, it has existed heretofore in other countries, it 
 has been in other instances in a great degree 
 remedied ; and it may and will be remedied again 
 by rulers who shall have the firmness and honesty 
 to persevere in attacking what themselves know to 
 be evils, and who will not be persuaded to think 
 those evils, attested as such by the clamours alone 
 of an ignorant and deluded populace. 
 
236 
 
 OF THE MEN TO BE LOVED AXD THE 
 MEN TO BE ADMIRED. 
 
 Susses Dichten, laut're Wahrheit 
 
 Fesselt mich in Sympathie, 
 Rein verkBrpert Liebes-Klarheit 
 
 Im Gewand der Poesie. 
 
 Goethe. 
 
 It is strange how little we know of each other. 
 Men pass through life wearing a conventional mask, 
 often partially, but seldom entirely withdrawn, save 
 through the influence of those occasional emotions 
 witnessed by few spectators, and which would cease 
 to be powerful if they were less rare. Those with 
 whom we are in the constant habit of social inter- 
 course we know but imperfectly; many of our more 
 distinguished contemporaries, with whose sayings 
 and doings we are familiar without personal ac- 
 quaintance, we often mistake most grossly ; truly 
 then may we say, in reverting to the worthies of 
 antiquity, 
 
 " Whose deeds have died, however nobly done,"* 
 
 * Spenser. 
 
OF THE MEN TO BE LOVED ETC. 237 
 
 and left posterity no autographic memorial of those 
 who wrought them ; 
 
 " The world knows nothing of its greatest men." * 
 
 If they who embark in the troubled seas of war 
 and politics obtain more than their due admiration 
 from contemporaries, the neglect of succeeding 
 generations adjusts the scale. They have left no- 
 thing themselves hy which we can judge them, we 
 know them only at second-hand by what others 
 have said of them, which usually amounts to no 
 more than a skeleton of the real living man, to be 
 fleshed by each inquirer after the fashion he lists. 
 Our interest, therefore, in the characters of ancient 
 warriors and statesmen, unless it should happen that 
 their names are party-watchwords in our own times, 
 is, like our knowledge of them, faint. We can see 
 none but the literary dead in the light of personal 
 acquaintances, and of these, only the comparatively 
 few whose peculiar idiosyncracy is stamped upon 
 their works. 
 
 A man cannot express his opinions on many sub- 
 jects without disclosing much of his moral character, 
 for the will often bids the understanding find reasons 
 for what it desires to think. Hence it is that we 
 know men best by their books, which should be 
 
 * Philip van Artevelde. 
 
.238 OF THE MEN TO BE LOVED 
 
 their moral and intellectual epitome. But there are' 
 not many who have had the courage to tell the 
 public neither more nor less, but just Avhat they 
 thought. It may be remarked by the way, that it 
 is scarcely possible for a writer to be wholly unin- 
 teresting, who will think for himself and say what 
 he thinks. This it is which will give his writings 
 character, not to be attained by affectation or strain- 
 ing, and originality, which seems to be nothing more 
 than the being true to oneself. This a feeble mind 
 dares not be, and simple as the rule appears, it is 
 not uniformly adhered to even by the strongest. 
 We are too near to ourselves ever to look inwardly 
 without some self-deception, and often neglect and 
 violate what we believe we are most rigidly ob' 
 serving. 
 
 Authors, like men, are to be loved and admired, 
 but the number of the admirable is greater than 
 that of the amiable, and those who are capable of 
 uniting both our admiration and affection are few. 
 The number of these last, however, might have 
 been considerably increased, had not some of the 
 mightiest minds, as Homer and Shakspeare, studiously 
 avoided self, and delighted to lose their own indivi- 
 duality in their subjects, leaving their readers, from 
 the general tone of their works, to form conjectures 
 of the author's character as they might. 
 
 Allusions to self in Homer are very rare. The 
 
-^ND THE MEN TO BE ADMIRED. 239 
 
 most pointed is that in the passage quoted from his 
 Hymns by Thucydides, which refers, however, 
 rather to his generic character as a poet, than to 
 the individual man who bore the name of Homer. 
 What Delian girl could have given other than an 
 affirmative answer to the gentle request I 
 
 " 'E/x€?o 5e Koi lyLerSTncrde 
 fxvria'acrB' , 6inr6Te k4u tIs iiri-^^QovLwv audpanruy 
 ei'flaS' aveip7)Tai, i,eivos raXanelpios i\6ibv 
 w Kovpai, ris ^'vfijjuv av7]p ridiaros aoihSiv 
 fvdaSe TTbiXeiTai, Kal recfi repTrecrde fj.dM(TTa ; 
 iifxels S'eS fjiaKa iracrai viroKplvacrd' evcprj/xais, > 
 Tv<p\hs a,v)]p, oj/cel Se 'Kicf ivi iranraXoeffiTT;." 
 
 He appears also to have alluded to himself in that 
 beautiful and touching description of the blind bard 
 in the Odyssey : 
 
 " rhv Trept Mover' i(pl\7)(re, SiSov 8' ayaOov re, KaK6v re, 
 o(f)6a\ixoov fiev d/xepce, Sidov 5' rjSeiav aoiSTjy." 
 
 But the first Greek whom we know sufficiently 
 to love as well as admire is Socrates. And him we 
 know chiefly through the writings of that renowned 
 disciple, who has exercised an influence over the 
 philosophy of all succeeding generations, never to 
 be obliterated while the world lasts. What must he 
 have been who held such an empire over such a 
 mind ? That Socrates, of whom Plato could say, 
 " To be reminded of him, whether I speak of him 
 
240 OF THE MEN TO BE LOVED 
 
 myself, or hear him spoken of by others, is ever to 
 me the most delightful of all things!"* It has 
 rightly been esteemed a great thing " laudari a lau- 
 dato viro," but to be loved by a man than whom 
 few or none were ever more worthy, both of affec- 
 tion and praise, infers the possession of every endow- 
 ment, moral and intellectual, which can elevate and 
 adorn humanity. The death of Socrates, in the 
 act of conversing on the immortality of the soul 
 with his disciples, is of all incidents in history the 
 one wherein beauty and pathos seem most perfectly 
 combined ; with beauty always interesting, with 
 pathos always subdued, it presents a picture of calm 
 unostentatious fortitude, supported only by a doubt- 
 ful glimmering of hope, which it is impossible to 
 surpass. Plato's account of it cannot be read with- 
 out recalling to mind the last discourses of the 
 divine founder of our religion, under similar, though 
 incomparably more painful circumstances. 
 
 If it be objected to Socrates and Plato that they 
 founded no system, the answer is they loved truth 
 too well. There is perhaps no passage in any writer 
 where the love of truth is more transparent, than in 
 that most touching and beautiful warning against 
 submitting reason to authority in the last discourse 
 of Socrates to his disciples : — ■ 
 
 * Phaedon, 
 
AND THE MEN TO BE ADMIRED. Si'l 
 
 « You, however, if you will be persuaded by me, 
 heeding Socrates little, but truth much more, if I 
 should appear to you to say any thing true, receive 
 it with me ; but if not, reject the whole argument; 
 and beware, lest, carried away by my ardour, I 
 deceive both myself and you, and depart like the 
 bee, leaving a sting behind me." 
 
 When we remember who he was who thus spoke, 
 what glorious humility is here ! 
 
 It is remarkable that the distinguishing feature 
 in the character of Socrates, as drawn by Plato, is 
 the same as that of the romantic drama developed 
 in the works of Shakspeare and Calderon, — breadth. 
 Socrates appears, indeed, to have anticipated that 
 union of tragedy and comedy* which for near two 
 thousand years after his death no one dared to 
 attempt, though without it the stage cannot be a 
 correct imitation of the life of man. It is thus that 
 minds of the highest order, however different their 
 walks, unconsciously touch. 
 
 " The language of Socrates," says Plato in his 
 Banquet, after having compared him to statues of 
 Sileni and Satyrs, which were found when opened 
 to contain images of the gods, " would appear to a 
 stranger at first altogether ridiculous. He would 
 think his outward garb of words and phrases like 
 
 * See Plato's Banquet. 
 
24'2 OF THE MEN TO BE LOVED 
 
 the hide of a coarse Satyr. For he talks of asses 
 with pack-saddles, and smiths, and shoemakers, and 
 curriers, and he always seems to express the same 
 meaning in the same words, so that every inexpe- 
 rienced and shallow man would laugh at his whole 
 discourse. But whosoever should be admitted within 
 and see it opened, would first perceive that the 
 words of Socrates alone among men had an esoteric 
 meaning, afterwards that they were most truly di- 
 vine, containing within them the most beautiful 
 representations of virtue, and also most comprehen- 
 sive in grasp, and, indeed, including every subject 
 which a man should examine, who would live in 
 the beauty of goodness. These are the things, my 
 friends, which in Socrates I admire." * — Convi- 
 vium, 221, 222. 
 
 To complete this characteristic portrait, we must 
 add that famous elpwpeia, which is the spear of Ithu- 
 riel, whose touch no false system can endure. 
 
 Of Plato himself it is not too much to say, that, 
 among literary men, those minds which are most 
 amiable are most essentially Platonic. As an 
 author, he is not to be excelled in grasp, variety, 
 subtlety or eloquence, in the airy touch which 
 
 * I am indebted to the Bishop of London's article on Plato 
 in the Encyclo aedia Metropolitana, for the striking passage I 
 have here attempted to translate. 
 
AND THE MEN TO BE ADMIRED. 243 
 
 exhausts without an effort all the powers and graces 
 of language ; as a man, pious, noble, pure, affec- 
 tionate and gentle ; — hardly elsewhere shall we find 
 united so much intellectual and moral beauty. It 
 must, however, be confessed that the picture is not 
 all light. Plato is, like most of his countrymen, too 
 synthetical, his arguments are sometimes merely 
 verbal, and Milton, a congenial mind, has blamed 
 him for " fabling, and smooth conceits." Such 
 faults, however, do not make the author less delight- 
 ful, or the man less amiable. All who are capable 
 of understanding him must have felt that it was not 
 idly said, " I would rather err with Plato than think 
 justly with other men." 
 
 Cicero, the most amiable, was also the best and 
 wisest of all the Romans. Pie was, it may be, timid 
 and vain, "ingenii sui nimium amator," but he 
 possessed that most precious of heavenly gifts, a 
 beautiful mind. Notwithstanding some weaknesses, 
 he was assuredly a man to be loved. Is there not 
 affection as well as gratitude in the lines of Catullus ? 
 
 " Disertissime Romuli nepotum, 
 Quot sunt, quotque fuere, Marce Tulli^ 
 Quotque post aliis erunt in annls ! 
 Gratias tibi maximas Catullus 
 Agit, pessimus omnium poeta ; 
 Tanto pessimus omnium poeta 
 Quanto tu optimus omnium patronus." 
 R 2 
 
244) OF THE MEN TO BE LOVED 
 
 There is a fine feeling of courtesy in the charming 
 dialogues of Plato and Cicero, which is not the least 
 of their numerous excellences. Their tone is that 
 of the most refined society of our own times : 
 Spenser could say, 
 
 " Of court it seems men courtesy do call." 
 
 We are apt to suppose it originated with those 
 " gentle Norman men," whom the noblest of our 
 land are proud to claim as their ancestors ; yet 
 nowhere do we find it better understood than among 
 these glorious republicans of Greece and Rome. 
 Whenever one of the characters in these dialogues 
 is introduced as rallying another, it is always " co- 
 miter ut solebat." What has earth so delightful, as 
 it must have been to linger in " the olive grove of 
 Academe," in the sweet society of Socrates, Plato, 
 and Critias ; or on some terrace overlooking the 
 blue Tuscan sea, beneath the leafy shade of a 
 trellised vine, to discuss philosophical questions the 
 livelong day with Balbus, Cotta and Cicero ! 
 
 Cicero had most exalted notions of friendship. 
 If others have understood equally with him what 
 friendship is, none perhaps have expressed it so 
 well. 
 
 " Amare autem nihil aliud est nisi eum ipsum 
 diligere quem ames, nulla indigentia, nulla utili- 
 tate quaesita. ..... Caritate benevo- 
 
AND THE MEN TO BE ADMIRED. 245 
 
 ientiaque sublata omnis est e vita sublata jucunditas. 
 
 Equidem, ex omnibus rebus," says Leelius, "" quas 
 mihi aut fortuna aut natura tribuit, nihil habeo 
 quod cum amicitia Scipionis possim comparare. In 
 hac milii de republica consensus, in hac rerum pri- 
 vatarum consilium ; in eadem requies plena oblec- 
 tationis fuit : nunquam ilium ne minima quidem re 
 ofFendi quod quidem senserim, nihil audivi ex eo 
 ipse quod nollem. Una domus erat, idem victus, 
 isque communis : neque solum militia, sed etiam 
 peregrinationes rusticationesque communes." 
 
 If such friendship ever did exist as that which 
 Cicero has here ascribed to Scipio and Laelius, most 
 certainly it does not exist now. Even if such friends, 
 by some extraordinary chance, were anywhere to be 
 found, they would soon be sneered out of their better 
 feelings in these days. And yet, is there a man who 
 has any thing noble in his nature who has not de- 
 sired or felt the want of such pure and perfect 
 sympathy ! 
 
 Montaigne, that charming thinker aloud, who, 
 though occasionally objectionable in a moral point 
 of view, has yet thrown so much soul into his Es- 
 says, goes beyond Cicero ; " les discours mesmes que 
 I'antiquite nous a laisse sur ce subject me semblent 
 lasches au prix du sentiment que j'en ay." He pro- 
 fesses, too, to speak from experience, thus beautifully 
 R 3 
 
^46 OF THE MEN TO BE LOVED 
 
 indulging his philosophical egotism : " Car, a la 
 verite, si je compare tout le reste de ma vie, quoyqu' 
 avecques la grace de Dieu je I'aye passee doulce, 
 aysee, et, sauf la perte d'un tel amy, exempte 
 d'affliction poisante, ^pleine de tranquillite d'esprit^ 
 ayant prins en payement mes commodites naturelles 
 et originelles, sans en rechercher d'auUres ; si je la 
 compare, dis-je, toute, aux quatre annees qu" il m'a 
 este donne de jouyr de la compaignie et societe de 
 ce personnage, ce n'est que fumee, ce n'est qu'une 
 nuict obscure et ennuyeuse." 
 
 The climax, however, was reserved for Sir Tho- 
 mas Browne ; — 
 
 " I hope I do not break the fifth commandment, 
 if I conceive I may love my friend before the 
 nearest of my blood, even those to whom I owe the 
 principles of life. I never yet cast a true affection 
 on a woman ; but I have loved my friend, as I do 
 virtue, my soul, my God." 
 
 It is somewhat doubtful, nevertheless, whether 
 the delicious knight ever had such a friend ; but 
 while the idea only existed in his own most vivid 
 imagination, it sufficed with him for every necessary 
 purpose. There is assuredly no better test of a 
 noble and beautiful mind than an exalted notion of 
 friendship. Lord Bacon, though too wise to break 
 into such raptures on the subject as Cicero, Mon- 
 taigne, and Browne, evidently had the same feel- 
 
AND THE MEN TO BE ADMIRED. 247 
 
 ings. How touchingly does he say ! " A crowd is 
 not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, 
 and talk but a tinkling cymbal where 'there is no 
 love." We can hardly believe that he is not speak- 
 ing here of our own times. The real, though un- 
 comfortable truth on this subject is given in the 
 saying of the wise and inspired king, one of the last 
 certainly which we should have expected to hear 
 from a royal mouth ; " Keep thy foot from thy 
 neighbour's house, lest he be weary of thee, and so 
 hate thee." Is not this the germ of some of our 
 modern maxims, as, " Pique a man and he will 
 court you, court him and he will slight you," whose 
 partial truth no one can mix much in the world 
 without discovering. Ben Jonson is unjust in at- 
 tacking only the gentler sex, — 
 
 " Follow a shadow, it still flies you, 
 Seem to fly it, it will pursue : 
 So court a mistress, she denies you. 
 
 Let her alone, she will court you." ' 
 
 All artifices are contemptible, but nothing shews 
 more clearly than the constant success of artifices 
 " pour se faire valoir," the intrinsic littleness of 
 humanity. Men cannot admire excellence in itself 
 alone ; there must always be something extrinsic, 
 something " ad captandum." Shall we not then 
 exclaim, in bitterness of soul, with him whom Byron 
 R 4 
 
248^ OF THE MEN TO BE LOVED 
 
 rightly called " Rome's least mortal mind, " " O 
 prseclarum diem, cum ad illud divinum animorum 
 concilium csetumque proficiscar, cumque ex hac 
 turba et coUuvione discedam I " Or with Browne, 
 when, improving on the words of Cicero, that the 
 world is an inn, and not a dwelling-place, he says, 
 " For the world, I count it not an inn but a hospital, 
 and a place not to live but die in !" 
 
 Admirable as are the courage and candour of Mon- 
 taigne and Browne, and of others who preceded and 
 followed them in the same track, and valuable as 
 their very curious contributions to intellectual ana- 
 tomy are, incidental and subordinate self-painting 
 is the most accurate and the best. An elaborate 
 full-length portrait is not always the most charac- 
 teristic. How is it then, it may be asked, if inci- 
 dental self-painting be thus instructive, that we 
 know so little of Shakspeare, who did not live, like 
 Homer, in a barbarous age before the dawn of his- 
 tory, but scarcely more than two centuries since, 
 and who has allowed himself in his works a wider 
 range, wherein it was obviously more difficult to 
 hide his idiosyncracy, than any man before him 
 ever dared to attempt ? But it is this very vastness 
 which makes Shakspeare so mysterious. Goethe 
 has somewhere a chapter on this subject, entitled 
 " Shakspeare and no end," and justly, for his 
 works are the most complete symbol of the infinite 
 
AND THE MEN TO BE ADMIRED. 249 
 
 we possess. He has identified himself with none of 
 his characters. We cannot discover that he sympa- 
 thises more strongly with Hamlet or Jaques than 
 with FalstafF or Mercutio. There have been men 
 whose souls were " like stars, and dwelt apart," but 
 it was often in ignorance ; Shakspeare dwelt apart in 
 the fulness of knowledge and wisdom. It is, there- 
 fore, impossible to comprehend him thoroughly; 
 but, notwithstanding some passages, which were 
 probably interpolated, or which appeared to his 
 age in a light very different from what they do to 
 ours, thus much we may certainly affirm, that his 
 mind could not have been other than gentle, noble, 
 and pure. His gentleness is shewn by his constant 
 though chaste appeals to all the better feelings of 
 human nature, his nobility by the justness and fine 
 moral perception of his sentiments, his purity by 
 his exquisite and unequalled delineations of women. 
 What freedom, too, from selfishness in the beautiful 
 sonnet on his own death, in the very point where 
 selfishness is most venial, the desire to be lamented 
 when we die ! Of Shakspeare's moral man, then, we 
 may know something, but the intellectual is beyond 
 our grasp, and, indeed, no theme for criticism, 
 which may find perpetual employment in searching 
 for the hidden treasures of that mighty deep. As 
 Cicero said of the productions of physical nature, 
 
250 OF THE MEN TO BE LOVED 
 
 his excellences are in multitude incredible, in variety 
 insatiable. 
 
 Among our older prose writers there is not one 
 more worthy to be loved than Hooker. He has 
 not, indeed, with Shakspeare thrown a broad light 
 over all the feelings and actions of men, or with 
 Bacon over all their knowledge ; but his imagina- 
 tion is scarcely less poetical than Bacon's, his reason 
 almost equally exact and searching, his periods not 
 less stately or less sonorous ; and nowhere, perhaps, 
 shall we find united in the same individual, in the 
 same degree, such profound wisdom, such fervent 
 piety, such exalted goodness. 
 
 If any farther illustration of the constituent qua- 
 lities of a fine mind be necessary, perhaps no better 
 can be given than Locke's epitaph, written by him- 
 fcelf: — 
 
 " Hie juxta situs est Johannes Locke. Si qualis 
 fuerit rogas, mediocritate sua contentum se vixisse 
 respondet. Literis innutritus, eo usque profecit ut 
 veritati unice litaret. Hoc ex scriptis illius disce ; 
 quae, quod de eo reliquum est, majori fide tibi 
 exhibebunt quam epitaphii suspecta elogia. Vir- 
 tutes si quas habuit, minores sane, quam sibi laudi, 
 tibi in exemplum proponerentur. Vitia una sepe- 
 liantur. Morum exemplum si quseras, in Evangelio 
 habes ; vitiorum utinam nusquam : mortalitatis certe 
 quod prosit hie et ubique." 
 
AND THE MEN TO BE ADMIRED. 251 
 
 Of the famous literary triumvirate of the last 
 century, Pope, Swift, and Bolingbroke, the peevish 
 poet is surely to be preferred to the hard-hearted 
 misanthrope, or the unprincipled voluptuary ; 
 though St. John was one rich in all natural 
 gifts — 
 
 " Mercurio ingenio, Jupiter ventura, 
 Marte valor, y Venus hermosura."* 
 
 Hazlitt has remarked, in his Essay " On the Men 
 one would like to have seen," the peculiar elegance 
 of Pope's compliments. They shew extreme tact 
 and delicacy of mind, but the subjects of some of 
 them occasionally remind us of his own comparison 
 of straws preserved in amber. Pope had a feeling 
 heart, as even Swift testifies — 
 
 " Poor Pope will grieve a month, and Gay 
 A week, and Arbuthnot a day." 
 
 Among our own contemporaries, the author of 
 the Doctor and Charles Lamb are the most Platonic 
 in disposition, which, as the former remarks, is the 
 one thing unchangeable through life. Lamb, quaint 
 and affected as he is, has an exquisite sense of the 
 beautiful, the humorous, and the pathetick. He is 
 remarkable for deep and striking thoughts, which he 
 pours forth in all their natural rawness, though 
 
 * Calderon. 
 
252 OF THE MEN TO BE LOVED 
 
 there is truth and novelty enough in them to make 
 the fortunes of many a cooker up of systems. 
 Lamb, like Montaigne, is a most interesting study 
 for the psychologist ; he does not, with many writers 
 of more pretension, but less depth and courage, 
 give merely the results of long trains of thought, 
 but he shews us his mind in the very act of thinking, 
 he gives us his half-formed opinions ; he is content 
 to be ignorant of many things, — an excellent 
 symptom of intellectual health ; and if he can but 
 occasionally catch a glimpse for a moment of the 
 face of truth, darkly shadowed out in the ancient 
 mystery of the veiled goddess of Sais, he asks for 
 no more ; he has fulfilled his destiny. 
 
 It is not a bad test of a man's intellectual cha- 
 racter to ask him, when he has an opportunity of 
 giving a full and satisfactory answer, what he thinks 
 of the Doctor ? That answer, if he can give it, 
 will decide whether he is a Platonist or an Aristo- 
 telian, under one of -which heads, says Coleridge, all 
 thinkers may be classed. The beautiful is the author's 
 forte; in the odd and the curious, of which there is 
 certainly too much, he is less successful. The 
 boldness and originality of the design are worthy 
 of all praise ; the execution on the whole would 
 seem to require more vigour and less oddity. A 
 man can take up few books, however, from which 
 he is so likely to rise the better for reading. It 
 
AND THE MEN TO BE ADMIRED. 253 
 
 instils nothing with more earnestness than piety and 
 the cultivation of the domestic affections, at all 
 times and in all countries the true sources of 
 happiness. Both these, it is obvious, must come 
 from within, and without them what are the wonder- 
 working institutions of the credulous scoffers, who 
 practically believe in nothing save the fantastic 
 creations of their own self-love I Froth, foam, or 
 whatever is most unsubstantial. There are some 
 angry spots visible on the outer rind of the Doctor, 
 but all, we are persuaded, is calm and sound at the 
 core. 
 
 But enough of illustrations. Goethe has em- 
 bodied in the pregnant motto prefixed to these 
 remarks the chief qualities which make an author 
 loved ; a poetical imagination, candour, and warm 
 feelings. Delightful as the possession of these gifts 
 must enable a man to render a book, it is doubtful 
 whether they contribute much to his own happiness, 
 or peculiarly fit him for the worldly conflicts he 
 will have to endure. Certain it is that there are 
 few, if any noble-minded men who have not given 
 vent to feelings of bitter disappointment, when they 
 discovered the contrast between the ideal and the 
 real world. The energy of the expression may vary 
 according to the character of the utterer, but whe- 
 ther the language be that of the contemplative 
 north or of the impetuous south, the sentiment is 
 
254 OF THE MEN TO BE LOVED 
 
 still the same. What is calm philosophic despair in 
 Goethe, 
 
 " Bilde mir nicht ein was Rechts zu wissen, 
 Bilde mir nicht ein ich kcinnte was lehren 
 Die Menschen zu bessern und zu bekehren." 
 
 And Schiller, 
 
 " In des Herzens heilig stille Riiume 
 
 Muss du fliehen aus des Lebens Drang, 
 Freiheit lebt nur in dem Reich der Traume, 
 Und das Schone bliiht nur im Gesang." * 
 
 becomes heart-rending anguish in the mouth of the 
 ardent and unhappy Tasso, , 
 
 " Che piu si spera, o che s'attende omai ! 
 
 Dopo trionfo e palma, 
 
 Sol qui restano al' alma 
 Lutti e lamenti, e lagrimosi lai. 
 Che piu giova amicizia o giova amore ! 
 Ahi lagrime ! ahi dolore ! " 
 
 If misfortunes should be supposed to have over- 
 whelmed the mind of Tasso, let us turn to Petrarch, 
 the laurelled pet of princes and nations, the restorer 
 
 * This stanza runs naturally into English verse : 
 
 To the deep heart's silent, holy cell, 
 
 Must thou fly from out life's busy throng, 
 
 Freedom in the realm of dreams must dwell. 
 And the beautiful but blooms in song. 
 
AND THE MEN TO BE ADMIRED. 255 
 
 of literature, the creator of a language ; — who can 
 hope to run a more brilliant and glorious career ? 
 Yet what conclusion does he draw from it all ? The 
 best of things is death : 
 
 " Irrequietus homo per multos anxius annos 
 Ad mortem festinat iter ; mors optima rerum ! " 
 
 Many indeed may be disappointed and weary of 
 the world, but it is the christian alone who can 
 truly say at the last mysterious hour, when his 
 " feet stumble upon the dark mountains," 
 
 " atrTTourlr], TpiXKiffros, iwriXvde vv^ ipSeevvij" * 
 * Homer. 
 
 THE ENDv 
 
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