The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 12 of 12

The New Monthly Magazine.] [December, 1825.

This old-fashioned epithet might be supposed to have been bestowed ironically, or on the old principle—Ut lucus a non lucendo. Yet there is something in the sound that hits the fancy, and a sort of truth beyond appearances. To be sure, it is from a dull, homely ground that the gleams of mirth and jollity break out; but the streaks of light that tinge the evening sky are not the less striking on that account. The beams of the morning sun shining on the lonely glades, or through the idle branches of the tangled forest, the leisure, the freedom, ‘the pleasure of going and coming without knowing where,’ the troops of wild deer, the sports of the chase, and other rustic gambols, were sufficient to justify the well-known appellation of ‘Merry Sherwood,’ and in like manner, we may apply the phrase to Merry England. The smile is not the less sincere because it does not always play upon the cheek; and the jest is not the less welcome, nor the laugh less hearty, because they happen to be a relief from care or leaden-eyed melancholy. The instances are the more precious as they are rare; 16and we look forward to them with the greater good will, or back upon them with the greater gratitude, as we drain the last drop in the cup with particular relish. If not always gay or in good spirits, we are glad when any occasion draws us out of our natural gloom, and disposed to make the most of it. We may say with Silence in the play, ‘I have been merry once ere now,’—and this once was to serve him all his life; for he was a person of wonderful silence and gravity, though ‘he chirped over his cups,’ and announced with characteristic glee that ‘there were pippins and cheese to come.’ Silence was in this sense a merry man, that is, he would be merry if he could, and a very great economy of wit, like very slender fare, was a banquet to him, from the simplicity of his taste and habits. ‘Continents,’ says Hobbes, ‘have most of what they contain’—and in this view it may be contended that the English are the merriest people in the world, since they only show it on high-days and holidays. They are then like a schoolboy let loose from school, or like a dog that has slipped his collar. They are not gay like the French, who are one eternal smile of self-complacency, tortured into affectation, or spun into languid indifference, nor are they voluptuous and immersed in sensual indolence, like the Italians; but they have that sort of intermittent, fitful, irregular gaiety, which is neither worn out by habit, nor deadened by passion, but is sought with avidity as it takes the mind by surprise, is startled by a sense of oddity and incongruity, indulges its wayward humours or lively impulses, with perfect freedom and lightness of heart, and seizes occasion by the forelock, that it may return to serious business with more cheerfulness, and have something to beguile the hours of thought or sadness. I do not see how there can be high spirits without low ones; and every thing has its price according to circumstances. Perhaps we have to pay a heavier tax on pleasure, than some others: what skills it, so long as our good spirits and good hearts enable us to bear it?

‘They’ (the English), says Froissart, ‘amused themselves sadly after the fashion of their country’—ils se réjouissent tristement selon la coutume de leur pays. They have indeed a way of their own. Their mirth is a relaxation from gravity, a challenge to dull care to be gone; and one is not always clear at first, whether the appeal is successful. The cloud may still hang on the brow; the ice may not thaw at once. To help them out in their new character is an act of charity. Any thing short of hanging or drowning is something to begin with. They do not enter into their amusements the less doggedly because they may plague others. They like a thing the better for hitting them a rap on the knuckles, for making their blood tingle. They do not dance or sing, but they make good cheer—‘eat, 17drink, and are merry.’ No people are fonder of field-sports, Christmas gambols, or practical jests. Blindman’s-buff, hunt-the-slipper, hot-cockles, and snap-dragon, are all approved English games, full of laughable surprises and ‘hairbreadth ‘scapes,’ and serve to amuse the winter fire-side after the roast-beef and plum-pudding, the spiced ale and roasted crab, thrown (hissing-hot) into the foaming tankard. Punch (not the liquor, but the puppet) is not, I fear, of English origin; but there is no place, I take it, where he finds himself more at home or meets a more joyous welcome, where he collects greater crowds at the corners of streets, where he opens the eyes or distends the cheeks wider, or where the bangs and blows, the uncouth gestures, ridiculous anger and screaming voice of the chief performer excite more boundless merriment or louder bursts of laughter among all ranks and sorts of people. An English theatre is the very throne of pantomime; nor do I believe that the gallery and boxes of Drury Lane or Covent Garden filled on the proper occasions with holiday folks (big or little) yield the palm for undisguised, tumultuous, inextinguishable laughter to any spot in Europe. I do not speak of the refinement of the mirth (this is no fastidious speculation) but of its cordiality, on the return of these long looked-for and licensed periods; and I may add here, by way of illustration, that the English common people are a sort of grown children, spoiled and sulky perhaps, but full of glee and merriment, when their attention is drawn off by some sudden and striking object. The May-pole is almost gone out of fashion among us: but May-day, besides its flowering hawthorns and its pearly dews, has still its boasted exhibition of painted chimney-sweepers and their Jack-o’-the-Green, whose tawdry finery, bedizened faces, unwonted gestures, and short-lived pleasures call forth good-humoured smiles and looks of sympathy in the spectators. There is no place where trap-ball, fives, prison-base, foot-ball, quoits, bowls are better understood or more successfully practised; and the very names of a cricket bat and ball make English fingers tingle. What happy days must ‘Long Robinson’ have passed in getting ready his wickets and mending his bats, who when two of the fingers of his right hand were struck off by the violence of a ball, had a screw fastened to it to hold the bat, and with the other hand still sent the ball thundering against the boards that bounded Old Lord’s cricket-ground! What delightful hours must have been his in looking forward to the matches that were to come, in recounting the feats he had performed in those that were past! I have myself whiled away whole mornings in seeing him strike the ball (like a countryman mowing with a scythe) to the farthest extremity of the smooth, level, sun-burnt ground, and with long, awkward strides count the notches that made victory sure! 18Then again, cudgel-playing, quarter-staff, bull and badger-baiting, cock-fighting are almost the peculiar diversions of this island, and often objected to us as barbarous and cruel; horse-racing is the delight and the ruin of numbers; and the noble science of boxing is all our own. Foreigners can scarcely understand how we can squeeze pleasure out of this pastime; the luxury of hard blows given or received; the joy of the ring; nor the perseverance of the combatants.^[4] The English also excel, or are not excelled in wiring a hare, in stalking a deer, in shooting, fishing, and hunting. England to this day boasts her Robin Hood and his merry men, that stout archer and outlaw, and patron saint of the sporting-calendar. What a cheerful sound is that of the hunters, issuing from the autumnal wood and sweeping over hill and dale!

What sparkling richness in the scarlet coats of the riders, what a glittering confusion in the pack, what spirit in the horses, what eagerness in the followers on foot, as they disperse over the plain, or force their way over hedge and ditch! Surely, the coloured prints and pictures of these, hung up in gentlemen’s halls and village alehouses, however humble as works of art, have more life and health and spirit in them, and mark the pith and nerve of the national character more creditably than the mawkish, sentimental, affected designs of Theseus 19and Pirithous, and Æneas and Dido, pasted on foreign salons à manger, and the interior of country-houses. If our tastes are not epic, nor our pretensions lofty, they are simple and our own; and we may possibly enjoy our native rural sports, and the rude remembrances of them, with the truer relish on this account, that they are suited to us and we to them. The English nation, too, are naturally ‘brothers of the angle.’ This pursuit implies just that mixture of patience and pastime, of vacancy and thoughtfulness, of idleness and business, of pleasure and of pain, which is suited to the genius of an Englishman, and as I suspect, of no one else in the same degree. He is eminently gifted to stand in the situation assigned by Dr. Johnson to the angler, ‘at one end of a rod with a worm at the other.’ I should suppose no language can show such a book as an often-mentioned one, ‘Walton’s Complete Angler,’—so full of naïveté, of unaffected sprightliness, of busy trifling, of dainty songs, of refreshing brooks, of shady arbours, of happy thoughts and of the herb called Heart’s Ease! Some persons can see neither the wit nor wisdom of this genuine volume, as if a book as well as a man might not have a personal character belonging to it, amiable, venerable from the spirit of joy and thorough goodness it manifests, independently of acute remarks or scientific discoveries: others object to the cruelty of Walton’s theory and practice of trout-fishing—for my part, I should as soon charge an infant with cruelty for killing a fly, and I feel the same sort of pleasure in reading his book as I should have done in the company of this happy, child-like old man, watching his ruddy cheek, his laughing eye, the kindness of his heart, and the dexterity of his hand in seizing his finny prey! It must be confessed, there is often an odd sort of materiality in English sports and recreations. I have known several persons, whose existence consisted wholly in manual exercises, and all whose enjoyments lay at their finger-ends. Their greatest happiness was in cutting a stick, in mending a cabbage-net, in digging a hole in the ground, in hitting a mark, turning a lathe, or in something else of the same kind, at which they had a certain knack. Well is it when we can amuse ourselves with such trifles and without injury to others! This class of character, which the Spectator has immortalised in the person of Will Wimble, is still common among younger brothers and gentlemen of retired incomes in town or country. The Cockney character is of our English growth, as this intimates a feverish fidgety delight in rural sights and sounds, and a longing wish, after the turmoil and confinement of a city-life, to transport one’s-self to the freedom and breathing sweetness of a country retreat. London is half suburbs. The suburbs of Paris are a desert; and you see nothing but crazy wind-mills, stone-walls, and a few straggling visitants in 20spots where in England you would find a thousand villas, a thousand terraces crowned with their own delights, or be stunned with the noise of bowling-greens and tea-gardens, or stifled with the fumes of tobacco mingling with fragrant shrubs, or the clouds of dust raised by half the population of the metropolis panting and toiling in search of a mouthful of fresh air. The Parisian is, perhaps, as well (or better) contented with himself wherever he is, stewed in his shop or his garret; the Londoner is miserable in these circumstances, and glad to escape from them.^[5] Let no one object to the gloomy appearance of a London Sunday, compared with a Parisian one. It is a part of our politics and our religion: we would not have James the First’s ‘Book of Sports’ thrust down our throats: and besides, it is a part of our character to do one thing at a time, and not to be dancing a jig and on our knees in the same breath. It is true the Englishman spends his Sunday evening at the alehouse—

but he only unbends and waxes mellow by degrees, and sits soaking till he can neither sit, stand, nor go: it is his vice, and a beastly one it is, but not a proof of any inherent distaste to mirth or good-fellowship. Neither can foreigners throw the carnival in our teeth with any effect: those who have seen it (at Florence, for example), will say that it is duller than any thing in England. Our Bartholomew-Fair is Queen Mab herself to it! What can be duller than a parcel of masks moving about the streets and looking as grave and monotonous as possible from day to day, and with the same lifeless formality in their limbs and gestures as in their features? One might as well expect variety and spirit in a procession of wax-work. We must be hard run indeed, when we have recourse to a pasteboard proxy to set off our mirth: a mask may be a very good cover for licentiousness (though of that I saw no signs), but it is a very bad exponent of wit and humour. I should suppose there is more drollery and unction in the caricatures in Gilray’s shop-window, than in all the masks in Italy, without exception.^[6]

The humour of English writing and description has often been wondered at; and it flows from the same source as the merry 21traits of our character. A degree of barbarism and rusticity seems necessary to the perfection of humour. The droll and laughable depend on peculiarity and incongruity of character. But with the progress of refinement, the peculiarities of individuals and of classes wear out or lose their sharp, abrupt edges; nay, a certain slowness and dulness of understanding is required to be struck with odd and unaccountable appearances, for which a greater facility of apprehension can sooner assign an explanation that breaks the force of the seeming absurdity, and to which a wider scope of imagination is more easily reconciled. Clowns and country people are more amused, are more disposed to laugh and make sport of the dress of strangers, because from their ignorance the surprise is greater, and they cannot conceive any thing to be natural or proper to which they are unused. Without a given portion of hardness and repulsiveness of feeling the ludicrous cannot well exist. Wonder, and curiosity, the attributes of inexperience, enter greatly into its composition. Now it appears to me that the English are (or were) just at that mean point between intelligence and obtuseness, which must produce the most abundant and happiest crop of humour. Absurdity and singularity glide over the French mind without jarring or jostling with it; or they evaporate in levity:—with the Italians they are lost in indolence or pleasure. The ludicrous takes hold of the English imagination, and clings to it with all its ramifications. We resent any difference or peculiarity of appearance at first, and yet, having not much malice at our hearts, we are glad to turn it into a jest—we are liable to be offended, and as willing to be pleased—struck with oddity from not knowing what to make of it, we wonder and burst out a laughing at the eccentricity of others, while we follow our own bent from wilfulness or simplicity, and thus afford them, in our turn, matter for the indulgence of the comic vein. It is possible that a greater refinement of manners may give birth to finer distinctions of satire and a nicer tact for the ridiculous: but our insular situation and character are, I should say, most likely to foster, as they have in fact fostered, the greatest quantity of natural and striking humour, in spite of our plodding tenaciousness, and want both of gaiety and quickness of perception. A set of raw recruits with their awkward movements and unbending joints are laughable enough: but they cease to be so, when they have once been drilled into discipline and uniformity. So it is with nations that lose their angular points and grotesque qualities with education and intercourse: but it is in a mixed state of manners that comic humour chiefly flourishes, for, in order that the drollery may not be lost, we must have spectators of the passing scene who are able to appreciate and embody its most remarkable 22features,—wits as well as butts for ridicule. I shall mention two names in this department, which may serve to redeem the national character from absolute dulness and solemn pretence,—Fielding and Hogarth. These were thorough specimens of true English humour; yet both were grave men. In reality, too high a pitch of animal spirits runs away with the imagination, instead of helping it to reach the goal; is inclined to take the jest for granted when it ought to work it out with patient and marked touches, and it ends in vapid flippancy and impertinence. Among our neighbours on the Continent, Moliere and Rabelais carried the freedom of wit and humour to an almost incredible height; but they rather belonged to the old French school, and even approach and exceed the English licence and extravagance of conception. I do not consider Congreve’s wit (though it belongs to us) as coming under the article here spoken of; for his genius is any thing but merry. Lord Byron was in the habit of railing at the spirit of our good old comedy, and of abusing Shakspeare’s Clowns and Fools, which he said the refinement of the French and Italian stage would not endure, and which only our grossness and puerile taste could tolerate. In this I agree with him; and it is pat to my purpose. I flatter myself that we are almost the only people left who understand and relish nonsense. We are not ‘merry and wise,’ but indulge our mirth to excess and folly. When we trifle, we trifle in good earnest; and having once relaxed our hold of the helm, drift idly down the stream, and delighted with the change are tossed about ‘by every little breath’ of whim or caprice,

All we then want is to proclaim a truce with reason, and to be pleased with as little expense of thought or pretension to wisdom as possible. This licensed fooling is carried to its very utmost length in Shakspeare, and in some other of our elder dramatists, without, perhaps, sufficient warrant or the same excuse. Nothing can justify this extreme relaxation but extreme tension. Shakspeare’s trifling does indeed tread upon the very borders of vacancy: his meaning often hangs by the very slenderest threads. For this he might be blamed if it did not take away our breath to follow his eagle flights, or if he did not at other times make the cordage of our hearts crack. After our heads ache with thinking, it is fair to play the fool. The clowns were as proper an appendage to the gravity of our antique literature, as fools and dwarfs were to the stately dignity of courts and noble houses in former days. Of all people, they have the best right to claim a total exemption from rules and rigid formality, who, when they have any thing of importance to do, set about it with the 23greatest earnestness and perseverance, and are generally grave and sober to a proverb.^[7] Poor Swift, who wrote more idle or nonsense verses than any man, was the severest of moralists; and his feelings and observations morbidly acute. Did not Lord Byron himself follow up his Childe Harold with his Don Juan?—not that I insist on what he did as an illustration of the English character. He was one of the English Nobility, not one of the English People; and his occasional ease and familiarity were in my mind equally constrained and affected, whether in relation to the pretensions of his rank or the efforts of his genius.

They ask you in France, how you pass your time in England without amusements; and can with difficulty believe that there are theatres in London, still less that they are larger and handsomer than those in Paris. That we should have comic actors, ‘they own, surprises them.’ They judge of the English character in the lump as one great jolter-head, containing all the stupidity of the country, as the large ball at the top of the Dispensary in Warwick-lane, from its resemblance to a gilded pill, has been made to represent the whole pharmacopœia and professional quackery of the kingdom. They have no more notion, for instance, how we should have such an actor as Liston on our stage, than if we were to tell them we have parts performed by a sea-otter; nor if they were to see him, would they be much the wiser, or know what to think of his unaccountable twitches of countenance or nondescript gestures, of his teeth chattering in his head, his eyes that seem dropping from their sockets, his nose that is tickled by a jest as by a feather and shining with self-complacency as if oiled, his ignorant conceit, his gaping stupor, his lumpish vivacity in Lubin Log or Tony Lumpkin; for as our rivals do not wind up the machine to such a determined intensity of purpose, neither have they any idea of its running down to such degrees of imbecility and folly, or coming to an absolute stand still and lack of meaning, nor can they enter into or be amused with the contrast. No people ever laugh heartily who can give a reason for their doing so: and I believe the English in general are not yet in this predicament. They are not metaphysical, but very much in a state of nature; and this is one main ground why I give them credit for being merry, notwithstanding appearances. Their mirth is not the mirth of vice or desperation, but of innocence and a native wildness. They do not cavil or boggle at niceties, and not merely come to the edge of a joke, but break their necks over it with a wanton ‘Here goes,’ where others make a pirouette and stand upon decorum. The 24French cannot, however, be persuaded of the excellence of our comic stage, nor of the store we set by it. When they ask what amusements we have, it is plain they can never have heard of Mrs. Jordan, nor King, nor Bannister, nor Suett, nor Munden, nor Lewis, nor little Simmons, nor Dodd, and Parsons, and Emery, and Miss Pope, and Miss Farren, and all those who even in my time have gladdened a nation and ‘made life’s business like a summer’s dream.’ Can I think of them, and of their names that glittered in the playbills when I was young, exciting all the flutter of hope and expectation of seeing them in their favourite parts of Nell, or Little Pickle, or Touchstone, or Sir Peter Teazle, or Lenitive in the Prize, or Lingo, or Crabtree, or Nipperkin, or old Dornton, or Ranger, or the Copper Captain, or Lord Sands, or Filch, or Moses, or Sir Andrew Aguecheek, or Acres, or Elbow, or Hodge, or Flora, or the Duenna, or Lady Teazle, or Lady Grace, or of the gaiety that sparkled in all eyes, and the delight that overflowed all hearts, as they glanced before us in these parts,

and not feel my heart yearn within me, or couple the thoughts of England and the spleen together? Our cloud has at least its rainbow tints; ours is not one long polar night of cold and dulness, but we have the gleaming lights of fancy to amuse us, the household fires of truth and genius to warm us. We can go to a play and see Liston; or stay at home and read Roderick Random; or have Hogarth’s prints of Marriage à la Mode hanging round our room. ‘Tut! there’s livers even in England,’ as well as ‘out of it.’ We are not quite the forlorn hope of humanity, the last of nations. The French look at us across the Channel, and seeing nothing but water and a cloudy mist, think that this is England.

If they have any farther idea of us, it is of George III. and our Jack tars, the House of Lords and House of Commons, and this is no great addition to us. To go beyond this, to talk of arts and elegances as having taken up their abode here, or to say that Mrs. Abington was equal to Mademoiselle Mars, and that we at one time got up the ‘School for Scandal,’ as they do the ‘Misanthrope,’ is to persuade them that Iceland is a pleasant summer-retreat, or to recommend the whale-fishery as a classical amusement. The French are the cockneys of Europe, and have no idea how any one can exist out of Paris, or be alive without incessant grimace and jabber. Yet what 25imports it? What! though the joyous train I have just enumerated were, perhaps, never heard of in the precincts of the Palais-Royal, is it not enough that they gave pleasure where they were, to those who saw and heard them? Must our laugh, to be sincere, have its echo on the other side of the water? Had not the French their favourites and their enjoyments at the time, that we knew nothing of? Why then should we not have ours (and boast of them too) without their leave? A monopoly of self-conceit is not a monopoly of all other advantages. The English, when they go abroad, do not take away the prejudice against them by their looks. We seem duller and sadder than we are. As I write this, I am sitting in the open air in a beautiful valley, near Vevey: Clarens is on my left, the Dent de Jamant is behind me, the rocks of Meillerie opposite: under my feet is a green bank, enamelled with white and purple flowers, in which a dew-drop here and there still glitters with pearly light—

Intent upon the scene and upon the thoughts that stir within me, I conjure up the cheerful passages of my life, and a crowd of happy images appear before me. No one would see it in my looks—my eyes grow dull and fixed, and I seem rooted to the spot, as all this phantasmagoria passes in review before me, glancing a reflex lustre on the face of the world and nature. But the traces of pleasure, in my case, sink into an absorbent ground of thoughtful melancholy, and require to be brought out by time and circumstances, or (as the critics tell you) by the varnish of style!

The comfort, on which the English lay so much stress, is of the same character, and arises from the same source as their mirth. Both exist by contrast and a sort of contradiction. The English are certainly the most uncomfortable of all people in themselves, and therefore it is that they stand in need of every kind of comfort and accommodation. The least thing puts them out of their way, and therefore every thing must be in its place. They are mightily offended at disagreeable tastes and smells, and therefore they exact the utmost neatness and nicety. They are sensible of heat and cold, and therefore they cannot exist, unless every thing is snug and warm, or else open and airy, where they are. They must have ‘all appliances and means to boot.’ They are afraid of interruption and intrusion, and therefore they shut themselves up in in-door enjoyments and by their own firesides. It is not that they require luxuries (for that implies a high degree of epicurean indulgence and gratification), but they cannot do without their comforts; that is, whatever tends to supply their physical wants, and ward off physical pain and annoyance. 26As they have not a fund of animal spirits and enjoyments in themselves, they cling to external objects for support, and derive solid satisfaction from the ideas of order, cleanliness, plenty, property, and domestic quiet, as they seek for diversion from odd accidents and grotesque surprises, and have the highest possible relish not of voluptuous softness, but of hard knocks and dry blows, as one means of ascertaining their personal identity.

The New Monthly Magazine.] [January, 1826.

B—— it was, I think, who suggested this subject, as well as the defence of Guy Faux, which I urged him to execute. As, however, he would undertake neither, I suppose I must do both—a task for which he would have been much fitter, no less from the temerity than the felicity of his pen—

Compared with him I shall, I fear, make but a common-place piece of business of it; but I should be loth the idea was entirely lost, and besides I may avail myself of some hints of his in the progress of it. I am sometimes, I suspect, a better reporter of the ideas of other people than expounder of my own. I pursue the one too far into paradox or mysticism; the others I am not bound to follow farther than I like, or than seems fair and reasonable.

On the question being started, A—— said, ‘I suppose the two first persons you would choose to see would be the two greatest names in English literature, Sir Isaac Newton and Mr. Locke?’ In this A——, as usual, reckoned without his host. Every one burst out a laughing at the expression of B——’s face, in which impatience was restrained by courtesy. ‘Yes, the greatest names,’ he stammered out hastily, ‘but they were not persons—not persons.’—‘Not persons?’ said A——, looking wise and foolish at the same time, afraid his triumph might be premature. ‘That is,’ rejoined B——, ‘not characters, you know. By Mr. Locke and Sir Isaac Newton, you mean the Essay on the Human Understanding, and the Principia, which we have to this day. Beyond their contents there is nothing personally interesting in the men. But what we want to 27see any one bodily for, is when there is something peculiar, striking in the individuals, more than we can learn from their writings, and yet are curious to know. I dare say Locke and Newton were very like Kneller’s portraits of them. But who could paint Shakspeare?’—‘Ay,’ retorted A——, ‘there it is; then I suppose you would prefer seeing him and Milton instead?’—‘No,’ said B——, ‘neither. I have seen so much of Shakspeare on the stage and on book-stalls, in frontispieces and on mantle-pieces, that I am quite tired of the everlasting repetition: and as to Milton’s face, the impressions that have come down to us of it I do not like; it is too starched and puritanical; and I should be afraid of losing some of the manna of his poetry in the leaven of his countenance and the precisian’s band and gown.’—‘I shall guess no more,’ said A——. ‘Who is it, then, you would like to see “in his habit as he lived,” if you had your choice of the whole range of English literature?’ B—— then named Sir Thomas Brown and Fulke Greville, the friend of Sir Philip Sidney, as the two worthies whom he should feel the greatest pleasure to encounter on the floor of his apartment in their nightgown and slippers, and to exchange friendly greeting with them. At this A—— laughed outright, and conceived B—— was jesting with him; but as no one followed his example, he thought there might be something in it, and waited for an explanation in a state of whimsical suspense. B—— then (as well as I can remember a conversation that passed twenty years ago—how time slips!) went on as follows. ‘The reason why I pitch upon these two authors is, that their writings are riddles, and they themselves the most mysterious of personages. They resemble the soothsayers of old, who dealt in dark hints and doubtful oracles; and I should like to ask them the meaning of what no mortal but themselves, I should suppose, can fathom. There is Dr. Johnson, I have no curiosity, no strange uncertainty about him: he and Boswell together have pretty well let me into the secret of what passed through his mind. He and other writers like him are sufficiently explicit: my friends, whose repose I should be tempted to disturb, (were it in my power) are implicit, inextricable, inscrutable.

‘When I look at that obscure but gorgeous prose-composition (the Urn-burial) I seem to myself to look into a deep abyss, at the bottom of which are hid pearls and rich treasure; or it is like a stately labyrinth of doubt and withering speculation, and I would invoke the spirit of the author to lead me through it. Besides, who would not 28be curious to see the lineaments of a man who, having himself been twice married, wished that mankind were propagated like trees! As to Fulke Greville, he is like nothing but one of his own “Prologues spoken by the ghost of an old king of Ormus,” a truly formidable and inviting personage: his style is apocalyptical, cabalistical, a knot worthy of such an apparition to untie; and for the unravelling a passage or two, I would stand the brunt of an encounter with so portentous a commentator!’—‘I am afraid in that case,’ said A——, ‘that if the mystery were once cleared up, the merit might be lost;‘—and turning to me, whispered a friendly apprehension, that while B—— continued to admire these old crabbed authors, he would never become a popular writer. Dr. Donne was mentioned as a writer of the same period, with a very interesting countenance, whose history was singular, and whose meaning was often quite as uncomeatable, without a personal citation from the dead, as that of any of his contemporaries. The volume was produced; and while some one was expatiating on the exquisite simplicity and beauty of the portrait prefixed to the old edition, A—— got hold of the poetry, and exclaiming ‘What have we here?’ read the following:—

There was no resisting this, till B——, seizing the volume, turned to the beautiful ‘Lines to his Mistress,’ dissuading her from accompanying him abroad, and read them with suffused features and a faltering tongue.

Some one then inquired of B—— if we could not see from the window the Temple-walk in which Chaucer used to take his exercise; and on his name being put to the vote, I was pleased to find that there was a general sensation in his favour in all but A——, who said something about the ruggedness of the metre, and even objected to the quaintness of the orthography. I was vexed at this superficial gloss, pertinaciously reducing every thing to its own trite level, and asked ‘if he did not think it would be worth while to scan the eye that had first greeted the Muse in that dim twilight and early dawn of English literature; to see the head, round which the visions of fancy must have played like gleams of inspiration or a sudden glory; to watch those lips that “lisped in numbers, for the numbers came”—as 30by a miracle, or as if the dumb should speak? Nor was it alone that he had been the first to tune his native tongue (however imperfectly to modern ears); but he was himself a noble, manly character, standing before his age and striving to advance it; a pleasant humourist withal, who has not only handed down to us the living manners of his time, but had, no doubt, store of curious and quaint devices, and would make as hearty a companion as Mine Host of Tabard. His interview with Petrarch is fraught with interest. Yet I would rather have seen Chaucer in company with the author of the Decameron, and have heard them exchange their best stories together, the Squire’s Tale against the Story of the Falcon, the Wife of Bath’s Prologue against the Adventures of Friar Albert. How fine to see the high mysterious brow which learning then wore, relieved by the gay, familiar tone of men of the world, and by the courtesies of genius. Surely, the thoughts and feelings which passed through the minds of these great revivers of learning, these Cadmuses who sowed the teeth of letters, must have stamped an expression on their features, as different from the moderns as their books, and well worth the perusal. Dante,’ I continued, ‘is as interesting a person as his own Ugolino, one whose lineaments curiosity would as eagerly devour in order to penetrate his spirit, and the only one of the Italian poets I should care much to see. There is a fine portrait of Ariosto by no less a hand than Titian’s; light, Moorish, spirited, but not answering our idea. The same artist’s large colossal profile of Peter Aretine is the only likeness of the kind that has the effect of conversing with “the mighty dead,” and this is truly spectral, ghastly, necromantic.’ B—— put it to me if I should like to see Spenser as well as Chaucer; and I answered without hesitation, ‘No; for that his beauties were ideal, visionary, not palpable or personal, and therefore connected with less curiosity about the man. His poetry was the essence of romance, a very halo round the bright orb of fancy; and the bringing in the individual might dissolve the charm. No tones of voice could come up to the mellifluous cadence of his verse; no form but of a winged angel could vie with the airy shapes he has described. He was (to our apprehensions) rather “a creature of the element, that lived in the rainbow and played in the plighted clouds,” than an ordinary mortal. Or if he did appear, I should wish it to be as a mere vision, like one of his own pageants, and that he should pass by unquestioned like a dream or sound—

Captain C. muttered something about Columbus, and M. C. hinted 31at the Wandering Jew; but the last was set aside as spurious, and the first made over to the New World.

‘I should like,’ said Miss D——, ‘to have seen Pope talking with Patty Blount; and I have seen Goldsmith.’ Every one turned round to look at Miss D——, as if by so doing they too could get a sight of Goldsmith.

‘Where,’ asked a harsh croaking voice, ‘was Dr. Johnson in the years 1745–6? He did not write any thing that we know of, nor is there any account of him in Boswell during those two years. Was he in Scotland with the Pretender? He seems to have passed through the scenes in the Highlands in company with Boswell many years after “with lack-lustre eye,” yet as if they were familiar to him, or associated in his mind with interests that he durst not explain. If so, it would be an additional reason for my liking him; and I would give something to have seen him seated in the tent with the youthful Majesty of Britain, and penning the Proclamation to all true subjects and adherents of the legitimate Government.’

‘I thought,’ said A——, turning short round upon B——, ‘that you of the Lake School did not like Pope?’—‘Not like Pope! My dear sir, you must be under a mistake—I can read him over and over for ever!’—‘Why certainly, the “Essay on Man” must be masterpiece.’—‘It may be so, but I seldom look into it.’—‘Oh! then it’s his Satires you admire?’—‘No, not his Satires, but his friendly Epistles and his compliments.’—‘Compliments! I did not know he ever made any.’—‘The finest,’ said B——, ‘that were ever paid by the wit of man. Each of them is worth an estate for life—nay, is an immortality. There is that superb one to Lord Cornbury:

‘Was there ever more artful insinuation of idolatrous praise? And then that noble apotheosis of his friend Lord Mansfield (however little deserved), when, speaking of the House of Lords, he adds—

‘And with what a fine turn of indignant flattery he addresses Lord Bolingbroke—

32‘Or turn,’ continued B——, with a slight hectic on his cheek and his eye glistening, ‘to his list of early friends:

Here his voice totally failed him, and throwing down the book, he said, ‘Do you think I would not wish to have been friends with such a man as this?’

‘What say you to Dryden?’—‘He rather made a show of himself, and courted popularity in that lowest temple of Fame, a coffee-house, so as in some measure to vulgarize one’s idea of him. Pope, on the contrary, reached the very beau-ideal of what a poet’s life should be; and his fame while living seemed to be an emanation from that which was to circle his name after death. He was so far enviable (and one would feel proud to have witnessed the rare spectacle in him) that he was almost the only poet and man of genius who met with his reward on this side of the tomb, who realized in friends, fortune, the esteem of the world, the most sanguine hopes of a youthful ambition, and who found that sort of patronage from the great during his lifetime which they would be thought anxious to bestow upon him after his death. Read Gay’s verses to him on his supposed return from Greece, after his translation of Homer was finished, and say if you would not gladly join the bright procession that welcomed him home, or see it once more land at Whitehall-stairs.’—‘Still,’ said Miss D——, ‘I would rather have seen him talking with Patty Blount, or riding by in a coronet-coach with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu!’

E——, who was deep in a game of piquet at the other end of the room, whispered to M. C. to ask if Junius would not be a fit person to invoke from the dead. ‘Yes,’ said B——, ‘provided he would agree to lay aside his mask.’

We were now at a stand for a short time, when Fielding was mentioned as a candidate: only one, however, seconded the proposition. ‘Richardson?’—‘By all means, but only to look at him 33through the glass-door of his back-shop, hard at work upon one of his novels (the most extraordinary contrast that ever was presented between an author and his works), but not to let him come behind his counter lest he should want you to turn customer, nor to go upstairs with him, lest he should offer to read the first manuscript of Sir Charles Grandison, which was originally written in eight and twenty volumes octavo, or get out the letters of his female correspondents, to prove that Joseph Andrews was low.’

There was but one statesman in the whole of English history that any one expressed the least desire to see—Oliver Cromwell, with his fine, frank, rough, pimply face, and wily policy;—and one enthusiast, John Bunyan, the immortal author of the Pilgrim’s Progress. It seemed that if he came into the room, dreams would follow him, and that each person would nod under his golden cloud, ‘nigh-sphered in Heaven,’ a canopy as strange and stately as any in Homer.

Of all persons near our own time, Garrick’s name was received with the greatest enthusiasm, who was proposed by J. F——. He presently superseded both Hogarth and Handel, who had been talked of, but then it was on condition that he should act in tragedy and comedy, in the play and the farce, Lear and Wildair and Abel Drugger. What a sight for sore eyes that would be! Who would not part with a year’s income at least, almost with a year of his natural life, to be present at it? Besides, as he could not act alone, and recitations are unsatisfactory things, what a troop he must bring with him—the silver-tongued Barry, and Quin, and Shuter and Weston, and Mrs. Clive and Mrs. Pritchard, of whom I have heard my father speak as so great a favourite when he was young! This would indeed be a revival of the dead, the restoring of art; and so much the more desirable, as such is the lurking scepticism mingled with our overstrained admiration of past excellence, that though we have the speeches of Burke, the portraits of Reynolds, the writings of Goldsmith, and the conversation of Johnson, to show what people could do at that period, and to confirm the universal testimony to the merits of Garrick; yet, as it was before our time, we have our misgivings, as if he was probably after all little better than a Bartlemy-fair actor, dressed out to play Macbeth in a scarlet coat and laced cocked-hat. For one, I should like to have seen and heard with my own eyes and ears. Certainly, by all accounts, if any one was ever moved by the true histrionic æstus, it was Garrick. When he followed the Ghost in Hamlet, he did not drop the sword, as most actors do behind the scenes, but kept the point raised the whole way round, so fully was he possessed with the idea, or so anxious not to lose sight of his part for a moment. Once at a splendid dinner-party 34at Lord ——’s, they suddenly missed Garrick, and could not imagine what was become of him, till they were drawn to the window by the convulsive screams and peals of laughter of a young negro boy, who was rolling on the ground in an ecstasy of delight to see Garrick mimicking a turkey-cock in the court-yard, with his coat-tail stuck out behind, and in a seeming flutter of feathered rage and pride. Of our party only two persons present had seen the British Roscius; and they seemed as willing as the rest to renew their acquaintance with their old favourite.

We were interrupted in the hey-day and mid-career of this fanciful speculation, by a grumbler in a corner, who declared it was a shame to make all this rout about a mere player and farce-writer, to the neglect and exclusion of the fine old dramatists, the contemporaries and rivals of Shakspeare. B—— said he had anticipated this objection when he had named the author of Mustapha and Alaham; and out of caprice insisted upon keeping him to represent the set, in preference to the wild hair-brained enthusiast Kit Marlowe; to the sexton of St. Ann’s, Webster, with his melancholy yew-trees and death’s-heads; to Deckar, who was but a garrulous proser; to the voluminous Heywood; and even to Beaumont and Fletcher, whom we might offend by complimenting the wrong author on their joint productions. Lord Brook, on the contrary, stood quite by himself, or in Cowley’s words, was ‘a vast species alone.’ Some one hinted at the circumstance of his being a lord, which rather startled B——, but he said a ghost would perhaps dispense with strict etiquette, on being regularly addressed by his title. Ben Jonson divided our suffrages pretty equally. Some were afraid he would begin to traduce Shakspeare, who was not present to defend himself. ‘If he grows disagreeable,’ it was whispered aloud, ‘there is G—— can match him.’ At length, his romantic visit to Drummond of Hawthornden was mentioned, and turned the scale in his favour.

B—— inquired if there was any one that was hanged that I would choose to mention? And I answered, Eugene Aram.^[8] The name of the ‘Admirable Crichton’ was suddenly started as a splendid example of waste talents, so different from the generality of his countrymen. This choice was mightily approved by a North-Briton present, who declared himself descended from that prodigy of learning and accomplishment, and said he had family-plate in his possession as vouchers for the fact, with the initials A. C.—Admirable Crichton! H—— laughed or rather roared as heartily at this as I should think he has done for many years.

35The last-named Mitre-courtier^[9] then wished to know whether there were any metaphysicians to whom one might be tempted to apply the wizard spell? I replied, there were only six in modern times deserving the name—Hobbes, Berkeley, Butler, Hartley, Hume, Leibnitz; and perhaps Jonathan Edwards, a Massachusets man.^[10] As to the French, who talked fluently of having created this science, there was not a title in any of their writings, that was not to be found literally in the authors I had mentioned. [Horne Tooke, who might have a claim to come in under the head of Grammar, was still living.] None of these names seemed to excite much interest, and I did not plead for the re-appearance of those who might be thought best fitted by the abstracted nature of their studies for their present spiritual and disembodied state, and who, even while on this living stage, were nearly divested of common flesh and blood. As A—— with an uneasy fidgetty face was about to put some question about Mr. Locke and Dugald Stewart, he was prevented by M. C. who observed, ‘If J—— was here, he would undoubtedly be for having up those profound and redoubted scholiasts, Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus.’ I said this might be fair enough in him who had read or fancied he had read the original works, but I did not see how we could have any right to call up these authors to give an account of themselves in person, till we had looked into their writings.

By this time it should seem that some rumour of our whimsical deliberation had got wind, and had disturbed the irritabile genus in their shadowy abodes, for we received messages from several candidates that we had just been thinking of. Gray declined our invitation, though he had not yet been asked: Gay offered to come and bring in his hand the Duchess of Bolton, the original Polly: Steele and Addison left their cards as Captain Sentry and Sir Roger de Coverley: Swift came in and sat down without speaking a word, and quitted the room as abruptly: Otway and Chatterton were seen lingering on the opposite side of the Styx, but could not muster enough between them to pay Charon his fare: Thomson fell asleep in the boat, and was 36rowed back again—and Burns sent a low fellow, one John Barleycorn, an old companion of his who had conducted him to the other world, to say that he had during his lifetime been drawn out of his retirement as a show, only to be made an exciseman of, and that he would rather remain where he was. He desired, however, to shake hands by his representative—the hand, thus held out, was in a burning fever, and shook prodigiously.

The room was hung round with several portraits of eminent painters. While we were debating whether we should demand speech with these masters of mute eloquence, whose features were so familiar to us, it seemed that all at once they glided from their frames, and seated themselves at some little distance from us. There was Leonardo with his majestic beard and watchful eye, having a bust of Archimedes before him; next him was Raphael’s graceful head turned round to the Fornarina; and on his other side was Lucretia Borgia, with calm, golden locks; Michael Angelo had placed the model of St. Peter’s on the table before him; Corregio had an angel at his side; Titian was seated with his Mistress between himself and Giorgioni; Guido was accompanied by his own Aurora, who took a dice-box from him; Claude held a mirror in his hand; Rubens patted a beautiful panther (led in by a satyr) on the head; Vandyke appeared as his own Paris, and Rembrandt was hid under furs, gold chains and jewels, which Sir Joshua eyed closely, holding his hand so as to shade his forehead. Not a word was spoken; and as we rose to do them homage, they still presented the same surface to the view. Not being bonâ-fide representations of living people, we got rid of the splendid apparitions by signs and dumb show. As soon as they had melted into thin air, there was a loud noise at the outer door, and we found it was Giotto, Cimabue, and Ghirlandaio, who had been raised from the dead by their earnest desire to see their illustrious successors—

Finding them gone, they had no ambition to be seen after them, and mournfully withdrew. ‘Egad!’ said B——, ‘those are the very fellows I should like to have had some talk with, to know how they could see to paint when all was dark around them?’

‘But shall we have nothing to say,’ interrogated G. J——, ‘to the Legend of Good Women?’—‘Name, name, Mr. J——,’ cried H—— in a boisterous tone of friendly exultation, ‘name as many as you please, without reserve or fear of molestation!’ J—— was perplexed between so many amiable recollections, that the name of the 37lady of his choice expired in a pensive whiff of his pipe; and B—— impatiently declared for the Duchess of Newcastle. Mrs. Hutchinson was no sooner mentioned, than she carried the day from the Duchess. We were the less solicitous on this subject of filling up the posthumous lists of Good Women, as there was already one in the room as good, as sensible, and in all respects as exemplary, as the best of them could be for their lives! ‘I should like vastly to have seen Ninon de l’Enclos,’ said that incomparable person; and this immediately put us in mind that we had neglected to pay honour due to our friends on the other side of the Channel: Voltaire, the patriarch of levity, and Rousseau, the father of sentiment, Montaigne and Rabelais (great in wisdom and in wit), Moliere and that illustrious group that are collected round him (in the print of that subject) to hear him read his comedy of the Tartuffe at the house of Ninon; Racine, La Fontaine, Rochefoucault, St. Evremont, &c.

‘There is one person,’ said a shrill, querulous voice, ‘I would rather see than all these—Don Quixote!’

‘Come, come!’ said H——; ‘I thought we should have no heroes, real or fabulous. What say you, Mr. B——? Are you for eking out your shadowy list with such names as Alexander, Julius Cæsar, Tamerlane, or Ghengis Khan?’—‘Excuse me,’ said B——, ‘on the subject of characters in active life, plotters and disturbers of the world, I have a crotchet of my own, which I beg leave to reserve.’—‘No, no! come, out with your worthies!’—‘What do you think of Guy Faux and Judas Iscariot?’ H—— turned an eye upon him like a wild Indian, but cordial and full of smothered glee. ‘Your most exquisite reason!’ was echoed on all sides; and A—— thought that B—— had now fairly entangled himself. ‘Why, I cannot but think,’ retorted he of the wistful countenance, ‘that Guy Faux, that poor fluttering annual scare-crow of straw and rags, is an ill-used gentleman. I would give something to see him sitting pale and emaciated, surrounded by his matches and his barrels of gunpowder, and expecting the moment that was to transport him to Paradise for his heroic self-devotion; but if I say any more, there is that fellow G—— will make something of it. And as to Judas Iscariot, my reason is different. I would fain see the face of him, who, having dipped his hand in the same dish with the Son of Man, could afterwards betray him. I have no conception of such a thing; nor have I ever seen any picture (not even Leonardo’s very fine one) that gave me the least idea of it.’—‘You have said enough, Mr. B——, to justify your choice.’

‘Oh! ever right, Menenius,—ever right!’

‘There is only one other person I can ever think of after this,’ 38continued H——; but without mentioning a name that once put on a semblance of mortality. ‘If Shakspeare was to come into the room, we should all rise up to meet him; but if that person was to come into it, we should all fall down and try to kiss the hem of his garment!’

As a lady present seemed now to get uneasy at the turn the conversation had taken, we rose up to go. The morning broke with that dim, dubious light by which Giotto, Cimabue, and Ghirlandaio must have seen to paint their earliest works; and we parted to meet again and renew similar topics at night, the next night, and the night after that, till that night overspread Europe which saw no dawn. The same event, in truth, broke up our little Congress that broke up the great one. But that was to meet again: our deliberations have never been resumed.

The New Monthly Magazine.] [April, 1826.

The conversation of Lords is very different from that of authors. Mounted on horseback, they stick at nothing in the chace, and clear every obstacle with flying leaps, while we poor devils have no chance of keeping up with them with our clouten shoes and long hunting-poles. They have all the benefit of education, society, confidence, they read books, purchase pictures, breed horses, learn to ride, dance, and fence, look after their estates, travel abroad:—authors have none of these advantages, or inlets of knowledge, to assist them, except one, reading; and this is still more impoverished and clouded by the painful exercise of their own thoughts. The knowledge of the Great has a character of wealth and property in it, like the stores of the rich merchant or manufacturer, who lays his hands on all within his reach: the understanding of the student is like the workshop of the mechanic, who has nothing but what he himself creates. How difficult is the production, how small the display in the one case compared to the other! Most of Correggio’s designs are contained in one small room at Parma: how different from the extent and variety of some hereditary and princely collections!

The human mind has a trick (probably a very natural and consoling one) of striking a balance between the favours of wisdom and of fortune, and of making one thing a gratuitous and convenient foil to another. Whether this is owing to envy or to a love of justice, I 39will not say: but whichever it is owing to, I must own I do not think it well founded. A scholar is without money: therefore (to make the odds even) we argue (not very wisely) that a rich man must be without ideas. This does not follow. ‘The wish is father to that thought;’ and the thought is a spurious one. We might as well pretend, that because a man has the advantage of us in height, he is not strong or in good health; or because a woman is handsome, she is not at the same time young, accomplished and well-bred. Our fastidious self-love or our rustic prejudices may revolt at the accumulation of advantages in others; but we must learn to submit to the mortifying truth, which every day’s experience points out, with what grace we may. There were those who grudged to Lord Byron the name of a poet because he was of noble birth; as he himself could not endure the praises bestowed upon Wordsworth, whom he considered as a clown. He carried this weakness so far, that he even seemed to regard it as a piece of presumption in Shakspeare to be preferred before him as a dramatic author, and contended that Milton’s writing an epic poem and the ‘Answer to Salmasius’ was entirely owing to vanity—so little did he relish the superiority of the old blind schoolmaster. So it is that one party would arrogate every advantage to themselves, while those on the other side would detract from all in their rivals that they do not themselves possess. Some will not have the statue painted: others can see no beauty in the clay-model!

The man of rank and fortune, besides his chance for the common or (now and then) an uncommon share of wit and understanding, has it in his power to avail himself of every thing that is to be taught of art and science; he has tutors and valets at his beck; he may master the dead languages, he must acquire the modern ones; he moves in the highest circles, and may descend to the lowest; the paths of pleasure, of ambition, of knowledge, are open to him; he may devote himself to a particular study, or skim the cream of all; he may read books or men or things, as he finds most convenient or agreeable; he is not forced to confine his attention to some one dry uninteresting pursuit; he has a single hobby, or half a dozen; he is not distracted by care, by poverty and want of leisure; he has every opportunity and facility afforded him for acquiring various accomplishments of body or mind, and every encouragement, from confidence and success, for making an imposing display of them; he may laugh with the gay, jest with the witty, argue with the wise; he has been in courts, in colleges, and camps, is familiar with playhouses and taverns, with the riding-house and the dissecting-room, has been present at or taken part in the debates of both Houses of Parliament, was in the O. P. 40row, and is deep in the Fancy, understands the broadsword exercise, is a connoisseur in regimentals, plays the whole game at whist, is a tolerable proficient at backgammon, drives four in hand, skates, rows, swims, shoots; knows the different sorts of game and modes of agriculture in the different counties of England, the manufactures and commerce of the different towns, the politics of Europe, the campaigns in Spain, has the Gazette, the newspapers, and reviews at his fingers’ ends, has visited the finest scenes of Nature and beheld the choicest works of Art, and is in society where he is continually hearing or talking of all these things; and yet we are surprised to find that a person so circumstanced and qualified has any ideas to communicate or words to express himself, and is not, as by patent and prescription he was bound to be, a mere well-dressed fop of fashion or a booby lord! It would be less remarkable if a poor author, who has none of this giddy range and scope of information, who pores over the page till it fades from his sight, and refines upon his style till the words stick in his throat, should be dull as a beetle and mute as a fish, instead of spontaneously pouring out a volume of wit and wisdom on every subject that can be started.

An author lives out of the world, or mixes chiefly with those of his own class; which renders him pedantic and pragmatical, or gives him a reserved, hesitating, and interdicted manner. A lord or gentleman-commoner goes into the world, and this imparts that fluency, spirit, and freshness to his conversation, which arises from the circulation of ideas and from the greater animation and excitement of unrestrained intercourse. An author’s tongue is tied for want of somebody to speak to: his ideas rust and become obscured, from not being brought out in company and exposed to the gaze of instant admiration. A lord has always some one at hand on whom he can ‘bestow his tediousness,’ and grows voluble, copious, inexhaustible in consequence: his wit is polished, and the flowers of his oratory expanded by his smiling commerce with the world, like the figures in tapestry, that after being thrust into a corner and folded up in closets, are displayed on festival and gala-days. Again, the man of fashion and fortune reduces many of those arts and mysteries to practice, of which the scholar gains all his knowledge from books and vague description. Will not the rules of architecture find a readier reception and sink deeper into the mind of the proprietor of a noble mansion, or of him who means to build one, than of the half-starved occupier of a garret? Will not the political economist’s insight into Mr. Ricardo’s doctrine of Rent, or Mr. Malthus’s theory of Population, be vastly quickened by the circumstance of his possessing a large landed estate and having to pay enormous poor-rates? 41And in general is it not self-evident that a man’s knowledge of the true interests of the country will be enlarged just in proportion to the stake he has in it? A person may have read accounts of different cities and the customs of different nations: but will this give him the same accurate idea of the situation of celebrated places, of the aspect and manners of the inhabitants, or the same lively impulse and ardour and fund of striking particulars in expatiating upon them, as if he had run over half the countries of Europe, for no other purpose than to satisfy his own curiosity, and excite that of others on his return? I many years ago looked into the Duke of Newcastle’s ‘Treatise on Horsemanship’; all I remember of it is some quaint cuts of the Duke and his riding-master introduced to illustrate the lessons. Had I myself possessed a stud of Arabian coursers, with grooms and a master of the horse to assist me in reducing these precepts to practice, they would have made a stronger impression on my mind; and what interested myself from vanity or habit, I could have made interesting to others. I am sure I could have learnt to ride the Great Horse, and do twenty other things, in the time I have employed in endeavouring to make something out of nothing, or in conning the same problem fifty times over, as monks count over their beads! I have occasionally in my life bought a few prints, and hung them up in my room with great satisfaction; but is it to be supposed possible, from this casual circumstance, that I should compete in taste or in the knowledge of virtù with a peer of the realm, who has in his possession the costly designs, or a wealthy commoner, who has spent half his fortune in learning to distinguish copies from originals? ‘A question not to be asked!’ Nor is it likely that the having dipped into the Memoirs of Count Grammont, or of Lady Vane in Peregrine Pickle, should enable any one to sustain a conversation on subjects of love and gallantry with the same ease, grace, brilliancy, and spirit as the having been engaged in a hundred adventures of one’s own, or heard the scandal and tittle-tattle of fashionable life for the last thirty years canvassed a hundred times. Books may be manufactured from other books by some dull, mechanical process: it is conversation and the access to the best society that alone fit us for society; or ‘the act and practic part of life must be the mistress to our theorique,’ before we can hope to shine in mixed company, or bend our previous knowledge to ordinary and familiar uses out of that plaster-cast mould which is as brittle as it is formal!

There is another thing which tends to produce the same effect, viz. that lords and gentlemen seldom trouble themselves about the knotty and uninviting parts of a subject: they leave it to ‘the dregs 42of earth’ to drain the cup or find the bottom. They are attracted by the frothy and sparkling. If a question puzzles them, or is not likely to amuse others, they leave it to its fate, or to those whose business it is to contend with difficulty, and to pursue truth for its own sake. They string together as many available, off-hand topics as they can procure for love or money; and aided by a good person or address, sport them with very considerable effect at the next rout or party they go to. They do not bore you with pedantry, or tease you with sophistry. Their conversation is not made up of moot-points or choke-pears. They do not willingly forego ‘the feast of reason or the flow of soul’ to grub up some solitary truth or dig for hid treasure. They are amateurs, not professors; the patrons, not the drudges of knowledge. An author loses half his life, and stultifies his faculties, in hopes to find out something which perhaps neither he nor any one else can ever find out. For this he neglects half a hundred acquirements, half a hundred accomplishments. Aut Cæsar aut nihil. He is proud of the discovery or of the fond pursuit of one truth—a lord is vain of a thousand ostentatious common-places. If the latter ever devotes himself to some crabbed study, or sets about finding out the longitude, he is then to be looked upon as a humorist if he fails—a genius if he succeeds—and no longer belongs to the class I have been speaking of.

Perhaps a multiplicity of attainments and pursuits is not very favourable to their selectness; as a local and personal acquaintance with objects of imagination takes away from, instead of adding to, their romantic interest. Familiarity is said to breed contempt; or at any rate, the being brought into contact with places, persons, or things that we have hitherto only heard or read of, removes a certain aerial delicious veil of refinement from them, and strikes at that ideal abstraction, which is the charm and boast of a life conversant chiefly among books. The huddling a number of tastes and studies together tends to degrade and vulgarise each, and to give a crude, unconcocted, dissipated turn to the mind. Instead of stuffing it full of gross, palpable, immediate objects of excitement, a wiser plan would be to leave something in reserve, something hovering in airy space to draw our attention out of ourselves, to excite hope, curiosity, wonder, and never to satisfy it. The great art is not to throw a glare of light upon all objects, or to lay the whole extended landscape bare at one view; but so to manage as to see the more amiable side of things, and through the narrow vistas and loop-holes of retreat,

I hate to annihilate air and distance by the perpetual use of an 43opera-glass, to run every thing into foreground, and to interpose no medium between the thought and the object. The breath of words stirs and plays idly with the gossamer web of fancy: the touch of things destroys it. I have seen a good deal of authors: and I believe that they (as well as I) would quite as lieve that I had not. Places I have seen too, that did not answer my expectation. Pictures (that is, some few of them) are the only things that are the better for our having studied them ‘face to face, not in a glass darkly,’ and that in themselves surpass any description we can give, or any notion we can form of them. But I do not think seriously, after all, that those who possess are the best judges of them. They become furniture, property in their hands. The purchasers look to the price they will fetch, or turn to that which they have cost. They consider not beauty or expression, but the workmanship, the date, the pedigree, the school—something that will figure in the description in a catalogue or in a puff in a newspaper. They are blinded by silly admiration of whatever belongs to themselves, and warped so as to eye ‘with jealous leer malign’ all that is not theirs. Taste is melted down in the crucible of avarice and vanity, and leaves a wretched caput mortuum of pedantry and conceit. As to books, they ‘best can feel them who have read them most,’ and who rely on them for their only support and their only chance of distinction. They most keenly relish the graces of style who have in vain tried to make them their own: they alone understand the value of a thought who have gone through the trouble of thinking. The privation of other advantages is not a clear loss, if it is counterbalanced by a proportionable concentration and unity of interest in what is left. The love of letters is the forlorn hope of the man of letters. His ruling passion is the love of fame. A member of the Roxburgh Club has a certain work (let it be the Decameron of Boccaccio) splendidly bound, and in the old quarto edition, we will say. In this not only his literary taste is gratified, but the pride of property, the love of external elegance and decoration. The poor student has only a paltry and somewhat worn copy of the same work (or perhaps only a translation) which he picked up at a stall, standing out of a shower of rain. What then! has not the Noble Virtuoso doubly the advantage, and a much higher pleasure in the perusal of the work? No; for these are vulgar and mechanical helps to the true enjoyment of letters. From all this mock-display and idle parade of binding and arms and dates, his unthought-of rival is precluded, and sees only the talismanic words, feels only the spirit of the author, and in that author reads ‘with sparkling eyes’

44Oh! divine air of learning, fanned by the undying breath of genius, still let me taste thee, free from all adventitious admixtures,

We are far at present from the style of Swift’s ‘Polite Conversation.’ The fashionable tone has quite changed in this respect, and almost gone into the opposite extreme. At that period, the polite world seems to have been nearly at a stand, in a state of intellectual abeyance; or in the interval between the disuse of chivalrous exercises and the introduction of modern philosophy, not to have known how to pass its time and to have sunk into the most common-place formality and unmeaning apathy. But lo! at a signal given, or rather prompted by that most powerful of all calls, the want of something to do, all rush into the lists, having armed themselves anew with the shining panoply of science and of letters, with an eagerness, a perseverance, a dexterity, and a success that are truly astonishing. The higher classes have of late taken the lead almost as much in arts as they formerly did in arms, when the last was the only prescribed mode of distinguishing themselves from the rabble whom they treated as serfs and churls. The prevailing cue at present is to regard mere authors (who are not also of gentle blood) as dull, illiterate, poor creatures, a sort of pretenders to taste and elegance, and adventurers in intellect. The true adepts in black-letter are knights of the shire: the sworn patentees of Parnassus are Peers of the Realm. Not to pass for a literary quack, you must procure a diploma from the College of Heralds. A dandy conceals a bibliomanist: our belles are bluestockings. The Press is so entirely monopolised by beauty, birth, or importance in the State, that an author by profession resigns the field to the crowd of well-dressed competitors, out of modesty or pride, is fain to keep out of sight—

Lord Byron used to boast that he could bring forward a dozen young men of fashion who could beat all the regular authors at their several weapons of wit or argument; and though I demur to the truth of the assertion, yet there is no saying till the thing is tried. Young gentlemen make very pretty sparrers, but are not the ‘ugliest customers’ when they take off the gloves. Lord Byron himself was in his capacity of author an out-and-outer; but then it was at the expense of other things, for he could not talk except in short sentences and sarcastic allusions, he had no ready resources; all his ideas moulded themselves into stanzas, and all his ardour was carried off in rhyme. 45The channel of his pen was worn deep by habit and power; the current of his thoughts flowed strong in it, and nothing remained to supply the neighbouring flats and shallows of miscellaneous conversation, but a few sprinklings of wit or gushes of spleen. An intense purpose concentrated and gave a determined direction to his energies, that ‘held on their way, unslacked of motion.’ The track of his genius was like a volcanic eruption, a torrent of burning lava, full of heat and splendour and headlong fury, that left all dry, cold, hard, and barren behind it! To say nothing of a host of female authors, a bright galaxy above our heads, there is no young lady of fashion in the present day, scarce a boarding-school girl, that is not mistress of as many branches of knowledge as would set up half-a-dozen literary hacks. In lieu of the sampler and the plain-stitch of our grandmothers, they have so many hours for French, so many for Italian, so many for English grammar and composition, so many for geography and the use of the globes, so many for history, so many for botany, so many for painting, music, dancing, riding, &c. One almost wonders how so many studies are crammed into the twenty-four hours; or how such fair and delicate creatures can master them without spoiling the smoothness of their brows, the sweetness of their tempers, or the graceful simplicity of their manners. A girl learns French (not only to read, but to speak it) in a few months, while a boy is as many years in learning to construe Latin. Why so? Chiefly because the one is treated as a bagatelle or agreeable relaxation; the other as a serious task or necessary evil. Education, a very few years back, was looked upon as a hardship, and enforced by menaces and blows, instead of being carried on (as now) as an amusement and under the garb of pleasure, and with the allurements of self-love. It is found that the products of the mind flourish better and shoot up more quickly in the sunshine of good-humour and in the air of freedom, than under the frowns of sullenness, or the shackles of authority. ‘The labour we delight in physics pain.’ The idlest people are not those who have most leisure-time to dispose of as they choose: take away the feeling of compulsion, and you supply a motive for application, by converting a toil into a pleasure. This makes nearly all the difference between the hardest drudgery and the most delightful exercise—not the degree of exertion, but the motive and the accompanying sensation. Learning does not gain proselytes by the austerity or awfulness of its looks. By representing things as so difficult, and as exacting such dreadful sacrifices, and to be acquired under such severe penalties, we not only deter the student from the attempt, but lay a dead-weight upon the imagination, and destroy that cheerfulness and alacrity of spirit which is the spring of thought and 46action. But to return.—An author by profession reads a few works that he intends to criticise and cut up ‘for a consideration,’—a bluestocking by profession reads all that comes out to pass the time or satisfy her curiosity. The author has something to say about Fielding, Richardson, or even the Scotch novels: but he is soon distanced by the fair critic or overwhelmed with the contents of whole Circulating Libraries poured out upon his head without stint or intermission. He reads for an object and to live; she for the sake of reading or to talk. Be this as it may, the idle reader at present reads twenty times as many books as the learned one. The former skims the surface of knowledge, and carries away the striking points and a variety of amusing details, while the latter reserves himself for great occasions, or perhaps does nothing under the pretence of having so much to do.

The literati of Europe threaten at present to become the Monks of letters, and from having taken up learning as a profession, to live on the reputation of it. As gentlemen have turned authors, authors seem inclined to turn gentlemen; and enjoying the otium cum dignitate, to be much too refined and abstracted to condescend to the subordinate or mechanical parts of knowledge. They are too wise in general to be acquainted with anything in particular; and remain in a proud and listless ignorance of all that is within the reach of the vulgar. They are not, as of old, walking libraries or Encyclopædias, but rather certain faculties of the mind personified. They scorn the material and instrumental branches of inquiry, the husk and bran, and affect only the fine flour of literature—they are only to be called in to give the last polish to style, the last refinement to thought. They leave it to their drudges, the Reading Public, to accumulate the facts, to arrange the evidence, to make out the data, and like great painters whose pupils have got in the ground-work and the established proportions of a picture, come forward to go over the last thin glazing of the colours, or throw in the finer touches of expression. On my excusing myself to N—— for some blunder in history, by saying, ‘I really had not time to read,’—he said, ‘No, but you have time to write!’ And once a celebrated critic taking me to task as to the subject of my pursuits, and receiving regularly the same answer to his queries, that I knew nothing of chemistry, nothing of astronomy, of botany, of law, of politics, &c. at last exclaimed somewhat impatiently—‘What the devil is it, then, you do know?’ I laughed, and was not very much disconcerted at the reproof, as it was just.

Modern men of letters may be divided into three classes; the 47mere scholar or book-worm, all whose knowledge is taken from books, and who may be passed by as an obsolete character, little inquired after—the literary hack or coffee-house politician, who gets his information mostly from hearsay, and who makes some noise indeed, but the echo of it does not reach beyond his own club or circle—and the man of real or of pretended genius, who aims to draw upon his own resources of thought or feeling, and to throw a new light upon nature and books. This last personage (if he acts up to his supposed character) has too much to do to lend himself to a variety of pursuits, or to lay himself out to please in all companies. He has a task in hand, a vow to perform; and he cannot be diverted from it by incidental or collateral objects. All the time that he does not devote to this paramount duty, he should have to himself, to repose, to lie fallow, to gather strength and recruit himself. A boxer is led into the lists that he may not waste a particle of vigour needlessly; and a leader in Parliament, on the day that he is expected to get up a grand attack or defence, is not to be pestered with the ordinary news of the day. So an author (who is, or would be thought original) has no time for spare accomplishments or ornamental studies. All that he intermeddles with must be marshalled to bear upon his purpose. He must be acquainted with books and the thoughts of others, but only so far as to assist him on his way, and ‘to take progression from them.’ He starts from the point where they left off. All that does not aid him in his new career goes for nothing, is thrown out of the account; or is a useless and splendid incumbrance. Most of his time he passes in brooding over some wayward hint or suggestion of a thought, nor is he bound to give any explanation of what he does with the rest. He tries to melt down truth into essences—to express some fine train of feeling, to solve some difficult problem, to start what is new, or to perfect what is old; in a word, not to do what others can do (which in the division of mental labour he holds to be unnecessary), but to do what they all with their joint efforts cannot do. For this he is in no hurry, and must have the disposal of his leisure and the choice of his subject. The public can wait. He deems with a living poet, who is an example of his own doctrine—

Or I have sometimes thought that the dalliance of the mind with Fancy or with Truth might be described almost in the words of Andrew Marvell’s address ‘To his Coy Mistress:‘—

The aspiring poet or prose-writer undertakes to do a certain thing; and if he succeeds, it is enough. While he is intent upon that or asleep, others may amuse themselves how they can with any topic that happens to be afloat and all the eloquence they are masters of, so that they do not disturb the champion of truth, or the proclaimer of beauty to the world. The Conversation of Lords, on the contrary, is to this like a newspaper to a book—the latter treats well or ill of one subject, and leads to a conclusion on one point; the other is made up of all sorts of things jumbled together, debates in parliament, law-reports, plays, operas, concerts, routs, levees, fashions, auctions, the last fight, foreign news, deaths, marriages, and crim-cons, bankruptcies, and quack medicines; and a large allowance is frequently to be made, besides the natural confusion of the subjects, for cross-readings in the speaker’s mind!^[11] Or, to take another illustration, fashionable conversation has something theatrical or melo-dramatic in it; it is got up for immediate effect, it is calculated to make a great display, there is a profusion of paint, scenery, and dresses, the music 49is loud, there are banquets and processions, you have the dancers from the Opera, the horses from Astley’s, and the elephant from Exeter ‘Change, the stage is all life, bustle, noise and glare, the audience brilliant and delighted, and the whole goes off in a blaze of phosphorus; but the dialogue is poor, the story improbable, the critics shake their heads in the pit, and the next day the piece is damned!

In short, a man of rank and fortune takes the adventitious and ornamental part of letters, the obvious, popular, fashionable, that serves to amuse at the time, or minister to the cravings of vanity, without laying a very heavy tax on his own understanding, or the patience of his hearers. He furnishes his mind as he does his house, with what is showy, striking, and of the newest pattern: he mounts his hobby as he does his horse, which is brought to his door for an airing, and which (should it prove restive or sluggish) he turns away for another; or like a child at a fair, gets into a round-about of knowledge, till his head becomes giddy, runs from sight to sight, from booth to booth, and like the child, goes home loaded with trinkets, gewgaws, and rattles. He does not pore and pine over an idea (like some poor hypochondriac) till it becomes impracticable, unsociable, incommunicable, absorbed in mysticism, and lost in minuteness: he is not upon oath never to utter anything but oracles, but rattles away in a fine careless hair-brained dashing manner, hit or miss, and succeeds the better for it. Nor does he prose over the same stale round of politics and the state of the nation (with the coffee-house politician), but launches out with freedom and gaiety into whatever has attraction and interest in it, ‘runs the great circle, and is still at home.’ He is inquisitive, garrulous, credulous, sanguine, florid,—neither pedantic nor vulgar. Neither is he intolerant, exclusive, bigoted to one set of opinions or one class of individuals. He clothes an abstract theory with illustrations from his own experience and observation, hates what is dry and dull, and throws in an air of high health, buoyant spirits, fortune and splendid connections to give animation and vividness to what perhaps might otherwise want it. He selects what is palpable without being gross or trivial, lends it colour from the flush of success, and elevation from the distinctions of rank. He runs on and never stops for an answer, rather dictating to others than endeavouring to ascertain their opinions, solving his own questions, improving 50upon their hints, and bearing down or precluding opposition by a good-natured loquacity or stately dogmatism. All this is perhaps more edifying as a subject of speculation than delightful in itself. Shakspeare somewhere says—‘A man’s mind is parcel of his fortunes,’—and I think the inference will be borne out in the present case. I should guess that in the prevailing tone of fashionable society or aristocratic literature would be found all that variety, splendour, facility, and startling effect which corresponds with external wealth, magnificence of appearance, and a command of opportunity; while there would be wanting whatever depends chiefly on intensity of pursuit, on depth of feeling, and on simplicity and independence of mind joined with straitened fortune. Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it. Accordingly, we find but one really great name (Lord Bacon) in this rank of English society, where superiority is taken for granted, and reflected from outward circumstances. The rest are in the second class. Lord Bolingbroke, whom Pope idolized (and it pains me that all his idols are not mine) was a boastful empty mouther! I never knew till the other day, that Lord Bolingbroke was the model on which Mr. Pitt formed himself. He was his Magnus Apollo; and no wonder. The late Minister used to lament it as the great desideratum of English literature, that there was no record anywhere existing of his speeches as they were spoken, and declared that he would give any price for one of them reported as speeches were reported in the newspapers in our time. Being asked which he thought the best of his written productions, he would answer, raising his eyebrows and deepening the tones of his voice to a sonorous bass—‘Why, undoubtedly, Sir, the Letter to Sir William Wyndham is the most masterly of all his writings, and the first composition for wit and eloquence in the English language;‘—and then he would give his reasons at great length and con amore, and say that Junius had formed himself entirely upon it. Lord Bolingbroke had, it seems, a house next-door to one belonging to Lord Chatham at Walham-Green; and as the gardens joined, they could hear Lord Bolingbroke walking out with the company that came to see him in his retirement, and elaborately declaiming politics to the old lords and statesmen that were with him, and philosophy to the younger ones. Pitt learned this story from his father when a boy. This account, interesting in itself, was to me the more interesting and extraordinary, as it had always appeared to me that Mr. Pitt was quite an original, sui generis,

51that so far from having a model or idol that he looked up to and grounded himself upon, he had neither admiration nor consciousness of any thing existing out of himself, and that he lived solely in the sound of his own voice and revolved in the circle of his own hollow and artificial periods. I have it from the same authority that he thought Cobbett the best writer and Horne Tooke the cleverest man of the day. His hatred of Wyndham was excessive and mutual.—Perhaps it may be said that Lord Chatham was a first-rate man in his way, and I incline to think it; but he was a self-made man, bred in a camp, not in a court, and his rank was owing to his talents.^[12]

The New Monthly Magazine.] [October, 1827.

Horas non numero nisi serenas—is the motto of a sun-dial near Venice. There is a softness and a harmony in the words and in the thought unparalleled. Of all conceits it is surely the most classical. ‘I count only the hours that are serene.’ What a bland and care-dispelling feeling! How the shadows seem to fade on the dial-plate as the sky lours, and time presents only a blank unless as its progress is marked by what is joyous, and all that is not happy sinks into oblivion! What a fine lesson is conveyed to the mind—to take no note of time but by its benefits, to watch only for the smiles and neglect the frowns of fate, to compose our lives of bright and gentle moments, turning always to the sunny side of things, and letting the rest slip from our imaginations, unheeded or forgotten! How different from the common art of self-tormenting! For myself, as I rode along the Brenta, while the sun shone hot upon its sluggish, slimy waves, my sensations were far from comfortable; but the reading this inscription on the side of a glaring wall in an instant restored me to myself; and still, whenever I think of or repeat it, it has the power of wafting me into the region of pure and blissful abstraction. I 52cannot help fancying it to be a legend of Popish superstition. Some monk of the dark ages must have invented and bequeathed it to us, who, loitering in trim gardens and watching the silent march of time, as his fruits ripened in the sun or his flowers scented the balmy air, felt a mild languor pervade his senses, and having little to do or to care for, determined (in imitation of his sun-dial) to efface that little from his thoughts or draw a veil over it, making of his life one long dream of quiet! Horas non numero nisi serenas—he might repeat, when the heavens were overcast and the gathering storm scattered the falling leaves, and turn to his books and wrap himself in his golden studies! Out of some such mood of mind, indolent, elegant, thoughtful, this exquisite device (speaking volumes) must have originated.

Of the several modes of counting time, that by the sun-dial is perhaps the most apposite and striking, if not the most convenient or comprehensive. It does not obtrude its observations, though it ‘morals on the time,’ and, by its stationary character, forms a contrast to the most fleeting of all essences. It stands sub dio—under the marble air, and there is some connexion between the image of infinity and eternity. I should also like to have a sunflower growing near it with bees fluttering round.^[13] It should be of iron to denote duration, and have a dull, leaden look. I hate a sun-dial made of wood, which is rather calculated to show the variations of the seasons, than the progress of time, slow, silent, imperceptible, chequered with light and shade. If our hours were all serene, we might probably take almost as little note of them, as the dial does of those that are clouded. It is the shadow thrown across, that gives us warning of their flight. Otherwise, our impressions would take the same undistinguishable hue; we should scarce be conscious of our existence. Those who have had none of the cares of this life to harass and disturb them, have been obliged to have recourse to the hopes and fears of the next to enliven the prospect before them. Most of the methods for measuring the lapse of time have, I believe, been the contrivance of monks and religious recluses, who, finding time hang heavy on their hands, were at some pains to see how they got rid of it. The hour-glass is, I suspect, an older invention; and it is certainly the most defective of all. Its creeping sands are not indeed an unapt emblem of the minute, countless portions of our existence; and the manner in which they gradually slide through the hollow glass and diminish in number till not a single one is left, also 53illustrates the way in which our years slip from us by stealth: but as a mechanical invention, it is rather a hindrance than a help, for it requires to have the time, of which it pretends to count the precious moments, taken up in attention to itself, and in seeing that when one end of the glass is empty, we turn it round, in order that it may go on again, or else all our labour is lost, and we must wait for some other mode of ascertaining the time before we can recover our reckoning and proceed as before. The philosopher in his cell, the cottager at her spinning-wheel must, however, find an invaluable acquisition in this ‘companion of the lonely hour,’ as it has been called,^[14] which not only serves to tell how the time goes, but to fill up its vacancies. What a treasure must not the little box seem to hold, as if it were a sacred deposit of the very grains and fleeting sands of life! What a business, in lieu of other more important avocations, to see it out to the last sand, and then to renew the process again on the instant, that there may not be the least flaw or error in the account! What a strong sense must be brought home to the mind of the value and irrecoverable nature of the time that is fled; what a thrilling, incessant consciousness of the slippery tenure by which we hold what remains of it! Our very existence must seem crumbling to atoms, and running down (without a miraculous reprieve) to the last fragment. ‘Dust to dust and ashes to ashes’ is a text that might be fairly inscribed on an hour-glass: it is ordinarily associated with the scythe of Time and a Death’s head, as a Memento mori; and has, no doubt, furnished many a tacit hint to the apprehensive and visionary enthusiast in favour of a resurrection to another life!

The French give a different turn to things, less sombre and less edifying. A common and also a very pleasing ornament to a clock, in Paris, is a figure of Time seated in a boat which Cupid is rowing along, with the motto, L’Amour fait passer le Tems—which the wits again have travestied into Le Tems fait passer L’Amour. All this is ingenious and well; but it wants sentiment. I like a people who have something that they love and something that they hate, and with whom every thing is not alike a matter of indifference or pour passer le tems. The French attach no importance to any thing, except for the moment; they are only thinking how they shall get rid of one sensation for another; all their ideas are in transitu. Every thing is detached, nothing is accumulated. It would be a million of years before a Frenchman would think of the Horas non numero nisi serenas. Its impassioned repose and ideal voluptuousness are as far from their 54breasts as the poetry of that line in Shakspeare—‘How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon that bank!’ They never arrive at the classical—or the romantic. They blow the bubbles of vanity, fashion, and pleasure; but they do not expand their perceptions into refinement, or strengthen them into solidity. Where there is nothing fine in the ground-work of the imagination, nothing fine in the superstructure can be produced. They are light, airy, fanciful (to give them their due)—but when they attempt to be serious (beyond mere good sense) they are either dull or extravagant. When the volatile salt has flown off, nothing but a caput mortuum remains. They have infinite crotchets and caprices with their clocks and watches, which seem made for any thing but to tell the hour—gold-repeaters, watches with metal covers, clocks with hands to count the seconds. There is no escaping from quackery and impertinence, even in our attempts to calculate the waste of time. The years gallop fast enough for me, without remarking every moment as it flies; and farther, I must say I dislike a watch (whether of French or English manufacture) that comes to me like a footpad with its face muffled, and does not present its clear, open aspect like a friend, and point with its finger to the time of day. All this opening and shutting of dull, heavy cases (under pretence that the glass-lid is liable to be broken, or lets in the dust or air and obstructs the movement of the watch), is not to husband time, but to give trouble. It is mere pomposity and self-importance, like consulting a mysterious oracle that one carries about with one in one’s pocket, instead of asking a common question of an acquaintance or companion. There are two clocks which strike the hour in the room where I am. This I do not like. In the first place, I do not want to be reminded twice how the time goes (it is like the second tap of a saucy servant at your door when perhaps you have no wish to get up): in the next place, it is starting a difference of opinion on the subject, and I am averse to every appearance of wrangling and disputation. Time moves on the same, whatever disparity there may be in our mode of keeping count of it, like true fame in spite of the cavils and contradictions of the critics. I am no friend to repeating watches. The only pleasant association I have with them is the account given by Rousseau of some French lady, who sat up reading the New Heloise when it first came out, and ordering her maid to sound the repeater, found it was too late to go to bed, and continued reading on till morning. Yet how different is the interest excited by this story from the account which Rousseau somewhere else gives of his sitting up with his father reading romances, when a boy, till they were startled by the swallows twittering in their nests at day-break, and the father cried out, half angry and ashamed—‘Allons, 55mon fils; je suis plus enfant que toi!’ In general, I have heard repeating watches sounded in stage-coaches at night, when some fellow-traveller suddenly awaking and wondering what was the hour, another has very deliberately taken out his watch, and pressing the spring, it has counted out the time; each petty stroke acting like a sharp puncture on the ear, and informing me of the dreary hours I had already passed, and of the more dreary ones I had to wait till morning.

The great advantage, it is true, which clocks have over watches and other dumb reckoners of time is, that for the most part they strike the hour—that they are as it were the mouth-pieces of time; that they not only point it to the eye, but impress it on the ear; that they ‘lend it both an understanding and a tongue.’ Time thus speaks to us in an audible and warning voice. Objects of sight are easily distinguished by the sense, and suggest useful reflections to the mind; sounds, from their intermittent nature, and perhaps other causes, appeal more to the imagination, and strike upon the heart. But to do this, they must be unexpected and involuntary—there must be no trick in the case—they should not be squeezed out with a finger and a thumb; there should be nothing optional, personal in their occurrence; they should be like stern, inflexible monitors, that nothing can prevent from discharging their duty. Surely, if there is any thing with which we should not mix up our vanity and self-consequence, it is with Time, the most independent of all things. All the sublimity, all the superstition that hang upon this palpable mode of announcing its flight, are chiefly attached to this circumstance. Time would lose its abstracted character, if we kept it like a curiosity or a jack-in-a-box: its prophetic warnings would have no effect, if it obviously spoke only at our prompting, like a paltry ventriloquism. The clock that tells the coming, dreaded hour—the castle bell, that ‘with its brazen throat and iron tongue, sounds one unto the drowsy ear of night’—the curfew, ‘swinging slow with sullen roar’ o’er wizard stream or fountain, are like a voice from other worlds, big with unknown events. The last sound, which is still kept up as an old custom in many parts of England, is a great favourite with me. I used to hear it when a boy. It tells a tale of other times. The days that are past, the generations that are gone, the tangled forest glades and hamlets brown of my native country, the woodsman’s art, the Norman warrior armed for the battle or in his festive hall, the conqueror’s iron rule and peasant’s lamp extinguished, all start up at the clamorous peal, and fill my mind with fear and wonder. I confess, nothing at present interests me but what has been—the recollection of the impressions of my early life, or events long past, 56of which only the dim traces remain in a smouldering ruin or half-obsolete custom. That things should be that are now no more, creates in my mind the most unfeigned astonishment. I cannot solve the mystery of the past, nor exhaust my pleasure in it. The years, the generations to come, are nothing to me. We care no more about the world in the year 2300 than we do about one of the planets. Even George IV. is better than the Earl of Windsor. We might as well make a voyage to the moon as think of stealing a march upon Time with impunity. De non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est ratio. Those who are to come after us and push us from the stage seem like upstarts and pretenders, that may be said to exist in vacuo, we know not upon what, except as they are blown up with vain and self-conceit by their patrons among the moderns. But the ancients are true and bonâ-fide people, to whom we are bound by aggregate knowledge and filial ties, and in whom seen by the mellow light of history we feel our own existence doubled and our pride consoled, as we ruminate on the vestiges of the past. The public in general, however, do not carry this speculative indifference about the future to what is to happen to themselves, or to the part they are to act in the busy scene. For my own part, I do; and the only wish I can form, or that ever prompts the passing sigh, would be to live some of my years over again—they would be those in which I enjoyed and suffered most!

The ticking of a clock in the night has nothing very interesting nor very alarming in it, though superstition has magnified it into an omen. In a state of vigilance or debility, it preys upon the spirits like the persecution of a teazing pertinacious insect; and haunting the imagination after it has ceased in reality, is converted into the death-watch. Time is rendered vast by contemplating its minute portions thus repeatedly and painfully urged upon its attention, as the ocean in its immensity is composed of water-drops. A clock striking with a clear and silver sound is a great relief in such circumstances, breaks the spell, and resembles a sylph-like and friendly spirit in the room. Foreigners, with all their tricks and contrivances upon clocks and time-pieces, are strangers to the sound of village bells, though perhaps a people that can dance may dispense with them. They impart a pensive, wayward pleasure to the mind, and are a kind of chronology of happy events, often serious in the retrospect—births, marriages, and so forth. Coleridge calls them ‘the poor man’s only music.’ A village-spire in England peeping from its cluster of trees is always associated in imagination with this cheerful accompaniment, and may be expected to pour its joyous tidings on the gale. In Catholic countries, you are stunned with the everlasting tolling of 57bells to prayers or for the dead. In the Apennines, and other wild and mountainous districts of Italy, the little chapel-bell with its simple tinkling sound has a romantic and charming effect. The Monks in former times appear to have taken a pride in the construction of bells as well as churches; and some of those of the great cathedrals abroad (as at Cologne and Rouen) may be fairly said to be hoarse with counting the flight of ages. The chimes in Holland are a nuisance. They dance in the hours and the quarters. They leave no respite to the imagination. Before one set has done ringing in your ears, another begins. You do not know whether the hours move or stand still, go backwards or forwards, so fantastical and perplexing are their accompaniments. Time is a more staid personage, and not so full of gambols. It puts you in mind of a tune with variations, or of an embroidered dress. Surely, nothing is more simple than time. His march is straightforward; but we should have leisure allowed us to look back upon the distance we have come, and not be counting his steps every moment. Time in Holland is a foolish old fellow with all the antics of a youth, who ‘goes to church in a coranto, and lights his pipe in a cinque-pace.’ The chimes with us, on the contrary, as they come in every three or four hours, are like stages in the journey of the day. They give a fillip to the lazy, creeping hours, and relieve the lassitude of country places. At noon, their desultory, trivial song is diffused through the hamlet with the odour of rashers of bacon; at the close of day they send the toil-worn sleepers to their beds. Their discontinuance would be a great loss to the thinking or unthinking public. Mr. Wordsworth has painted their effect on the mind when he makes his friend Matthew, in a fit of inspired dotage,

The tolling of the bell for deaths and executions is a fearful summons, though, as it announces, not the advance of time but the approach of fate, it happily makes no part of our subject. Otherwise, the ‘sound of the bell’ for Macheath’s execution in the ‘Beggar’s Opera,’ or for that of the Conspirators in ‘Venice Preserved,’ with the roll of the drum at a soldier’s funeral, and a digression to that of my Uncle Toby, as it is so finely described by Sterne, would furnish ample topics to descant upon. If I were a moralist, I might disapprove the ringing in the new and ringing out the old year.

58St Paul’s bell tolls only for the death of our English kings, or a distinguished personage or two, with long intervals between.^[15]

Those who have no artificial means of ascertaining the progress of time, are in general the most acute in discerning its immediate signs, and are most retentive of individual dates. The mechanical aids to knowledge are not sharpeners of the wits. The understanding of a savage is a kind of natural almanac, and more true in its prognostication of the future. In his mind’s eye he sees what has happened or what is likely to happen to him, ‘as in a map the voyager his course.’ Those who read the times and seasons in the aspect of the heavens and the configurations of the stars, who count by moons and know when the sun rises and sets, are by no means ignorant of their own affairs or of the common concatenation of events. People in such situations have not their faculties distracted by any multiplicity of inquiries beyond what befalls themselves, and the outward appearances that mark the change. There is, therefore, a simplicity and clearness in the knowledge they possess, which often puzzles the more learned. I am sometimes surprised at a shepherd-boy by the road-side, who sees nothing but the earth and sky, asking me the time of day—he ought to know so much better than any one how far the sun is above the horizon. I suppose he wants to ask a question of a passenger, or to see if he has a watch. Robinson Crusoe lost his reckoning in the monotony of his life and that bewildering dream of solitude, and was fain to have recourse to the notches in a piece of wood. What a diary was his! And how time must have spread its circuit round him, vast and pathless as the ocean!

For myself, I have never had a watch nor any other mode of keeping time in my possession, nor ever wish to learn how time goes. It is a sign I have had little to do, few avocations, few engagements. When I am in a town, I can hear the clock; and when I am in the country, I can listen to the silence. What I like best is to lie whole mornings on a sunny bank on Salisbury Plain, without any object before me, neither knowing nor caring how time passes, and thus ‘with light-winged toys of feathered Idleness’ to melt down hours to moments. Perhaps some such thoughts as I have here set down float before me like motes before my half-shut eyes, or some vivid image of the past by forcible contrast rushes by me—‘Diana and her fawn, and all the glories of the antique world;’ then I start away to prevent the iron from entering my soul, and let fall some tears into that stream of time which separates me farther and farther from all I 59once loved! At length I rouse myself from my reverie, and home to dinner, proud of killing time with thought, nay even without thinking. Somewhat of this idle humour I inherit from my father, though he had not the same freedom from ennui, for he was not a metaphysician; and there were stops and vacant intervals in his being which he did not know how to fill up. He used in these cases, and as an obvious resource, carefully to wind up his watch at night, and ‘with lack-lustre eye’ more than once in the course of the day look to see what o’clock it was. Yet he had nothing else in his character in common with the elder Mr. Shandy. Were I to attempt a sketch of him, for my own or the reader’s satisfaction, it would be after the following manner:——but now I recollect, I have done something of the kind once before, and were I to resume the subject here, some bat or owl of a critic, with spectacled gravity, might swear I had stolen the whole of this Essay from myself—or (what is worse) from him! So I had better let it go as it is.

The New Monthly Magazine.] [November, 1827.

Because it is taken for granted that they must be amiable and interesting, in the first instance, and like other things that are taken for granted, is but indifferently, or indeed cannot be made out at all in the sequel. To put it to the proof, to give illustrations of it, would be to throw a doubt upon the question. They have only to show themselves to ensure conquest. Indeed, the reputation of their victories goes before them, and is a pledge of their success before they even appear. They are, or are supposed to be, so amiable, so handsome, so accomplished, so captivating, that all hearts bow before them, and all the women are in love with them without knowing why or wherefore, except that it is understood that they are to be so. All obstacles vanish without a finger lifted or a word spoken, and the effect is produced without a blow being struck. When there is this imaginary charm at work, every thing they could do or say must weaken the impression, like arguments brought in favour of a self-evident truth: they very wisely say or do little or nothing, rely on their names and the author’s good word, look, smile, and are adored; but to all but the heroines of romance and their confidantes, are exceedingly uninteresting and common-place personages, either great coxcombs or wonderfully insipid. When a lover is able to look unutterable things which produce the desired effect, what occasion 60for him to exert his eloquence or make an impassioned speech in order to bring about a revolution in his favour, which is already accomplished by other less doubtful means? When the impression at first sight is complete and irresistible, why throw away any farther thoughts or words to make it more so? This were ‘to gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to smooth the ice, to throw a perfume on the violet, or add another hue unto the rainbow, or seek with taper-light the beauteous eye of Heaven to garnish,’ which has been pronounced to be ‘wasteful and superfluous excess.’ Authors and novel-writers therefore reserve for their second-rate and less prominent characters, the artillery of words, the arts of persuasion, and all the unavailing battery of hopeless attentions and fine sentiment, which are of no use to the more accomplished gallant, who makes his triumphant approaches by stolen glances and breathing sighs, and whose appearance alone supersedes the disclosure of all his other implied perfections and an importunate display of a long list of titles to the favour of the fair, which, as they are not insisted on, it would be vain and unbecoming to produce to the gaze of the world, or for the edification of the curious reader. It is quite enough if the lady is satisfied with her choice, and if (as generally happens both as a cause and consequence in such cases) the gentleman is satisfied with himself. If he indeed seemed to entertain a doubt upon the subject, the spell of his fascination would be broken, and the author would be obliged to derogate from the beau-ideal of his character, and make him do something to deserve the good opinion that might be entertained of him, and to which he himself had not led the way by boundless self-complacency and the conscious assurance of infallible success.

Another circumstance that keeps our novel-heroes in the back-ground is, that if there was any doubt of their success, or they were obliged to employ the ordinary and vulgar means to establish their superiority over every one else, they would be no longer those ‘faultless monsters’ which it is understood that they must be to fill their part in the drama. The discarded or despairing, not the favoured lovers, are unavoidably the most interesting persons in the story. In fact, the principals are already disposed of in the first page; they are destined for each other by an unaccountable and uncontrollable sympathy: the ceremony is in a manner over, and they are already married people, with all the lawful attributes and indifference belonging to the character. To produce an interest, there must be mixed motives, alternate hope and fear, difficulties to struggle with, sacrifices to make; but the true hero of romance is too fine a gentleman to be subjected to this rude ordeal, or mortifying exposure, which devolves upon some much more unworthy and unpretending personage. The beauty of the outline 61must not be disturbed by the painful conflicts of passion or the strong contrast of light and shade. The taste of the heroic cannot swerve for a moment from the object of its previous choice, who must never be placed in disadvantageous circumstances. The top characters occupy a certain prescriptive rank in the world of romance, by the rules of etiquette and laws of this sort of fictitious composition, reign like princes, and have only to do nothing to forfeit their privileges or compromise their supposed dignity.

The heroes of the old romances, the Grand Cyruses, the Artamenes, and Oroondates, are in this respect better than the moderns. They had their steel helmet and plume of feathers, the glittering spear and shield, the barbed steed, and the spread banner, and had knightly service to perform in joust and tournament, in the field of battle or the deep forest, besides the duty which they owed to their ‘mistress’ eyebrow,’ and the favours they received at her hands. They were comparatively picturesque and adventurous personages, and men of action in the tented field, and lost all title to the smile of beauty if they did not deserve it by feats of prowess, and by the valour of their arms. However insipid they might be as accepted lovers, in their set speeches and improgressive languishments by which they paid their court to their hearts’ idols, the ‘fairest of the fair,’ yet in their character of warriors and heroes, they were men of mettle, and had something in them. They did not merely sigh and smile and kneel in the presence of their mistresses—they had to unhorse their adversaries in combat, to storm castles, to vanquish giants, and lead armies. So far, so well. In the good old times of chivalry and romance, favour was won and maintained by the bold achievements and fair fame of the chosen knight, which keeps up a show of suspense and dramatic interest, instead of depending, as in more effeminate times, on taste, sympathy, and a refinement of sentiment and manners, of the delicacy of which it is impossible to convey any idea by words or actions. Even in the pompous and affected courtship of the romances of the seventeenth century (now, alas! exploded) the interviews between the lovers are so rare and guarded, their union, though agreed upon and inevitable, is so remote, the smile with which the lady regards her sworn champion, though as steady as that of one of the fixed stars, is like them so cold, as to give a tone of passion and interest to their enamoured flights, as though they were affected by the chances and changes of sublunary affairs. I confess I have read some of these fabulous folios formerly with no small degree of delight and breathless anxiety, particularly that of ‘Cassandra’; and would willingly indeed go over it again to catch even a faint, a momentary glimpse of the pleasure with which I used at one period to peruse its prolix descriptions 62and high-flown sentiments. Not only the Palmerins of England and Amadises of Gaul, who made their way to their mistresses’ hearts by slaying giants and taming dragons, but the heroes of the French romances of intrigue and gallantry which succeeded those of necromancy and chivalry, and where the adventurers for the prize have to break through the fences of morality and scruples of conscience instead of stone-walls and enchantments dire, are to be excepted from the censure of downright insipidity which attaches to those ordinary drawing-room heroes, who are installed in the good graces of their Divinities by a look, and keep their places there by the force of still-life! It is Gray who cries out, ‘Be mine to read eternal new romances of Marivaux and Crebillon!’ I could say the same of those of Madame La Fayette and the Duke de la Rochefoucault. ‘The Princess of Cleves’ is a most charming work of this kind; and the Duke de Nemours is a great favourite with me. He is perhaps the most brilliant personage that ever entered upon the tapis of a drawing-room, or trifled at a lady’s toilette.

I prefer him, I own, vastly to Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison, whom I look upon as the prince of coxcombs; and so much the more impertinent as he is a moral one. His character appears to me ‘ugly all over with affectation.’ There is not a single thing that Sir Charles Grandison does or says all through the book from liking to any person or object but himself, and with a view to answer to a certain standard of perfection for which he pragmatically sets up. He is always thinking of himself, and trying to show that he is the wisest, happiest, and most virtuous person in the whole world. He is (or would be thought) a code of Christian ethics; a compilation and abstract of all gentlemanly accomplishments. There is nothing, I conceive, that excites so little sympathy as this inordinate egotism; or so much disgust as this everlasting self-complacency. Yet this self-admiration, brought forward on every occasion as the incentive to every action and reflected from all around him, is the burden and pivot of the story. ‘Is not the man Sir Charles Grandison?’—is what he and all the other persons concerned are continually repeating to themselves. His preference of the little, insignificant, selfish, affected, puritanical Miss Byron, who is remarkable for nothing but her conceit of herself and her lover, to the noble Clementina, must for ever stamp him for the poltroon and blockhead that he was. What a contrast between these two females—the one, the favourite heroine, settling her idle punctilios and the choice of her ribbons for the wedding-day with equal interest, the other, self-devoted, broken-hearted, generous, disinterested, pouring out her whole soul in the fervent expressions and dying struggles of an unfortunate and hopeless affection! It was impossible indeed for the 63genius of the author (strive all he could) to put the prettinesses and coquettish scruples of the bride-elect upon a par with the eloquent despair and impassioned sentiments of her majestic but unsuccessful rival. Nothing can show more clearly that the height of good fortune and of that conventional faultlessness which is supposed to secure it, is incompatible with any great degree of interest. Lady Clementina should have been married to Sir Charles to surfeit her of a coxcomb—Miss Byron to Lovelace to plague her with a rake! Have we not sometimes seen such matches? A slashing critic of my acquaintance once observed, that ‘Richardson would be surprised in the next world to find Lovelace in Heaven and Grandison in Hell!’ Without going this orthodox length, I must say there is something in Lovelace’s vices more attractive than in the other’s best virtues. Clarissa’s attachment seems as natural as Clementina’s is romantic. There is a regality about Lovelace’s manner, and he appears clothed in a panoply of wit, gaiety, spirit, and enterprise, that is criticism-proof. If he had not possessed these dazzling qualities, nothing could have made us forgive for an instant his treatment of the spotless Clarissa; but indeed they might be said to be mutually attracted to and extinguished in each other’s dazzling lustre! When we think of Lovelace and his luckless exploits, we can hardly be persuaded at this time of day that he wore a wig. Yet that he did so is evident; for Miss Howe when she gave him that spirited box on the ear, struck the powder out of it! Mr. B. in ‘Pamela’ has all the insipidity, that arises from patronising beauty and condescending to virtue. Pamela herself is delightfully made out; but she labours under considerable disadvantages, and is far from a regular heroine.

Sterne (thank God!) has neither hero nor heroine, and he does very well without them.

Many people find fault with Fielding’s Tom Jones as gross and immoral. For my part, I have doubts of his being so very handsome from the author’s always talking about his beauty, and I suspect he was a clown, from being constantly assured he was so very genteel. Otherwise, I think Jones acquits himself very well both in his actions and speeches, as a lover and as a trencher-man whenever he is called upon. Some persons, from their antipathy to that headlong impulse, of which Jones was the slave, and to that morality of good-nature which in him is made a foil to principle, have gone so far as to prefer Blifil as the prettier fellow of the two. I certainly cannot subscribe to this opinion, which perhaps was never meant to have followers, and has nothing but its singularity to recommend it. Joseph Andrews is a hero of the shoulder-knot: it would be hard to canvass his pretensions too severely, especially considering what a patron he has in 64Parson Adams. That one character would cut up into a hundred fine gentlemen and novel-heroes! Booth is another of the good-natured tribe, a fine man, a very fine man! But there is a want of spirit to animate the well-meaning mass. He hardly deserved to have the hashed mutton kept waiting for him. The author has redeemed himself in Amelia; but a heroine with a broken nose and who was a married woman besides, must be rendered truly interesting and amiable to make up for superficial objections. The character of the Noble Peer in this novel is not insipid. If Fielding could have made virtue as admirable as he could make vice detestable, he would have been a greater master even than he was. I do not understand what those critics mean who say he got all his characters out of alehouses. It is true he did some of them.

Smollett’s heroes are neither one thing nor the other: neither very refined nor very insipid. Wilson in Humphrey Clinker comes the nearest to the beau-ideal of this character, the favourite of the novel-reading and boarding-school girl. Narcissa and Emilia Gauntlet are very charming girls; and Monimia in Count Fathom is a fine monumental beauty. But perhaps he must be allowed to be most at home in Winifred Jenkins!

The women have taken this matter up in our own time: let us see what they have made of it. Mrs. Radcliffe’s heroes and lovers are perfect in their kind; nobody can find any fault with them, for nobody knows any thing about them. They are described as very handsome, and quite unmeaning and inoffensive.

Theodore, Valancourt,—what delightful names! and there is nothing else to distinguish them by. Perhaps, however, this indefiniteness is an advantage. We add expression to the inanimate outline, and fill up the blank with all that is amiable, interesting, and romantic. A long ride without a word spoken, a meeting that comes to nothing, a parting look, a moonlight scene, or evening skies that paint their sentiments for them better than the lovers can do for themselves, farewells too full of anguish, deliverances too big with joy to admit of words, suppressed sighs, faint smiles, the freshness of the morning, pale melancholy, the clash of swords, the clank of chains that make the fair one’s heart sink within her, these are the chief means by which the admired authoress of ‘The Romance of the Forest’ and ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho’ keeps alive an ambiguous interest in the bosom of her fastidious readers, and elevates the lover into the hero of the fable. Unintelligible distinctions, impossible attempts, a 65delicacy that shrinks from the most trifling objection, and an enthusiasm that rushes on its fate, such are the charming and teazing contradictions that form the flimsy texture of a modern romance! If the lover in such critical cases was any thing but a lover, he would cease to be the most amiable of all characters in the abstract and by way of excellence, and would be a traitor to the cause; to give reasons or to descend to particulars, is to doubt the omnipotence of love and shake the empire of credulous fancy; a sounding name, a graceful form, are all that is necessary to suspend the whole train of tears, sighs, and the softest emotions upon; the ethereal nature of the passion requires ethereal food to sustain it; and our youthful hero, in order to be perfectly interesting, must be drawn as perfectly insipid!

I cannot, however, apply this charge to Mrs. Inchbald’s heroes or heroines. However finely drawn, they are an essence of sentiment. Their words are composed of the warmest breath, their tears scald, their sighs stifle. Her characters seem moulded of a softer clay, the work of fairest hands. Miss Milner is enchanting. Doriforth indeed is severe, and has a very stately opinion of himself, but he has spirit and passion. Lord Norwynne is the most unpleasant and obdurate. He seduces by his situation and kills by indifference, as is natural in such cases. But still through all these the fascination of the writer’s personal feelings never quits you. On the other hand, Miss Burney’s (Madame D’Arblay’s) forte is ridicule, or an exquisite tact for minute absurdities, and when she aims at being fine she only becomes affected. No one had ever much less of the romantic. Lord Orville is a condescending suit of clothes; yet certainly the sense which Evelina has of the honour done her is very prettily managed. Sir Clement Willoughby is a much gayer and more animated person, though his wit outruns his discretion. Young Delville is the hero of punctilio—a perfect diplomatist in the art of love-making—and draws his parallels and sits down as deliberately before the citadel of his mistress’s heart, as a cautious general lays siege to an impregnable fortress. Cecilia is not behind-hand with him in the game of studied cross-purposes and affected delays, and is almost the veriest and most provoking trifler on record. Miss Edgeworth, I believe, has no heroes. Her trenchant pen cuts away all extravagance and idle pretence, and leaves nothing but common sense, prudence, and propriety behind it, wherever it comes.

I do not apprehend that the heroes of the Author of Waverley form any very striking exception to the common rule. They conform to their designation and follow the general law of their being. They are for the most part very equivocal and undecided personages, who receive their governing impulse from accident, or are puppets in the 66hands of their mistresses, such as Waverley, Ivanhoe, Frank Osbaldistone, Henry Morton, &c. I do not say that any of these are absolutely insipid, but they have in themselves no leading or master-traits, and they are worked out of very listless and inert materials into a degree of force and prominence solely by the genius of the author. Instead of acting, they are acted upon, and keep in the back-ground and in a neutral posture, till they are absolutely forced to come forward, and it is then with a very amiable reservation of modest scruples. Does it not seem almost, or generally speaking, as if a character to be put in this responsible situation of candidate for the highest favour of the public at large, or of the fair in particular, who is to conciliate all suffrages and concentrate all interests, must really have nothing in him to please or give offence, that he must be left a negative, feeble character without untractable or uncompromising points, and with a few slight recommendations and obvious good qualities which every one may be supposed to improve upon and fill up according to his or her inclination or fancy and the model of perfection previously existing in the mind? It is a privilege claimed, no doubt, by the fair reader to make out the object of her admiration and interest according to her own choice; and the same privilege, if not openly claimed, may be covertly exercised by others. We are all fond of our own creations, and if the author does little to his chief character and allows us to have a considerable hand in it, it may not suffer in our opinion from this circumstance. In fact, the hero of the work is not so properly the chief object in it, as a sort of blank left open to the imagination, or a lay-figure on which the reader disposes whatever drapery he pleases! Of all Sir Walter’s characters the most dashing and spirited is the Sultan Saladin. But he is not meant for a hero, nor fated to be a lover. He is a collateral and incidental performer in the scene. His movements therefore remain free, and he is master of his own resplendent energies, which produce so much the more daring and felicitous an effect. So far from being intended to please all tastes or the most squeamish, he is not meant for any taste. He has no pretensions, and stands upon the sole ground of his own heroic acts and sayings. The author has none of the timidity or mawkishness arising from a fear of not coming up to his own professions, or to the expectations excited in the reader’s mind. Any striking trait, any interesting exploit is more than was bargained for—is heaped measure, running over. There is no idle, nervous apprehension of falling short of perfection, arresting the hand or diverting the mind from truth and nature. If the Pagan is not represented as a monster and barbarian, all the rest is a god-send. Accordingly all is spontaneous, bold, and original in this beautiful 67and glowing design, which is as magnificent as it is magnanimous.—Lest I should forget it, I will mention while I am on the subject of Scotch novels, that Mackenzie’s ‘Man of Feeling’ is not without interest, but it is an interest brought out in a very singular and unprecedented way. He not merely says or does nothing to deserve the approbation of the goddess of his idolatry, but from extreme shyness and sensitiveness, instead of presuming on his merits, gets out of her way, and only declares his passion on his death-bed. Poor Harley!—Mr. Godwin’s Falkland is a very high and heroic character: he, however, is not a love-hero; and the only part in which an episode of this kind is introduced, is of the most trite and mawkish description. The case is different in St. Leon. The author’s resuscitated hero there quaffs joy, love, and immortality with a considerable gusto, and with appropriate manifestations of triumph.

As to the heroes of the philosophical school of romance, such as Goethe’s Werther, &c., they are evidently out of the pale of this reasoning. Instead of being common-place and insipid, they are one violent and startling paradox from beginning to end. Instead of being cast in stiff unmeaning mould, they ‘all germins spill at once’ that make mere mortal men. They run a-tilt at all established usages and prejudices, and overset all the existing order of society. There is plenty of interest here; and instead of complaining of a calm, we are borne along by a hurricane of passion and eloquence, certainly without any thing of ‘temperance that may give it smoothness.’ Schiller’s Moor, Kotzebue’s heroes, and all the other German prodigies are of this stamp.

Shakspeare’s lovers and Boccaccio’s I like much: they seem to me full of tenderness and manly spirit, and free from insipidity and cant. Otway’s Jaffier is, however, the true woman’s man—full of passion and effeminacy, a mixture of strength and weakness. Perhaps what I have said above may suggest the true reason and apology for Milton’s having unwittingly made Satan the hero of ‘Paradise Lost.’ He suffers infinite losses, and makes the most desperate efforts to recover or avenge them; and it is the struggle with fate and the privation of happiness that sharpens our desires, or enhances our sympathy with good or evil. We have little interest in unalterable felicity, nor can we join with heart and soul in the endless symphonies and exulting hallelujahs of the spirits of the blest. The remorse of a fallen spirit or ‘tears such as angels shed’ touch us more nearly.

The New Monthly Magazine.] [October and December, 1828.

A. For my part, I think Helvetius has made it clear that self-love is at the bottom of all our actions, even of those which are apparently the most generous and disinterested.

B. I do not know what you mean by saying that Helvetius has made this clear, nor what you mean by self-love.

A. Why, was not he the first who explained to the world that in gratifying others, we gratify ourselves; that though the result may be different, the motive is really the same, and a selfish one; and that if we had not more pleasure in performing what are called friendly or virtuous actions than the contrary, they would never enter our thoughts?

96B. Certainly he is no more entitled to this discovery (if it be one) than you are. Hobbes and Mandeville long before him asserted the same thing in the most explicit and unequivocal manner;^[21] and Butler, in the Notes and Preface to his Sermons, had also long before answered it in the most satisfactory way.

A. Ay, indeed! pray how so?

B. By giving the common sense answer to the question which I have just asked of you.

A. And what is that? I do not exactly comprehend.

B. Why, that self-love means, both in common and philosophical speech, the love of self.

A. To be sure, there needs no ghost to tell us that.

B. And yet, simple as it is, both you and many great philosophers seem to have overlooked it.

A. You are pleased to be obscure—unriddle for the sake of the vulgar.

B. Well then, Bishop Butler’s statement in the volume I have mentioned——

A. May I ask, is it the author of the Analogy you speak of?

B. The same, but an entirely different and much more valuable work. His position is, that the arguments of the opposite party go to prove that in all our motives and actions it is the individual indeed who loves or is interested in something, but not in the smallest degree (which yet seems necessary to make out the full import of the compound ‘sound significant,’ self-love) that that something is himself. By self-love is surely implied not only that it is I who feel a certain passion, desire, good-will, and so forth, but that I feel this good-will towards myself—in other words, that I am both the person feeling the attachment, and the object of it. In short, the controversy between self-love and benevolence relates not to the person who loves, but to the person beloved—otherwise, it is flat and puerile nonsense. There must always be some one to feel the love, that’s certain, or else there could be no love of one thing or another—so far there can be no question that it is a given individual who feels, thinks, and acts in all possible cases of feeling, thinking, and acting—‘there needs,’ according to your own allusion, ‘no ghost come 97from the grave to tell us that’—but whether the said individual in so doing always thinks of, feels for, and acts with a view to himself, that is a very important question, and the only real one at issue; and the very statement of which, in a distinct and intelligible form, gives at once the proper and inevitable answer to it. Self-love, to mean any thing, must have a double meaning, that is, must not merely signify love, but love defined and directed in a particular manner, having self for its object, reflecting and reacting upon self; but it is downright and intolerable trifling to persist that the love or concern which we feel for another still has self for its object, because it is we who feel it. The same sort of quibbling would lead to the conclusion that when I am thinking of any other person, I am notwithstanding thinking of myself, because it is I who have his image in my mind.

A. I cannot, I confess, see the connection.

B. I wish you would point out the distinction. Or let me ask you—Suppose you were to observe me looking frequently and earnestly at myself in the glass, would you not be inclined to laugh, and say that this was vanity?

A. I might be half-tempted to do so.

B. Well; and if you were to find me admiring a fine picture, or speaking in terms of high praise of the person or qualities of another, would you not set it down equally to an excess of coxcombry and self-conceit?

A. How, in the name of common sense, should I do so?

B. Nay, how should you do otherwise upon your own principles? For if sympathy with another is to be construed into self-love because it is I who feel it, surely, by the same rule, my admiration and praise of another must be resolved into self-praise and self-admiration, and I am the whole time delighted with myself, to wit, with my own thoughts and feelings, while I pretend to be delighted with another. Another’s limbs are as much mine, who contemplate them, as his feelings.

A. Now, my good friend, you go too far: I can’t think you serious.

B. Do I not tell you that I have a most grave Bishop (equal to a whole Bench) on my side?

A. What! is this illustration of the looking-glass and picture his? I thought it was in your own far-fetched manner.

B. And why far-fetched?

A. Because nobody can think of calling the praise of another self-conceit—the words have a different meaning in the language.

B. Nobody has thought of confounding them hitherto, and yet they sound to me as like as selfishness and generosity. If our vanity 98can be brought to admire others disinterestedly, I do not see but our good-nature may be taught to serve them as disinterestedly. Grant me but this, that self-love signifies not simply, ‘I love,’ but requires to have this further addition, ‘I love myself.’ understood in order to make sense or grammar of it, and I defy you to make one or the other of Helvetius’s theory, if you will needs have it to be his. If, as Fielding says, all our passions are selfish merely because they are ours, then in hating another we must be said to hate ourselves, just as wisely as in loving another, we are said to be actuated by self-love. I have no patience with such foolery. I respect that fine old sturdy fellow Hobbes, or even the acute pertinacious sophistry of Mandeville; but I do not like the flimsy, self-satisfied repetition of an absurdity, which with its originality has lost all its piquancy.

A. You have, I know, very little patience with others who differ from you, nor are you a very literal reporter of the arguments of those who happen to be on your side of the question. You were about to tell me the substance of Butler’s answer to Helvetius’s theory, if we can let the anachronism pass; and I have as yet only heard certain quaint and verbal distinctions of your own. I must still think that the most disinterested actions proceed from a selfish motive. A man feels distress at the sight of a beggar, and he parts with his money to remove this uneasiness. If he did not feel this distress in his own mind, he would take no steps to relieve the other’s wants.

B. And pray, does he feel this distress in his own mind out of love to himself, or solely that he may have the pleasure of getting rid of it? The first move in the game of mutual obligation is evidently a social, not a selfish impulse, and I might rest the dispute here and insist upon going no farther till this step is got over, but it is not necessary. I have already told you the substance of Butler’s answer to this common-place and plausible objection. He says, in his fine broad manly and yet unpretending mode of stating a question, that a living being may be supposed to be actuated either by mere sensations, having no reference to any one else, or else that having an idea and foresight of the consequences to others, he is influenced by and interested in those consequences only in so far as they have a distinct connexion with his own ultimate good, in both which cases, seeing that the motives and actions have both their origin and end in self, they may and must be properly denominated selfish. But where the motive is neither physically nor morally selfish, that is, where the impulse to act is neither excited by a physical sensation nor by a reflection on the consequence to accrue to the individual, it must be hard to say in what sense it can be called so, except in that sense 99already exploded, namely, that which would infer that an impulse of any kind is selfish merely because it acts upon some one, or that before we can entertain disinterested sympathy with another, we must feel no sympathy at all. Benevolence, generosity, compassion, friendship, &c. imply, says the Bishop, that we take an immediate and unfeigned interest in the welfare of others; that their pleasures give us pleasure; that their pains give us pain, barely to know of them, and from no thought about ourselves. But no! retort the advocates of self-love, this is not enough: before any person can pretend to the title of benevolent, generous, and so on, he must prove, that so far from taking the deepest and most heartfelt interest in the happiness of others, he has no feeling on the subject, that he is perfectly indifferent to their weal or woe; and then taking infinite pains and making unaccountable sacrifices for their good without caring one farthing about them, he might pass for heroic and disinterested. But if he lets it appear he has the smallest good-will towards them and acts upon it, he then becomes a merely selfish agent; so that to establish a character for generosity, compassion, humanity, &c. in any of his actions, he must first plainly prove that he never felt the slightest twinge of any of these passions thrilling in his bosom. This, according to my author, is requiring men to act not from charitable motives, but from no motives at all. Such reasoning has not an appearance of philosophy, but rather of drivelling weakness or of tacit irony. For my part, I can conceive of no higher strain of generosity than that which justly and truly says, Nihil humani â me alienum puto—but, according to your modern French friends and my old English ones, there is no difference between this and the most sordid selfishness; for the instant a man takes an interest in another’s welfare, he makes it his own, and all the merit and disinterestedness is gone. ‘Greater love than this hath no man, that he should give his life for his friend.’ It must be rather a fanciful sort of self-love that at any time sacrifices its own acknowledged and obvious interests for the sake of another.

A. Not in the least. The expression you have just used explains the whole mystery, and I think you must allow this yourself. The moment I sympathise with another, I do in strictness make his interest my own. The two things on this supposition become inseparable, and my gratification is identified with his advantage. Every one, in short, consults his particular taste and inclination, whatever may be its bias, or acts from the strongest motive. Regulus, as Helvetius has so ably demonstrated, would not have returned to Carthage, but that the idea of dishonour gave him more uneasiness than the apprehension of a violent death.

B. That is, had he not preferred the honour of his country to his 100own interest. Surely, when self-love by all accounts takes so very wide a range and embraces entirely new objects of a character so utterly opposed to its general circumscribed and paltry routine of action, it would be as well to designate it by some new and appropriate appellation, unless it were meant, by the intervention of the old and ambiguous term, to confound the important practical distinction which subsists between the puny circle of a man’s physical sensations and private interests and the whole world of virtue and honour, and thus to bring back the last gradually and disingenuously within the verge of the former. Things without names are unapt to take root in the human mind: we are prone to reduce nature to the dimensions of language. If a feeling of a refined and romantic character is expressed by a gross and vulgar name, our habitual associations will be sure to degrade the first to the level of the last, instead of conforming to a forced and technical definition. But I beg to deny, not only that the objects in this case are the same, but that the principle is similar.

A. Do you then seriously pretend that the end of sympathy is not to get rid of the momentary uneasiness occasioned by the distress of another?

B. And has that uneasiness, I again ask, its source in self-love? If self-love were the only principle of action, we ought to receive no uneasiness from the pains of others, we ought to be wholly exempt from any such weakness: or the least that can be required to give the smallest shadow of excuse to this exclusive theory is, that the instant the pain was communicated by our foolish, indiscreet sympathy, we should think of nothing but getting rid of it as fast as possible, by fair means or foul, as a mechanical instinct. If the pain of sympathy, as soon as it arose, was decompounded from the objects which gave it birth, and acted upon the brain or nerves solely as a detached, desultory feeling, or abstracted sense of uneasiness, from which the mind shrunk with its natural aversion to pain, then I would allow that the impulse in this case, having no reference to the good of another, and seeking only to remove a present inconvenience from the individual, would still be properly self-love: but no such process of abstraction takes place. The feeling of compassion, as it first enters the mind, so it continues to act upon it in conjunction with the idea of what another suffers; refers every wish it forms or every effort it makes, to the removal of pain from a fellow-creature, and is only satisfied when it believes this end to be accomplished. It is not a blind, physical repugnance to pain, as affecting ourselves, but rational or intelligible conception of it as existing out of ourselves, that prompts and sustains our exertions in behalf of humanity. Nor 101can it be otherwise, while man is the creature of imagination and reason, and has faculties that implicate him (whether he will or not) in the pleasures and pains of others, and bind up his fate with theirs. Why, then, when an action or feeling is neither in its commencement nor progress, nor ultimate objects, dictated by or subject to the control of self-love, bestow the name where every thing but the name is wanting?

A. I must give you fair warning, that in this last tirade you have more than once gone beyond my comprehension. Your distinctions are too fine-drawn, and there is a want of relief in the expression. Are you not getting back to what you describe as your first manner? Your present style is more amusing. See if you cannot throw a few high lights into that last argument!

B. Un peu plus à l’Anglaise—any thing to oblige! I say, then, it appears to me strange that self-love should be asserted by any impartial reasoner, (not the dupe of a play upon words), to be absolute and undisputed master of the human mind, when compassion or uneasiness on account of others enters it without leave and in spite of this principle. What! to be instantly expelled by it without mercy, so that it may still assert its pre-eminence? No; but to linger there, to hold consultation with another principle, Imagination, which owes no allegiance to self-interest, and to march out only under condition and guarantee that the welfare of another is first provided for without any special clause in its own favour. This is much as if you were to say and swear, that though the bailiff and his man have taken possession of your house, you are still the rightful owner of it.

A. And so I am.

B. Why, then, not turn out such unwelcome intruders without standing upon ceremony?

A. You were too vague and abstracted before: now you are growing too figurative. Always in extremes.

B. Give me leave for a moment, as you will not let me spin mere metaphysical cobwebs.

A. I am patient.

B. Suppose that by sudden transformation your body were so contrived that it could feel the actual sensations of another body, as if your nerves had an immediate and physical communication; that you were assailed by a number of objects you saw and knew nothing of before, and felt desires and appetites springing up in your bosom for which you could not at all account—would you not say that this addition of another body made a material alteration in your former situation; that it called for a new set of precautions and instincts to provide for its wants and wishes? or would you persist in it that you 102were just where you were, that no change had taken place in your being and interests, and that your new body was in fact your old one, for no other reason than because it was yours? To my thinking, the case would be quite altered by the supererogation of such a new sympathetic body, and I should be for dividing my care and time pretty equally between them.

Captain C. You mean that in that case you would have taken in partners to the concern, as well as No. I.?

B. Yes; and my concern for No. II. would be something very distinct from, and quite independent of, my original and hitherto exclusive concern for No. I.

A. How very gross and vulgar! (whispering to D——, and then turning to me, added,)—but why suppose an impossibility? I hate all such incongruous and far-fetched illustrations.

B. And yet this very miracle takes place every day in the human mind and heart, and you and your sophists would persuade us that it is nothing, and would slur over its existence by a shallow misnomer. Do I not by imaginary sympathy acquire a new interest (out of myself) in others as much as I should on the former supposition by physical contact or animal magnetism? and am I not compelled by this new law of my nature (neither included in physical sensation nor a deliberate regard to my own individual welfare) to consult the feelings and wishes of the new social body of which I am become a member, often to the prejudice of my own? The parallel seems to me exact, and I think the inference from it unavoidable. I do not postpone a benevolent or friendly purpose to my own personal convenience, or make it bend to it—

The will is amenable not to our immediate sensibility but to reason and imagination, which point out and enforce a line of duty very different from that prescribed by self-love. The operation of sympathy or social feeling, though it has its seat certainly in the mind of the individual, is neither for his immediate behalf nor to his remote benefit, but is constantly a diversion from both, and therefore, I contend, is not in any sense selfish. The movements in my breast as much originate in, and are regulated by, the idea of what another feels, as if they were governed by a chord placed there vibrating to another’s pain. If these movements were mechanical, they would be considered as directed to the good of another: it is odd, that because my bosom takes part and beats in unison with them, they should become of a less generous character. In the passions of hatred, 103resentment, sullenness, or even in low spirits, we voluntarily go through a great deal of pain, because such is our pleasure; or strictly, because certain objects have taken hold of our imagination, and we cannot, or will not, get rid of the impression: why should good-nature and generosity be the only feelings in which we will not allow a little forgetfulness of ourselves? Once more. If self-love, or each individual’s sensibility, sympathy, what you will, were like an animalcule, sensitive, quick, shrinking instantly from whatever gave it pain, seeking instinctively whatever gave it pleasure, and having no other obligation or law of its existence, then I should be most ready to acknowledge that this principle was in its nature, end, and origin, selfish, slippery, treacherous, inert, inoperative but as an instrument of some immediate stimulus, incapable of generous sacrifice or painful exertion, and deserving a name and title accordingly, leading one to bestow upon it its proper attributes. But the very reverse of all this happens. The mind is tenacious of remote purposes, indifferent to immediate feelings, which cannot consist with the nature of a rational and voluntary agent. Instead of the animalcule swimming in pleasure and gliding from pain, the principle of self-love is incessantly to the imagination or sense of duty what the fly is to the spider—that fixes its stings into it, involves it in its web, sucks its blood, and preys upon its vitals! Does the spider do all this to please the fly? Just as much as Regulus returned to Carthage and was rolled down a hill in a barrel with iron spikes in it to please himself! The imagination or understanding is no less the enemy of our pleasure than of our interest. It will not let us be at ease till we have accomplished certain objects with which we have ourselves no concern but as melancholy truths.

A. But the spider you have so quaintly conjured up is a different animal from the fly. The imagination on which you lay so much stress is a part of one’s-self.

B. I grant it: and for that very reason, self-love, or a principle tending exclusively to our own immediate gratification or future advantage, neither is nor can be the sole spring of action in the human mind.

A. I cannot see that at all.

D. Nay, I think he has made it out better than usual.

B. Imagination is another name for an interest in things out of ourselves, which must naturally run counter to our own. Self-love, for so fine and smooth-spoken a gentleman, leads his friends into odd scrapes. The situation of Regulus in a barrel with iron spikes in it was not a very easy one: but, say the advocates of refined self-love, their points were a succession of agreeable punctures in his sides, 104compared with the stings of dishonour. But what bound him to this dreadful alternative? Not self-love. When the pursuit of honour becomes troublesome, ‘throw honour to the dogs—I’ll none of it!’ This seems the true Epicurean solution. Philosophical self-love seems neither a voluptuary nor an effeminate coward, but a cynic, and even a martyr, so that I am afraid he will hardly dare show his face at Very’s, and that, with this knowledge of his character, even the countenance of the Count de Stutt-Tracy will not procure his admission to the saloons.

A. The Count de Stutt-Tracy, did you say? Who is he? I never heard of him.

B. He is the author of the celebrated ‘Idéologie,’ which Bonaparte denounced to the Chamber of Peers as the cause of his disasters in Russia. He is equally hated by the Bourbons; and what is more extraordinary still, he is patronised by Ferdinand VII. who settled a pension of two hundred crowns a year on the translator of his works. He speaks of Condillac as having ‘created the science of Ideology,’ and holds Helvetius for a true philosopher.

A. Which you do not! I think it a pity you should affect singularity of opinion in such matters, when you have all the most sensible and best-informed judges against you,

B. I am sorry for it too; but I am afraid I can hardly expect you with me, till I have all Europe on my side, of which I see no chance while the Englishman with his notions of solid beef and pudding holds fast by his substantial identity, and the Frenchman with his lighter food and air mistakes every shadowy impulse for himself.

The New Monthly Magazine.] [December, 1828.

D. You deny, I think, that personal identity, in the qualified way in which you think proper to admit it, is any ground for the doctrine of self-interest?

B. Yes, in an exclusive and absolute sense I do undoubtedly, that is, in the sense in which it is affirmed by metaphysicians, and ordinarily believed in.

D. Could you not go over the ground briefly, without entering into technicalities?

B. Not easily: but stop me when I entangle myself in difficulties. A person fancies, or feels habitually, that he has a positive, substantial 105interest in his own welfare, (generally speaking) just as much as he has in any actual sensation that he feels, because he is always and necessarily the same self. What is his interest at one time is therefore equally his interest at all other times. This is taken for granted as a self-evident proposition. Say he does not feel a particular benefit or injury at this present moment, yet it is he who is to feel it, which comes to the same thing. Where there is this continued identity of person, there must also be a correspondent identity of interest. I have an abstract, unavoidable interest in whatever can befall myself, which I can have or feel in no other person living, because I am always under every possible circumstance the self-same individual, and not any other individual whatsoever. In short, this word self (so closely do a number of associations cling round it and cement it together) is supposed to represent as it were a given concrete substance, as much one thing as any thing in nature can possibly be, and the centre or substratum in which the different impressions and ramifications of my being meet and are indissolubly knit together.

A. And you propose then seriously to take ‘this one entire and perfect chrysolite,’ this self, this ‘precious jewel of the soul,’ this rock on which mankind have built their faith for ages, and at one blow shatter it to pieces with the sledge-hammer, or displace it from its hold in the imagination with the wrenching-irons of metaphysics?

B. I am willing to use my best endeavours for that purpose.

D. You really ought: for you have the prejudices of the whole world against you.

B. I grant the prejudices are formidable; and I should despair, did I not think the reasons even stronger. Besides, without altering the opinions of the whole world, I might be contented with the suffrages of one or two intelligent people.

D. Nay, you will prevail by flattery, if not by argument.

A. That is something newer than all the rest.

B. ‘Plain truth,’ dear A——, ‘needs no flowers of speech.’

D. Let me rightly understand you. Do you mean to say that I am not C. D. and that you are not W. B. or that we shall not both of us remain so to the end of the chapter, without a possibility of ever changing places with each other?

B. I am afraid, if you go to that, there is very little chance that

But with all this precise individuality and inviolable identity that you speak of, let me ask, Are you not a little changed (less so, it is true, than most people) from what you were twenty years ago? Or do 106you expect to appear the same that you are now twenty years hence?

D. ‘No more of that if thou lovest me.’ We know what we are, but we know not what we shall be.

B. A truce then; but be assured that whenever you happen to fling up your part, there will be no other person found to attempt it after you.

D. Pray, favour us with your paradox without farther preface.

B. I will then try to match my paradox against your prejudice, which as it is armed all in proof, to make any impression on it, I must, I suppose, take aim at the rivets; and if I can hit them, if I do not (round and smooth as it is) cut it into three pieces, and show that two parts in three are substance and the third and principal part shadow, never believe me again. Your real self ends exactly where your pretended self-interest begins; and in calculating upon this principle as a solid, permanent, absolute, self-evident truth, you are mocked with a name.

D. How so? I hear, but do not see.

B. You must allow that this identical, indivisible, ostensible self is at any rate distinguishable into three parts,—the past, the present, and future?

D. I see no particular harm in that.

B. It is nearly all I ask. Well then, I admit that you have a peculiar, emphatic, incommunicable and exclusive interest or fellow-feeling in the two first of these selves; but I deny resolutely and unequivocally that you have any such natural, absolute, unavoidable, and mechanical interest in the last self, or in your future being, the interest you take in it being necessarily the offspring of understanding and imagination (aided by habit and circumstances), like that which you take in the welfare of others, and yet this last interest is the only one that is ever the object of rational and voluntary pursuit, or that ever comes into competition with the interests of others.

D. I am still to seek for the connecting clue.

B. I am almost ashamed to ask for your attention to a statement so very plain that it seems to border on a truism. I have an interest of a peculiar and limited nature in my present self, inasmuch as I feel my actual sensations not simply in a degree, but in a way and by means of faculties which afford me not the smallest intimation of the sensations of others. I cannot possibly feel the sensations of any one else, nor consequently take the slightest interest in them as such. I have no nerves communicating with another’s brain, and transmitting to me either the glow of pleasure or the agony of pain which he may feel at the present moment by means of his senses. So far, therefore, 107namely, so far as my present self or immediate sensations are concerned, I am cut off from all sympathy with others. I stand alone in the world, a perfectly insulated individual, necessarily and in the most unqualified sense indifferent to all that passes around me, and that does not in the first instance affect myself, for otherwise I neither have nor can have the remotest consciousness of it as a matter of organic sensation, any more than the mole has of light or the deaf adder of sounds.

D. Spoken like an oracle.

B. Again, I have a similar peculiar, mechanical, and untransferable interest in my past self, because I remember and can dwell upon my past sensations (even after the objects are removed) also in a way and by means of faculties which do not give me the smallest insight into or sympathy with the past feelings of others. I may conjecture and fancy what those feelings have been; and so I do. But I have no memory or continued consciousness of what either of good or evil may have found a place in their bosoms, no secret spring that touched vibrates to the hopes and wishes that are no more, unlocks the chambers of the past with the same assurance of reality, or identifies my feelings with theirs in the same intimate manner as with those which I have already felt in my own person. Here again, then, there is a real, undoubted, original and positive foundation for the notion of self to rest upon; for in relation to my former self and past feelings, I do possess a faculty which serves to unite me more especially to my own being, and at the same time draws a distinct and impassable line around that being, separating it from every other. A door of communication stands always open between my present consciousness and my past feelings, which is locked and barred by the hand of Nature and the constitution of the human understanding against the intrusion of any straggling impressions from the minds of others. I can only see into their real history darkly and by reflection. To sympathise with their joys or sorrows, and place myself in their situation either now or formerly, I must proceed by guess-work, and borrow the use of the common faculty of imagination. I am ready to acknowledge, then, that in what regards the past as well as the present, there is a strict metaphysical distinction between myself and others, and that my personal identity so far, or in the close, continued, inseparable connection between my past and present impressions, is firmly and irrevocably established.

D. You go on swimmingly. So far all is sufficiently clear.

B. But now comes the rub: for beyond that point I deny that the doctrine of personal identity or self-interest (as a consequence from it) has any foundation to rest upon but a confusion of names and 108ideas. It has none in the nature of things or of the human mind. For I have no faculty by which I can project myself into the future, or hold the same sort of palpable, tangible, immediate, and exclusive communication with my future feelings, in the same manner as I am made to feel the present moment by means of the senses, or the past moment by means of memory. If I have any such faculty, expressly set apart for the purpose, name it. If I have no such faculty, I can have no such interest. In order that I may possess a proper personal identity so as to live, breathe, and feel along the whole line of my existence in the same intense and intimate mode, it is absolutely necessary to have some general medium or faculty by which my successive impressions are blended and amalgamated together, and to maintain and support this extraordinary interest. But so far from there being any foundation for this merging and incorporating of my future in my present self, there is no link of connection, no sympathy, no reaction, no mutual consciousness between them, nor even a possibility of any thing of the kind, in a mechanical and personal sense. Up to the present point, the spot on which we stand, the doctrine of personal identity holds good; hitherto the proud and exclusive pretensions of self ‘come, but no farther.’ The rest is air, is nothing, is a name, or but the common ground of reason and humanity. If I wish to pass beyond this point and look into my own future lot, or anticipate my future weal or woe before it has had an existence, I can do so by means of the same faculties by which I enter into and identify myself with the welfare, the being, and interests of others, but only by these. As I have already said, I have no particular organ or faculty of self-interest, in that case made and provided. I have no sensation of what is to happen to myself in future, no presentiment of it, no instinctive sympathy with it, nor consequently any abstract and unavoidable self-interest in it. Now mark. It is only in regard to my past and present being, that a broad and insurmountable barrier is placed between myself and others: as to future objects, there is no absolute and fundamental distinction whatever. But it is only these last that are the objects of any rational or practical interest. The idea of self properly attaches to objects of sense or memory, but these can never be the objects of action or of voluntary pursuit, which must, by the supposition, have an eye to future events. But with respect to these the chain of self-interest is dissolved and falls in pieces by the very necessity of our nature, and our obligations to self as a blind, mechanical, unsociable principle are lost in the general law which binds us to the pursuit of good as it comes within our reach and knowledge.

A. A most lame and impotent conclusion, I must say. Do you 109mean to affirm that you have really the same interest in another’s welfare that you have in your own?

B. I do not wish to assert any thing without proof. Will you tell me if you have this particular interest in yourself what faculty is it that gives it you—to what conjuration and what mighty magic it is owing—or whether it is merely the name of self that is to be considered as a proof of all the absurdities and impossibilities that can be drawn from it?

A. I do not see that you have hitherto pointed out any.

B. What! not the impossibility that you should be another being, with whom you have not a particle of fellow-feeling?

A. Another being! Yes, I know it is always impossible for me to be another being.

B. Ay, or yourself either, without such a fellow-feeling, for it is that which constitutes self. If not, explain to me what you mean by self. But it is more convenient for you to let that magical sound lie involved in the obscurity of prejudice and language. You will please to take notice that it is not I who commence these hairbreadth distinctions and special-pleading. I take the old ground of common sense and natural feeling, and maintain that though in a popular, practical sense mankind are strongly swayed by self-interest, yet in the same ordinary sense they are also governed by motives of good-nature, compassion, friendship, virtue, honour, &c. Now all this is denied by your modern metaphysicians, who would reduce every thing to abstract self-interest, and exclude every other mixed motive or social tie in a strict, philosophical sense. They would drive me from my ground by scholastic subtleties and newfangled phrases; am I to blame then if I take them at their word, and try to foil them at their own weapons? Either stick to the unpretending jog-trot notions on the subject, or if you are determined to refine in analysing words and arguments, do not be angry if I follow the example set me, or even go a little farther to arrive at the truth. Shall we proceed on this understanding?

A. As you please.

B. We have got so far then (if I mistake not, and if there is not some flaw in the argument which I am unable to detect) that the past and present (which alone can appeal to our selfish faculties) are not the objects of action, and that the future (which can alone be the object of practical pursuit) has no particular claim or hold upon self. All action, all passion, all morality and self-interest, is prospective.

A. You have not made that point quite clear. What then is meant by a present interest, by the gratification of the present moment, as opposed to a future one?

110B. Nothing, in a strict sense; or rather in common speech, you mean a near one, the interest of the next moment, the next hour, the next day, the next year, as it happens.

A. What! would you have me believe that I snatch my hand out of the flame of a candle from a calculation of future consequences?

D. (laughing.) A. had better not meddle with that question. B. is in his element there. It is his old and favourite illustration.

B. Do you not snatch your hand out of the fire to procure ease from pain?

A. No doubt, I do.

B. And is not this case subsequent to the act, and the act itself to the feeling of pain, which caused it?

A. It may be so; but the interval is so slight that we are not sensible of it.

B. Nature is nicer in her distinctions than we. Thus you could not lift the food to your mouth, but upon the same principle. The viands are indeed tempting, but if it were the sight or smell of these alone that attracted you, you would remain satisfied with them. But you use means to ends, neither of which exist till you employ or produce them, and which would never exist if the understanding which foresees them did not run on before the actual objects and purvey to appetite. If you say it is habit, it is partly so; but that habit would never have been formed, were it not for the connection between cause and effect, which always takes place in the order of time, or of what Hume calls antecedents and consequents.

A. I confess I think this a mighty microscopic way of looking at the subject.

B. Yet you object equally to more vague and sweeping generalities. Let me, however, endeavour to draw the knot a little tighter, as it has a considerable weight to bear—no less, in my opinion, than the whole world of moral sentiments. All voluntary action must relate to the future: but the future can only exist or influence the mind as an object of imagination and forethought; therefore the motive to voluntary action, to all that we seek or shun, must be in all cases ideal and problematical. The thing itself which is an object of pursuit can never co-exist with the motives which make it an object of pursuit. No one will say that the past can be an object either of prevention or pursuit. It may be a subject of involuntary regrets, or may give rise to the starts and flaws of passion; but we cannot set about seriously recalling or altering it. Neither can that which at present exists, or is an object of sensation, be at the same time an object of action or of volition, since if it is, no volition or exertion of mine can for the instant make it to be other than it is. I can make 111it cease to be indeed, but this relates to the future, to the supposed non-existence of the object, and not to its actual impression on me. For a thing to be willed, it must necessarily not be. Over my past and present impressions my will has no control: they are placed, according to the poet, beyond the reach of fate, much more of human means. In order that I may take an effectual and consistent interest in any thing, that it may be an object of hope or fear, of desire or dread, it must be a thing still to come, a thing still in doubt, depending on circumstances and the means used to bring about or avert it. It is my will that determines its existence or the contrary (otherwise there would be no use in troubling oneself about it); it does not itself lay its peremptory, inexorable mandates on my will. For it is as yet (and must be in order to be the rational object of a moment’s deliberation) a nonentity, a possibility merely and it is plain that nothing can be the cause of nothing. That which is not, cannot act, much less can it act mechanically, physically, all-powerfully. So far is it from being true that a real and practical interest in any thing are convertible terms, that a practical interest can never by any possible chance be a real one, that is, excited by the presence of a real object or by mechanical sympathy. I cannot assuredly be induced by a present object to take means to make it exist—it can be no more than present to me—or if it is past, it is too late to think of recovering the occasion or preventing it now. But the future, the future is all our own; or rather it belongs equally to others. The world of action then, of business or pleasure, of self-love or benevolence, is not made up of solid materials, moved by downright, solid springs; it is essentially a void, an unreal mockery, both in regard to ourselves and others, except as it is filled up, animated, and set in motion by human thoughts and purposes. The ingredients of passion, action, and properly of interest are never positive, palpable matters-of-fact, concrete existences, but symbolical representations of events lodged in the bosom of futurity, and teaching us, by timely anticipation and watchful zeal, to build up the fabric of our own or others’ future weal.

A. Do we not sometimes plot their woe with at least equal good-will?

B. Not much oftener than we are accessory to our own.

A. I must say that savours more to me of an antithesis than of an answer.

B. For once, be it so.

A. But surely there is a difference between a real and an imaginary interest? A history is not a romance.

B. Yes; but in this sense the feelings and interests of others are 112in the end as real, as much matters of fact as mine or yours can be. The history of the world is not a romance, though you and I have had only a small share in it. You would turn every thing into autobiography. The interests of others are no more chimerical, visionary, fantastic than my own, being founded in truth, and both are brought home to my bosom in the same way by the force of imagination and sympathy.

D. But in addition to all this sympathy that you make such a rout about, it is I who am to feel a real, downright interest in my own future good, and I shall feel no such interest in another person’s. Does not this make a wide, nay a total difference in the case? Am I to have no more affection for my own flesh and blood than for another’s?

B. This would indeed make an entire difference in the case, if your interest in your own good were founded in your affection for yourself, and not your affection for yourself in your attachment to your own good. If you were attached to your own good merely because it was yours, I do not see why you should not be equally attached to your own ill—both are equally yours! Your own person or that of others would, I take it, be alike indifferent to you, but for the degree of sympathy you have with the feelings of either. Take away the sense or apprehension of pleasure and pain, and you would care no more about yourself than you do about the hair of your head or the paring of your nails, the parting with which gives you no sensible uneasiness at the time or on after-reflection.

D. But up to the present moment you allow that I have a particular interest in my proper self. Where then am I to stop, or how draw the line between my real and my imaginary identity?

B. The line is drawn for you by the nature of things. Or if the difference between reality and imagination is so small that you cannot perceive it, it only shows the strength of the latter. Certain it is that we can no more anticipate our future being than we change places with another individual, except in an ideal and figurative sense. But it is just as impossible that I should have an actual sensation of and interest in my future feelings as that I should have an actual sensation of and interest in what another feels at the present instant. An essential and irreconcileable difference in our primary faculties forbids it. The future, were it the next moment, were it an object nearest and dearest to our hearts, is a dull blank, opaque, impervious to sense as an object close to the eye of the blind, did not the ray of reason and reflection enlighten it. We can never say to its fleeting, painted essence, ‘Come, let me clutch thee!’ it is a thing of air, a phantom that flies before us, and we follow it, and with respect to all but our past and present sensations, which are no longer any thing to 113action, we totter on the brink of nothing. That self which we project before us into it, that we make our proxy or representative, and empower to embody, and transmit back to us all our real, substantial interests before they have had an existence, except in our imaginations, is but a shadow of ourselves, a bundle of habits, passions, and prejudices, a body that falls in pieces at the touch of reason or the approach of inquiry. It is true, we do build up such an imaginary self, and a proportionable interest in it; we clothe it with the associations of the past and present, we disguise it in the drapery of language, we add to it the strength of passion and the warmth of affection, till we at length come to class our whole existence under one head, and fancy our future history a solid, permanent, and actual continuation of our immediate being, but all this only proves the force of imagination and habit to build up such a structure on a merely partial foundation, and does not alter the true nature and distinction of things. On the same foundation are built up nearly as high natural affection, friendship, the love of country, of religion, &c. But of this presently. What shows that the doctrine of self-interest, however high it may rear its head, or however impregnable it may seem to attack, is a mere ‘contradiction,’

is this single consideration, that we never know what is to happen to us beforehand, no, not even for a moment, and that we cannot so much as tell whether we shall be alive a year, a month, or a day hence. We have no presentiment of what awaits us, making us feel the future in the instant. Indeed such an insight into futurity would be inconsistent with itself, or we must become mere passive instruments in the hands of fate. A house may fall on my head as I go from this, I may be crushed to pieces by a carriage running over me, or I may receive a piece of news that is death to my hopes before another four-and-twenty hours are passed over, and yet I feel nothing of the blow that is thus to stagger and stun me. I laugh and am well. I have no warning given me either of the course or the consequence (in truth if I had, I should, if possible, avoid it). This continued self-interest that watches over all my concerns alike, past, present, and future, and concentrates them all in one powerful and invariable principle of action, is useless here, leaves me at a loss at my greatest need, is torpid, silent, dead, and I have no more consciousness of what so nearly affects me, and no more care about it, (till I find out my danger by other and natural means,) than if no such thing were ever to happen, or were to happen to the Man in the Moon.

114This beautiful line is not verified in the ordinary prose of life. That it is not, is a staggering consideration for your fine, practical, instinctive, abstracted, comprehensive, uniform principle of self-interest. Don’t you think so, D——?

D. I shall not answer you. Am I to give up my existence for an idle sophism? You heap riddle upon riddle; but I am mystery-proof. I still feel my personal identity as I do the chair I sit on, though I am enveloped in a cloud of smoke and words. Let me have your answer to a plain question.—Suppose I were actually to see a coach coming along and I was in danger of being run over, what I want to know is, should I not try to save myself sooner than any other person?

B. No, you would first try to save a sister, if she were with you.

A. Surely that would be a very rare instance of self, though I do not deny it.

B. I do not think so. I believe there is hardly any one who does not prefer some one to themselves. For example, let us look into Waverley.

A. Ay, that is the way that you take your ideas of philosophy, from novels and romances, as if they were sound evidence.

B. If my conclusions are as true to nature as my premises, I shall be satisfied. Here is the passage I was going to quote: ‘I was only ganging to say, my lord,’ said Evan, in what he meant to be an insinuating manner, ‘that if your excellent honour and the honourable court would let Vich Ian Vohr go free just this once and let him gae back to France and not trouble King George’s government again, that any six o’ the very best of his clan will be willing to be justified in his stead; and if you’ll just let me gae down to Glennaquoich, I’ll fetch them up to ye myself to head or hang, and you may begin with me the very first man.’^[22]

A. But such instances as this are the effect of habit and strong prejudice. We can hardly argue from so barbarous a state of society.

B. Excuse me there. I contend that our preference of ourselves is just as much the effect of habit, and very frequently a more unaccountable and unreasonable one than any other.

A. I should like to hear how you can possibly make that out.

B. If you will not condemn me before you hear what I have to say, I will try. You allow that D——, in the case we have been talking of, would perhaps run a little risk for you or me; but if it were a perfect stranger, he would get out of the way as fast as his legs would carry him, and leave the stranger to shift for himself.

A. Yes; and does not that overturn your whole theory?

115B. It would if my theory were as devoid of common sense as you are pleased to suppose; that is, if because I deny an original and absolute distinction in nature (where there is no such thing,) it followed that I must deny that circumstances, intimacy, habit, knowledge, or a variety of incidental causes could have any influence on our affections and actions. My inference is just the contrary. For would you not say that D—— cared little about the stranger for this plain reason, that he knew nothing about him?

A. No doubt.

B. And he would care rather more about you and me, because he knows more about us?

A. Why yes, it would seem so.

B. And he would care still more about a sister, (according to the same supposition) because he would be still better acquainted with her, and had been more constantly with her?

A. I will not deny it.

B. And it is on the same principle (generally speaking) that a man cares most of all about himself, because he knows more about himself than about any body else, that he is more in the secret of his own most intimate thoughts and feelings, and more in the habit of providing for his own wants and wishes, which he can anticipate with greater liveliness and certainty than those of others, from being more nearly ‘made and moulded of things past.’ The poetical fiction is rendered easier and assisted by my acquaintance with myself, just as it is by the ties of kindred or habits of friendly intercourse. There is no farther approach made to the doctrines of self-love and personal identity.

D. E., here is B. trying to persuade me I am not myself.

E. Sometimes you are not.

D. But he says that I never am.—Or is it only that I am not to be so?

B. Nay, I hope ‘thou art to continue, thou naughty varlet’—

You have been yourself (nobody like you) for the last forty years of your life: you would not prematurely stuff the next twenty into the account, till you have had them fairly out?

D. Not for the world, I have too great an affection for them.

B. Yet I think you would have less if you did not look forward to pass them among old books, old friends, old haunts. If you were cut off from all these, you would be less anxious about what was left of yourself.

D. I would rather be the Wandering Jew than not be at all.

116B. Or you would not be the person I always took you for.

D. Does not this willingness to be the Wandering Jew rather than nobody, seem to indicate that there is an abstract attachment to self, to the bare idea of existence, independently of circumstances or habit?

B. It must be a very loose and straggling one. You mix up some of your old recollections and favourite notions with your self elect, and indulge them in your new character, or you would trouble yourself very little about it. If you do not come in in some shape or other, it is merely saying that you would be sorry if the Wandering Jew were to disappear from the earth, however strictly he may have hitherto maintained his incognito.

D. There is something in that; and as well as I remember there is a curious but exceedingly mystical illustration of this point in an original Essay of yours which I have read and spoken to you about.

B. I believe there is; but A—— is tired of making objections, and I of answering them to no purpose.

D. I have the book in the closet, and if you like, we will turn to the place. It is after that burst of enthusiastic recollection (the only one in the book) that Southey said at the time was something between the manner of Milton’s prose-works and Jeremy Taylor.

B. Ah! I as little thought then that I should ever be set down as a florid prose-writer as that he would become poet-laureat!

J. D. here took the volume from his brother, and read the following passage from it.

‘I do not think I should illustrate the foregoing reasoning so well by any thing I could add on the subject, as by relating the manner in which it first struck me. There are moments in the life of a solitary thinker which are to him what the evening of some great victory is to the conqueror and hero—milder triumphs long remembered with truer and deeper delight. And though the shouts of multitudes do not hail his success—though gay trophies, though the sounds of music, the glittering of armour, and the neighing of steeds do not mingle with his joy, yet shall he not want monuments and witnesses of his glory—the deep forest, the willowy brook, the gathering clouds of winter, or the silent gloom of his own chamber, “faithful remembrancers of his high endeavour, and his glad success,” that, as time passes by him with unreturning wing, still awaken the consciousness of a spirit patient, indefatigable in the search of truth, and the hope of surviving in the thoughts and minds of other men. I remember I had been reading a speech which Mirabaud (the author of the “System of Nature”) has put into the mouth of a supposed Atheist at the last judgment; and was afterwards led on, by some means or other to consider the question, whether it could properly be 117said to be an act of virtue in any one to sacrifice his own final happiness to that of any other person or number of persons, if it were possible for the one ever to be made the price of the other? Suppose it were my own case—that it were in my power to save twenty other persons by voluntarily consenting to suffer for them: Why should I not do a generous thing, and never trouble myself about what might be the consequence to myself the Lord knows when?

‘The reason why a man should prefer his own future welfare to that of others is, that he has a necessary, absolute interest in the one, which he cannot have in the other—and this, again, is a consequence of his being always the same individual, of his continued identity with himself. The difference, I thought, was this, that however insensible I may be to my own interest at any future period, yet when the time comes I shall feel differently about it. I shall then judge of it from the actual impression of the object, that is, truly and certainly; and as I shall still be conscious of my past feelings, and shall bitterly regret my own folly and insensibility, I ought, as a rational agent, to be determined now by what I shall then wish I had done, when I shall feel the consequences of my actions most deeply and sensibly. It is this continued consciousness of my own feelings which gives me an immediate interest in whatever relates to my future welfare, and makes me at all times accountable to myself for my own conduct. As, therefore, this consciousness will be renewed in me after death, if I exist again at all—But stop—as I must be conscious of my past feelings to be myself, and as this conscious being will be myself, how if that consciousness should be transferred to some other being? How am I to know that I am not imposed upon by a false claim of identity? But that is ridiculous, because you will have no other self than that which arises from this very consciousness. Why, then, this self may be multiplied in as many different beings as the Deity may think proper to endue with the same consciousness; which, if it can be renewed at will in any one instance, may clearly be so in a hundred others. Am I to regard all these as equally myself? Am I equally interested in the fate of all? Or if I must fix upon some one of them in particular as my representative and other self, how am I to be determined in my choice? Here, then, I saw an end put to my speculations about absolute self-interest and personal identity. I saw plainly that the consciousness of my own feelings, which is made the foundation of my continued interest in them, could not extend to what had never been, and might never be; that my identity with myself must be confined to the connection between my past and present being; that with respect to my future feelings or interests, 118they could have no communication with, or influence over, my present feelings and interests, merely because they were future; that I shall be hereafter affected by the recollection of my past feelings and actions; and my remorse be equally heightened by reflecting on my past folly and late-earned wisdom, whether I am really the same being, or have only the same consciousness renewed in me; but that to suppose that this remorse can re-act in the reverse order on my present feelings, or give me an immediate interest in my future feelings, before they exist, is an express contradiction in terms. It can only affect me as an imaginary idea, or an idea of truth. But so may the interests of others; and the question proposed was, whether I have not some real, necessary, absolute interest in whatever relates to my future being, in consequence of my immediate connection with myself—independently of the general impression which all positive ideas have on my mind. How, then, can this pretended unity of consciousness which is only reflected from the past—which makes me so little acquainted with the future that I cannot even tell for a moment how long it will be continued, whether it will be entirely interrupted by or renewed in me after death, and which might be multiplied in I don’t know how many different beings, and prolonged by complicated sufferings, without my being any the wiser for it,—how, I say, can a principle of this sort identify my present with my future interests, and make me as much a participator in what does not at all affect me as if it were actually impressed on my senses? It is plain, as this conscious being may be decompounded, entirely destroyed, renewed again, or multiplied in a great number of beings, and as, whichever of these takes place, it cannot produce the least alteration in my present being—that what I am does not depend on what I am to be, and that there is no communication between my future interests, and the motives by which my present conduct must be governed. This can no more be influenced by what may be my future feelings with respect to it, than it will then be possible for me to alter my past conduct by wishing that I had acted differently. I cannot, therefore, have a principle of active self-interest arising out of the immediate connection between my present and future self, for no such connection exists, or is possible. I am what I am in spite of the future. My feelings, actions, and interests, must be determined by causes already existing and acting, and are absolutely independent of the future. Where there is not an intercommunity of feelings, there can be no identity of interests. My personal interest in any thing must refer either to the interest excited by the actual impression of the object, which cannot be felt before it exists, and can last no longer than while the impression lasts; or it may refer to the particular 119manner in which I am mechanically affected by the idea of my own impressions in the absence of the object. I can, therefore, have no proper personal interest in my future impressions, since neither my ideas of future objects, nor my feelings with respect to them, can be excited either directly or indirectly by the impressions themselves, or by any ideas or feelings accompanying them, without a complete transposition of the order in which causes and effects follow one another in nature. The only reason for my preferring my future interest to that of others, must arise from my anticipating it with greater warmth of present imagination. It is this greater liveliness and force with which I can enter into my future feelings, that in a manner identifies them with my present being; and this notion of identity being once formed, the mind makes use of it to strengthen its habitual propensity, by giving to personal motives a reality and absolute truth which they can never have. Hence it has been inferred that my real, substantial interest in any thing, must be derived in some indirect manner from the impression of the object itself, as if that could have any sort of communication with my present feelings, or excite any interest in my mind but by means of the imagination, which is naturally affected in a certain manner by the prospect of future good or evil.’

J. D. ‘This is the strangest tale that e’er I heard,

C. D. ‘It is the strangest fellow, brother John!’

The New Monthly Magazine.] [July, 1830.

A free Admission is the lotos of the mind: the leaf in which your name is inscribed as having the privileges of the entrée for the season is of an oblivious quality—an antidote for half the ills of life. I speak here not of a purchased but of a gift-ticket, an emanation of the generosity of the Managers, a token of conscious desert. With the first you can hardly bring yourself to go to the theatre; with the last, you cannot keep away. If you have paid five guineas for a free admission for the season, this free admission turns to a mere slavery. You seem to have done a foolish thing, and to have committed an extravagance under the plea of economy. You are struck with remorse. You are impressed with a conviction that pleasure is not to be bought. You have paid for your privilege in the lump, and you receive the benefit in driblets. The five pounds you are out of pocket does not meet with an adequate compensation the first night, or on any single occasion—you must come again, and use double diligence 120to strike a balance to make up your large arrears; instead of an obvious saving, it hangs as a dead-weight on your satisfaction all the year; and the improvident price you have paid for them kills every ephemeral enjoyment, and poisons the flattering illusions of the scene. You have incurred a debt, and must go every night to redeem it; and as you do not like being tied to the oar, or making a toil of a pleasure, you stay away altogether; give up the promised luxury as a bad speculation; sit sullenly at home, or bend your loitering feet in any other direction; and putting up with the first loss, resolve never to be guilty of the like folly again. But it is not thus with the possessor of a Free Admission, truly so called. His is a pure pleasure, a clear gain. He feels none of these irksome qualms and misgivings. He marches to the theatre like a favoured lover; if he is compelled to absent himself, he feels all the impatience and compunction of a prisoner. The portal of the Temple of the Muses stands wide open to him, closing the vista of the day—when he turns his back upon it at night with steps gradual and slow, mingled with the common crowd, but conscious of a virtue which they have not, he says, ‘I shall come again to-morrow!’ In passing through the streets, he casts a sidelong, careless glance at the playbills: he reads the papers chiefly with a view to see what is the play for the following day, or the ensuing week. If it is something new, he is glad; if it is old, he is resigned—but he goes in either case. His steps bend mechanically that way—pleasure becomes a habit, and habit a duty—he fulfils his destiny—he walks deliberately along Long-acre (you may tell a man going to the play, and whether he pays or has a free admission)—quickens his pace as he turns the corner of Bow-street, and arrives breathless and in haste at the welcome spot, where on presenting himself, he receives a passport that is a release from care, thought, toil, for the evening, and wafts him into the regions of the blest! What is it to him how the world turns round if the play goes on; whether empires rise or fall, so that Covent Garden stands its ground? Shall he plunge into the void of politics, that volcano burnt-out with the cold, sterile, sightless lava, hardening all around? or con over the registers of births, deaths, and marriages, when he may be present at Juliet’s wedding, and gaze on Juliet’s tomb? or shall he wonder at the throng of coaches in Regent-street, when he can feast his eyes with the coach (the fairy-vision of his childhood) in which Cinderella rides to the ball? Here (by the help of that Open Sessame! a Free Admission), ensconced in his favourite niche, looking from the ‘loop-holes of retreat’ in the second circle, he views the pageant of the world played before him; melts down years to moments; sees human life, like a gaudy shadow, glance across the stage; and here tastes of all earth’s bliss, the sweet 121without the bitter, the honey without the sting, and plucks ambrosial fruits and amaranthine flowers (placed by the enchantress Fancy within his reach,) without having to pay a tax for it at the time, or repenting of it afterwards. ‘He is all ear and eye, and drinks in sounds or sights that might create a soul under the ribs of death.’ ‘The fly,’ says Gay, ‘that sips treacle, is lost in the sweets’: so he that has a free admission forgets every thing else. Why not? It is the chief and enviable transfer of his being from the real to the unreal world, and the changing half of his life into a dream. ‘Oh! leave me to my repose,’ in my beloved corner at Covent Garden Theatre! This (and not ‘the arm-chair at an inn,’ though that too, at other times, and under different circumstances, is not without its charms,) is to me ‘the throne of felicity.’ If I have business that would detain me from this, I put it off till the morrow; if I have friends that call in just at the moment, let them go away under pain of bearing my maledictions with them. What is there in their conversation to atone to me for the loss of one quarter of an hour at the ‘witching time of night?’ If it is on indifferent subjects, it is flat and insipid; if it grows animated and interesting, it requires a painful effort, and begets a feverish excitement. But let me once reach, and fairly establish myself in this favourite seat, and I can bid a gay defiance to mischance, and leave debts and duns, friends and foes, objections and arguments, far behind me. I would, if I could, have it surrounded with a balustrade of gold, for it has been to me a palace of delight. There golden thoughts unbidden betide me, and golden visions come to me. There the dance, the laugh, the song, the scenic deception greet me; there are wafted Shakspear’s winged words, or Otway’s plaintive lines; and there how often have I heard young Kemble’s voice, trembling at its own beauty, and prolonging its liquid tones, like the murmur of the billowy surge on sounding shores! There I no longer torture a sentence or strain a paradox: the mind is full without an effort, pleased without asking why. It inhales an atmosphere of joy, and is steeped in all the luxury of woe. To show how much sympathy has to do with the effect, let us suppose any one to have a free admission to the rehearsals of a morning, what mortal would make use of it? One might as well be at the bottom of a well, or at the top of St. Paul’s for any pleasure we should derive from the finest tragedy or comedy. No, a play is nothing without an audience, it is a satisfaction too great and too general not to be shared with others. But reverse this cold and comfortless picture—let the eager crowd beset the theatre-doors ‘like bees in spring-time, when the sun with Taurus rides’—let the boxes be filled with innocence and beauty like beds of lilies on the first night of Isabella 122or Belvidera, see the flutter, the uneasy delight of expectation, see the big tear roll down the cheek of sensibility as the story proceeds—let us listen to the deep thunder of the pit, or catch the gallery’s shout at some true master-stroke of passion; and we feel that a thousand hearts are beating in our bosoms, and hail the sparkling illusion reflected in a thousand eyes. The stage has, therefore, been justly styled ‘a discipline of humanity’; for there is no place where the social principle is called forth with such strength and harmony, by a powerful interest in a common object. A crowd is everywhere else oppressive; but the fuller the play-house, the more intimately and cordially do we sympathise with every individual in it. Empty benches have as bad an effect on the spectator as on the players. This is one reason why so many mistakes are made with respect to plays and players, ere they come before the public. The taste is crude and uninformed till it is ripened by the blaze of lighted lamps and the sunshine of happy faces: the cold, critical faculty, the judgment of Managers and Committees asks the glow of sympathy and the buzz of approbation to prompt and guide it. We judge in a crowd with the sense and feelings of others; and from the very strength of the impression, fancy we should have come to the same unavoidable conclusion had we been left entirely to ourselves. Let any one try the experiment by reading a manuscript play, or seeing it acted—or by hearing a candidate for the stage rehearse behind the scenes, or top his part after the orchestra have performed their fatal prelude. Nor is the air of a play-house favourable only to social feeling—it aids the indulgence of solitary musing. The brimming cup of joy or sorrow is full; but it runs over to other thoughts and subjects. We can there (nowhere better) ‘retire, the world shut out, our thoughts call home.’ We hear the revelry and the shout, but ‘the still, small voice’ of other years and cherished recollections is not wanting. It is pleasant to hear Miss Ford repeat Love’s Catechism, or Mrs. Humby^[23] sing ‘I cannot marry Crout’: but the ear is not therefore deaf to Mrs. Jordan’s laugh in Nell; Mrs. Goodall’s Rosalind still haunts the glades of Arden, and the echo of Amiens’ song, ‘Blow, blow, thou winter’s wind,’ lingers through a lapse of thirty years. A pantomime (the Little Red Riding-Hood) recalls the innocence of our childish thoughts: a dance (the Minuet de la Cour) throws us back to the gorgeous days of Louis XIV. and tells us that the age of chivalry is gone for ever. Who will be the Mrs. Siddons of a distant age? What future Kean shall ‘strut and fret his hour upon the stage,’ full of genius and free from errors? What favourite actor or actress will be taking their farewell benefit a hundred years hence? 123What plays and what players will then amuse the town? Oh, many-coloured scenes of human life! where are ye more truly represented than in the mirror of the stage? or where is that eternal principle of vicissitude which rules over ye, the painted pageant and the sudden gloom, more strikingly exemplified than here? At the entrance to our great theatres, in large capitals over the front of the stage, might be written Mutability! Does not the curtain that falls each night on the pomps and vanities it was withdrawn awhile to reveal (and the next moment all is dark) afford a fine moral lesson? Here, in small room, is crowded the map of human life; the lengthened, varied scroll is unfolded like rich tapestry with its quaint and flaunting devices spread out; whatever can be saved from the giddy whirl of ever-rolling time and of this round orb, which moves on and never stops,^[24] all that can strike the sense, can touch the heart, can stir up laughter or call tears from their secret source, is here treasured up and displayed ostentatiously—here is Fancy’s motley wardrobe, the masks of all the characters that were ever played—here is a glass set up clear and large enough to show us our own features and those of all mankind—here, in this enchanted mirror, are represented, not darkly, but in vivid hues and bold relief, the struggle of Life and Death, the momentary pause between the cradle and the grave, with charming hopes and fears, terror and pity in a thousand modes, strange and ghastly apparitions, the events of history, the fictions of poetry (warm from the heart); all these, and more than can be numbered in my feeble page, fill that airy space where the green curtain rises, and haunt it with evanescent shapes and indescribable yearnings.

Who can collect into one audible pulsation the thoughts and feelings that in the course of his life all these together have occasioned; or what heart, if it could recall them at once, and in their undiminished power and plenitude, would not burst with the load? Let not the style be deemed exaggerated, but tame and creeping, that attempts to do justice to this high and pregnant theme, and let tears blot out the unequal lines that the pen traces! Quaffing these delights, inhaling this atmosphere, brooding over these visions, this long trail of glory, is the possessor of a Free Admission to be blamed if ‘he takes his ease’ at the play; and turning theatrical recluse, and forgetful of himself and his friends, devotes himself to the study of the drama, and to dreams of the past? By constant habit (having nothing to do, 124little else to think of), he becomes a tippler of the dews of Castaly—a dram-drinker on Mount Parnassus. He tastes the present moment, while a rich sea of pleasure presses to his lip and engulfs him round. The noise, the glare, the warmth, the company, produce a sort of listless intoxication, and clothe the pathos and the wit with a bodily sense. There is a weight, a closeness even, in the air, that makes it difficult to breathe out of it. The custom of going to the play night after night becomes a relief, a craving, a necessity—one cannot do without it. To sit alone is intolerable, to be in company is worse; we are attracted with pleasing force to the spot where ‘all that mighty heart is beating still.’ It is not that perhaps there is any thing new or fine to see—if there is, we attend to it—but at any time, it kills time and saves the trouble of thinking. O, Covent Garden! ‘thy freedom hath made me effeminate!’ It has hardly left me power to write this description of it. I am become its slave, I have no other sense or interest left. There I sit and lose the hours I live beneath the sky, without the power to stir, without any determination to stay. ‘Teddy the Tiler’ is become familiar to me, and, as it were, a part of my existence: ‘Robert the Devil’ has cast his spell over me. I have seen both thirty times at least, (no offence to the Management!) and could sit them out thirty times more. I am bed-rid in the lap of luxury; am grown callous and inert with perpetual excitement.

I have my favourite box too, as Beau Brummell had his favourite leg; one must decide on something, not to be always deciding. Perhaps I may have my reasons too—perhaps into the box next to mine a Grace enters; perhaps from thence an air divine breathes a glance (of heaven’s own brightness), kindles contagious fire;—but let us turn all such thoughts into the lobbies. These may be considered as an Arabesque border round the inclosed tablet of human life. If the Muses reign within, Venus sports heedless, but not unheeded without. Here a bevy of fair damsels, richly clad, knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance, lead on ‘the frozen winter and the pleasant spring!’ Would I were allowed to attempt a list of some of them, and Cowley’s Gallery would blush at mine! But this is a licence which only poetry, and not even a Free Admission can give. I can now understand the attachment to a player’s life, and how impossible it is for those who are once engaged in it ever to wean themselves from it. If the merely witnessing the bustle and the splendour of the scene as an idle spectator creates such a fascination, and flings such a charm over it, how much more must this be the case 125with those who have given all their time and attention to it—who regard it as the sole means of distinction—with whom even the monotony and mortifications must please—and who, instead of being passive, casual votaries, are the dispensers of the bounty of the gods, and the high-priests at the altar?

The New Monthly Magazine.] [August, 1830.

What a difference between this subject and my last—a ‘Free Admission!’ Yet from the crowded theatre to the sick chamber, from the noise, the glare, the keen delight, to the loneliness, the darkness, the dulness, and the pain, there is but one step. A breath of air, an overhanging cloud effects it; and though the transition is made in an instant, it seems as if it would last for ever. A sudden illness not only puts a stop to the career of our triumphs and agreeable sensations, but blots out and cancels all recollection of and desire for them. We lose the relish of enjoyment; we are effectually cured of our romance. Our bodies are confined to our beds; nor can our thoughts wantonly detach themselves and take the road to pleasure, but turn back with doubt and loathing at the faint, evanescent phantom which has usurped its place. If the folding-doors of the imagination were thrown open or left a-jar, so that from the disordered couch where we lay, we could still hail the vista of the past or future, and see the gay and gorgeous visions floating at a distance, however denied to our embrace, the contrast, though mortifying, might have something soothing in it, the mock-splendour might be the greater for the actual gloom: but the misery is that we cannot conceive any thing beyond or better than the present evil; we are shut up and spell-bound in that, the curtains of the mind are drawn close, we cannot escape from ‘the body of this death,’ our souls are conquered, dismayed, ‘cooped and cabined in,’ and thrown with the lumber of our corporeal frames in one corner of a neglected and solitary room. We hate ourselves and everything else; nor does one ray of comfort ‘peep through the blanket of the dark’ to give us hope. How should we entertain the image of grace and beauty, when our bodies writhe with pain? To what purpose invoke the echo of some rich strain of music, when we ourselves can scarcely breathe? The very attempt is an impossibility. We give up the vain task of linking delight to agony, of urging torpor into ecstasy, which makes the very heart sick. We feel the present pain, and an impatient longing to get rid of it. This were indeed ‘a consummation 126devoutly to be wished’: on this we are intent, in earnest, inexorable: all else is impertinence and folly; and could we but obtain ease (that Goddess of the infirm and suffering) at any price, we think we could forswear all other joy and all other sorrows. Hoc erat in votis. All other things but our disorder and its cure seem less than nothing and vanity. It assumes a palpable form; it becomes a demon, a spectre, an incubus hovering over and oppressing us: we grapple with it: it strikes its fangs into us, spreads its arms round us, infects us with its breath, glares upon us with its hideous aspect; we feel it take possession of every fibre and of every faculty; and we are at length so absorbed and fascinated by it, that we cannot divert our reflections from it for an instant, for all other things but pain (and that which we suffer most acutely,) appear to have lost their pith and power to interest. They are turned to dust and stubble. This is the reason of the fine resolutions we sometimes form in such cases, and of the vast superiority of a sick bed to the pomps and thrones of the world. We easily renounce wine when we have nothing but the taste of physic in our mouths: the rich banquet tempts us not, when ‘our very gorge rises’ within us: Love and Beauty fly from a bed twisted into a thousand folds by restless lassitude and tormenting cares: the nerve of pleasure is killed by the pains that shoot through the head or rack the limbs: an indigestion seizes you with its leaden grasp and giant force (down, Ambition!)—you shiver and tremble like a leaf in a fit of the ague (Avarice, let go your palsied hold!). We then are in the mood, without ghostly advice, to betake ourselves to the life of ‘hermit poor,

and should be glad to prevent the return of a fever raging in the blood by feeding on pulse, and slaking our thirst at the limpid brook. These sudden resolutions, however, or ‘vows made in pain as violent and void,’ are generally of short duration; the excess and the sorrow for it are alike selfish; and those repentances which are the most loud and passionate are the surest to end speedily in a relapse; for both originate in the same cause, the being engrossed by the prevailing feeling (whatever it may be), and an utter incapacity to look beyond it.

It is amazing how little effect physical suffering or local circumstances have upon the mind, except while we are subject to their immediate influence. While the impression lasts, they are every thing: when it is gone, they are nothing. We toss and tumble about in a 127sick bed; we lie on our right side, we then change to the left; we stretch ourselves on our backs, we turn on our faces; we wrap ourselves up under the clothes to exclude the cold, we throw them off to escape the heat and suffocation; we grasp the pillow in agony, we fling ourselves out of bed, we walk up and down the room with hasty or feeble steps; we return into bed; we are worn out with fatigue and pain, yet can get no repose for the one, or intermission for the other; we summon all our patience, or give vent to passion and petty rage: nothing avails; we seem wedded to our disease, ‘like life and death in disproportion met;’ we make new efforts, try new expedients, but nothing appears to shake it off, or promise relief from our grim foe: it infixes its sharp sting into us, or overpowers us by its sickly and stunning weight: every moment is as much as we can bear, and yet there seems no end of our lengthening tortures; we are ready to faint with exhaustion, or work ourselves up to frenzy: we ‘trouble deaf Heaven with our bootless prayers:’ we think our last hour is come, or peevishly wish it were, to put an end to the scene; we ask questions as to the origin of evil and the necessity of pain; we ‘moralise our complaints into a thousand similes’; we deny the use of medicine in toto, we have a full persuasion that all doctors are mad or knaves, that our object is to gain relief, and theirs (out of the perversity of human nature, or to seem wiser than we) to prevent it; we catechise the apothecary, rail at the nurse, and cannot so much as conceive the possibility that this state of things should not last for ever; we are even angry at those who would give us encouragement, as if they would make dupes or children of us; we might seek a release by poison, a halter, or the sword, but we have not strength of mind enough—our nerves are too shaken—to attempt even this poor revenge—when lo! a change comes, the spell falls off, and the next moment we forget all that has happened to us. No sooner does our disorder turn its back upon us than we laugh at it. The state we have been in, sounds like a dream, a fable; health is the order of the day, strength is ours de jure and de facto; and we discard all uncalled-for evidence to the contrary with a smile of contemptuous incredulity, just as we throw our physic-bottles out of the window! I see (as I awake from a short, uneasy doze) a golden light shine through my white window-curtains on the opposite wall:—is it the dawn of a new day, or the departing light of evening? I do not well know, for the opium ‘they have drugged my posset with’ has made strange havoc with my brain, and I am uncertain whether time has stood still, or advanced, or gone backward. By ‘puzzling o’er the doubt,’ my attention is drawn a little out of myself to external objects; and I consider whether it would not administer some relief to my monotonous 128languour, if I could call up a vivid picture of an evening sky I witnessed a short while before, the white fleecy clouds, the azure vault, the verdant fields and balmy air. In vain! The wings of fancy refuse to mount from my bed-side. The air without has nothing in common with the closeness within: the clouds disappear, the sky is instantly overcast and black. I walk out in this scene soon after I recover; and with those favourite and well-known objects interposed, can no longer recall the tumbled pillow, the juleps or the labels, or the unwholesome dungeon in which I was before immured. What is contrary to our present sensations or settled habits, amalgamates indifferently with our belief: the imagination rules over imaginary themes, the senses and custom have a narrower sway, and admit but one guest at a time. It is hardly to be wondered at that we dread physical calamities so little beforehand: we think no more of them the moment after they have happened. Out of sight, out of mind. This will perhaps explain why all actual punishment has so little effect; it is a state contrary to nature, alien to the will. If it does not touch honour and conscience (and where these are not, how can it touch them?) it goes for nothing: and where these are, it rather sears and hardens them. The gyves, the cell, the meagre fare, the hard labour are abhorrent to the mind of the culprit on whom they are imposed, who carries the love of liberty or indulgence to licentiousness; and who throws the thought of them behind him (the moment he can evade the penalty,) with scorn and laughter,

So, in travelling, we often meet with great fatigue and inconvenience from heat or cold, or rather accidents, and resolve never to go a journey again; but we are ready to set off on a new excursion to-morrow. We remember the landscape, the change of scene, the romantic expectation, and think no more of the heat, the noise, and dust. The body forgets its grievances, till they recur; but imagination, passion, pride, have a longer memory and quicker apprehensions. To the first the pleasure or the pain is nothing when once over; to the last it is only then that they begin to exist. The line in Metastasio,

129is true only when applied to this latter sort.—It is curious that, on coming out of a sick room, where one has been pent some time, and grown weak and nervous, and looking at Nature for the first time, the objects that present themselves have a very questionable and spectral appearance, the people in the street resemble flies crawling about, and seem scarce half-alive. It is we who are just risen from a torpid and unwholesome state, and who impart our imperfect feelings of existence, health, and motion to others. Or it may be that the violence and exertion of the pain we have gone through make common every-day objects seem unreal and unsubstantial. It is not till we have established ourselves in form in the sitting-room, wheeled round the arm-chair to the fire (for this makes part of our re-introduction to the ordinary modes of being in all seasons,) felt our appetite return, and taken up a book, that we can be considered as at all restored to ourselves. And even then our first sensations are rather empirical than positive; as after sleep we stretch out our hands to know whether we are awake. This is the time for reading. Books are then indeed ‘a world, both pure and good,’ into which we enter with all our hearts, after our revival from illness and respite from the tomb, as with the freshness and novelty of youth. They are not merely acceptable as without too much exertion they pass the time and relieve ennui; but from a certain suspension and deadening of the passions, and abstraction from worldly pursuits, they may be said to bring back and be friendly to the guileless and enthusiastic tone of feeling with which we formerly read them. Sickness has weaned us pro tempore from contest and cabal; and we are fain to be docile and children again. All strong changes in our present pursuits throw us back upon the past. This is the shortest and most complete emancipation from our late discomfiture. We wonder that any one who has read The History of a Foundling should labour under an indigestion; nor do we comprehend how a perusal of the Faery Queen should not ensure the true believer an uninterrupted succession of halcyon days. Present objects bear a retrospective meaning, and point to ‘a foregone conclusion.’ Returning back to life with half-strung nerves and shattered strength, we seem as when we first entered it with uncertain purposes and faltering aims. The machine has received a shock, and it moves on more tremulously than before, and not all at once in the beaten track. Startled at the approach of death, we are willing to get as far from it as we can by making a proxy of our former selves; and finding the precarious tenure by which we hold existence, and its last sands running out, we gather up and make the most of the fragments that memory has stored up for us. Every thing is seen through a medium of reflection and contrast. 130We hear the sound of merry voices in the street; and this carries us back to the recollections of some country-town or village-group—

A cricket chirps on the hearth, and we are reminded of Christmas gambols long ago. The very cries in the street seem to be of a former date; and the dry toast eats very much as it did—twenty years ago. A rose smells doubly sweet, after being stifled with tinctures and essences; and we enjoy the idea of a journey and an inn the more for having been bed-rid. But a book is the secret and sure charm to bring all these implied associations to a focus. I should prefer an old one, Mr. Lamb’s favourite, the Journey to Lisbon; or the Decameron, if I could get it; but if a new one, let it be Paul Clifford. That book has the singular advantage of being written by a gentleman, and not about his own class. The characters he commemorates are every moment at fault between life and death, hunger and a forced loan on the public; and therefore the interest they take in themselves, and which we take in them, has no cant or affectation in it, but is ‘lively, audible, and full of vent.’ A set of well-dressed gentlemen picking their teeth with a graceful air after dinner, endeavouring to keep their cravats from the slightest discomposure, and saying the most insipid things in the most insipid manner, do not make a scene. Well, then, I have got the new paraphrase on the Beggar’s Opera, am fairly embarked on it; and at the end of the first volume, where I am galloping across the heath with the three highwaymen, while the moon is shining full upon them, feel my nerves so braced, and my spirits so exhilarated, that, to say truth, I am scarce sorry for the occasion that has thrown me upon the work and the author—have quite forgot my Sick Room, and am more than half ready to recant the doctrine that a Free Admission to the theatre is

for I feel as I read that if the stage shows us the masks of men and the pageant of the world, books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own. They are the first and last, the most home-felt, the most heartfelt of all our enjoyments.

The Monthly Magazine.] [January, 1827.

It is hard to be without money. To get on without it is like travelling in a foreign country without a passport—you are stopped, suspected, and made ridiculous at every turn, besides being subjected to the most serious inconveniences. The want of money I here allude to is not altogether that which arises from absolute poverty—where 137there is a downright absence of the common necessaries of life, this must be remedied by incessant hard labour, and the least we can receive in return is a supply of our daily wants—but that uncertain, casual, precarious mode of existence, in which the temptation to spend remains after the means are exhausted, the want of money joined with the hope and possibility of getting it, the intermediate state of difficulty and suspense between the last guinea or shilling and the next that we may have the good luck to encounter. This gap, this unwelcome interval constantly recurring, however shabbily got over, is really full of many anxieties, misgivings, mortifications, meannesses, and deplorable embarrassments of every description. I may attempt (this essay is not a fanciful speculation) to enlarge upon a few of them.

It is hard to go without one’s dinner through sheer distress, but harder still to go without one’s breakfast. Upon the strength of that first and aboriginal meal, one may muster courage to face the difficulties before one, and to dare the worst: but to be roused out of one’s warm bed, and perhaps a profound oblivion of care, with golden dreams (for poverty does not prevent golden dreams), and told there is nothing for breakfast, is cold comfort for which one’s half-strung nerves are not prepared, and throws a damp upon the prospects of the day. It is a bad beginning. A man without a breakfast is a poor creature, unfit to go in search of one, to meet the frown of the world, or to borrow a shilling of a friend. He may beg at the corner of a street—nothing is too mean for the tone of his feelings—robbing on the highway is out of the question, as requiring too much courage, and some opinion of a man’s self. It is, indeed, as old Fuller, or some worthy of that age, expresses it, ‘the heaviest stone which melancholy can throw at a man,’ to learn, the first thing after he rises in the morning, or even to be dunned with it in bed, that there is no loaf, tea, or butter in the house, and that the baker, the grocer, and butterman have refused to give any farther credit. This is taking one sadly at a disadvantage. It is striking at one’s spirit and resolution in their very source,—the stomach—it is attacking one on the side of hunger and mortification at once; it is casting one into the very mire of humility and Slough of Despond. The worst is, to know what face to put upon the matter, what excuse to make to the servants, what answer to send to the tradespeople; whether to laugh it off, or be grave, or angry, or indifferent; in short, to know how to parry off an evil which you cannot help. What a luxury, what a God’s-send in such a dilemma, to find a half-crown which had slipped through a hole in the lining of your waistcoat, a crumpled bank-note in your breeches-pocket, or a guinea clinking in the bottom of your trunk, which had 138been thoughtlessly left there out of a former heap! Vain hope! Unfounded illusion! The experienced in such matters know better, and laugh in their sleeves at so improbable a suggestion. Not a corner, not a cranny, not a pocket, not a drawer has been left unrummaged, or has not been subjected over and over again to more than the strictness of a custom-house scrutiny. Not the slightest rustle of a piece of bank-paper, not the gentlest pressure of a piece of hard metal, but would have given notice of its hiding-place with electrical rapidity, long before, in such circumstances. All the variety of pecuniary resources which form a legal tender on the current coin of the realm, are assuredly drained, exhausted to the last farthing before this time. But is there nothing in the house that one can turn to account! Is there not an old family-watch, or piece of plate, or a ring, or some worthless trinket that one could part with? nothing belonging to one’s-self or a friend, that one could raise the wind upon, till something better turns up? At this moment an old clothes-man passes, and his deep, harsh tones sound like an intended insult on one’s distress, and banish the thought of applying for his assistance, as one’s eye glanced furtively at an old hat or a great coat, hung up behind a closet-door. Humiliating contemplations! Miserable uncertainty! One hesitates, and the opportunity is gone by; for without one’s breakfast, one has not the resolution to do any thing!—The late Mr. Sheridan was often reduced to this unpleasant predicament. Possibly he had little appetite for breakfast himself; but the servants complained bitterly on this head, and said that Mrs. Sheridan was sometimes kept waiting for a couple of hours, while they had to hunt through the neighbourhood, and beat up for coffee, eggs, and French rolls. The same perplexity in this instance appears to have extended to the providing for the dinner; for so sharp-set were they, that to cut short a debate with a butcher’s apprentice about leaving a leg of mutton without the money, the cook clapped it into the pot: the butcher’s boy, probably used to such encounters, with equal coolness took it out again, and marched off with it in his tray in triumph. It required a man to be the author of The School for Scandal, to run the gauntlet of such disagreeable occurrences every hour of the day. There was one comfort, however, that poor Sheridan had: he did not foresee that Mr. Moore would write his Life!^[26]

139The going without a dinner is another of the miseries of wanting money, though one can bear up against this calamity better than the 140former, which really ‘blights the tender blossom and promise of the day.’ With one good meal, one may hold a parley with hunger and moralize upon temperance. One has time to turn one’s-self and look about one—to ‘screw one’s courage to the sticking-place,’ to graduate the scale of disappointment, and stave off appetite till supper-time. You gain time, and time in this weather-cock world is everything. You may dine at two, or at six, or seven—as most convenient. You may in the meanwhile receive an invitation to dinner, or some one (not knowing how you are circumstanced) may send you a present of a haunch of venison or a brace of pheasants from the country, or a distant relation may die and leave you a legacy, or a patron may call and overwhelm you with his smiles and bounty,

or there is no saying what may happen. One may wait for dinner—breakfast admits of no delay, of no interval interposed between that and our first waking thoughts.^[27] Besides, there are shifts and devices, shabby and mortifying enough, but still available in case of need. 141How many expedients are there in this great city (London), time out of mind and times without number, resorted to by the dilapidated and thrifty speculator, to get through this grand difficulty without utter failure! One may dive into a cellar, and dine on boiled beef and carrots for tenpence, with the knives and forks chained to the table, and jostled by greasy elbows that seem to make such a precaution not unnecessary (hunger is proof against indignity!)—or one may contrive to part with a superfluous article of wearing apparel, and carry home a mutton-chop and cook it in a garret; or one may drop in at a friend’s at the dinner-hour, and be asked to stay or not; or one may walk out and take a turn in the Park, about the time, and return home to tea, so as at least to avoid the sting of the evil—the appearance of not having dined. You then have the laugh on your side, having deceived the gossips, and can submit to the want of a sumptuous repast without murmuring, having saved your pride, and made a virtue of necessity. I say all this may be done by a man without a family (for what business has a man without money with one?—See English Malthus and Scotch Macculloch)—and it is only my intention here to bring forward such instances of the want of money as are tolerable both in theory and practice. I once lived on coffee (as an experiment) for a fortnight together, while I was finishing the copy of a half-length portrait of a Manchester manufacturer, who had died worth a plum. I rather slurred over the coat, which was a reddish brown, ‘of formal cut,’ to receive my five guineas, with which I went to market myself, and dined on sausages and mashed potatoes, and while they were getting ready, and I could hear them hissing in the pan, read a volume of Gil Blas, containing the account of the fair Aurora. This was in the days of my youth. Gentle reader, do not smile! Neither Monsieur de Very, nor Louis XVIII., over an oyster-pâté, nor Apicius himself, ever understood the meaning of the word luxury, better than I did at that moment! If the want of money has its drawbacks and disadvantages, it is not without its contrasts and counterbalancing effects, for which I fear nothing else can make us amends. Amelia’s hashed mutton is immortal; and there is something amusing, though carried to excess and caricature (which is very unusual with the author) in the contrivances of old Caleb, in ‘The Bride of Lammermuir,’ for raising the wind at breakfast, dinner, and supper-time. I recollect a ludicrous instance of a disappointment in a dinner which happened to a person of my acquaintance some years ago. He was not only poor but a very poor creature, as will be imagined. His wife had laid by fourpence (their whole remaining stock) to pay for the baking of a shoulder of mutton and potatoes, which they had in the house, and on her return home 142from some errand, she found he had expended it in purchasing a new string for a guitar. On this occasion a witty friend quoted the lines from Milton:

Defoe, in his Life of Colonel Jack, gives a striking picture of his young beggarly hero sitting with his companion for the first time in his life at a three-penny ordinary, and the delight with which he relished the hot smoking soup, and the airs with which he called about him—‘and every time,’ he says, ‘we called for bread, or beer, or whatever it might be, the waiter answered, “coming, gentlemen, coming;” and this delighted me more than all the rest!’ It was about this time, as the same pithy author expresses it, ‘the Colonel took upon him to wear a shirt!’ Nothing can be finer than the whole of the feeling conveyed in the commencement of this novel, about wealth and finery from the immediate contrast of privation and poverty. One would think it a labour, like the Tower of Babel, to build up a beau and a fine gentleman about town. The little vagabond’s admiration of the old man at the banking-house, who sits surrounded by heaps of gold as if it were a dream or poetic vision, and his own eager anxious visits, day by day, to the hoard he had deposited in the hollow tree, are in the very foremost style of truth and nature. See the same intense feeling expressed in Luke’s address to his riches in the City Madam, and in the extraordinary raptures of the ‘Spanish Rogue’ in contemplating and hugging his ingots of pure gold and Spanish pieces of eight: to which Mr. Lamb has referred in excuse for the rhapsodies of some of our elder poets on this subject, which to our present more refined and tamer apprehensions sound like blasphemy.^[28] In earlier times, before the diffusion of luxury, of knowledge, and other sources of enjoyment had become common, and acted as a diversion to the cravings of avarice, the passionate admiration, the idolatry, the hunger and thirst of wealth and all its precious symbols, was a kind of madness or hallucination, and Mammon was truly worshipped as a god!

It is among the miseries of the want of money, not to be able to pay your reckoning at an inn—or, if you have just enough to do that, to have nothing left for the waiter;—to be stopped at a turnpike gate, and forced to turn back;—not to venture to call a hackney-coach in a shower of rain—(when you have only one shilling left yourself, it is a bore to have it taken out of your pocket by a friend, 143who comes into your house eating peaches in a hot summer’s day, and desiring you to pay for the coach in which he visits you);—not to be able to purchase a lottery-ticket, by which you might make your fortune, and get out of all your difficulties;—or to find a letter lying for you at a country post-office, and not to have money in your pocket to free it, and be obliged to return for it the next day. The letter so unseasonably withheld may be supposed to contain money, and in this case there is a foretaste, a sort of actual possession taken through the thin folds of the paper and the wax, which in some measure indemnifies us for the delay: the bank-note, the post-bill seems to smile upon us, and shake hands through its prison bars;—or it may be a love-letter, and then the tantalization is at its height: to be deprived in this manner of the only consolation that can make us amends for the want of money, by this very want—to fancy you can see the name—to try to get a peep at the hand-writing—to touch the seal, and yet not dare to break it open—is provoking indeed—the climax of amorous and gentlemanly distress. Players are sometimes reduced to great extremity, by the seizure of their scenes and dresses, or (what is called) the property of the theatre, which hinders them from acting; as authors are prevented from finishing a work, for want of money to buy the books necessary to be consulted on some material point or circumstance, in the progress of it. There is a set of poor devils, who live upon a printed prospectus of a work that never will be written, for which they solicit your name and half-a-crown. Decayed actresses take an annual benefit at one of the theatres; there are patriots who live upon periodical subscriptions, and critics who go about the country lecturing on poetry. I confess I envy none of these; but there are persons who, provided they can live, care not how they live—who are fond of display, even when it implies exposure; who court notoriety under every shape, and embrace the public with demonstrations of wantonness. There are genteel beggars, who send up a well-penned epistle requesting the loan of a shilling. Your snug bachelors and retired old maids pretend they can distinguish the knock of one of these at their door. I scarce know which I dislike the most—the patronage that affects to bring premature genius into notice, or that extends its piecemeal, formal charity towards it in its decline. I hate your Literary Funds, and Funds for Decayed Artists—they are corporations for the encouragement of meanness, pretence, and insolence. Of all people, I cannot tell how it is, but players appear to me the best able to do without money. They are a privileged class. If not exempt from the common calls of necessity and business, they are enabled ‘by their so potent art’ to soar above them. As they make imaginary ills their own, real ones become 144imaginary, sit light upon them, and are thrown off with comparatively little trouble. Their life is theatrical—its various accidents are the shifting scenes of a play—rags and finery, tears and laughter, a mock-dinner or a real one, a crown of jewels or of straw, are to them nearly the same. I am sorry I cannot carry on this reasoning to actors who are past their prime. The gilding of their profession is then worn off, and shews the false metal beneath; vanity and hope (the props of their existence) have had their day; their former gaiety and carelessness serve as a foil to their present discouragements; and want and infirmities press upon them at once. ‘We know what we are,’ as Ophelia says, ‘but we know not what we shall be.’ A workhouse seems the last resort of poverty and distress—a parish-pauper is another name for all that is mean and to be deprecated in human existence. But that name is but an abstraction, an average term—‘within that lowest deep, a lower deep may open to receive us.’ I heard not long ago of a poor man, who had been for many years a respectable tradesman in London, and who was compelled to take shelter in one of those receptacles of age and wretchedness, and who said he could be contented with it—he had his regular meals, a nook in the chimney, and a coat to his back—but he was forced to lie three in a bed, and one of the three was out of his mind and crazy, and his great delight was, when the others fell asleep, to tweak their noses, and flourish his night-cap over their heads, so that they were obliged to lie awake, and hold him down between them. One should be quite mad to bear this. To what a point of insignificance may not human life dwindle! To what fine, agonizing threads will it not cling! Yet this man had been a lover in his youth, in a humble way, and still begins his letters to an old maid (his former flame), who sometimes comforts him by listening to his complaints, and treating him to a dish of weak tea, ‘My dear Miss Nancy!’

Another of the greatest miseries of a want of money, is the tap of a dun at your door, or the previous silence when you expect it—the uneasy sense of shame at the approach of your tormentor; the wish to meet, and yet to shun the encounter; the disposition to bully; the fear of irritating; the real and the sham excuses; the submission to impertinence; the assurances of a speedy supply; the disingenuousness you practise on him and on yourself; the degradation in the eyes of others and your own. Oh! it is wretched to have to confront a just and oft-repeated demand, and to be without the means to satisfy it; to deceive the confidence that has been placed in you; to forfeit your credit; to be placed at the power of another, to be indebted to his lenity; to stand convicted of having played the knave or the fool; and to have no way left to escape contempt, but by incurring pity. 145The suddenly meeting a creditor on turning the corner of a street, whom you have been trying to avoid for months, and had persuaded you were several hundred miles off, discomposes the features and shatters the nerves for some time. It is also a serious annoyance to be unable to repay a loan to a friend, who is in want of it—nor is it very pleasant to be so hard run, as to be induced to request the repayment. It is difficult to decide the preference between debts of honour and legal demands; both are bad enough, and almost a fair excuse for driving any one into the hands of money-lenders—to whom an application, if successful, is accompanied with a sense of being in the vulture’s gripe—a reflection akin to that of those who formerly sold themselves to the devil—or, if unsuccessful, is rendered doubly galling by the smooth, civil leer of cool contempt with which you are dismissed, as if they had escaped from your clutches—not you from their’s. If any thing can be added to the mortification and distress arising from straitened circumstances, it is when vanity comes in to barb the dart of poverty—when you have a picture on which you had calculated, rejected from an Exhibition, or a manuscript returned on your hands, or a tragedy damned, at the very instant when your cash and credit are at the lowest ebb. This forlorn and helpless feeling has reached its acme in the prison-scene in Hogarth’s Rake’s Progress, where his unfortunate hero has just dropped the Manager’s letter from his hands, with the laconic answer written in it:—‘Your play has been read, and won’t do.’^[29] To feel poverty is bad; but to feel it with the additional sense of our incapacity to shake it off, and that we have not merit enough to retrieve our circumstances—and, instead of being held up to admiration, are exposed to persecution and insult—is the last stage of human infirmity. My friend, Mr. Leigh Hunt (no one is better qualified than he to judge) thinks, that the most pathetic story in the world is that of Smollett’s fine gentleman and lady in gaol, who have been roughly handled by the mob for some paltry attempt at raising the wind, and she exclaims in extenuation of the pitiful figure he cuts, ‘Ah! he was a fine fellow once!’

It is justly remarked by the poet, that poverty has no greater inconvenience attached to it than that of making men ridiculous. It not only has this disadvantage with respect to ourselves, but it often shews us others in a very contemptible point of view. People are not soured by misfortune, but by the reception they meet with in it. When we do not want assistance, every one is ready to obtrude it on us, as if it were advice. If we do, they shun us instantly. They 146anticipate the increased demand on their sympathy or bounty, and escape from it as from a falling house. It is a mistake, however, that we court the society of the rich and prosperous, merely with a view to what we can get from them. We do so, because there is something in external rank and splendour that gratifies and imposes on the imagination; just as we prefer the company of those who are in good health and spirits to that of the sickly and hypochondriacal, or as we would rather converse with a beautiful woman than with an ugly one. I never knew but one man who would lend his money freely and fearlessly in spite of circumstances (if you were likely to pay him, he grew peevish, and would pick a quarrel with you). I can only account for this from a certain sanguine buoyancy and magnificence of spirit, not deterred by distant consequences, or damped by untoward appearances. I have been told by those, who shared of the same bounty, that it was not owing to generosity, but ostentation—if so, he kept his ostentation a secret from me, for I never received a hint or a look from which I could infer that I was not the lender, and he the person obliged. Neither was I expected to keep in the back-ground or play an under-part. On the contrary, I was encouraged to do my best; my dormant faculties roused, the ease of my circumstances was on condition of the freedom and independence of my mind, my lucky hits were applauded, and I was paid to shine. I am not ashamed of such patronage as this, nor do I regret any circumstance relating to it but its termination. People endure existence even in Paris: the rows of chairs on the Boulevards are gay with smiles and dress: the saloons, they say, are brilliant; at the theatre there is Mademoiselle Mars—what is all this to me? After a certain period, we live only in the past. Give me back one single evening at Boxhill, after a stroll in the deep-empurpled woods, before Buonaparte was yet beaten, ‘with wine of attic taste,’ when wit, beauty, friendship presided at the board! Oh no! Neither the time nor friends that are fled, can be recalled!—Poverty is the test of sincerity, the touchstone of civility. Even abroad, they treat you scurvily if your remittances do not arrive regularly, and though you have hitherto lived like a Milord Anglais. The want of money loses us friends not worth the keeping, mistresses who are naturally jilts or coquets; it cuts us out of society, to which dress and equipage are the only introduction; and deprives us of a number of luxuries and advantages of which the only good is, that they can only belong to the possessors of a large fortune. Many people are wretched because they have not money to buy a fine horse, or to hire a fine house, or to keep a carriage, or to purchase a diamond necklace, or to go to a race-ball, or to give their servants new liveries. 147I cannot myself enter into all this. If I can live to think, and think to live, I am satisfied. Some want to possess pictures, others to collect libraries. All I wish is, sometimes, to see the one and read the other. Gray was mortified because he had not a hundred pounds to bid for a curious library; and the Duchess of —— has immortalized herself by her liberality on that occasion, and by the handsome compliment she addressed to the poet, that ‘if it afforded him any satisfaction, she had been more than paid, by her pleasure in reading the Elegy in a Country Church-yard.’

Literally and truly, one cannot get on well in the world without money. To be in want of money, is to pass through life with little credit or pleasure; it is to live out of the world, or to be despised if you come into it; it is not to be sent for to court, or asked out to dinner, or noticed in the street; it is not to have your opinion consulted or else rejected with contempt, to have your acquirements carped at and doubted, your good things disparaged, and at last to lose the wit and the spirit to say them; it is to be scrutinized by strangers, and neglected by friends; it is to be a thrall to circumstances, an exile in a foreign land; to forego leisure, freedom, ease of body and mind, to be dependent on the good-will and caprice of others, or earn a precarious and irksome livelihood by some laborious employment: it is to be compelled to stand behind a counter, or to sit at a desk in some public office, or to marry your landlady, or not the person you would wish; or to go out to the East or West-Indies, or to get a situation as judge abroad, and return home with a liver-complaint; or to be a law-stationer, or a scrivener or scavenger, or newspaper reporter; or to read law and sit in court without a brief, or be deprived of the use of your fingers by transcribing Greek manuscripts, or to be a seal engraver and pore yourself blind; or to go upon the stage, or try some of the Fine Arts; with all your pains, anxiety, and hopes, most probably to fail, or, if you succeed, after the exertions of years, and undergoing constant distress of mind and fortune, to be assailed on every side with envy, backbiting, and falsehood, or to be a favourite with the public for awhile, and then thrown into the back-ground—or a jail, by the fickleness of taste and some new favourite; to be full of enthusiasm and extravagance in youth, of chagrin and disappointment in after-life; to be jostled by the rabble because you do not ride in your coach, or avoided by those who know your worth and shrink from it as a claim on their respect or their purse; to be a burden to your relations, or unable to do any thing for them; to be ashamed to venture into crowds; to have cold comfort at home; to lose by degrees your confidence and any talent you might possess; to grow crabbed, morose, and querulous, dissatisfied 148with every one, but most so with yourself; and plagued out of your life, to look about for a place to die in, and quit the world without any one’s asking after your will. The wiseacres will possibly, however, crowd round your coffin, and raise a monument at a considerable expense, and after a lapse of time, to commemorate your genius and your misfortunes!

The only reason why I am disposed to envy the professions of the church or army is, that men can afford to be poor in them without being subjected to insult. A girl with a handsome fortune in a country town may marry a poor lieutenant without degrading herself. An officer is always a gentleman; a clergyman is something more. Echard’s book On the Contempt of the Clergy is unfounded. It is surely sufficient for any set of individuals, raised above actual want, that their characters are not merely respectable, but sacred. Poverty, when it is voluntary, is never despicable, but takes an heroical aspect. What are the begging friars? Have they not put their base feet upon the necks of princes? Money as a luxury is valuable only as a passport to respect. It is one instrument of power. Where there are other admitted and ostensible claims to this, it becomes superfluous, and the neglect of it is even admired and looked up to as a mark of superiority over it. Even a strolling beggar is a popular character, who makes an open profession of his craft and calling, and who is neither worth a doit nor in want of one. The Scotch are proverbially poor and proud: we know they can remedy their poverty when they set about it. No one is sorry for them. The French emigrants were formerly peculiarly situated in England. The priests were obnoxious to the common people on account of their religion; both they and the nobles, for their politics. Their poverty and dirt subjected them to many rebuffs; but their privations being voluntarily incurred, and also borne with the characteristic patience and good-humour of the nation, screened them from contempt. I little thought, when I used to meet them walking out in the summer’s-evenings at Somers’ Town, in their long great coats, their beards covered with snuff, and their eyes gleaming with mingled hope and regret in the rays of the setting sun, and regarded them with pity bordering on respect, as the last filmy vestige of the ancient regime, as shadows of loyalty and superstition still flitting about the earth and shortly to disappear from it for ever, that they would one day return over the bleeding corpse of their country, and sit like harpies, a polluted triumph, over the tomb of human liberty! To be a lord, a papist, and poor, is perhaps to some temperaments a consummation devoutly to be wished. There is all the subdued splendour of external rank, the pride of self-opinion, irritated and goaded on by petty privations 149and vulgar obloquy to a degree of morbid acuteness. Private and public annoyances must perpetually remind him of what he is, of what his ancestors were (a circumstance which might otherwise be forgotten); must narrow the circle of conscious dignity more and more, and the sense of personal worth and pretension must be exalted by habit and contrast into a refined abstraction—‘pure in the last recesses of the mind’—unmixed with, or unalloyed by ‘baser matter!’—It was an hypothesis of the late Mr. Thomas Wedgwood, that there is a principle of compensation in the human mind which equalizes all situations, and by which the absence of any thing only gives us a more intense and intimate perception of the reality; that insult adds to pride, that pain looks forward to ease with delight, that hunger already enjoys the unsavoury morsel that is to save it from perishing; that want is surrounded with imaginary riches, like the poor poet in Hogarth, who has a map of the mines of Peru hanging on his garret walls; in short, that ‘we can hold a fire in our hand by thinking on the frosty Caucasus’—but this hypothesis, though ingenious and to a certain point true, is to be admitted only in a limited and qualified sense.

There are two classes of people that I have observed who are not so distinct as might be imagined—those who cannot keep their own money in their hands, and those who cannot keep their hands from other people’s. The first are always in want of money, though they do not know what they do with it. They muddle it away, without method or object, and without having any thing to show for it. They have not, for instance, a fine house, but they hire two houses at a time; they have not a hot-house in their garden, but a shrubbery within doors; they do not gamble, but they purchase a library, and dispose of it when they move house. A princely benefactor provides them with lodgings, where, for a time, you are sure to find them at home: and they furnish them in a handsome style for those who are to come after them. With all this sieve-like economy, they can only afford a leg of mutton and a bottle of wine, and are glad to get a lift in a common stage; whereas with a little management and the same disbursements, they might entertain a round of company and drive a smart tilbury. But they set no value upon money, and throw it away on any object or in any manner that first presents itself, merely to have it off their hands, so that you wonder what has become of it. The second class above spoken of not only make away with what belongs to themselves, but you cannot keep any thing you have from their rapacious grasp. If you refuse to lend them what you want, they insist that you must: if you let them have any thing to take charge of for a time (a print or a bust) they swear 150that you have given it them, and that they have too great a regard for the donor ever to part with it. You express surprise at their having run so largely in debt; but where is the singularity while others continue to lend? And how is this to be helped, when the manner of these sturdy beggars amounts to dragooning you out of your money, and they will not go away without your purse, any more than if they came with a pistol in their hand? If a person has no delicacy, he has you in his power, for you necessarily feel some towards him; and since he will take no denial, you must comply with his peremptory demands, or send for a constable, which out of respect for his character you will not do. These persons are also poor—light come, light go—and the bubble bursts at last. Yet if they had employed the same time and pains in any laudable art or study that they have in raising a surreptitious livelihood, they would have been respectable, if not rich. It is their facility in borrowing money that has ruined them. No one will set heartily to work, who has the face to enter a strange house, ask the master of it for a considerable loan, on some plausible and pompous pretext, and walk off with it in his pocket. You might as well suspect a highwayman of addicting himself to hard study in the intervals of his profession.

There is only one other class of persons I can think of, in connexion with the subject of this Essay—those who are always in want of money from the want of spirit to make use of it. Such persons are perhaps more to be pitied than all the rest. They live in want, in the midst of plenty—dare not touch what belongs to them, are afraid to say that their soul is their own, have their wealth locked up from them by fear and meanness as effectually as by bolts and bars, scarcely allow themselves a coat to their backs or a morsel to eat, are in dread of coming to the parish all their lives, and are not sorry when they die, to think that they shall no longer be an expense to themselves—according to the old epigram:

The Monthly Magazine.] [March, 1827.

‘Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us.’

No young man believes he shall ever die. It was a saying of my brother’s, and a fine one. There is a feeling of Eternity in youth, which makes us amends for every thing. To be young is to be as 151one of the Immortal Gods. One half of time indeed is flown—the other half remains in store for us with all its countless treasures; for there is no line drawn, and we see no limit to our hopes and wishes. We make the coming age our own.——

Death, old age, are words without a meaning, that pass by us like the idle air which we regard not. Others may have undergone, or may still be liable to them—we ‘bear a charmed life,’ which laughs to scorn all such sickly fancies. As in setting out on a delightful journey, we strain our eager gaze forward——

and see no end to the landscape, new objects presenting themselves as we advance; so, in the commencement of life, we set no bounds to our inclinations, nor to the unrestricted opportunities of gratifying them. We have as yet found no obstacle, no disposition to flag; and it seems that we can go on so for ever. We look round in a new world, full of life, and motion, and ceaseless progress; and feel in ourselves all the vigour and spirit to keep pace with it, and do not foresee from any present symptoms how we shall be left behind in the natural course of things, decline into old age, and drop into the grave. It is the simplicity, and as it were abstractedness of our feelings in youth, that (so to speak) identifies us with nature, and (our experience being slight and our passions strong) deludes us into a belief of being immortal like it. Our short-lived connection with existence, we fondly flatter ourselves, is an indissoluble and lasting union—a honey-moon that knows neither coldness, jar, nor separation. As infants smile and sleep, we are rocked in the cradle of our wayward fancies, and lulled into security by the roar of the universe around us—we quaff the cup of life with eager haste without draining it, instead of which it only overflows the more—objects press around us, filling the mind with their magnitude and with the throng of desires that wait upon them, so that we have no room for the thoughts of death. From that plenitude of our being, we cannot change all at once to dust and ashes, we cannot imagine ‘this sensible, warm motion, to become a kneaded clod’—we are too much dazzled by the brightness of the waking dream around us to look into the darkness of the tomb. We no more see our end than our beginning: the one is lost in oblivion and vacancy, as the other is hid from us by the crowd and hurry of approaching events. Or the grim shadow is seen lingering in the horizon, which we are doomed never to overtake, or whose last, faint, glimmering outline touches 152upon Heaven and translates us to the skies! Nor would the hold that life has taken of us permit us to detach our thoughts from present objects and pursuits, even if we would. What is there more opposed to health, than sickness; to strength and beauty, than decay and dissolution; to the active search of knowledge than mere oblivion? Or is there none of the usual advantage to bar the approach of Death, and mock his idle threats; Hope supplies their place, and draws a veil over the abrupt termination of all our cherished schemes. While the spirit of youth remains unimpaired, ere the ‘wine of life is drank up,’ we are like people intoxicated or in a fever, who are hurried away by the violence of their own sensations: it is only as present objects begin to pall upon the sense, as we have been disappointed in our favourite pursuits, cut off from our closest ties, that passion loosens its hold upon the breast, that we by degrees become weaned from the world, and allow ourselves to contemplate, ‘as in a glass, darkly,’ the possibility of parting with it for good. The example of others, the voice of experience, has no effect upon us whatever. Casualties we must avoid: the slow and deliberate advances of age we can play at hide-and-seek with. We think ourselves too lusty and too nimble for that blear-eyed decrepid old gentleman to catch us. Like the foolish fat scullion, in Sterne, when she hears that Master Bobby is dead, our only reflection is—‘So am not I!’ The idea of death, instead of staggering our confidence, rather seems to strengthen and enhance our possession and our enjoyment of life. Others may fall around us like leaves, or be mowed down like flowers by the scythe of Time: these are but tropes and figures to the unreflecting ears and overweening presumption of youth. It is not till we see the flowers of Love, Hope, and Joy, withering around us, and our own pleasures cut up by the roots, that we bring the moral home to ourselves, that we abate something of the wanton extravagance of our pretensions, or that the emptiness and dreariness of the prospect before us reconciles us to the stillness of the grave!

Well might the poet begin his indignant invective against an art, whose professed object is its destruction, with this animated apostrophe to life. Life is indeed a strange gift, and its privileges are most miraculous. Nor is it singular that when the splendid boon is first granted us, our gratitude, our admiration, and our delight should prevent us from reflecting on our own nothingness, or from thinking it will ever be recalled. Our first and strongest impressions are taken 153from the mighty scene that is opened to us, and we very innocently transfer its durability as well as magnificence to ourselves. So newly found, we cannot make up our minds to parting with it yet and at least put off that consideration to an indefinite term. Like a clown at a fair, we are full of amazement and rapture, and have no thoughts of going home, or that it will soon be night. We know our existence only from external objects, and we measure it by them. We can never be satisfied with gazing; and nature will still want us to look on and applaud. Otherwise, the sumptuous entertainment, ‘the feast of reason and the flow of soul,’ to which they were invited, seems little better than a mockery and a cruel insult. We do not go from a play till the scene is ended, and the lights are ready to be extinguished. But the fair face of things still shines on; shall we be called away, before the curtain falls, or ere we have scarce had a glimpse of what is going on? Like children, our step-mother Nature holds us up to see the raree-show of the universe; and then, as if life were a burthen to support, lets us instantly down again. Yet in that short interval, what ‘brave sublunary things’ does not the spectacle unfold; like a bubble, at one minute reflecting the universe, and the next, shook to air!—To see the golden sun and the azure sky, the outstretched ocean, to walk upon the green earth, and to be lord of a thousand creatures, to look down giddy precipices or over distant flowery vales, to see the world spread out under one’s finger in a map, to bring the stars near, to view the smallest insects in a microscope, to read history, and witness the revolutions of empires and the succession of generations, to hear of the glory of Sidon and Tyre, of Babylon and Susa, as of a faded pageant, and to say all these were, and are now nothing, to think that we exist in such a point of time, and in such a corner of space, to be at once spectators and a part of the moving scene, to watch the return of the seasons, of spring and autumn, to hear

to traverse desert wildernesses, to listen to the midnight choir, to visit lighted halls, or plunge into the dungeon’s gloom, or sit in crowded theatres and see life itself mocked, to feel heat and cold, pleasure and pain, right and wrong, truth and falsehood, to study the works of art and refine the sense of beauty to agony, to worship fame and to dream of immortality, to have read Shakspeare and belong to the same species as Sir Isaac Newton;^[31] to be and to do all this, and then in a 154moment to be nothing, to have it all snatched from one like a juggler’s ball or a phantasmagoria; there is something revolting and incredible to sense in the transition, and no wonder that, aided by youth and warm blood, and the flush of enthusiasm, the mind contrives for a long time to reject it with disdain and loathing as a monstrous and improbable fiction, like a monkey on a house-top, that is loath, amidst its fine discoveries and specious antics, to be tumbled headlong into the street, and crushed to atoms, the sport and laughter of the multitude!

The change, from the commencement to the close of life, appears like a fable, after it has taken place; how should we treat it otherwise than as a chimera before it has come to pass? There are some things that happened so long ago, places or persons we have formerly 155seen, of which such dim traces remain, we hardly know whether it was sleeping or waking they occurred; they are like dreams within the dream of life, a mist, a film before the eye of memory, which, as we try to recall them more distinctly, elude our notice altogether. It is but natural that the lone interval that we thus look back upon, should have appeared long and endless in prospect. There are others so distinct and fresh, they seem but of yesterday—their very vividness might be deemed a pledge of their permanence. Then, however far back our impressions may go, we find others still older (for our years are multiplied in youth); descriptions of scenes that we had read, and people before our time, Priam and the Trojan war; and even then, Nestor was old and dwelt delighted on his youth, and 156spoke of the race, of heroes that were no more;—what wonder that, seeing this long line of being pictured in our minds, and reviving as it were in us, we should give ourselves involuntary credit for an indeterminate period of existence? In the Cathedral at Peterborough there is a monument to Mary, Queen of Scots, at which I used to gaze when a boy, while the events of the period, all that had happened since, passed in review before me. If all this mass of feeling and imagination could be crowded into a moment’s compass, what might not the whole of life be supposed to contain? We are heirs of the past; we count upon the future as our natural reversion. Besides, there are some of our early impressions so exquisitely tempered, it appears that they must always last—nothing can add to or take away from their sweetness and purity—the first breath of spring, the hyacinth dipped in the dew, the mild lustre of the evening-star, the rainbow after a storm—while we have the full enjoyment of these, we must be young; and what can ever alter us in this respect? Truth, friendship, love, books, are also proof against the canker of time; and while we live, but for them, we can never grow old. We take out a new lease of existence from the objects on which we set our affections, and become abstracted, impassive, immortal in them. We cannot conceive how certain sentiments should ever decay or grow cold in our breasts; and, consequently, to maintain them in their first youthful glow and vigour, the flame of life must continue to burn as bright as ever, or rather, they are the fuel that feed the sacred lamp, that kindle ‘the purple light of love,’ and spread a golden cloud around our heads! Again, we not only flourish and survive in our affections (in which we will not listen to the possibility of a change, any more than we foresee the wrinkles on the brow of a mistress), but we have a farther guarantee against the thoughts of death in our favourite studies and pursuits, and in their continual advance. Art we know is long; life, we feel, should be so too. We see no end of the difficulties we have to encounter: perfection is slow of attainment, and we must have time to accomplish it in. Rubens complained that when he had just learnt his art, he was snatched away from it: we trust we shall be more fortunate! A wrinkle in an old head takes whole days to finish it properly: but to catch ‘the Raphael grace, the Guido air,’ no limit should be put to our endeavours. What a prospect for the future! What a task we have entered upon! and shall we be arrested in the middle of it? We do not reckon our time thus employed lost, or our pains thrown away, or our progress slow—we do not droop or grow tired, but ‘gain new vigour at our endless task;‘—and shall Time grudge us the opportunity to finish what we have auspiciously begun, and have formed a sort of compact 157with nature to achieve? The fame of the great names we look up to is also imperishable; and shall not we, who contemplate it with such intense yearnings, imbibe a portion of ethereal fire, the divinæ particula auræ, which nothing can extinguish? I remember to have looked at a print of Rembrandt for hours together, without being conscious of the flight of time, trying to resolve it into its component parts, to connect its strong and sharp gradations, to learn the secret of its reflected lights, and found neither satiety nor pause in the prosecution of my studies. The print over which I was poring would last long enough; why should the idea in my mind, which was finer, more impalpable, perish before it? At this, I redoubled the ardour of my pursuit, and by the very subtlety and refinement of my inquiries, seemed to bespeak for them an exemption from corruption and the rude grasp of Death.^[32]

Objects, on our first acquaintance with them, have that singleness and integrity of impression that it seems as if nothing could destroy or obliterate them, so firmly are they stamped and rivetted on the brain. We repose on them with a sort of voluptuous indolence, in full faith and boundless confidence. We are absorbed in the present moment, or return to the same point—idling away a great deal of time in youth, thinking we have enough and to spare. There is often a local feeling in the air, which is as fixed as if it were of marble; we loiter in dim cloisters, losing ourselves in thought and in their glimmering arches; a winding road before us seems as long as the journey of life, and as full of events. Time and experience dissipate this illusion; and by reducing them to detail, circumscribe the limits of our expectations. It is only as the pageant of life passes by and the masques turn their backs upon us, that we see through the deception, or believe that the train will have an end. In many cases, the slow progress and monotonous texture of our lives, before we mingle with the world and are embroiled in its affairs, has a tendency to aid the same feeling. We have a difficulty, when left to ourselves, and without the resource of books or some more lively pursuit, to ‘beguile the slow and creeping hours of time,’ and argue that if it moves on always at this tedious snail’s-pace, it can never come to an end. We are willing to skip over certain portions of it that separate us from favourite objects, that irritate ourselves at the unnecessary delay. The young are prodigal of life from a superabundance of it; the old are tenacious on the same score, because they have little left, and cannot enjoy even what remains of it.

For my part, I set out in life with the French Revolution, and 158that event had considerable influence on my early feelings, as on those of others. Youth was then doubly such. It was the dawn of a new era, a new impulse had been given to men’s minds, and the sun of Liberty rose upon the sun of Life in the same day, and both were proud to run their race together. Little did I dream, while my first hopes and wishes went hand in hand with those of the human race, that long before my eyes should close, that dawn would be overcast, and set once more in the night of despotism—‘total eclipse!’ Happy that I did not. I felt for years, and during the best part of my existence, heart-whole in that cause, and triumphed in the triumphs over the enemies of man! At that time, while the fairest aspirations of the human mind seemed about to be realized, ere the image of man was defaced and his breast mangled in scorn, philosophy took a higher, poetry could afford a deeper range. At that time, to read the ‘Robbers,’ was indeed delicious, and to hear

could be borne only amidst the fulness of hope, the crash of the fall of the strong holds of power, and the exulting sounds of the march of human freedom. What feelings the death-scene in Don Carlos sent into the soul! In that headlong career of lofty enthusiasm, and the joyous opening of the prospects of the world and our own, the thought of death crossing it, smote doubly cold upon the mind; there was a stifling sense of oppression and confinement, an impatience of our present knowledge, a desire to grasp the whole of our existence in one strong embrace, to sound the mystery of life and death, and in order to put an end to the agony of doubt and dread, to burst through our prison-house, and confront the King of Terrors in his grisly palace!... As I was writing out this passage, my miniature-picture when a child lay on the mantle-piece, and I took it out of the case to look at it. I could perceive few traces of myself in it; but there was the same placid brow, the dimpled mouth, the same timid, inquisitive glance as ever. But its careless smile did not seem to reproach me with having become a recreant to the sentiments that were then sown in my mind, or with having written a sentence that could call up a blush in this image of ingenuous youth!

‘That time is past with all its giddy raptures.’ Since the future was barred to my progress, I have turned for consolation to the past, gathering up the fragments of my early recollections, and putting them into a form that might live. It is thus, that when we find our personal and substantial identity vanishing from us, we strive to gain a reflected and substituted one in our thoughts: we do not like to 159perish wholly, and wish to bequeath our names at least to posterity. As long as we can keep alive our cherished thoughts and nearest interests in the minds of others, we do not appear to have retired altogether from the stage, we still occupy a place in the estimation of mankind, exercise a powerful influence over them, and it is only our bodies that are trampled into dust or dispersed to air. Our darling speculations still find favour and encouragement, and we make as good a figure in the eyes of our descendants, nay, perhaps, a better than we did in our lifetime. This is one point gained; the demands of our self-love are so far satisfied. Besides, if by the proofs of intellectual superiority we survive ourselves in this world, by exemplary virtue or unblemished faith, we are taught to ensure an interest in another and a higher state of being, and to anticipate at the same time the applauses of men and angels.

As we advance in life, we acquire a keener sense of the value of time. Nothing else, indeed, seems of any consequence; and we become misers in this respect. We try to arrest its few last tottering steps, and to make it linger on the brink of the grave. We can never leave off wondering how that which has ever been should cease to be, and would still live on, that we may wonder at our own shadow, and when ‘all the life of life is flown,’ dwell on the retrospect of the past. This is accompanied by a mechanical tenaciousness of whatever we possess, by a distrust and a sense of fallacious hollowness in all we see. Instead of the full, pulpy feeling of youth, every thing is flat and insipid. The world is a painted witch, that puts us off with false shews and tempting appearances. The ease, the jocund gaiety, the unsuspecting security of youth are fled: nor can we, without flying in the face of common sense,

If we can slip out of the world without notice or mischance, can tamper with bodily infirmity, and frame our minds to the becoming composure of still-life, before we sink into total insensibility, it is as much as we ought to expect. We do not in the regular course of nature die all at once: we have mouldered away gradually long before; faculty after faculty, attachment after attachment, we are torn from ourselves piecemeal while living; year after year takes something from us; and death only consigns the last remnant of what we were to the grave. The revulsion is not so great, and a quiet 160euthanasia is a winding-up of the plot, that is not out of reason or nature.

That we should thus in a manner outlive ourselves, and dwindle imperceptibly into nothing, is not surprising, when even in our prime the strongest impressions leave so little traces of themselves behind, and the last object is driven out by the succeeding one. How little effect is produced on us at any time by the books we have read, the scenes we have witnessed, the sufferings we have gone through! Think only of the variety of feelings we experience in reading an interesting romance, or being present at a fine play—what beauty, what sublimity, what soothing, what heart-rending emotions! You would suppose these would last for ever, or at least subdue the mind to a correspondent tone and harmony—while we turn over the page, while the scene is passing before us, it seems as if nothing could ever after shake our resolution, that ‘treason domestic, foreign levy, nothing could touch us farther!’ The first splash of mud we get, on entering the street, the first pettifogging shop-keeper that cheats us out of twopence, and the whole vanishes clean out of our remembrance, and we become the idle prey of the most petty and annoying circumstances. The mind soars by an effort to the grand and lofty: it is at home, in the grovelling, the disagreeable, and the little. This happens in the height and hey-day of our existence, when novelty gives a stronger impulse to the blood and takes a faster hold of the brain, (I have known the impression on coming out of a gallery of pictures then last half a day)—as we grow old, we become more feeble and querulous, every object ‘reverbs its own hollowness,’ and both worlds are not enough to satisfy the peevish importunity and extravagant presumption of our desires! There are a few superior, happy beings, who are born with a temper exempt from every trifling annoyance. This spirit sits serene and smiling as in its native skies, and a divine harmony (whether heard or not) plays around them. This is to be at peace. Without this, it is in vain to fly into deserts, or to build a hermitage on the top of rocks, if regret and ill-humour follow us there: and with this, it is needless to make the experiment. The only true retirement is that of the heart; the only true leisure is the repose of the passions. To such persons it makes little difference whether they are young or old; and they die as they have lived, with graceful resignation.

The Monthly Magazine.] [January, 1828.

‘If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes!’ said the Macedonian hero; and the cynic might have retorted the compliment upon 199the prince by saying, that, ‘were he not Diogenes, he would be Alexander!’ This is the universal exception, the invariable reservation that our self-love makes, the utmost point at which our admiration or envy ever arrives—to wish, if we were not ourselves, to be some other individual. No one ever wishes to be another, instead of himself. We may feel a desire to change places with others—to have one man’s fortune—another’s health or strength—his wit or learning, or accomplishments of various kinds—

but we would still be our selves, to possess and enjoy all these, or we would not give a doit for them. But, on this supposition, what in truth should we be the better for them? It is not we, but another, that would reap the benefit; and what do we care about that other? In that case, the present owner might as well continue to enjoy them. We should not be gainers by the change. If the meanest beggar who crouches at a palace-gate, and looks up with awe and suppliant fear to the proud inmate as he passes, could be put in possession of all the finery, the pomp, the luxury, and wealth that he sees and envies on the sole condition of getting rid, together with his rags and misery, of all recollection that there ever was such a wretch as himself, he would reject the proffered boon with scorn. He might be glad to change situations; but he would insist on keeping his own thoughts, to compare notes, and point the transition by the force of contrast. He would not, on any account, forego his self-congratulation on the unexpected accession of good fortune, and his escape from past suffering. All that excites his cupidity, his envy, his repining or despair, is the alternative of some great good to himself; and if, in order to attain that object, he is to part with his own existence to take that of another, he can feel no farther interest in it. This is the language both of passion and reason.

Here lies ‘the rub that makes calamity of so long life:’ for it is not barely the apprehension of the ills that ‘in that sleep of death may come,’ but also our ignorance and indifference to the promised good, that produces our repugnance and backwardness to quit the present scene. No man, if he had his choice, would be the angel Gabriel to-morrow! What is the angel Gabriel to him but a splendid vision? He might as well have an ambition to be turned into a bright cloud, or a particular star. The interpretation of which is, he can have no sympathy with the angel Gabriel. Before he can be transformed into so bright and ethereal an essence, he must necessarily ‘put off this mortal coil’—be divested of all his old habits, passions, thoughts, 200and feelings—to be endowed with other lofty and beatific attributes, of which he has no notion; and, therefore, he would rather remain a little longer in this mansion of clay, which, with all its flaws, inconveniences, and perplexities, contains all that he has any real knowledge of, or any affection for. When, indeed, he is about to quit it in spite of himself, and has no other chance left to escape the darkness of the tomb, he may then have no objection (making a virtue of necessity) to put on angels’ wings, to have radiant locks, to wear a wreath of amaranth, and thus to masquerade it in the skies.

It is an instance of the truth and beauty of the ancient mythology, that the various transmutations it recounts are never voluntary, or of favourable omen, but are interposed as a timely release to those who, driven on by fate, and urged to the last extremity of fear or anguish, are turned into a flower, a plant, an animal, a star, a precious stone, or into some object that may inspire pity or mitigate our regret for their misfortunes. Narcissus was transformed into a flower; Daphne into a laurel; Arethusa into a fountain (by the favour of the gods)—but not till no other remedy was left for their despair. It is a sort of smiling cheat upon death, and graceful compromise with annihilation. It is better to exist by proxy, in some softened type and soothing allegory, than not at all—to breathe in a flower or shine in a constellation, than to be utterly forgot; but no one would change his natural condition (if he could help it) for that of a bird, an insect, a beast, or a fish, however delightful their mode of existence, or however enviable he might deem their lot compared to his own. Their thoughts are not our thoughts—their happiness is not our happiness; nor can we enter into it except with a passing smile of approbation, or as a refinement of fancy. As the poet sings:—

This is gorgeous description and fine declamation: yet who would be found to act upon it, even in the forming of a wish; or would not rather be the thrall of wretchedness, than launch out (by the aid of some magic spell) into all the delights of such a butterfly state of existence? The French (if any people can) may be said to enjoy this airy, heedless gaiety and unalloyed exuberance of satisfaction: yet 201what Englishman would deliberately change with them? We would sooner be miserable after our own fashion than happy after their’s. It is not happiness, then, in the abstract, which we seek, that can be addressed as

but a happiness suited to our taste and faculties—that has become a part of ourselves, by habit and enjoyment—that is endeared to us by a thousand recollections, privations, and sufferings. No one, then, would willingly change his country or his kind for the most plausible pretences held out to him. The most humiliating punishment inflicted in ancient fable is the change of sex: not that it was any degradation in itself—but that it must occasion a total derangement of the moral economy and confusion of the sense of personal propriety. The thing is said to have happened, au sens contraire, in our time. The story is to be met with in ‘very choice Italian’; and Lord D—— tells it in very plain English!

We may often find ourselves envying the possessions of others, and sometimes inadvertently indulging a wish to change places with them altogether; but our self-love soon discovers some excuse to be off the bargain we were ready to strike, and retracts ‘vows made in haste, as violent and void.’ We might make up our minds to the alteration in every other particular; but, when it comes to the point, there is sure to be some trait or feature of character in the object of our admiration to which we cannot reconcile ourselves—some favourite quality or darling foible of our own, with which we can by no means resolve to part. The more enviable the situation of another, the more entirely to our taste, the more reluctant we are to leave any part of ourselves behind that would be so fully capable of appreciating all the exquisiteness of its new situation, or not to enter into the possession of such an imaginary reversion of good fortune with all our previous inclinations and sentiments. The outward circumstances were fine: they only wanted a soul to enjoy them, and that soul is our’s (as the costly ring wants the peerless jewel to perfect and set it off). The humble prayer and petition to sneak into visionary felicity by personal adoption, or the surrender of our own personal pretensions, always ends in a daring project of usurpation, and a determination to expel the actual proprietor, and supply his place so much more worthily with our own identity—not bating a single jot of it. Thus, in passing through a fine collection of pictures, who has not envied the privilege of visiting it every day, and wished to be the owner? But the rising sigh is soon checked, and ‘the native hue of emulation 202is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,’ when we come to ask ourselves not merely whether the owner has any taste at all for these splendid works, and does not look upon them as so much expensive furniture, like his chairs and tables—but whether he has the same precise (and only true) taste that we have—whether he has the very same favourites that we have—whether he may not be so blind as to prefer a Vandyke to a Titian, a Ruysdael to a Claude;—nay, whether he may not have other pursuits and avocations that draw off his attention from the sole objects of our idolatry, and which seem to us mere impertinences and waste of time? In that case, we at once lose all patience, and exclaim indignantly, ‘Give us back our taste and keep your pictures!’ It is not we who should envy them the possession of the treasure, but they who should envy us the true and exclusive enjoyment of it. A similar train of feeling seems to have dictated Warton’s spirited Sonnet on visiting Wilton-House:—

One sometimes passes by a gentleman’s park, an old family-seat, with its moss-grown ruinous paling, its ‘glades mild-opening to the genial day,’ or embrowned with forest-trees. Here one would be glad to spend one’s life, ‘shut up in measureless content,’ and to grow old beneath ancestral oaks, instead of gaining a precarious, irksome, and despised livelihood, by indulging romantic sentiments, and writing disjointed descriptions of them. The thought has scarcely risen to the lips, when we learn that the owner of so blissful a seclusion is a thorough-bred fox-hunter, a preserver of the game, a brawling electioneerer, a Tory member of parliament, a ‘no-Popery’ man!—‘I’d sooner be a dog, and bay the moon!’ Who would be Sir Thomas Lethbridge for his title and estate? asks one man. But would not almost any one wish to be Sir Francis Burdett, the man of the people, the idol of the electors of Westminster? says another. I 203can only answer for myself. Respectable and honest as he is, there is something in his white boots, and white breeches, and white coat, and white hair, and red face, and white hat, that I cannot, by any effort of candour, confound my personal identity with! If Mr. Hobhouse can prevail on Sir Francis to exchange, let him do so by all means. Perhaps they might contrive to club a soul between them! Could I have had my will, I should have been born a lord: but one would not be a booby lord neither. I am haunted by an odd fancy of driving down the Great North Road in a chaise and four, about fifty years ago, and coming to the inn at Ferry-bridge, with out-riders, white favours, and a coronet on the panels; and then I choose my companion in the coach. Really there is a witchcraft in all this that makes it necessary to turn away from it, lest, in the conflict between imagination and impossibility, I should grow feverish and light-headed! But, on the other hand, if one was born a lord, should one have the same idea (that every one else has) of a peeress in her own right? Is not distance, giddy elevation, mysterious awe, an impassable gulf, necessary to form this idea in the mind, that fine ligament of ‘ethereal braid, sky-woven,’ that lets down heaven upon earth, fair as enchantment, soft as Berenice’s hair, bright and garlanded like Ariadne’s crown; and is it not better to have had this idea all through life—to have caught but glimpses of it, to have known it but in a dream—than to have been born a lord ten times over, with twenty pampered menials at one’s back, and twenty descents to boast of? It is the envy of certain privileges, the sharp privations we have undergone, the cutting neglect we have met with from the want of birth or title, that gives its zest to the distinction: the thing itself may be indifferent or contemptible enough. It is the becoming a lord that is to be desired; but he who becomes a lord in reality is an upstart—a mere pretender, without the sterling essence; so that, all that is of any worth in this supposed transition is purely imaginary and impossible. Had I been a lord, I should have married Miss ——, and my life would not have been one long-drawn sigh, made up of sweet and bitter regret!^[41] Had I been a lord, I would have been a Popish lord, and then I might also have been an honest man:—poor, and then I might have been proud and not vulgar! Kings are so accustomed to look down on all the rest of the world, that they consider the condition of mortality as vile and intolerable, if stripped of royal state, and cry out in the bitterness 204of their despair, ‘Give me a crown, or a tomb!’ It should seem from this as if all mankind would change with the first crowned head that could propose the alternative, or that it would be only the presumption of the supposition, or a sense of their own unworthiness, that would deter them. Perhaps there is not a single throne that, if it was to be filled by this sort of voluntary metempsychosis, would not remain empty. Many would, no doubt, be glad to ‘monarchise, be feared, and kill with looks’ in their own persons and after their own fashion: but who would be the double of ——, or of those shadows of a shade—those ‘tenth transmitters of a foolish face’—Charles X. and Ferdinand VII.? If monarchs have little sympathy with mankind, mankind have even less with monarchs. They are merely to us a sort of state-puppets or royal wax-work, which we may gaze at with superstitious wonder, but have no wish to become; and he who should meditate such a change must not only feel by anticipation an utter contempt for the slough of humanity which he is prepared to cast, but must feel an absolute void and want of attraction in those lofty and incomprehensible sentiments which are to supply its place. With respect to actual royalty, the spell is in a great measure broken. But, among ancient monarchs, there is no one, I think, who envies Darius or Xerxes. One has a different feeling with respect to Alexander or Pyrrhus; but this is because they were great men as well as great kings, and the soul is up in arms at the mention of their names as at the sound of a trumpet. But as to all the rest—those ‘in the catalogue who go for kings’—the praying, eating, drinking, dressing monarchs of the earth, in time past or present—one would as soon think of wishing to personate the Golden Calf, or to turn out with Nebuchadnezzar to graze, as to be transformed into one of that ‘swinish multitude.’ There is no point of affinity. The extrinsic circumstances are imposing: but, within, there is nothing but morbid humours and proud flesh! Some persons might vote for Charlemagne; and there are others who would have no objection to be the modern Charlemagne, with all he inflicted and suffered, even after the necromantic field of Waterloo, and the bloody wreath on the vacant brow of his conqueror, and that fell jailer set over him by a craven foe, that ‘glared round his soul, and mocked his closing eyelids!’

It has been remarked, that could we at pleasure change our situation in life, more persons would be found anxious to descend than to ascend in the scale of society. One reason may be, that we have it more in our power to do so; and this encourages the thought, and makes it familiar to us. A second is, that we naturally wish to throw off the cares of state, of fortune or business, that oppress us, and to seek repose before we find it in the grave. A third reason is, 205that, as we descend to common life, the pleasures are simple, natural, such as all can enter into, and therefore excite a general interest, and combine all suffrages. Of the different occupations of life, none is beheld with a more pleasing emotion, or less aversion to a change of our own, than that of a shepherd tending his flock: the pastoral ages have been the envy and the theme of all succeeding ones; and a beggar with his crutch is more closely allied than the monarch and his crown to the associations of mirth and heart’s ease. On the other hand, it must be admitted that our pride is too apt to prefer grandeur to happiness; and that our passions make us envy great vices oftener than great virtues.

The world shew their sense in nothing more than in a distrust and aversion to those changes of situation which only tend to make the successful candidates ridiculous, and which do not carry along with them a mind adequate to the circumstances. The common people, in this respect, are more shrewd and judicious than their superiors, from feeling their own awkwardness and incapacity, and often decline, with an instinctive modesty, the troublesome honours intended for them. They do not overlook their original defects so readily as others overlook their acquired advantages. It is wonderful, therefore, that opera-singers and dancers refuse, or only condescend as it were, to accept lords, though the latter are so often fascinated by them. The fair performer knows (better than her unsuspecting admirer) how little connection there is between the dazzling figure she makes on the stage and that which she may make in private life, and is in no hurry to convert ‘the drawing-room into a Green-room.’ The nobleman (supposing him not to be very wise) is astonished at the miraculous powers of art in

and thinks such a paragon must easily conform to the routine of manners and society which every trifling woman of quality of his acquaintance, from sixteen to sixty, goes through without effort. This is a hasty or a wilful conclusion. Things of habit only come by habit, and inspiration here avails nothing. A man of fortune who marries an actress for her fine performance of tragedy, has been well compared to the person who bought Punch. The lady is not unfrequently aware of the inconsequentiality, and unwilling to be put on the shelf, and hid in the nursery of some musty country-mansion. Servant girls, of any sense and spirit, treat their masters (who make serious love to them) with suitable contempt. What is it but a proposal to drag an unmeaning trollop at his heels through life, to her own annoyance and the ridicule of all his friends? No woman, 206I suspect, ever forgave a man who raised her from a low condition in life (it is a perpetual obligation and reproach); though, I believe, men often feel the most disinterested regard for women under such circumstances. Sancho Panza discovered no less folly in his eagerness to enter upon his new government, than wisdom in quitting it as fast as possible. Why will Mr. Cobbett persist in getting into Parliament? He would find himself no longer the same man. What member of Parliament, I should like to know, could write his Register? As a popular partisan, he may (for aught I can say) be a match for the whole Honourable House; but, by obtaining a seat in St. Stephen’s Chapel, he would only be equal to a 576th part of it. It was surely a puerile ambition in Mr. Addington to succeed Mr. Pitt as prime-minister. The situation was only a foil to his imbecility. Gipsies have a fine faculty of evasion: catch them who can in the same place or story twice! Take them; teach them the comforts of civilization; confine them in warm rooms, with thick carpets and down beds; and they will fly out of the window-like the bird, described by Chaucer, out of its golden cage. I maintain that there is no common language or medium of understanding between people of education and without it—between those who judge of things from books or from their senses. Ignorance has so far the advantage over learning; for it can make an appeal to you from what you know; but you cannot re-act upon it through that which it is a perfect stranger to. Ignorance is, therefore, power. This is what foiled Buonaparte in Spain and Russia. The people can only be gained over by informing them, though they may be enslaved by fraud or force. You say there is a common language in nature. They see nature through their wants, while you look at it for your pleasure. Ask a country lad if he does not like to hear the birds sing in the spring? And he will laugh in your face. ‘What is it, then, he does like?’—‘Good victuals and drink!’ As if you had not these too; but because he has them not, he thinks of nothing else, and laughs at you and your refinements, supposing you to live upon air. To those who are deprived of every other advantage, even nature is a book sealed. I have made this capital mistake all my life, in imagining that those objects which lay open to all, and excited an interest merely from the idea of them, spoke a common language to all; and that nature was a kind of universal home, where all ages, sexes, classes met. Not so. The vital air, the sky, the woods, the streams—all these go for nothing, except with a favoured few. The poor are taken up with their bodily wants—the rich, with external acquisitions: the one, with the sense of property—the other, of its privation. Both have the same distaste for sentiment. The 207genteel are the slaves of appearances—the vulgar, of necessity; and neither has the smallest regard to true worth, refinement, generosity. All savages are irreclaimable. I can understand the Irish character better than the Scotch. I hate the formal crust of circumstances and the mechanism of society. I have been recommended, indeed, to settle down into some respectable profession for life:—

I am ‘in no haste to be venerable!’

In thinking of those one might wish to have been, many people will exclaim, ‘Surely, you would like to have been Shakspeare?’ Would Garrick have consented to the change? No, nor should he; for the applause which he received, and on which he lived, was more adapted to his genius and taste. If Garrick had agreed to be Shakspeare, he would have made it a previous condition that he was to be a better player. He would have insisted on taking some higher part than Polonius or the Grave-digger. Ben Jonson and his companions at the Mermaid would not have known their old friend Will in his new disguise. The modern Roscius would have scouted the halting player. He would have shrunk from the parts of the inspired poet. If others were unlike us, we feel it as a presumption and an impertinence to usurp their place; if they were like us, it seems a work of supererogation. We are not to be cozened out of our existence for nothing. It has been ingeniously urged, as an objection to having been Milton, that ‘then we should not have had the pleasure of reading Paradise Lost.’ Perhaps I should incline to draw lots with Pope, but that he was deformed, and did not sufficiently relish Milton and Shakspeare. As it is, we can enjoy his verses and their’s too. Why, having these, need we ever be dissatisfied with ourselves? Goldsmith is a person whom I considerably affect, notwithstanding his blunders and his misfortunes. The author of the Vicar of Wakefield, and of Retaliation, is one whose temper must have had something eminently amiable, delightful, gay, and happy in it.

But then I could never make up my mind to his preferring Rowe and Dryden to the worthies of the Elizabethan age; nor could I, in like manner, forgive Sir Joshua—whom I number among those whose existence was marked with a white stone, and on whose tomb might be inscribed ‘Thrice Fortunate!’—his treating Nicholas Poussin with contempt. Differences in matters of taste and opinion 208are points of honour—‘stuff o’ the conscience’—stumbling-blocks not to be got over. Others, we easily grant, may have more wit, learning, imagination, riches, strength, beauty, which we should be glad to borrow of them; but that they have sounder or better views of things, or that we should act wisely in changing in this respect, is what we can by no means persuade ourselves. We may not be the lucky possessors of what is best or most desirable; but our notion of what is best and most desirable we will give up to no man by choice or compulsion; and unless others (the greatest wits or brightest geniuses) can come into our way of thinking, we must humbly beg leave to remain as we are. A Calvinistic preacher would not relinquish a single point of faith to be the Pope of Rome; nor would a strict Unitarian acknowledge the mystery of the Holy Trinity to have painted Raphael’s Assembly of the Just. In the range of ideal excellence, we are distracted by variety and repelled by differences: the imagination is fickle and fastidious, and requires a combination of all possible qualifications, which never met. Habit alone is blind and tenacious of the most homely advantages; and after running the tempting round of nature, fame, and fortune, we wrap ourselves up in our familiar recollections and humble pretensions—as the lark, after long fluttering on sunny wing, sinks into its lowly bed!

We can have no very importunate craving, nor very great confidence, in wishing to change characters, except with those with whom we are intimately acquainted by their works; and having these by us (which is all we know or covet in them), what would we have more? We can have no more of a cat than her skin; nor of an author than his brains. By becoming Shakspeare in reality, we cut ourselves out of reading Milton, Pope, Dryden, and a thousand more—all of whom we have in our possession, enjoy, and are, by turns, in the best part of them, their thoughts, without any metamorphosis or miracle at all. What a microcosm is our’s! What a Proteus is the human mind! All that we know, think of, or can admire, in a manner becomes ourselves. We are not (the meanest of us) a volume, but a whole library! In this calculation of problematical contingencies, the lapse of time makes no difference. One would as soon have been Raphael as any modern artist. Twenty, thirty, or forty years of elegant enjoyment and lofty feeling were as great a luxury in the fifteenth as in the nineteenth century. But Raphael did not live to see Claude, nor Titian Rembrandt. Those who found arts and sciences are not witnesses of their accumulated results and benefits; nor in general do they reap the meed of praise which is their due. We who come after in some ‘laggard age,’ 209have more enjoyment of their fame than they had. Who would have missed the sight of the Louvre in all its glory to have been one of those whose works enriched it? Would it not have been giving a certain good for an uncertain advantage? No: I am as sure (if it is not presumption to say so) of what passed through Raphael’s mind as of what passes through my own; and I know the difference between seeing (though even that is a rare privilege) and producing such perfection. At one time I was so devoted to Rembrandt, that I think, if the Prince of Darkness had made me the offer in some rash mood, I should have been tempted to close with it, and should have become (in happy hour, and in downright earnest) the great master of light and shade!

I have run myself out of my materials for this Essay, and want a well-turned sentence or two to conclude with; like Benvenuto Cellini, who complains that, with all the brass, tin, iron, and lead he could muster in the house, his statue of Perseus was left imperfect, with a dent in the heel of it. Once more then—I believe there is one character that all the world would be glad to change with—which is that of a favoured rival. Even hatred gives way to envy. We would be any thing—a toad in a dungeon—to live upon her smile, which is our all of earthly hope and happiness; nor can we, in our infatuation, conceive that there is any difference of feeling on the subject, or that the pressure of her hand is not in itself divine, making those to whom such bliss is deigned like the Immortal Gods!

The Monthly Magazine.] [October, 1830–June, 1831.

Servility is a sort of bastard envy. We heap our whole stock of involuntary adulation on a single prominent figure, to have an excuse for withdrawing our notice from all other claims (perhaps juster and more galling ones), and in the hope of sharing a part of the applause as train-bearers.

Admiration is catching by a certain sympathy. The vain admire the vain; the morose are pleased with the morose; nay, the selfish and cunning are charmed with the tricks and meanness of which they are witnesses, and may be in turn the dupes.

Vanity is no proof of conceit. A vain man often accepts of praise as a cheap substitute for his own good opinion. He may think more highly of another, though he would be wounded to the quick if his own circle thought so. He knows the worthlessness and hollowness of the flattery to which he is accustomed, but his ear is tickled with the sound; and the effeminate in this way can no more live without the incense of applause, than the effeminate in another can live without perfumes or any other customary indulgence of the senses. Such people would rather have the applause of fools than the approbation of the wise. It is a low and shallow ambition.

It was said of some one who had contrived to make himself popular abroad by getting into hot water, but who proved very troublesome and ungrateful when he came home—‘We thought him a very persecuted man in India’—the proper answer to which is, that there are some people who are good for nothing else but to be persecuted. They want some check to keep them in order.

It is a sort of gratuitous error in high life, that the poor are naturally thieves and beggars, just as the latter conceive that the rich are naturally proud and hard-hearted. Give a man who is starving a thousand a-year, and he will be no longer under a temptation to get himself hanged by stealing a leg of mutton for his dinner; he may still spend it in gaming, drinking, and the other vices of a gentleman, and not in charity, about which he before made such an outcry.

Do not confer benefits in the expectation of meeting with gratitude; and do not cease to confer them because you find those whom you have served ungrateful. Do what you think fit and right to please yourself; the generosity is not the less real, because it does not meet with a correspondent return. A man should study to get through the world as he gets through St. Giles’s—with as little annoyance and interruption as possible from the shabbiness around him.

Common-place advisers and men of the world, are always pestering you to conform to their maxims and modes, just like the barkers in Monmouth-street, who stop the passengers by entreating them to turn in and refit at their second-hand repositories.

The word gentility is constantly in the mouths of vulgar people; as quacks and pretenders are always talking of genius. Those who possess any real excellence think and say the least about it.

Taste is often envy in disguise: it turns into the art of reducing excellence within the smallest possible compass, or of finding out the minimum of pleasure. Some people admire only what is new and fashionable—the work of the day, of some popular author—the last and frothiest bubble that glitters on the surface of fashion. All the rest is gone by, ‘in the deep bosom of the ocean buried;’ to allude to it is Gothic, to insist upon it odious. We have only to wait a week to be relieved of the hot-pressed page, of the vignette-title; and in the interim can look with sovereign contempt on the wide range of science, learning, art, and on those musty old writers who lived before the present age of novels. Peace be with their manes! There are others, on the contrary, to whom all the modern publications are anathema, a by-word—they get rid of this idle literature ‘at one fell swoop’—disqualify the present race from all pretensions whatever, get into a corner with an obscure writer, and devour the cobwebs and the page together, and pick out in the quaintest production, the quaintest passages, the merest choke-pear, which they think nobody can swallow but themselves.

The source of the love of nature or of the country has never been explained so well as it might. The truth is this. Natural or inanimate objects please merely as objects of sense or contemplation, and we ask no return of the passion or admiration from them, so that we cannot be disappointed or distracted in our choice. If we are delighted with a flower or a tree, we are pleased with it for its own sake; nothing more is required to make our satisfaction complete; we do not ask the flower or tree whether it likes us again; and, therefore, wherever we can meet with the same or a similar object, we may reckon upon a recurrence of the same soothing emotion. Nature is the only mistress that smiles on us still the same; and does not repay admiration with scorn, love with hatred. She is faithful to us, as long as we are faithful to ourselves. Whereas, in regard to the human species, we have not so much to consider our own dispositions towards others, as theirs towards us; a thousand caprices, interests, and opinions, may intervene before the good understanding can be 212mutual; we not only cannot infer of one individual from another, but the same individual may change to-morrow: so that in our intercourse with the world, there is nothing but littleness, uncertainty, suspicion, and mortification, instead of the grandeur and repose of nature.

It has been objected to the soothing power of Nature, that it cannot take away the sharp pang of vehement distress, but rather barbs the dart, and seems to smile in mockery of our anguish. But the same might be said of music, poetry, and friendship, which only tantalize and torment us by offering to divert our grief in its keenest paroxysms; but yet cannot be denied to be enviable resources and consolations of the human mind, when the bitterness of the moment has passed over.

Every one is a hero, the circumstances being given. All that is necessary is, that the outward impression should be so strong as to make a man forget himself. A woman rushes into the flames to save her child, not from duty or reason—but because the distracting terror for another banishes all recollection of, and fear for, herself. For the same reason, a person throws himself from a precipice, because the apprehension of danger gets the better of and confounds the sense of self-preservation. The doctrine of self-love, as an infallible metaphysical principle of action, is nonsense.

The heroical ages were those in which there was a constant question between life and death, and men ate their scanty meal with their swords in their hands.

The hero acts from outward impulse; the martyr from internal faith, and so far is the greater character of the two. And yet it may be doubted whether the latter is properly a voluntary agent, or whether, if he could do it unperceived, he would not abstract himself from the scene, instead of becoming a sacrifice and a witness to the truth.

What shews that persecution and danger act as incentives rather than impediments to the will, is that zeal generally goes out with the fires that kindle it; and we become indifferent to a cause, when life, 213property, and limb are no longer endangered. He is the real philosopher who loves truth for its own sake, not in the spirit of contradiction: he the genuine friend of freedom and justice, who hates oppression and wrong after they have ceased, and as long as the very name of them remains, as well as while it is a bone of contention between infuriated sects and parties.

If reform were to gain the day, reform would become as vulgar as cant of any other kind. We only shew a spirit of independence and resistance to power, as long as power is against us. As soon as the cause of opposition prevails, its essence and character are gone out of it; and the most flagrant radicalism degenerates into the tamest servility. We then say as others say; sail with the stream; no longer sacrifice interest to principle, but are in a pitiful majority. Had events taken a different turn in 1794, who can predict what the popular cry would have been? This may point out how little chance there is of any great improvement in the affairs of the world. Virtue ceases with difficulty; honesty is militant. The mass of mankind, who are governed by indolence and habit, fall in with existing events and interests; the imaginative and reasoning part fall out with facts and reality; but could they have their way, and model the world at their pleasure, their occupation would be gone; or if all governments were wise and good, the character of the patriot would become obsolete, and a sinecure. At present there is a very convenient division of labour; and each class fulfils its vocation. It is essential to the triumph of reform that it should never succeed.

We talk about the cant of politics or religion, as if there were no cant but that which is common to the multitude. But whenever any two individuals agree about any one thing, they begin to cant about it, and take the echo of one another’s voices for the verdict of truth. Half-a-dozen persons will always make a quorum of credulity and vulgarity.

When people have done quarrelling about one set of questions they start another. Motion is necessary to mind as much as to matter; and for ‘an ultimate end,’ Hobbes denies that there is any such thing. Hence the tendency to all Ultra opinions and measures! Man is seldom contented to go as far as others, unless he can go beyond them, and make a caricature and a paradox even of the most vulgar prejudice. 214It is necessary to aim at some kind of distinction—to create some difficulty, were it only for the sake of overcoming it. Thus we find that O’Connell, having carried his cause, would not let the ‘agitation’ subside without turning it into a personal quarrel: the way was opened to him into the House, and he wanted to force his way there by an ex post facto inference; the banns of marriage were published between him and parliament, and he would fain, with the petulance of opposition, seize a seat there.

Truth itself becomes but a fashion. When all the world acknowledge it, it seems trite and stale. It is tinged by the coarse medium through which it passes.

Erasmus, in his ‘Remains,’ tells a story of two thieves, who were recommended by their mother to rob every one they met with; but warned, on peril of their lives, to avoid one Black-breeches (Hercules). Meeting him, however, without knowing him, they set upon him, and were slung across his shoulder,—where Hercules heard them muttering behind his back, a long way off, ‘This must surely be he that our mother warned us of.’ In contempt and pity he let them escape. What modern wit can come up to the grotesque grandeur of this invention?

People addicted to secresy are so without knowing why; they are so not ‘for cause,’ but for secresy’s sake. It is a mixture of cowardice and conceit. They think, if they tell you any thing, you may understand it better than they do, or turn it in some way against them; but that while they shut up their mouths they are wiser than you, just as liars think by telling you a falsehood they have an advantage over you. There are others who deal in significant nods, smiles, and half-sentences, so that you never can get at their meaning, and indeed they have none, but leave it to you to put what interpretation you please on their embryo hints and conceptions. They are glad to find a proxy for their want of understanding.

It is the force and violence of the English mind that has put it into the safe custody of the law, and it is every man’s disposition to act upon his own judgment and presumption, without regard to others, that has made it absolutely necessary to establish equal claims to curb 215them. We are too much in a state of nature to submit to what Burke calls ‘the soft collar of social esteem,’ and require ‘the iron rod, the torturing hour,’ to tame us. But though the foundations of liberty, life, and property, are formally secured in this way from the ebullitions of national character, yet the spirit breaks out upon the surface of manners, and is often spurted in our face. Lord Castlereagh was wrong in saying that ‘liberty was merely a custom of England;’ it is the indigenous growth of our temper and our clime; and woe to him who deprives us of the only amends for so many disadvantages and failings! The wild beast roaming his native forests is respectable though formidable—shut up in Exeter ‘Change, he is equally odious and wretched.

It was a long time made an argument for not throwing open the galleries of noblemen and others to the public, that if permission were given they would be filled with the lowest of the rabble, and with squalid wretches, who would run up against well-dressed people, and damage the works of art. Nothing could be more false than this theory, as experience has shown. It was in vain to quote the example of foreign countries, as it was said the common people there were kept more in subjection; but if they are tamer, ours are prouder for that very reason. The National Gallery in Pall-Mall is now open to all the world; and, except a shabby artist or two, who ever saw a soul there who was not, if not well-dressed, yet dressed in his best, and behaving with decency, instead of trying to turn the place into a bear-garden, as had been predicted.^[42] People will not go out of their way to see pictures unless they have an interest in them, which gives the title, and is a security against ill consequences; much less will any class of people obtrude themselves where they are pointed at as inferior to the rest of the company, or subject themselves to looks of scorn and disgust, to see any sights in the world. There is no man so poor or low but he loves himself better than pictures or statues; and if he must get snubbed and treated with contempt to indulge his admiration of celebrated works, he will forego the latter. Comparisons are odious; and we avoid them. The first object of every human being (high or low, great or small) is to stand well with himself, and to appear to the best advantage to others. A man is not very fond of passing along the streets in a thread-bare coat, and shoes with holes in them. Will he go in this trim into a group of well-dressed people 216to make himself ridiculous? The mind, so far from being dull or callous on this point, is but too sensitive; our jealousy of public opinion is the ruling passion, a morbid disease. Does not the consciousness of any singularity or impropriety of appearance immediately take off from our pleasure at a play? How seldom we observe an interloper in the dress circle; and how sure he is to pay for it! If a man has any defect or inferiority, this is certain, he will keep it in the back-ground. If a chimney-sweeper or scavenger had a ticket to a ball, would he go? Oh! no; it is enough to bear the sense of our own infirmity and disgrace in silence, and unnoticed, without having it wrought to agony by the glare of contrast and ostentation of insult! What linendraper or grocer’s son would dine with a prince every day though he might, to be crushed into insignificance, and stifled with ironical civility? Do we not observe the difficulty there is in making servants and mechanics sit down, or keep on their hats in speaking to their betters, for fear of being thought to encroach, and made liable to a rebuff in consequence? Assuredly, then, the great may throw open their palace-doors and galleries of art without having to dread the inroad or outrages of the mob, or fancying that any one will go who is not qualified to appear, or will not come away with his mind and manners improved. The wooden shoes and mob caps in the Louvre or the Vatican do no harm to the pictures on the walls: but add a new interest to them, and throw a pleasing light on human nature. If we are behind other nations in politeness and civilization, the best way to overtake them is to tread in their steps.

It is at the same time true that familiarity breeds contempt; or that the vulgar, if admitted to an intimacy and footing of equality, try to make you feel all your defects, and to pay for the superiority you have so long usurped over them. The same pride that before kept them at a distance makes them ready to throw down any barrier of deference or distinction the moment they can do so with impunity. No one willingly admits a superiority in another; or does not secretly prefer himself to the whole universe beside. The slave would kill the tyrant, whose feet he kisses; and there is no Turk so loyal that he would not cut off the head of the best of Sultans, if he was sure of putting the diadem upon his own.

The strongest minds are governed more by appearances than by a regard to consequences. Those who pretend to be the greatest calculators of their own interest, or the main-chance, are the very slaves 217of opinion, and dupes of shallow pretension. They are often so mad in this respect, that they think neither better nor worse of the oldest friend they have in the world than the first person they happen to be in company with does, or the last rumour they heard gives him out. Their circumspection amounts to looking three ways at once, and missing the right point of view at last. They would rather speak to a well-dressed fool in the street than to the wisest man in a thread-bare suit. I know an author who succeeds with a set of second-hand thoughts by having a coat of the newest cut; and an editor, who flourishes about the town in virtue of a pair of green spectacles. Lay out all you are worth in decking out the person of a vulgar woman, and she will cut you in the very finery you have given her; lay it out on your own back, and she will be ambitious of your least notice. People judge of you not from what they know, but from the impression you make on others, which depends chiefly on professions, and on outward bearing and bravery. De non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est ratio. If a man has no opinion of himself, how the deuce should any one else? It is like electing a person member of parliament who refuses to come forward as a candidate. On the other hand, let a man have impudence in lieu of all other qualifications, and he needs not despair. The part of quack or coxcomb is a favourite one with the town. The only character that is likely to get on by passing for a poor creature is the legacy-hunter. Nothing can be too low or insignificant for that. A man is only grateful to you in the other world for having been a foil to him in this. A miser (if he could) would leave his fortune to his dog, that no human being might be the better for it, or no one that he could envy in the possession of it, or think raised to an equality with himself.

We complain of old friends who have made their fortunes in the world and slighted us in their prosperity, without considering those who have been unsuccessful, and whom we have neglected in our turn. When our friends betray or desert us, we cling the closer to those that remain. Our confidence is strengthened by being circumscribed; we do not wish to give up a forlorn hope. With the crumbling and decayed fragments of friendship around us, we maintain our point to the last; like the cobbler, who kept his stall and cooked his beef-steak in the ruins of Drury Lane. Bonaparte used to speak of old generals and favourites who would not have abandoned him in his misfortunes if they had lived; it was perhaps well for them that they were dead. The list of traitors and the ungrateful is too much swelled without any probable additions to it.

When we hear of any base or shocking action or character, we think the better of ourselves; instead of which, we ought to think the worse. It strikes at the grounds of our faith in human nature. The reflection of the old divine was wiser on seeing a reprobate—‘There goes my wicked self!’

Over-civility generally ends in impertinence; for as it proceeds from design, and not from any kindness or respect, it ceases with its object.

I am acquainted with but one person, of whom I feel quite sure that if he were to meet an old and tried friend in the street, he would go up and speak to him in the same manner, whether in the interim he had become a lord or a beggar. Upon reflection, I may add a second to the list. Such is my estimate of the permanence and sincerity of our most boasted virtues. ‘To be honest as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.’

It has been said that family attachments are the only ones that stand the test of adversity, because the disgrace or misfortune is there in some measure reflected upon ourselves. A friend is no longer a friend, provided we choose to pick a quarrel with him; but we cannot so easily cut the link of relationship asunder. We therefore relieve the distresses of our near relations, or get them out of the way, lest they should shame us. But the sentiment is unnatural, and therefore must be untrue.

L—— said of some monkeys at a fair, that we were ashamed of their resemblance to ourselves on the same principle that we avoided poor relations.

Servants and others who consult only their ease and convenience, give a great deal of trouble by their carelessness and profligacy; those who take a pride in their work often carry it to excess, and plague you with constant advice and interference. Their duty gets so much a-head in their imagination, that it becomes their master, and your’s too.

There are persons who are never easy unless they are putting your books or papers in order, that is, according to their notions of the matter; and hide things lest they should be lost, where neither the owner nor any body else can find them. This is a sort of magpie faculty. If any thing is left where you want it, it is called making a litter. There is a pedantry in housewifery as in the gravest concerns. Abraham Tucker complained that whenever his maid servant had been in his library, he could not set comfortably to work again for several days.

True misanthropy consists not in pointing out the faults and follies of men, but in encouraging them in the pursuit. They who wish well to their fellow-creatures are angry at their vices and sore at their mishaps; he who flatters their errors and smiles at their ruin is their worst enemy. But men like the sycophant better than the plain-dealer, because they prefer their passions to their reason, and even to their interest.

I am not very patriotic in my notions, nor prejudiced in favour of my own countrymen; and one reason is, I wish to have as good an opinion as I can of human nature in general. If we are the paragons that some people would make us out, what must the rest of the world be? If we monopolize all the sense and virtue on the face of the globe, we ‘leave others poor indeed,’ without having a very great superabundance falling to our own share. Let them have a few advantages that we have not—grapes and the sun!

When the Persian ambassador was at Edinburgh, an old Presbyterian lady, more full of zeal than discretion, fell upon him for his idolatrous belief, and said ‘I hear you worship the sun!’—‘In faith, Madam,’ he replied, ‘and so would you too if you had ever seen him!’

‘To be direct and honest is not safe,’ says Iago. Shakspeare has here defined the nature of honesty, which seems to consist in the absence of any indirect or sinister bias. The honest man looks at and decides upon an object as it is in itself, without a view to consequences, and as if he himself were entirely out of the question; the prudent 220man considers only what others will think of it; the knave, how he can turn it to his own advantage or another’s detriment, which he likes better. His straightforward simplicity of character is the reverse of what is understood by the phrase, a man of the world: an honest man is independent of and abstracted from material ties. This character is owing chiefly to strong natural feeling and a love of right, partly to pride and obstinacy, and a want of discursiveness of imagination. It is not well to be too witty or too wise. In many circles (not including the night-cellar or a mess-table) a clever fellow means a rogue. According to the French proverb, ‘Tout homme reflechi est méchant.’ Your honest man often is, and is always set down as no better than an ass.

A person who does not tell lies will not believe that others tell them. From old habit, he cannot break the connection between words and things. This is to labour under a great disadvantage in his transactions with men of the world: it is playing against sharpers with loaded dice. The secret of plausibility and success is point-blanc lying. The advantage which men of business have over the dreamers and sleep-walkers is not in knowing the exact state of a case, but in telling you with a grave face what it is not, to suit their own purposes. This is one obvious reason why students and book-worms are so often reduced to their last legs. Education (which is a study and discipline of abstract truth) is a diversion to the instinct of lying and a bar to fortune.

Those who get their money as wits, spend it like fools.

It is not true that authors, artists, &c., are uniformly ill-paid; they are often improvident, and look upon an income as an estate. A literary man who has made even five or six hundred a-year for a length of time has only himself to blame if he has none of it left (a tradesman with the same annual profits would have been rich or independent); an artist who breaks for ten thousand pounds cannot surely lament the want of patronage. A sieve might as well petition against a dry season. Persons of talent and reputation do not make money, because they do not keep it; and they do not keep it, because they do not care about it till they feel the want of it—and then the public stop payment. The prudent and careful, even among players, lay by fortunes.

In general, however, it is not to be expected that those should grow rich by a special Providence, whose first and last object is by every means and at every sacrifice to grow famous. Vanity and avarice have different goals and travel different roads. The man of genius produces that which others admire: the man of business that which they will buy. If the poet is delighted with the ideas of certain things, the reader is equally satisfied with the idea of them too. The man of genius does that which no one else but himself can do: the man of business gets his wealth from the joint mechanical drudgery of all whom he has the means to employ. Trade is the Briareus that works with a hundred hands. A popular author grew rich, because he seemed to have a hundred hands to write with: but he wanted another hand to say to his well-got gains, ‘Come, let me clutch thee.’ Nollekens made a fortune (how he saved it we know) by having blocks of marble to turn into sharp-looking busts (which required a capital), and by hiring a number of people to hack and hew them into shape. Sir Joshua made more money than West or Barry, partly because he was a better painter, partly because gentlemen like their own portraits better than those of prophet or apostle, saint or hero. What the individual wants, he will pay the highest price for: what is done for the public the State must pay for. How if they will not? The historical painter cannot make them; and if he persists in the attempt, must be contented to fall a martyr to it. It is some glory to fail in great designs; and some punishment is due to having rashly or presumptuously embarked in them.

It is some comfort to starve on a name: it is something to be a poor gentleman; and your man of letters ‘writes himself armigero, in any bond, warrant, or quittance.’ In fixing on a profession for a child, it is a consideration not to place him in one in which he may not be thought good enough to sit down in any company. Miserable mortals that we are! If you make a lawyer of him, he may become Lord Chancellor; and then all his posterity are lords. How cheap and yet acceptable a thing is nobility in this country! It does not date from Adam or the conquest. We need not laugh at Buonaparte’s mushroom peers, who were something like Charlemagne’s or the knights of King Arthur’s round table.

We talk of the march of intellect, as if it only unfolded the knowledge of good: the knowledge of evil, which communicates with 222twenty times the rapidity, is never once hinted at. Eve’s apple, the torch of Prometheus, and Pandora’s box, are discarded as childish fables by our wise moderns.

As I write this, I hear out of the window a man beating his wife and calling her names. Is this what is meant by good-nature and domestic comfort? Or is it that we have so little of these, ordinarily speaking, that we are astonished at the smallest instances of them; and have never done lauding ourselves for the exclusive possession of them?

A man should never marry beneath his own rank in life—for love. It shews goodness of heart, but want of consideration; and the very generosity of purpose will defeat itself. She may please him and be every way qualified to make him happy: but what will others think? Can he with equal certainty of the issue introduce her to his friends and family? If not, nothing is done; for marriage is an artificial institution, and a wife a part of the machinery of society. We are not in a state of nature, to be quite free and unshackled to follow our spontaneous impulses. Nothing can reconcile the difficulty but a woman’s being a paragon of wit or beauty; but every man fancies his Dulcinea a paragon of wit or beauty. Without this, he will only (with the best intentions in the world) have entailed chagrin and mortification both on himself and her; and she will be as much excluded from society as if he had made her his mistress instead of his wife. She must either mope at home, or tie him to her apron-string; and he will drag a clog and a load through life, if he be not saddled with a scold and a tyrant to boot.

I believe in the theoretical benevolence, and practical malignity of man.

We pity those who lived three hundred years ago, as if the world was hardly then awake, and they were condemned to feel their way and drag out an inanimate existence in the obscure dawn of manners and civilization: we forsooth are at the meridian, and the ages that are to follow are dark night. But if there were any truth in our theory, we should be as much behind-hand and objects of scorn to those who are to come after us, as we have a fancied advantage over 223those that have preceded us. Supposing it to be a misfortune to have lived in the age of Raphael or Virgil, it would be desirable (if it were possible) still to postpone the period of our existence sine die: for the value of time must mount up, as it proceeds, through the positive, comparative, and superlative degrees. Common sense with a little reflection will teach us, that one age is as good as another; that in familiar phrase we cannot have our cake and eat it; and that there is no time like the time present, whether in the first, the tenth or the twentieth century.

The world does not start fair in the race of time: one country has run its course before another has set out or even been heard of. Riches, luxury, and the arts, reach their utmost height in one place, while the rest of the globe is in a crude and barbarous state; decline thenceforward, and can no more be resuscitated than the dead. The twelve old Etruscan cities are stone-walls, surrounded with heaps of cinders: Rome is but the tomb of its ancient greatness. Venice, Genoa, are extinct; and there are those who think that England has had her day. She may exclaim in the words of Gray’s Bard—‘To triumph and to die are mine.’ America is just setting out in the path of history, on the model of England, without a language of its own, and with a continent instead of an island to run its career in—like a novice in the art, who gets a larger canvass than his master ever had to cover with his second-hand designs.

It was shrewdly observed that the ruin of states commences with the accumulation of people in great cities, which conceal and foster vice and profligacy.

The world, said a sensible man, does not on the whole grow much worse, nor abandon itself to absolute licentiousness, because as people have children growing up, they do not wish them to be reprobates; but give them good advice and conceal their failings from them. This in each successive generation brings morality on its legs again, however sceptical in virtue or hardened in vice the old may become through habit or bad example.

As children puzzle you by asking explanations of what they do not understand, many grown people shine in company and triumph over their antagonists by dint of ignorance and conceit.

A certain bookseller wanted Northcote to write a history of art in all ages and countries, and in all its ramifications and collateral bearings. It would have taken a life to execute it; but the projector thought it was as easy to make the book as to draw up the title-page. Some minds are as sanguine from a want of imagination, as others are from an excess of it; they see no difficulty or objection in the way of what they undertake, and are blind to every thing but their own interest and wishes.

An outcry is raised against the distresses of literature as a tax upon the public, and against the sums of money and unrepaid loans which authors borrow of strangers or friends. It is not considered that but for authors we should still have been in the hands of tyrants, who rioted in the spoil of widows and orphans, and swept the fortunes of individuals and the wealth of provinces into their pouch. It will be time enough to be alarmed when the Literary Fund has laid its iron grasp on fat abbey lands and portly monasteries for the poor brethren of the Muses, has establishments like those of the Franciscan and Dominican Friars for its hoary veterans or tender novices, and has laid half the property of the country under contribution. Authors are the ideal class of the present day, who supply the brains of the community with ‘fancies and good-nights,’ as the priests did of old; and who cultivating no goodly vineyard of their own to satisfy the wants of the body, are sometimes entitled, besides their pittance, to ask the protection of taste or liberality. After all, the fees of Parnassus are trifling in comparison with the toll of Purgatory.

There are but few authors who should marry: they are already wedded to their studies and speculations. Those who are accustomed to the airy regions of poetry and romance, have a fanciful and peculiar standard of perfection of their own, to which realities can seldom come up; and disappointment, indifference, or disgust, is too often the result. Besides, their ideas and their intercourse with society make them fit for the highest matches. If an author, baulked of the goddess of his idolatry, marries an ignorant and narrow-minded person, they have no language in common: if she is a bluestocking, they do nothing but wrangle. Neither have most writers the means to maintain a wife and family without difficulty. They have chosen their part, the pursuit of the intellectual and abstracted; and should not attempt to force the world of reality into a union with it, like mixing gold with 225clay. In this respect, the Romish priests were perhaps wiser. ‘From every work they challenged essoin for contemplation’s sake.’ Yet their celibacy was but a compromise with their sloth and supposed sanctity. We must not contradict the course of nature, after all.

There is sometimes seen more natural ease and grace in a common gipsy-girl than in an English court-circle. To demand a reason why, is to ask why the strolling fortune-teller’s hair and eyes are black, or her face oval.

The greatest proof of pride is its being able to extinguish envy and jealousy. Vanity produces the latter effect on the continent.

When you speak of the popular effect and enthusiasm produced by the ceremonies of the Catholic church, it is presently objected that all this faith and zeal is excited by mummery and superstition. I am ready to allow that; and when I find that truth and reason have the same homage and reverence paid to them as absurdity and falsehood, I shall think all the advantages are clearly on the side of the former. The processes of reason do not commonly afford the elements of passion as their result; and the object of strong and even lofty feeling seems to appeal rather to the grossness and incongruity of the senses and imagination, than to the clear and dry deductions of the understanding. Man has been truly defined a religious animal; but his faith and heavenward aspirations cease if you reduce him to a mere mathematical machine. The glory and the power of the true religion are in its enlisting the affections of man along with the understanding.

We are imposed upon by the affectation of grace and gentility only till we see the reality; and then we laugh at the counterfeit, and are surprised that we did not see through it before.

English women, even of the highest rank, look like dowdies in Paris; or exactly as countrywomen do in London. It is a rule-of-three proportion. A French milliner or servant maid laughs (not without reason) at an English Duchess. The more our fair country women dress à la Française, the more unlucky they seem; and the 226more foreign graces they give themselves, the more awkward they grow. They want the tournure Françoise. Oh! how we have ‘melted, thawed, and dissolved into a dew,’ to see a bustling, red-faced, bare-necked English Duchess, or banker’s wife, come into a box at the French theatre, bedizened and bedaubed! My Lady-mayoress or the Right Honourable the Countess Dowager of ——, before she ventures on the word vulgar, or scorns her untitled and untutored neighbours as beneath her notice, should go to see les Angloises pour rire! That is the looking-glass for upstart wealth and inflated aristocracy.

The advantage of our nobility over the plebeian classes is said to be in the blood and in the breed—the Norman breed, we suppose—the high noses and arched eyebrows date from the Conquest. We plead guilty to the insinuation conveyed in the expression—‘the coronet face’—and bow with some sort of pride to the pride of birth. But this hypothesis is hardly compatible with the evident improvement in the present generation of noblemen and gentlemen by the intermarriages with rich heiresses, or the beautiful Pamelas of an humbler stock. Crossing the breed has done much good; for the actual race of Bond-street loungers would make a very respectable regiment of grenadiers; and the satire on Beau Didapper, in Fielding’s Joseph Andrews, has lost its force.

The tone of society in Paris is very far from John Bullish. They do not ask what a man is worth, or whether his father is owner of a tin-mine or a borough—but what he has to say, whether he is amiable and spirituel. In the case (unless a marriage is on the tapis) no one inquires whether his account at his banker’s is high or low; or whether he has come in his carriage or on foot. An English soldier of fortune, or a great traveller, is listened to with some attention as a marked character; while a booby lord is no more regarded than his own footman in livery. The blank after a man’s name is expected to be filled up with talent or adventures, or he passes for what he really is, a cypher.

Our young Englishmen in Paris do not make much figure in the society of Frenchmen of education and spirit. They stumble at the threshold in point of manners, dress, and conversation. They have not only to learn the language, but to unlearn almost every thing else. 227Both words and things are different in France; our raw recruits have to get rid of a host of prejudices, and they do it awkwardly and reluctantly, and if they attempt to make a regular stand, are presently out-voted. The terms gothic and barbarous are talisman to strike them dumb. There is, moreover, a clumsiness in both their wit and advances to familiarity, that the spiteful brunettes on the other side of the water do not comprehend, and that subjects them to constant sneers; and every false step adds to their confusion and want of confidence. But their lively antagonists are so flushed with victory and victims to their loquacity and charms, that they are not contented to lecture them on morals, metaphysics, sauces, and virtù, but proceed to teach them the true pronunciation and idiom of the English tongue. Thus a smart French widow having blundered by saying, ‘I have never made a child;’ and perceiving that it excited a smile, maintained, for three whole days, against a large company, that it was better than saying, ‘I never had a child.’

The Parisian trip (say what they will) is not grace. It is the motion of a puppet, and may be mimicked, which grace cannot. It may be different from the high, heavy-heeled walk of the Englishwoman. Is it not equally remote from the step (if step it may be called) of an Andalusian girl?

It has been often made a subject of dispute, What is the distinguishing characteristic of man? And the answer may, perhaps, be given that he is the only animal that dresses. He is the only being who is coxcomb enough not to go out of the world naked as he came into it; that is ashamed of what he really is, and proud of what he is not; and that tries to pass off an artificial disguise as himself. We may safely extend the old maxim, and say that it is the tailor that makes both the gentleman and the man. Fine feathers make fine birds—this lie is the motto of the human mind. Dress a fellow in sheepskin, and he is a clown—dress him in scarlet, and he is a gentleman. It is then the clothes that makes all the difference; and the moral agent is simply the lay-figure to hang them on. Man, in short, is the only creature in the known world, with whom appearances pass for realities, words for things; or that has the wit to find out his own defects, and the impudence and hypocrisy, by merely concealing them, to persuade himself and others that he has them not. Teniers’s monkeys, habited like monks, may be thought a satire on human nature—alas! 228it is a piece of natural history. The monks are the larger and more solemn species, to be sure. Swift has taken a good bird’s eye view of man’s nature, by abstracting the habitual notions of size, and looking at it in great or in little: would that some one had the boldness and the art to do a similar service, by stripping off the coat from his back, the vizor from his thoughts, or by dressing up some other creature in similar mummery! It is not his body alone that he tampers with, and metamorphoses so successfully; he tricks out his mind and soul in borrowed finery, and in the admired costume of gravity and imposture. If he has a desire to commit a base or cruel action without remorse and with the applause of the spectators, he has only to throw the cloak of religion over it, and invoke Heaven to set its seal on a massacre or a robbery. At one time dirt, at another indecency, at another rapine, at a fourth rancorous malignity, is decked out and accredited in the garb of sanctity. The instant there is a flaw, a ‘damned spot’ to be concealed, it is glossed over with a doubtful name. Again, we dress up our enemies in nicknames, and they march to the stake as assuredly as in san Benitos. The words Heretic or Papist, Jew or Infidel, labelled on those who differ from us, stand us in lieu of sense or decency. If a man be mean, he sets up for economy; if selfish, he pretends to be prudent; if harsh, firm; and so on. What enormities, what follies are not undertaken for the love of glory?—and the worst of all, are said to be for the glory of God! Strange, that a reptile should wish to be thought an angel; or that he should not be content to writhe and grovel in his native earth, without aspiring to the skies! It is from the love of dress and finery. He is the Chimney-sweeper on May-day all the year round: the soot peeps through the rags and tinsel, and all the flowers of sentiment!

The meaning of all which is, that man is the only hypocrite in the creation; or that he is composed of two natures, the ideal and the physical, the one of which he is always trying to keep a secret from the other. He is the Centaur not fabulous.

A person who is full of secrets is a knave or a fool, or both.

The error of Mandeville, as well as of those opposed to him, is in concluding that man is a simple and not a compound being. The schoolmen and divines endeavour to prove that the gross and material 229part of his nature is a foreign admixture, distinct from and unworthy of the man himself. The misanthropes and sceptics, on the other hand, maintain the falsity of all human virtues, and that all that is not sensual and selfish is a mere theatrical deception. But in order that man should be a wholly and incorrigibly selfish being, he should be shut up like an oyster in its shell, without any possible conception of what passes beyond the wall of his senses; and the feelers of his mind should not extend their ramifications under any circumstance or in any manner, to the thoughts and sentiments of others. Shakspeare has expressed the matter better than the pedants on either side, who wish unreasonably to exalt or degrade human nature.—‘The web of our lives is as of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not, and our vices would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues.’

People cry out against the preposterous absurdity of such representations as the German inventions of the Devil’s Elixir and the Bottle Imp. Is it then a fiction that we see? Or is it not rather a palpable reality that takes place every day and hour? Who is there that is not haunted by some heated phantom of his brain, some wizard spell, that clings to him in spite of his will, and hurries him on to absurdity or ruin? There is no machinery or phantasmagoria of a melo-drame, more extravagant than the workings of the passions. Mr. Farley may do his worst with scaly forms, with flames, and dragon’s wings: but after all, the true demon is within us. How many, whose senses are shocked at the outward spectacle, and who turn away startled or disgusted might say, pointing to their bosoms, ‘The moral is here!’

Mr. L—— asked Sir Thomas —— who had been intimate with the Prince, if it was true that he was so fine a gentleman as he was generally represented? Sir Thomas —— made answer, that it was certainly true that the Prince was a very fine gentleman indeed: ‘but,’ added he, ‘if I am to speak my mind, the finest gentleman I ever saw, was Sadi Baba, the ambassador to Constantinople, from the Usbek Tartars.’

‘Man is in no haste to be venerable.’ At present, it seems as if there were no occasion to become so. People die as usual; but it is not the fashion to grow old. Formerly, men subsided and settled down into a respectable old age at forty, as they did into a bob-wig, 230and a brown coat and waistcoat of a certain cut. The father of a family no longer pretended to pass for a gay young fellow, after he had children grown up; and women dwindled, by regular and willing gradations, into mothers and grandmothers, transferring their charms and pretensions to a blooming posterity; but these things are never thought of now-a-days. A matron of sixty flaunts it in ‘La Belle Assemblée’s dresses for May:’ and certainly M. Stultz never inquires into the grand climacteric of his customers. Dress levels all ages as well as all ranks.

The Monthly Magazine.] [November, 1830.

Editors are (to use an approved Scotch phrase—for what that is Scotch is not approved?) a ‘sort of tittle-tattle‘—difficult to deal with, dangerous to discuss. ‘A capital subject for an article, great scope, complete novelty, and ground never touched upon!’ Very true; for what Editor would insert an article against himself? Certainly none that did not feel himself free from and superior to the common foibles of his tribe. What might, therefore, be taken for a satire in manuscript, turns to a compliment in print—the exception in this, as in other cases, proves the rule—an inference we have endeavoured to express in our motto.

With one exception, then, Editors in general partake of the usual infirmity of human nature, and of persons placed in high and honorary situations. Like other individuals raised to authority, they are chosen to fill a certain post for qualities useful or ornamental to the reading public; but they soon fancy that the situation has been invented for their own honour and profit, and sink the use in the abuse. Kings are not the only servants of the public who imagine that they are the state. Editors are but men, and easily ‘lay the flattering unction to their souls’ that they are the Magazine, the Newspaper, or the Review they conduct. They have got a little power in their hands, and they wish to employ that power (as all power is employed) to increase the sense of self-importance; they borrow a certain dignity from their situation as arbiters and judges of taste and elegance, and they are determined to keep it to the detriment of their employers and of every one else. They are dreadfully afraid there should be any thing behind the Editor’s chair, greater than the Editor’s chair. That is a scandal to be prevented at all risks. The publication they are entrusted with for the amusement and edification of the town, they 231convert, in theory and practice, into a stalking-horse of their own vanity, whims, and prejudices. They cannot write a whole work themselves, but they take care that the whole is such as they might have written: it is to have the Editor’s mark, like the broad R, on every page, or the N. N. at the Tuileries; it is to bear the same image and superscription—every line is to be upon oath: nothing is to be differently conceived or better expressed than the Editor could have done it. The whole begins in vanity, and ends too often in dulness and insipidity.

It is utterly impossible to persuade an Editor that he is nobody. As Mr. Horne Tooke said, on his trial for a libel before Lord Kenyon, ‘There are two parties in this cause—myself and the jury; the judge and the crier of the court attend in their respective places:’ so in every periodical miscellany, there are two essential parties—the writers and the public; the Editor and the printer’s-devil are merely the mechanical instruments to bring them together. There is a secret consciousness of this on the part of the Conductor of the Literary Diligence, that his place is one for shew and form rather than use; and as he cannot maintain his pretended superiority by what he does himself, he thinks to arrive at the same end by hindering others from doing their best. The ‘dog-in-the-manger’ principle comes into full play. If an article has nothing to recommend it, is one of no mark or likelihood, it goes in; there is no offence in it. If it is likely to strike, to draw attention, to make a noise, then every syllable is scanned, every objection is weighed: if grave, it is too grave; if witty, it is too witty. One way or other, it might be better; and while this nice point is pending, it gives place, as a matter of course, to something that there is no question about.

The responsibility, the delicacy, the nervous apprehension of the Editor, naturally increase with the probable effect and popularity of the contributions on which he has to pass judgment; and the nearer an effusion approaches to perfection, the more fatal is a single flaw, or its falling short of that superhuman standard by a hair’s-breadth difference, to its final reception. If people are likely to ask, ‘Who wrote a certain paper in the last number of ——?’ the Editor is bound, as a point of honour, to baulk that impertinent curiosity on the part of the public. He would have it understood that all the articles are equally good, and may be equally his own. If he inserts a paper of more than the allowed average merit, his next care is to spoil by revising it. The sting, with the honey, is sure to be left out. If there is any thing that pleased you in the writing, you look in vain for it in the proof. What might electrify the reader, startles the Editor. With a paternal regard for the interests of the public, he 232takes care that their tastes should not be pampered, and their expectations raised too high, by a succession of fine passages, of which it is impossible to continue a supply. He interposes between the town and their vicious appetite for the piquant and high-seasoned, as we forbid children to indulge in sweetmeats. The trite and superficial are always to be had to order, and present a beautiful uniformity of appearance. There is no unexpected relief, no unwelcome inequality of style, to disorder the nerves or perplex the understanding: the reader may read, and smile, and sleep, without meeting a single idea to break his repose!

Some Editors, moreover, have a way of altering the first paragraph: they have then exercised their privileges, and let you alone for the rest of the chapter. This is like paying ‘a pepper-corn rent,’ or making one’s bow on entering a room: it is being let off cheap. Others add a pointless conclusion of their own: it is like signing their names to the article. Some have a passion for sticking in the word however at every opportunity, in order to impede the march of the style; and others are contented and take great pains (with Lindley Murray’s Grammar lying open before them) to alter ‘if it is’ into ‘if it be.’ An Editor abhors an ellipsis. If you fling your thoughts into continued passages, they set to work to cut them up into short paragraphs: if you make frequent breaks, they turn the tables on you that way, and throw the whole composition into masses. Any thing to preserve the form and appearance of power, to make the work their own by mental stratagem, to stamp it by some fiction of criticism with their personal identity, to enable them to run away with the credit, and look upon themselves as the master-spirits of the work and of the age! If there is any point they do not understand, they are sure to meddle with it, and mar the sense; for it piques their self-love, and they think they are bound ex-officio to know better than the writer. Thus they substitute (at a venture, and merely for the sake of altering) one epithet for another, when perhaps the same word has occurred just before, and produces a cruel tautology, never considering the trouble you have taken to compare the context and vary the phraseology.

Editors have no misplaced confidence in the powers of their contributors: they think by the supposition they must be in the right from a single supercilious glance,—and you in the wrong, after poring over a subject for a month. There are Editors who, if you insert the name of a popular actor or artist, strike it out, and, in virtue of their authority, insert a favourite of their own,—as a dexterous attorney substitutes the name of a friend in a will. Some Editors will let you praise nobody; others will let you blame nobody. The first excites 233their jealousy of contemporary merit; the last excites their fears, and they do not like to make enemies. Some insist upon giving no opinion at all, and observe an unarmed neutrality as to all parties and persons;—it is no wonder the world think very little of them in return. Some Editors stand upon their characters for this; others for that. Some pique themselves upon being genteel and well-dressed; others on being moral and immaculate, and do not perceive that the public never trouble their heads about the matter. We only know one Editor who openly discards all regard to character and decency, and who thrives by the dissolution of partnership, if indeed the articles were ever drawn up. We shall not mention names, as we would not advertise a work that ‘ought to lie on no gentleman’s table.’ Some Editors drink tea with a set of blue stockings and literary ladies: not a whisper, not a breath that might blow away those fine cobwebs of the brain—

Others dine with Lords and Academicians—for God’s sake, take care what you say! Would you strip the Editor’s mantel-piece of the cards of invitation that adorn it to select parties for the next six months? An Editor takes a turn in St. James’s-street, and is congratulated by the successive literary or political groups on all he does not write; and when the mistake is found out, the true Simon Pure is dismissed. We have heard that it was well said by the proprietor of a leading journal, that he would take good care never to write a line in his own paper, as he had conflicting interests enough to manage, without adding literary jealousies to the number. On the other hand, a very good-natured and warm-hearted individual declared, ‘he would never have another man of talents for an Editor’ (the Editor, in this case, is to the proprietor as the author to the Editor), ‘for he was tired of having their good things thrust in his teeth.’ Some Editors are scrubs, mere drudges, newspaper-puffs: others are bullies or quacks: others are nothing at all—they have the name, and receive a salary for it! A literary sinecure is at once lucrative and highly respectable. At Lord’s-Ground there are some old hands that are famous for ‘blocking out and staying in:’ it would seem that some of our literary veterans had taken a lesson from their youthful exercises at Harrow or Eton.

All this is bad enough; but the worst is, that Editors, besides their own failings, have friends who aggravate and take advantage of them. These self-styled friends are the night-shade and hemlock clinging to 234the work, preventing its growth and circulation, and dropping a slumberous poison from its jaundiced leaves. They form a cordon, an opake mass round the Editor, and persuade him that they are the support, the prop, and pillar of his reputation. They get between him and the public, and shut out the light, and set aside common sense. They pretend anxiety for the interest of some established organ of opinion, while all they want is to make it the organ of their dogmas, prejudices, or party. They want to be the Magazine or the Review—to wield that power covertly, to warp that influence to their own purposes. If they cannot do this, they care not if it sinks or swims. They prejudge every question—fly-blow every writer who is not of their own set. A friend of theirs has three articles in the last number of ——; they strain every nerve and make pressing instances to throw a slur on a popular contribution by another hand, in order that he may write a fourth in the next number. The short articles which are read by the vulgar, are cut down to make room for the long ones, which are read by nobody but the writers and their friends. If an opinion is expressed contrary to the shibboleth of the party, it is represented as an outrage on decency and public opinion, when in truth the public are delighted with the candour and boldness displayed. They would convert the most valuable and spirited journal into a dull pamphleteer, stuffed with their own lucubrations on certain heavy topics. The self-importance of these people is in proportion to their insignificance; and what they cannot do by an appeal to argument or sound policy, they effect by importunity and insinuation. They keep the Editor in continual alarm as to what will be said of him by the public, when in fact the public will think (in nine cases out of ten) just what he tells them.

These people create much of the mischief. An Editor should have no friends—his only prompter should be the number of copies of the work that sell. It is superfluous to strike off a large impression of a work for those few squeamish persons who prefer lead to tinsel. Principle and good manners are barriers that are, in our estimate, inviolable: the rest is open to popular suffrage, and is not to be prejudged by a coterie with closed doors. Another difficulty lies here. An Editor should, in one sense, be a respectable man—a distinguished character; otherwise, he cannot lend his name and sanction to the work. The conductor of a periodical publication which is to circulate widely and give the tone to taste and opinion, ought to be of high standing, should have connections with society, should belong to some literary institution, should be courted by the great, be run after by the obscure. But ‘here’s the rub’—that one so graced and gifted can neither have his time nor his thoughts to himself. Our obligations 235are mutual; and those who owe much to others, become the slaves of their good opinion and good word. He who dines out loses his free agency. He may improve in politeness; he falls off in the pith and pungency of his style. A poem is dedicated to the son of the Muses:—can the critic do otherwise than praise it? A tragedy is brought out by a noble friend and patron:—the severe rules of the drama must yield in some measure to the amenities of private life. On the contrary, Mr. —— is a garretteer—a person that nobody knows; his work has nothing but the contents to recommend it; it sinks into obscurity, or addresses itself to the canaille. An Editor, then, should be an abstraction—a being in the clouds—a mind without a body—reason without passion.——But where find such a one?

The Monthly Magazine.] [March, 1831.

Complaints are frequently made of the vanity and shortness of human life, when, if we examine its smallest details, they present a world by themselves. The most trifling objects, retraced with the eye of memory, assume the vividness, the delicacy, and importance of insects seen through a magnifying glass. There is no end of the brilliancy or the variety. The habitual feeling of the love of life may be compared to ‘one entire and perfect chrysolite,’ which, if analysed, breaks into a thousand shining fragments. Ask the sum-total of the value of human life, and we are puzzled with the length of the account, and the multiplicity of items in it: take any one of them apart, and it is wonderful what matter for reflection will be found in it! As I write this, the Letter-Bell passes: it has a lively, pleasant sound with it, and not only fills the street with its importunate clamour, but rings clear through the length of many half-forgotten years. It strikes upon the ear, it vibrates to the brain, it wakes me from the dream of time, it flings me back upon my first entrance into life, the period of my first coming up to town, when all around was strange, uncertain, adverse—a hubbub of confused noises, a chaos of shifting objects—and when this sound alone, startling me with the recollection of a letter I had to send to the friends I had lately left, brought me as it were to myself, made me feel that I had links still connecting me with the universe, and gave me hope and patience to persevere. At that loud-tinkling, interrupted sound (now and then), the long line of blue hills near the place where I was brought up waves in the horizon, a golden sunset hovers over them, the dwarf-oaks rustle their red leaves in the eveningbreeze, 236and the road from —— to ——, by which I first set out on my journey through life, stares me in the face as plain, but from time and change not less visionary and mysterious, than the pictures in the Pilgrim’s Progress. I should notice, that at this time the light of the French Revolution circled my head like a glory, though dabbled with drops of crimson gore: I walked comfortable and cheerful by its side—

It rose then in the east: it has again risen in the west. Two suns in one day, two triumphs of liberty in one age, is a miracle which I hope the Laureate will hail in appropriate verse. Or may not Mr. Wordsworth give a different turn to the fine passage, beginning—

For is it not brought back, ‘like morn risen on mid-night‘; and may he not yet greet the yellow light shining on the evening bank with eyes of youth, of genius, and freedom, as of yore? No, never! But what would not these persons give for the unbroken integrity of their early opinions—for one unshackled, uncontaminated strain—one Io pæan to Liberty—one burst of indignation against tyrants and sycophants, who subject other countries to slavery by force, and prepare their own for it by servile sophistry, as we see the huge serpent lick over its trembling, helpless victim with its slime and poison, before it devours it! On every stanza so penned should be written the word Recreant! Every taunt, every reproach, every note of exultation at restored light and freedom, would recal to them how their hearts failed them in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. And what shall we say to him—the sleep-walker, the dreamer, the sophist, the word-hunter, the craver after sympathy, but still vulnerable to truth, accessible to opinion, because not sordid or mechanical? The Bourbons being no longer tied about his neck, he may perhaps recover his original liberty of speculating; so that we may apply to him the lines about his own Ancient Mariner—

This is the reason I can write an article on the Letter-Bell, and other such subjects; I have never given the lie to my own soul. If I 237have felt any impression once, I feel it more strongly a second time; and I have no wish to revile or discard my best thoughts. There is at least a thorough keeping in what I write—not a line that betrays a principle or disguises a feeling. If my wealth is small, it all goes to enrich the same heap; and trifles in this way accumulate to a tolerable sum. Or if the Letter-Bell does not lead me a dance into the country, it fixes me in the thick of my town recollections, I know not how long ago. It was a kind of alarm to break off from my work when there happened to be company to dinner or when I was going to the play. That was going to the play, indeed, when I went twice a year, and had not been more than half a dozen times in my life. Even the idea that any one else in the house was going, was a sort of reflected enjoyment, and conjured up a lively anticipation of the scene. I remember a Miss D——, a maiden lady from Wales (who in her youth was to have been married to an earl), tantalised me greatly in this way, by talking all day of going to see Mrs. Siddons’ ‘airs and graces’ at night in some favourite part; and when the Letter-Bell announced that the time was approaching, and its last receding sound lingered on the ear, or was lost in silence, how anxious and uneasy I became, lest she and her companion should not be in time to get good places—lest the curtain should draw up before they arrived—and lest I should lose one line or look in the intelligent report which I should hear the next morning! The punctuating of time at that early period—every thing that gives it an articulate voice—seems of the utmost consequence; for we do not know what scenes in the ideal world may run out of them: a world of interest may hang upon every instant, and we can hardly sustain the weight of future years which are contained in embryo in the most minute and inconsiderable passing events. How often have I put off writing a letter till it was too late! How often had to run after the postman with it—now missing, now recovering the sound of his bell—breathless, angry with myself—then hearing the welcome sound come full round a corner—and seeing the scarlet costume which set all my fears and self-reproaches at rest! I do not recollect having ever repented giving a letter to the postman, or wishing to retrieve it after he had once deposited it in his bag. What I have once set my hand to, I take the consequences of, and have been always pretty much of the same humour in this respect. I am not like the person who, having sent off a letter to his mistress, who resided a hundred and twenty miles in the country, and disapproving, on second thoughts, of some expressions contained in it, took a post-chaise and four to follow and intercept it the next morning. At other times, I have sat and watched the decaying embers in a little 238back painting-room (just as the wintry day declined), and brooded over the half-finished copy of a Rembrandt, or a landscape by Vangoyen, placing it where it might catch a dim gleam of light from the fire; while the Letter-Bell was the only sound that drew my thoughts to the world without, and reminded me that I had a task to perform in it. As to that landscape, methinks I see it now—

There was a windmill, too, with a poor low clay-built cottage beside it:—how delighted I was when I had made the tremulous, undulating reflection in the water, and saw the dull canvas become a lucid mirror of the commonest features of nature! Certainly, painting gives one a strong interest in nature and humanity (it is not the dandy-school of morals or sentiment)—

Perhaps there is no part of a painter’s life (if we must tell ‘the secrets of the prison-house’) in which he has more enjoyment of himself and his art, than that in which after his work is over, and with furtive, sidelong glances at what he has done, he is employed in washing his brushes and cleaning his pallet for the day. Afterwards, when he gets a servant in livery to do this for him, he may have other and more ostensible sources of satisfaction—greater splendour, wealth, or fame; but he will not be so wholly in his art, nor will his art have such a hold on him as when he was too poor to transfer its meanest drudgery to others—too humble to despise aught that had to do with the object of his glory and his pride, with that on which all his projects of ambition or pleasure were founded. ‘Entire affection scorneth nicer hands.’ When the professor is above this mechanical part of his business, it may have become a stalking-horse to other worldly schemes, but is no longer his hobby-horse and the delight of his inmost thoughts—

I used sometimes to hurry through this part of my occupation, while the Letter-Bell (which was my dinner-bell) summoned me to the fraternal board, where youth and hope

239or oftener I put it off till after dinner, that I might loiter longer and with more luxurious indolence over it, and connect it with the thoughts of my next day’s labours.

The dustman’s bell, with its heavy, monotonous noise, and the brisk, lively tinkle of the muffin-bell, have something in them, but not much. They will bear dilating upon with the utmost licence of inventive prose. All things are not alike conductors to the imagination. A learned Scotch professor found fault with an ingenious friend and arch-critic for cultivating a rookery on his grounds: the professor declared ‘he would as soon think of encouraging a froggery.’ This was barbarous as it was senseless. Strange, that a country that has produced the Scotch novels and Gertrude of Wyoming should want sentiment!

The postman’s double knock at the door the next morning is ‘more germain to the matter.’ How that knock often goes to the heart! We distinguish to a nicety the arrival of the Two-penny or the General Post. The summons of the latter is louder and heavier, as bringing news from a greater distance, and as, the longer it has been delayed, fraught with a deeper interest. We catch the sound of what is to be paid—eight-pence, nine-pence, a shilling—and our hopes generally rise with the postage. How we are provoked at the delay in getting change—at the servant who does not hear the door! Then if the postman passes, and we do not hear the expected knock, what a pang is there! It is like the silence of death—of hope! We think he does it on purpose, and enjoys all the misery of our suspense. I have sometimes walked out to see the Mail-Coach pass, by which I had sent a letter, or to meet it when I expected one. I never see a Mail-Coach, for this reason, but I look at it as the bearer of glad tidings—the messenger of fate. I have reason to say so. The finest sight in the metropolis is that of the Mail-Coaches setting off from Piccadilly. The horses paw the ground, and are impatient to be gone, as if conscious of the precious burden they convey. There is a peculiar secresy and despatch, significant and full of meaning, in all the proceedings concerning them. Even the outside passengers have an erect and supercilious air, as if proof against the accidents of the journey. In fact, it seems indifferent whether they are to encounter the summer’s heat or winter’s cold, since they are borne on through the air in a winged chariot. The Mail-Carts drive up; the transfer of packages is made; and, at a signal given, they start off, bearing the irrevocable scrolls that give wings to thought, and that bind or sever hearts for ever. How we hate the Putney and Brentford stages that draw up in a line after they are gone! Some persons think the sublimest object in nature is 240a ship launched on the bosom of the ocean: but give me, for my private satisfaction, the Mail-Coaches that pour down Piccadilly of an evening, tear up the pavement, and devour the way before them to the Land’s-End!

In Cowper’s time, Mail-Coaches were hardly set up; but he has beautifully described the coming in of the Post-Boy:—

And yet, notwithstanding this, and so many other passages that seem like the very marrow of our being, Lord Byron denies that Cowper was a poet!—The Mail-Coach is an improvement on the Post-Boy; but I fear it will hardly bear so poetical a description. The picturesque and dramatic do not keep pace with the useful and mechanical. The telegraphs that lately communicated the intelligence of the new revolution to all France within a few hours, are a wonderful contrivance; but they are less striking and appalling than the beacon-fires (mentioned by Æschylus), which, lighted from hill-top to hill-top, announced the taking of Troy, and the return of Agamemnon.

The Liberal.] [1823.

My father was a Dissenting Minister at W——m in Shropshire; and in the year 1798 (the figures that compose that date are to me like the ‘dreaded name of Demogorgon’) Mr. Coleridge came to Shrewsbury, to succeed Mr. Rowe in the spiritual charge of a Unitarian Congregation there. He did not come till late on the Saturday afternoon before he was to preach; and Mr. Rowe, who himself went down to the coach in a state of anxiety and expectation, to look for the arrival of his successor, could find no one at all answering the description but a round-faced man in a short black coat (like a shooting jacket) which hardly seemed to have been made for him, but who seemed to be talking at a great rate to his fellow-passengers. Mr. Rowe had scarce returned to give an account of his disappointment, when the round-faced man in black entered, and dissipated all doubts on the subject, by beginning to talk. He did not cease while he staid; nor has he since, that I know of. He held the good town of Shrewsbury in delightful suspense for three weeks that he remained there, ‘fluttering the proud Salopians like an 260eagle in a dove-cote; ‘and the Welch mountains that skirt the horizon with their tempestuous confusion, agree to have heard no such mystic sounds since the days of

As we passed along between W——m and Shrewsbury, and I eyed their blue tops seen through the wintry branches, or the red rustling leaves of the sturdy oak-trees by the road-side, a sound was in my ears as of a Siren’s song; I was stunned, startled with it, as from deep sleep; but I had no notion then that I should ever be able to express my admiration to others in motley imagery or quaint allusion, till the light of his genius shone into my soul, like the sun’s rays glittering in the puddles of the road. I was at that time dumb, inarticulate, helpless, like a worm by the way-side, crushed, bleeding, lifeless; but now, bursting from the deadly bands that ‘bound them,

my ideas float on winged words, and as they expand their plumes, catch the golden light of other years. My soul has indeed remained in its original bondage, dark, obscure, with longings infinite and unsatisfied; my heart, shut up in the prison-house of this rude clay, has never found, nor will it ever find, a heart to speak to; but that my understanding also did not remain dumb and brutish, or at length found a language to express itself, I owe to Coleridge. But this is not to my purpose.

My father lived ten miles from Shrewsbury, and was in the habit of exchanging visits with Mr. Rowe, and with Mr. Jenkins of Whitchurch (nine miles farther on) according to the custom of Dissenting Ministers in each other’s neighbourhood. A line of communication is thus established, by which the flame of civil and religious liberty is kept alive, and nourishes its smouldering fire unquenchable, like the fires in the Agamemnon of Æschylus, placed at different stations, that waited for ten long years to announce with their blazing pyramids the destruction of Troy. Coleridge had agreed to come over to see my father, according to the courtesy of the country, as Mr. Rowe’s probable successor; but in the meantime I had gone to hear him preach the Sunday after his arrival. A poet and a philosopher getting up into a Unitarian pulpit to preach the Gospel, was a romance in these degenerate days, a sort of revival of the primitive spirit of Christianity, which was not to be resisted.

It was in January, 1798, that I rose one morning before daylight, to walk ten miles in the mud, and went to hear this celebrated person preach. Never, the longest day I have to live, shall I have such 261another walk as this cold, raw, comfortless one, in the winter of the year 1798. Il y a des impressions que ni le tems ni les circonstances peuvent effacer. Dusse-je vivre des siècles entiers, le doux tems de ma jeunesse ne peut renaître pour moi, ni s’effacer jamais dans ma mémoire. When I got there, the organ was playing the 100th psalm, and, when it was done, Mr. Coleridge rose and gave out his text, ‘And he went up into the mountain to pray, HIMSELF, ALONE.’ As he gave out this text, his voice ‘rose like a steam of rich distilled perfumes,’ and when he came to the two last words, which he pronounced loud, deep, and distinct, it seemed to me, who was then young, as if the sounds had echoed from the bottom of the human heart, and as if that prayer might have floated in solemn silence through the universe. The idea of St. John came into mind, ‘of one crying in the wilderness, who had his loins girt about, and whose food was locusts and wild honey.’ The preacher then launched into his subject, like an eagle dallying with the wind. The sermon was upon peace and war; upon church and state—not their alliance, but their separation—on the spirit of the world and the spirit of Christianity, not as the same, but as opposed to one another. He talked of those who had ‘inscribed the cross of Christ on banners dripping with human gore.’ He made a poetical and pastoral excursion,—and to shew the fatal effects of war, drew a striking contrast between the simple shepherd-boy, driving his team afield, or sitting under the hawthorn, piping to his flock, ‘as though he should never be old,’ and the same poor country lad, crimped, kidnapped, brought into town, made drunk at an alehouse, turned into a wretched drummer-boy, with his hair sticking on end with powder and pomatum, a long cue at his back, and tricked out in the loathsome finery of the profession of blood.

And for myself, I could not have been more delighted if I had heard the music of the spheres. Poetry and Philosophy had met together. Truth and Genius had embraced, under the eye and with the sanction of Religion. This was even beyond my hopes. I returned home well satisfied. The sun that was still labouring pale and wan through the sky, obscured by thick mists, seemed an emblem of the good cause; and the cold dank drops of dew that hung half melted on the beard of the thistle, had something genial and refreshing in them; for there was a spirit of hope and youth in all nature, that turned every thing into good. The face of nature had not then the brand of Jus Divinum on it:

262On the Tuesday following, the half-inspired speaker came. I was called down into the room where he was, and went half-hoping, half-afraid. He received me very graciously, and I listened for a long time without uttering a word. I did not suffer in his opinion by my silence. ‘For those two hours,’ he afterwards was pleased to say, ‘he was conversing with W. H.’s forehead! ‘His appearance was different from what I had anticipated from seeing him before. At a distance, and in the dim light of the chapel, there was to me a strange wildness in his aspect, a dusky obscurity, and I thought him pitted with the small-pox. His complexion was at that time clear, and even bright—

His forehead was broad and high, light as if built of ivory, with large projecting eyebrows, and his eyes rolling beneath them like a sea with darkened lustre. ‘A certain tender bloom his face o’erspread,’ a purple tinge as we see it in the pale thoughtful complexions of the Spanish portrait-painters, Murillo and Velasquez. His mouth was gross, voluptuous, open, eloquent; his chin good-humoured and round; but his nose, the rudder of the face, the index of the will, was small, feeble, nothing—like what he has done. It might seem that the genius of his face as from a height surveyed and projected him (with sufficient capacity and huge aspiration) into the world unknown of thought and imagination, with nothing to support or guide his veering purpose, as if Columbus had launched his adventurous course for the New World in a scallop, without oars or compass. So at least I comment on it after the event. Coleridge in his person was rather above the common size, inclining to the corpulent, or like Lord Hamlet, ‘somewhat fat and pursy.’ His hair (now, alas! grey) was then black and glossy as the raven’s, and fell in smooth masses over his forehead. This long pendulous hair is peculiar to enthusiasts, to those whose minds tend heavenward; and is traditionally inseparable (though of a different colour) from the pictures of Christ. It ought to belong, as a character, to all who preach Christ crucified, and Coleridge was at that time one of those!

It was curious to observe the contrast between him and my father, who was a veteran in the cause, and then declining into the vale of years. He had been a poor Irish lad, carefully brought up by his parents, and sent to the University of Glasgow (where he studied under Adam Smith) to prepare him for his future destination. It was his mother’s proudest wish to see her son a Dissenting Minister. So if we look back to past generations (as far as eye can reach) we see the same hopes, fears, wishes, followed by the same disappointments, 263throbbing in the human heart; and so we may see them (if we look forward) rising up for ever, and disappearing, like vapourish bubbles, in the human breast! After being tossed about from congregation to congregation in the heats of the Unitarian controversy, and squabbles about the American war, he had been relegated to an obscure village, where he was to spend the last thirty years of his life, far from the only converse that he loved, the talk about disputed texts of Scripture and the cause of civil and religious liberty. Here he passed his days, repining but resigned, in the study of the Bible, and the perusal of the Commentators,—huge folios, not easily got through, one of which would outlast a winter! Why did he pore on these from morn to night (with the exception of a walk in the fields or a turn in the garden to gather broccoli-plants or kidney-beans of his own rearing, with no small degree of pride and pleasure)?—Here were ‘no figures nor no fantasies,’—neither poetry nor philosophy—nothing to dazzle, nothing to excite modern curiosity; but to his lack-lustre eyes there appeared, within the pages of the ponderous, unwieldy, neglected tomes, the sacred name of JEHOVAH in Hebrew capitals: pressed down by the weight of the style, worn to the last fading thinness of the understanding, there were glimpses, glimmering notions of the patriarchal wanderings, with palm-trees hovering in the horizon, and processions of camels at the distance of three thousand years; there was Moses with the Burning Bush, the number of the Twelve Tribes, types, shadows, glosses on the law and the prophets; there were discussions (dull enough) on the age of Methuselah, a mighty speculation! there were outlines, rude guesses at the shape of Noah’s Ark and of the riches of Solomon’s Temple; questions as to the date of the creation, predictions of the end of all things; the great lapses of time, the strange mutations of the globe were unfolded with the voluminous leaf, as it turned over; and though the soul might slumber with an hieroglyphic veil of inscrutable mysteries drawn over it, yet it was in a slumber ill-exchanged for all the sharpened realities of sense, wit, fancy, or reason. My father’s life was comparatively a dream; but it was a dream of infinity and eternity, of death, the resurrection, and a judgment to come!

No two individuals were ever more unlike than were the host and his guest. A poet was to my father a sort of nondescript: yet whatever added grace to the Unitarian cause was to him welcome. He could hardly have been more surprised or pleased, if our visitor had worn wings. Indeed, his thoughts had wings; and as the silken sounds rustled round our little wainscoted parlour, my father threw back his spectacles over his forehead, his white hairs mixing with its sanguine hue; and a smile of delight beamed across his rugged cordial 264face, to think that Truth had found a new ally in Fancy!^[50] Besides, Coleridge seemed to take considerable notice of me, and that of itself was enough. He talked very familiarly, but agreeably, and glanced over a variety of subjects. At dinner-time he grew more animated, and dilated in a very edifying manner on Mary Wolstonecraft and Mackintosh. The last, he said, he considered (on my father’s speaking of his Vindiciæ Gallicæ as a capital performance) as a clever scholastic man—a master of the topics,—or as the ready warehouseman of letters, who knew exactly where to lay his hand on what he wanted, though the goods were not his own. He thought him no match for Burke, either in style or matter. Burke was a metaphysician, Mackintosh a mere logician. Burke was an orator (almost a poet) who reasoned in figures, because he had an eye for nature: Mackintosh, on the other hand, was a rhetorician, who had only an eye to common-places. On this I ventured to say that I had always entertained a great opinion of Burke, and that (as far as I could find) the speaking of him with contempt might be made the test of a vulgar democratical mind. This was the first observation I ever made to Coleridge, and he said it was a very just and striking one. I remember the leg of Welsh mutton and the turnips on the table that day had the finest flavour imaginable. Coleridge added that Mackintosh and Tom Wedgwood (of whom, however, he spoke highly) had expressed a very indifferent opinion of his friend Mr. Wordsworth, on which he remarked to them—‘He strides on so far before you, that he dwindles in the distance!’ Godwin had once boasted to him of having carried on an argument with Mackintosh for three hours with dubious success; Coleridge told him—‘If there had been a man of genius in the room, he would have settled the question in five minutes.’ He asked me if I had ever seen Mary Wolstonecraft, and I said, I had once for a few moments, and that she seemed to me to turn off Godwin’s objections to something she advanced with quite a playful, easy air. He replied, that ‘this was only one instance of the ascendancy which people of imagination exercised over those of mere intellect.’ He did not rate Godwin very high^[51] (this was caprice or prejudice, real or affected) but he had a great idea of Mrs. Wolstonecraft’s powers of conversation, none at all of her talent 265for book-making. We talked a little about Holcroft. He had been asked if he was not much struck with him, and he said, he thought himself in more danger of being struck by him. I complained that he would not let me get on at all, for he required a definition of every the commonest word, exclaiming, ‘What do you mean by a sensation, Sir? What do you mean by an idea?’ This, Coleridge said, was barricadoing the road to truth:—it was setting up a turnpike gate at every step we took. I forget a great number of things, many more than I remember; but the day passed off pleasantly, and the next morning Mr. Coleridge was to return to Shrewsbury. When I came down to breakfast, I found that he had just received a letter from his friend T. Wedgwood, making him an offer of 150l. a-year if he chose to wave his present pursuit, and devote himself entirely to the study of poetry and philosophy. Coleridge seemed to make up his mind to close with this proposal in the act of tying on one of his shoes. It threw an additional damp on his departure. It took the wayward enthusiast quite from us to cast him into Deva’s winding vales, or by the shores of old romance. Instead of living at ten miles distance, of being the pastor of a Dissenting congregation at Shrewsbury, he was henceforth to inhabit the Hill of Parnassus, to be a Shepherd on the Delectable Mountains. Alas! I knew not the way thither, and felt very little gratitude for Mr. Wedgwood’s bounty. I was presently relieved from this dilemma; for Mr. Coleridge, asking for a pen and ink, and going to a table to write something on a bit of card, advanced towards me with undulating step, and giving me the precious document, said that that was his address, Mr. Coleridge, Nether Stowey, Somersetshire; and that he should be glad to see me there in a few weeks’ time, and, if I chose, would come half-way to meet me. I was not less surprised than the shepherd-boy (this simile is to be found in Cassandra) when he sees a thunderbolt fall close at his feet. I stammered out my acknowledgments and acceptance of this offer (I thought Mr. Wedgwood’s annuity a trifle to it) as well as I could; and this mighty business being settled, the poet-preacher took leave, and I accompanied him six miles on the road. It was a fine morning in the middle of winter, and he talked the whole way. The scholar in Chaucer is described as going

So Coleridge went on his. In digressing, in dilating, in passing from subject to subject, he appeared to me to float in air, to slide on ice. He told me in confidence (going along) that he should have preached two sermons before he accepted the situation at Shrewsbury, one on Infant Baptism, the other on the Lord’s Supper, shewing that he 266could not administer either, which would have effectually disqualified him for the object in view. I observed that he continually crossed me on the way by shifting from one side of the foot-path to the other. This struck me as an odd movement; but I did not at that time connect it with any instability of purpose or involuntary change of principle, as I have done since. He seemed unable to keep on in a strait line. He spoke slightingly of Hume (whose Essay on Miracles he said was stolen from an objection started in one of South’s sermons—Credat Judæus Apella!) I was not very much pleased at this account of Hume, for I had just been reading, with infinite relish, that completest of all metaphysical choke-pears, his Treatise on Human Nature, to which the Essays, in point of scholastic subtlety and close reasoning, are mere elegant trifling, light summer-reading. Coleridge even denied the excellence of Hume’s general style, which I think betrayed a want of taste or candour. He however made me amends by the manner in which he spoke of Berkeley. He dwelt particularly on his Essay on Vision as a masterpiece of analytical reasoning. So it undoubtedly is. He was exceedingly angry with Dr. Johnson for striking the stone with his foot, in allusion to this author’s Theory of Matter and Spirit, and saying, ‘Thus I confute him, Sir.’ Coleridge drew a parallel (I don’t know how he brought about the connection) between Bishop Berkeley and Tom Paine. He said the one was an instance of a subtle, the other of an acute mind, than which no two things could be more distinct. The one was a shop-boy’s quality, the other the characteristic of a philosopher. He considered Bishop Butler as a true philosopher, a profound and conscientious thinker, a genuine reader of nature and of his own mind. He did not speak of his Analogy, but of his Sermons at the Rolls’ Chapel, of which I had never heard. Coleridge somehow always contrived to prefer the unknown to the known. In this instance he was right. The Analogy is a tissue of sophistry, of wire-drawn, theological special-pleading; the Sermons (with the Preface to them) are in a fine vein of deep, matured reflection, a candid appeal to our observation of human nature, without pedantry and without bias. I told Coleridge I had written a few remarks, and was sometimes foolish enough to believe that I had made a discovery on the same subject (the Natural Disinterestedness of the Human Mind)—and I tried to explain my view of it to Coleridge, who listened with great willingness, but I did not succeed in making myself understood. I sat down to the task shortly afterwards for the twentieth time, got new pens and paper, determined to make clear work of it, wrote a few meagre sentences in the skeleton-style of a mathematical demonstration, stopped half-way down the second page; and, after trying in 267vain to pump up any words, images, notions, apprehensions, facts, or observations, from that gulph of abstraction in which I had plunged myself for four or five years preceding, gave up the attempt as labour in vain, and shed tears of helpless despondency on the blank unfinished paper. I can write fast enough now. Am I better than I was then? Oh no! One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world. Would that I could go back to what I then was! Why can we not revive past times as we can revisit old places? If I had the quaint Muse of Sir Philip Sidney to assist me, I would write a Sonnet to the Road between W——m and Shrewsbury, and immortalise every step of it by some fond enigmatical conceit. I would swear that the very milestones had ears, and that Harmer-hill stooped with all its pines, to listen to a poet, as he passed! I remember but one other topic of discourse in this walk. He mentioned Paley, praised the naturalness and clearness of his style, but condemned his sentiments, thought him a mere time-serving casuist, and said that ‘the fact of his work on Moral and Political Philosophy being made a text-book in our Universities was a disgrace to the national character.’ We parted at the six-mile stone; and I returned homeward pensive but much pleased. I had met with unexpected notice from a person, whom I believed to have been prejudiced against me. ‘Kind and affable to me had been his condescension, and should be honoured ever with suitable regard.’ He was the first poet I had known, and he certainly answered to that inspired name. I had heard a great deal of his powers of conversation, and was not disappointed. In fact, I never met with any thing at all like them, either before or since. I could easily credit the accounts which were circulated of his holding forth to a large party of ladies and gentlemen, an evening or two before, on the Berkeleian Theory, when he made the whole material universe look like a transparency of fine words; and another story (which I believe he has somewhere told himself) of his being asked to a party at Birmingham, of his smoking tobacco and going to sleep after dinner on a sofa, where the company found him to their no small surprise, which was increased to wonder when he started up of a sudden, and rubbing his eyes, looked about him, and launched into a three-hours’ description of the third heaven, of which he had had a dream, very different from Mr. Southey’s Vision of Judgment, and also from that other Vision of Judgment, which Mr. Murray, the Secretary of the Bridge-street Junto, has taken into his especial keeping!

On my way back, I had a sound in my ears, it was the voice of Fancy: I had a light before me, it was the face of Poetry. The one still lingers there, the other has not quitted my side! Coleridge 268in truth met me half-way on the ground of philosophy, or I should not have been won over to his imaginative creed. I had an uneasy, pleasurable sensation all the time, till I was to visit him. During those months the chill breath of winter gave me a welcoming; the vernal air was balm and inspiration to me. The golden sunsets, the silver star of evening, lighted me on my way to new hopes and prospects. I was to visit Coleridge in the spring. This circumstance was never absent from my thoughts, and mingled with all my feelings. I wrote to him at the time proposed, and received an answer postponing my intended visit for a week or two, but very cordially urging me to complete my promise then. This delay did not damp, but rather increased my ardour. In the meantime, I went to Llangollen Vale, by way of initiating myself in the mysteries of natural scenery; and I must say I was enchanted with it. I had been reading Coleridge’s description of England in his fine Ode on the Departing Year, and I applied it, con amore, to the objects before me. That valley was to me (in a manner) the cradle of a new existence: in the river that winds through it, my spirit was baptised in the waters of Helicon!

I returned home, and soon after set out on my journey with unworn heart and untired feet. My way lay through Worcester and Gloucester, and by Upton, where I thought of Tom Jones and the adventure of the muff. I remember getting completely wet through one day, and stopping at an inn (I think it was at Tewkesbury) where I sat up all night to read Paul and Virginia. Sweet were the showers in early youth that drenched my body, and sweet the drops of pity that fell upon the books I read! I recollect a remark of Coleridge’s upon this very book, that nothing could shew the gross indelicacy of French manners and the entire corruption of their imagination more strongly than the behaviour of the heroine in the last fatal scene, who turns away from a person on board the sinking vessel, that offers to save her life, because he has thrown off his clothes to assist him in swimming. Was this a time to think of such a circumstance? I once hinted to Wordsworth, as we were sailing in his boat on Grasmere lake, that I thought he had borrowed the idea of his Poems on the Naming of Places from the local inscriptions of the same kind in Paul and Virginia. He did not own the obligation, and stated some distinction without a difference, in defence of his claim to originality. Any the slightest variation would be sufficient for this purpose in his mind; for whatever he added or omitted would inevitably be worth all that any one else had done, and contain the marrow of the sentiment. I was still two days before the time fixed for my arrival, for I had taken care to set out early enough. I 269stopped these two days at Bridgewater, and when I was tired of sauntering on the banks of its muddy river, returned to the inn, and read Camilla. So have I loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing to make me happy; but wanting that, have wanted everything!

I arrived, and was well received. The country about Nether Stowey is beautiful, green and hilly, and near the sea-shore. I saw it but the other day, after an interval of twenty years, from a hill near Taunton. How was the map of my life spread out before me, as the map of the country lay at my feet! In the afternoon, Coleridge took me over to All-Foxden, a romantic old family-mansion of the St. Aubins, where Wordsworth lived. It was then in the possession of a friend of the poet’s, who gave him the free use of it. Somehow that period (the time just after the French Revolution) was not a time when nothing was given for nothing. The mind opened, and a softness might be perceived coming over the heart of individuals, beneath ‘the scales that fence’ our self-interest. Wordsworth himself was from home, but his sister kept house, and set before us a frugal repast; and we had free access to her brother’s poems, the Lyrical Ballads, which were still in manuscript, or in the form of Sybilline Leaves. I dipped into a few of these with great satisfaction, and with the faith of a novice. I slept that night in an old room with blue hangings, and covered with the round-faced family-portraits of the age of George I. and II. and from the wooded declivity of the adjoining park that overlooked my window, at the dawn of day, could

In the outset of life (and particularly at this time I felt it so) our imagination has a body to it. We are in a state between sleeping and waking, and have indistinct but glorious glimpses of strange shapes, and there is always something to come better than what we see. As in our dreams the fulness of the blood gives warmth and reality to the coinage of the brain, so in youth our ideas are clothed, and fed, and pampered with our good spirits; we breathe thick with thoughtless happiness, the weight of future years presses on the strong pulses of the heart, and we repose with undisturbed faith in truth and good. As we advance, we exhaust our fund of enjoyment and of hope. We are no longer wrapped in lamb’s-wool, lulled in Elysium. As we taste the pleasures of life, their spirit evaporates, the sense palls; and nothing is left but the phantoms, the lifeless shadows of what has been!

270That morning, as soon as breakfast was over, we strolled out into the park, and seating ourselves on the trunk of an old ash-tree that stretched along the ground, Coleridge read aloud with a sonorous and musical voice, the ballad of Betty Foy. I was not critically or sceptically inclined. I saw touches of truth and nature, and took the rest for granted. But in the Thorn, the Mad Mother, and the Complaint of a Poor Indian Woman, I felt that deeper power and pathos which have been since acknowledged,

as the characteristics of this author; and the sense of a new style and a new spirit in poetry came over me. It had to me something of the effect that arises from the turning up of the fresh soil, or of the first welcome breath of Spring,

Coleridge and myself walked back to Stowey that evening, and his voice sounded high

as we passed through echoing grove, by fairy stream or waterfall, gleaming in the summer moonlight! He lamented that Wordsworth was not prone enough to believe in the traditional superstitions of the place, and that there was a something corporeal, a matter-of-fact-ness, a clinging to the palpable, or often to the petty, in his poetry, in consequence. His genius was not a spirit that descended to him through the air; it sprung out of the ground like a flower, or unfolded itself from a green spray, on which the gold-finch sang. He said, however (if I remember right) that this objection must be confined to his descriptive pieces, that his philosophic poetry had a grand and comprehensive spirit in it, so that his soul seemed to inhabit the universe like a palace, and to discover truth by intuition, rather than by deduction. The next day Wordsworth arrived from Bristol at Coleridge’s cottage. I think I see him now. He answered in some degree to his friend’s description of him, but was more gaunt and Don Quixote-like. He was quaintly dressed (according to the costume of that unconstrained period) in a brown fustian jacket and striped pantaloons. There was something of a roll, a lounge in his gait, not unlike his own Peter Bell. There was a severe, worn pressure of thought about his temples, a fire in his eye (as if he saw something in 271objects more than the outward appearance), an intense high narrow forehead, a Roman nose, cheeks furrowed by strong purpose and feeling, and a convulsive inclination to laughter about the mouth, a good deal at variance with the solemn, stately expression of the rest of his face. Chantry’s bust wants the marking traits; but he was teazed into making it regular and heavy: Haydon’s head of him, introduced into the Entrance of Christ into Jerusalem, is the most like his drooping weight of thought and expression. He sat down and talked very naturally and freely, with a mixture of clear gushing accents in his voice, a deep guttural intonation, and a strong tincture of the northern burr, like the crust on wine. He instantly began to make havoc of the half of a Cheshire cheese on the table, and said triumphantly that ‘his marriage with experience had not been so unproductive as Mr. Southey’s in teaching him a knowledge of the good things of this life.’ He had been to see the Castle Spectre by Monk Lewis, while at Bristol, and described it very well. He said ‘it fitted the taste of the audience like a glove.’ This ad captandum merit was however by no means a recommendation of it, according to the severe principles of the new school, which reject rather than court popular effect. Wordsworth, looking out of the low, latticed window, said, ‘How beautifully the sun sets on that yellow bank!’ I thought within myself, ‘With what eyes these poets see nature!’ and ever after, when I saw the sunset stream upon the objects facing it, conceived I had made a discovery, or thanked Mr. Wordsworth for having made one for me! We went over to All-Foxden again the day following, and Wordsworth read us the story of Peter Bell in the open air; and the comment made upon it by his face and voice was very different from that of some later critics! Whatever might be thought of the poem, ‘his face was as a book where men might read strange matters,’ and he announced the fate of his hero in prophetic tones. There is a chaunt in the recitation both of Coleridge and Wordsworth, which acts as a spell upon the hearer, and disarms the judgment. Perhaps they have deceived themselves by making habitual use of this ambiguous accompaniment. Coleridge’s manner is more full, animated, and varied; Wordsworth’s more equable, sustained, and internal. The one might be termed more dramatic, the other more lyrical. Coleridge has told me that he himself liked to compose in walking over uneven ground, or breaking through the straggling branches of a copse-wood; whereas Wordsworth always wrote (if he could) walking up and down a straight gravel-walk, or in some spot where the continuity of his verse met with no collateral interruption. Returning that same evening, I got into a metaphysical argument with Wordsworth, while Coleridge was explaining the 272different notes of the nightingale to his sister, in which we neither of us succeeded in making ourselves perfectly clear and intelligible. Thus I passed three weeks at Nether Stowey and in the neighbourhood, generally devoting the afternoons to a delightful chat in an arbour made of bark by the poet’s friend Tom Poole, sitting under two fine elm-trees, and listening to the bees humming round us, while we quaffed our flip. It was agreed, among other things, that we should make a jaunt down the Bristol-Channel, as far as Linton. We set off together on foot, Coleridge, John Chester, and I. This Chester was a native of Nether Stowey, one of those who were attracted to Coleridge’s discourse as flies are to honey, or bees in swarming-time to the sound of a brass pan. He ‘followed in the chase, like a dog who hunts, not like one that made up the cry.’ He had on a brown cloth coat, boots, and corduroy breeches, was low in stature, bow-legged, had a drag in his walk like a drover, which he assisted by a hazel switch, and kept on a sort of trot by the side of Coleridge, like a running footman by a state coach, that he might not lose a syllable or sound that fell from Coleridge’s lips. He told me his private opinion, that Coleridge was a wonderful man. He scarcely opened his lips, much less offered an opinion the whole way: yet of the three, had I to chuse during that journey, I would be John Chester. He afterwards followed Coleridge into Germany, where the Kantean philosophers were puzzled how to bring him under any of their categories. When he sat down at table with his idol, John’s felicity was complete; Sir Walter Scott’s, or Mr. Blackwood’s, when they sat down at the same table with the King, was not more so. We passed Dunster on our right, a small town between the brow of a hill and the sea. I remember eying it wistfully as it lay below us: contrasted with the woody scene around, it looked as clear, as pure, as embrowned and ideal as any landscape I have seen since, of Gaspar Poussin’s or Domenichino’s. We had a long day’s march—(our feet kept time to the echoes of Coleridge’s tongue)—through Minehead and by the Blue Anchor, and on to Linton, which we did not reach till near midnight, and where we had some difficulty in making a lodgment. We however knocked the people of the house up at last, and we were repaid for our apprehensions and fatigue by some excellent rashers of fried bacon and eggs. The view in coming along had been splendid. We walked for miles and miles on dark brown heaths overlooking the Channel, with the Welsh hills beyond, and at times descended into little sheltered valleys close by the seaside, with a smuggler’s face scowling by us, and then had to ascend conical hills with a path winding up through a coppice to a barren top, like a monk’s shaven crown, from one of which I pointed out to 273Coleridge’s notice the bare masts of a vessel on the very edge of the horizon and within the red-orbed disk of the setting sun, like his own spectre-ship in the Ancient Mariner. At Linton the character of the sea-coast becomes more marked and rugged. There is a place called the Valley of Rocks (I suspect this was only the poetical name for it) bedded among precipices overhanging the sea, with rocky caverns beneath, into which the waves dash, and where the sea-gull for ever wheels its screaming flight. On the tops of these are huge stones thrown transverse, as if an earthquake had tossed them there, and behind these is a fretwork of perpendicular rocks, something like the Giant’s Causeway. A thunder-storm came on while we were at the inn, and Coleridge was running out bare-headed to enjoy the commotion of the elements in the Valley of Rocks, but as if in spite, the clouds only muttered a few angry sounds, and let fall a few refreshing drops. Coleridge told me that he and Wordsworth were to have made this place the scene of a prose-tale, which was to have been in the manner of, but far superior to, the Death of Abel, but they had relinquished the design. In the morning of the second day, we breakfasted luxuriously in an old-fashioned parlour, on tea, toast, eggs, and honey, in the very sight of the bee-hives from which it had been taken, and a garden full of thyme and wild flowers that had produced it. On this occasion Coleridge spoke of Virgil’s Georgics, but not well. I do not think he had much feeling for the classical or elegant. It was in this room that we found a little worn-out copy of the Seasons, lying in a window-seat, on which Coleridge exclaimed, ‘That is true fame!’ He said Thomson was a great poet, rather than a good one; his style was as meretricious as his thoughts were natural. He spoke of Cowper as the best modern poet. He said the Lyrical Ballads were an experiment about to be tried by him and Wordsworth, to see how far the public taste would endure poetry written in a more natural and simple style than had hitherto been attempted; totally discarding the artifices of poetical diction, and making use only of such words as had probably been common in the most ordinary language since the days of Henry II. Some comparison was introduced between Shakespear and Milton. He said ‘he hardly knew which to prefer. Shakespear appeared to him a mere stripling in the art; he was as tall and as strong, with infinitely more activity than Milton, but he never appeared to have come to man’s estate; or if he had, he would not have been a man, but a monster.’ He spoke with contempt of Gray, and with intolerance of Pope. He did not like the versification of the latter. He observed that ‘the ears of these couplet-writers might be charged with having short memories, that could not retain the harmony of 274whole passages.’ He thought little of Junius as a writer; he had a dislike of Dr. Johnson; and a much higher opinion of Burke as an orator and politician, than of Fox or Pitt. He however thought him very inferior in richness of style and imagery to some of our elder prose-writers, particularly Jeremy Taylor. He liked Richardson, but not Fielding; nor could I get him to enter into the merits of Caleb Williams.^[52] In short, he was profound and discriminating with respect to those authors whom he liked, and where he gave his judgment fair play; capricious, perverse, and prejudiced in his antipathies and distastes. We loitered on the ‘ribbed sea-sands,’ in such talk as this, a whole morning, and I recollect met with a curious sea-weed, of which John Chester told us the country name! A fisherman gave Coleridge an account of a boy that had been drowned the day before, and that they had tried to save him at the risk of their own lives. He said ‘he did not know how it was that they ventured, but, Sir, we have a nature towards one another.’ This expression, Coleridge remarked to me, was a fine illustration of that theory of disinterestedness which I (in common with Butler) had adopted. I broached to him an argument of mine to prove that likeness was not mere association of ideas. I said that the mark in the sand put one in mind of a man’s foot, not because it was part of a former impression of a man’s foot (for it was quite new) but because it was like the shape of a man’s foot. He assented to the justness of this distinction (which I have explained at length elsewhere, for the benefit of the curious) and John Chester listened; not from any interest in the subject, but because he was astonished that I should be able to suggest any thing to Coleridge that he did not already know. We returned on the third morning, and Coleridge remarked the silent cottage-smoke curling up the valleys where, a few evenings before, we had seen the lights gleaming through the dark.

In a day or two after we arrived at Stowey, we set out, I on my return home, and he for Germany. It was a Sunday morning, and he was to preach that day for Dr. Toulmin of Taunton. I asked him if he had prepared anything for the occasion? He said he had not even thought of the text, but should as soon as we parted. I did not go to hear him,—this was a fault,—but we met in the evening at Bridgewater. The next day we had a long day’s walk to Bristol, 275and sat down, I recollect, by a well-side on the road, to cool ourselves and satisfy our thirst, when Coleridge repeated to me some descriptive lines from his tragedy of Remorse; which I must say became his mouth and that occasion better than they, some years after, did Mr. Elliston’s and the Drury Lane boards,—

I saw no more of him for a year or two, during which period he had been wandering in the Hartz Forest in Germany; and his return was cometary, meteorous, unlike his setting out. It was not till some time after that I knew his friends Lamb and Southey. The last always appears to me (as I first saw him) with a common-place book under his arm, and the first with a bon-mot in his mouth. It was at Godwin’s that I met him with Holcroft and Coleridge, where they were disputing fiercely which was the best—Man as he was, or man as he is to be. ‘Give me,’ says Lamb, ‘man as he is not to be.’ This saying was the beginning of a friendship between us, which I believe still continues.—Enough of this for the present.

The Liberal.] [1823.

The Scotch at present seem to bear the bell, and to have ‘got the start of the majestic world.’ They boast of the greatest novelists, the greatest preachers, the greatest philanthropists, and the greatest blackguards in the world. Sir Walter Scott stands at the head of these for Scotch humour, Dr. Chalmers for Scotch logic, Mr. Owen for Scotch Utopianism, and Mr. Blackwood for Scotch impudence. Unrivalled four! Nay, here is Mr. Irving, who threatens to make a fifth, and stultify all our London orators, from ‘kingly Kensington’ to Blackwall! Who has not heard of him? Who does not go to hear him? You can scarcely move along for the coronet-coaches that besiege the entrance to the Caledonian chapel in Hatton-garden; and when, after a prodigious squeeze, you get in so as to have standing-room, you see in the same undistinguished crowd Brougham and Mackintosh, Mr. Peel and Lord Liverpool, Lord Landsdown and Mr. Coleridge. Mr. Canning and Mr. Hone are pew fellows. Mr. Waithman frowns stern applause, and Mr. Alderman Wood 276does the honours of the Meeting! The lamb lies down with the lion, and the Millennium seems to be anticipated in the Caledonian chapel, under the new Scotch preacher. Lords, ladies, sceptics, fanatics, join in approbation,—some admire the doctrine, others the sound, some the picturesque appearance of the orator, others the grace of action, some the ingenuity of the argument, others the beauty of the style or the bursts of passion, some even go so far as to patronize a certain brackish infusion of the Scottish dialect, and a slight defect of vision. Lady Bluemount declares it to be only inferior to the Excursion in imagination, and Mr. Botherby cries—‘Good, good!’ The ‘Talking Potato’^[53] and Mr. Theodore Flash have not yet been.

Mr. Irving appears to us the most accomplished barbarian, and the least offensive and most dashing clerical holder-forth we remember to have seen. He puts us in mind of the first man, Adam, if Adam had but been a Scotchman, and had had coal black hair. He seems to stand up in the integrity of his composition, to begin a new race of practising believers, to give a new impulse to the Christian religion, to regenerate the fallen and degenerate race of man. You would say he had been turned out of the hands of Nature and the Schools a perfect piece of workmanship. See him in the street, he has the air, the free swing, the bolt upright figure of an Indian savage, or a northern borderer dressed in canonicals: set him in the pulpit, and he is armed with all the topics, a master of fence, the pupil of Dr. Chalmers! In action he has been compared to Kean; in the union of external 277and intellectual advantages, we might start a parallel for him in the admirable Crichton. He stands before Haydon’s picture of Lazarus, and says, ‘Look at me! ’ He crosses Piccadilly, and clears Bond-street of its beaux! Rob Roy, Macbriar is come again. We saw him stretched on a bench at the Black Bull in Edinburgh,—we met him again at a thirteen-penny ordinary in London, in the same attitude, and said, without knowing his calling, or his ghostly parts, ‘That is the man for a fair saint.’ We swear it by

Aye, there we stop like Imogen—there is a want of expression in it. ‘The iron has not entered his soul.’ He has not dared to feel but in trammels and in dread. He has read Werter but to criticise him; Rousseau, but to steel himself against him; Shakespear, but to quote him; Milton, but to round his periods. Pleasure, fancy, humanity, are syrens that he repels and keeps at arms-length; and hence his features are hardened, and have a barbaric crust upon them. They are not steeped in the expression of Titian or Raphael; but they would do for Spagnoletti to paint, and his dark profile and matted locks have something of the grave commanding appearance of Leonardo da Vinci’s massive portraits.

Dr. Chalmers is not so good-looking a man as Mr. Irving; he wants the same vigour and spirit. His face is dead and clammy, cold, pale, bloodless, passionless, and there is a glazed look of insincerity about the eyes, uninformed, uninspired from within. His voice is broken, harsh, and creaking, while Mr. Irving’s is flowing and silvery: his Scotch accent and pronunciation are a terrible infliction on the uncultivated ear. His ‘Whech observation I oorge upon you my frinds and breethren’ desolates and lays waste all the humanities. He grinds out his sentences between his teeth, and catches at truth with his fists, as a monkey catches an apple or a stick thrown at him with his paws. He seems by his action and his utterance to say to difficulties, ‘Come, let me clutch thee,’ and having got them in his grasp, tears and rends them in pieces as a dog tears an old rag to tatters or mumbles a stone that is flung in his way. Dr. Chalmers engages attention and secures sympathy solely by the intensity of his own purpose: there is neither eloquence nor wisdom, neither imagination nor feeling, neither the pomp of sound nor grace nor solemnity of manner about him, but he is in earnest, and eager in pursuit of his argument, and arrests the eye and ear of his congregation by this alone. He dashes head foremost into the briars and thorns of controversy, and drags you along with him whether you will or no, and 278your only chance is to push on and get out of them as well as you can, though dreadfully scratched and almost blinded. He involves you in a labyrinth, and you are anxious to escape from it: you have to pass through many a dark, subterranean cavern with him in his theological ferry-boat, and are glad enough to get out on the other side, with the help of Scotch logic for oars, and Scotch rhetoric for sails! You hear no home truths, nothing that touches the heart, or swells or expands the soul; there is no tide of eloquence lifting you up to Heaven, or wafting you from Indus to the Pole.—No, you are detained in a canal, with a great number of locks in it.—You make way by virtue of standing still, your will is irritated, and impelled forward by stoppages—you are puzzled into sympathy, pulled into admiration, tired into patience! The preacher starts a difficulty, of which you had no notion before, and you stare to see how he will answer it. He first makes you uneasy, sceptical, sensible of your helplessness and dependence upon his superior sagacity and recondite learning, and proportionably thankful for the relief he affords you in the unpleasant dilemma to which you have been reduced. It is like proposing a riddle, and then, after playing with the curiosity and impatience of the company for some time, giving the solution, which nobody else has the wit to find out. We never saw fuller attendances or more profound attention than at the Tron Church in Glasgow—it was like a sea of eyes, a swarm of heads, gaping for mysteries, and staring for elucidations—it was not the sublime or beautiful; the secret was that which has been here explained, a desire to get rid of the difficult, the disagreeable, the dry, and the discordant matter that had been conjured up in the imagination. Dr. Chalmers, then, succeeds by the force of sophistry and casuistry, in our humble judgment. Riddles (of which we spoke just now) are generally traditional: those that Dr. Chalmers unfolds from the pulpit, are of his own invention, or at least promulgation. He started an objection to the Christian religion (founded on its supposed inconsistency with the Newtonian philosophy) which objection had never been noticed in books, on purpose that he might answer it. ‘Well,’ said a Scotchman, ‘and if the answer was a good one, was he not right?’ ‘No, assuredly,’ we should answer, ‘for there is no faith so firm as that which has never been called in question.’ The answer could only satisfy those who had been unsettled by the question; and there would be many who would not be convinced by the Doctor’s reasoning, however he might plume himself on his success. We suspect that this is looking after a reputation for literary ingenuity and philosophical depth, rather than the peace of consciences or the salvation of souls; which, in a Christian minister, is unbecoming, and savours 279of the Mammon of unrighteousness. We ourselves were staggered by the blow (either then or long before) and still gasp for a reply, notwithstanding Dr. Chalmers’s nostrum. Let the reader briefly judge:—The Doctor tells us, it may be said, that the Christian Dispensation supposes that the counsels of God turn upon this world as its center; that there is a heaven above and an earth beneath; and that man is the lord of the universe, the only creature made in the divine likeness, and over whom Providence watches, and to whom revelations are given, and an inheritance everlasting. This agrees with the cosmogony of Moses, which makes the earth the center of all things, and the sun, moon, and stars, little shining spots like silver sixpences moving round it. But it does not so well agree with Newton’s Principia (we state Dr. Chalmers’s objection) which supposes the globe we inhabit to be but a point in the immensity of the universe; that ours is but one, and that the most insignificant (perhaps) among innumerable worlds, filled, probably, with created intelligences, rational and fallen souls, that share the eye of God with us, and who require to know that their Redeemer liveth. We alone (it would appear) cannot pretend to monopolize heaven or hell: there are other contingent candidates besides us. Jacob’s dream was poetical and natural, while the earth was supposed to be a flat surface and the blue sky hung over it, to which angels might ascend by a ladder, and the face of God be seen at the top, as his lofty and unchangeable abode; but this beautiful episode hardly accords with the Antipodes. Sir Isaac turned the world upon its back, and divided heaven from itself, and removed it far from every one of us. As we thought the universe turned round the earth as its pivot, so religion turned round man as its center, as the sole, important, moral and accountable agent in existence. But there are other worlds revolving in infinite space, to which this is a speck. Are they all desert, worthless? Were they made for us? Have they no especial dispensations of life and light? Have we alone a God, a Saviour, revealed to us? Is religion triumphant only here, or is it itinerant through each? It can hardly seem that we alone have occupied the thoughts or been the sole objects of the plans of infinite wisdom from eternity—that our life, resurrection, and judgment to come, are the whole history of a wide-seeing Providence, or the loftiest events in the grand drama of the universe, which was got up as a theatre only for us to perform our petty parts in, and then to be cast, most of us, into hell fire? Dr. Chalmers’s Astronomical Discourses indeed may be said to dwarf his mighty subject, and make mankind a very Lilliputian race of beings, which this Gulliver in vain dandles in the hard, broad, brawny hand of school divinity, and tries to lift into their 280bigotted self-sufficiency and exclusive importance again. How does he answer his own objection, and turn the tables on himself—how reverse this pitiful, diminished perspective, and aggrandise us in our own estimation once more as undoubted heirs of heaven or of hell—the sole favoured or reprobated sons of God? Why, his answer is this—that the microscope has done as much to lift man in the scale of being, and to enlarge the bounds of this atom the earth, as the telescope has done to circumscribe and lessen it; that there are infinite gradations BELOW man, worlds within worlds, as there are degrees of being above, and stars and suns blazing round each other; that, for what we know, a speck, a lucid drop circulating in a flea’s back, may be another habitable globe like this!—And has that, too, a revelation of its own, an avenging God, and a Christ crucified? Does every particle in a flea’s back contain a Mosaic dispensation, a Popish and a Protestant religion? Has it its Tron Church and its Caledonian Chapel, and Dr. Chalmers’s Discourses and Mr. Irving’s Orations in little? This does not seem to obviate the difficulty, but to increase it a million-fold. It is his objection and his answer to it, not ours: if blasphemy, it is his; and, if orthodoxy, he is entitled to all the credit of it. But his whole scheme shows how impossible it is to reconcile the faith delivered to the saints with the subtleties and intricacies of metaphysics. It displays more pride of intellect than simplicity of heart, is an insult equally on the understandings or prejudices of men, and could only have been hit upon by that personification and abstraction of cross-purposes, a Scotch metaphysical divine. In his general preaching, Dr. Chalmers is a great casuist, and a very indifferent moralist. He states the pros and cons of every question with extreme pertinacity, and often ‘spins the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.’ He assigns possible reasons, not practical motives, for conduct; and vindicates the ways of God, and his own interpretation of the Scriptures, to the head, not to the heart. The old school-divines set this practice afoot; for being accustomed to hear the secrets of confession, and to salve the tender consciences of the great and powerful, they had to bandy all sorts of questions about; and if they could find out ‘a loop or peg to hang a doubt on,’ were well rewarded for their trouble; they were constantly reduced to their shifts, and forced to go on the forlorn hope of morality by the ticklish cases referred to them for arbitration; and when they had exhausted the resources of humanity and natural sentiment, endeavoured to find new topics within the range of abstract reason and possibility. Dr. Chalmers’s reasoning is as unlike as possible to a chapter in the Gospels: but he may do very well to comment on the Apocalypse or an Epistle of St. Paul’s. We do 281not approve of this method of carving out excuses or defences of doctrinal points from the dry parchment of the understanding or the cobwebs of the brain. Whatever sets or leaves the dogmas of religion at variance with the dictates of the heart, hardens the last, and lends no advantage to the first.

Mr. Irving is a more amiable moralist, and a more practical reasoner. He throws a glancing, pleasing light over the gloomy ground of Calvinism. There is something humane in his appeals, striking in his apostrophes, graceful in his action, soothing in the tones of his voice. He is not affected and theatrical; neither is he deeply impassioned or overpowering from the simple majesty of his subject. He is above common-place both in fancy and argument; yet he can hardly rank as a poet or philosopher. He is a modernised covenanter, a sceptical fanatic. We do not feel exactly on sure ground with him—we scarcely know whether he preaches Christ crucified, or himself. His pulpit style has a resemblance to the florid gothic. We are a little mystified when a man with one hand brings us all the nice distinctions and air-drawn speculations of modern unbelievers, and arms the other with ‘fire hot from Hell,’—when St. Paul and Jeremy Bentham, the Evangelists and the Sorrows of Werter, Seneca, Shakespear, the author of Caleb Williams and the Political Justice, are mingled together in the same passage, and quoted in the same breath, however eloquent that breath may be. We see Mr. Irving smile with decent scorn at this remark, and launch one more thunderbolt at the critics. He is quite welcome, and we should be proud of his notice. In the discourses he has lately delivered, and which have drawn crowds to admire them, he has laboured to describe the Sensual Man, the Intellectual Man, the Moral Man, and the Spiritual Man; and has sacrificed the three first at the shrine of the last. He gave certainly a terrific picture of the death-bed of the Sensual Man—a scene where few shine—but it is a good subject for oratory, and he made the most of it. He described the Poet well, walking by the mountain side, in the eye of nature—yet oppressed, panting rather than satisfied, with beauty and sublimity. Neither Fame nor Genius, it is most true, are all-sufficient to the mind of man! He made a fair hit at the Philosophers; first, at the Political Economist, who draws a circle round man, gives him so many feet of earth to stand upon, and there leaves him to starve in all his nobler parts and faculties: next, at the great Jurisconsult, who carves out a mosaic work of motives for him, cold, hard, and dry, and expects him to move mechanically in right lines, squares, and parallelograms, drills him into perfection, and screws him into utility. He then fell foul of the Moralist and Sentimentalist, weighed him in the balance 282and found him wanting—deficient in clearness of sight to discern good, in strength of hand and purpose to seize upon it when discerned. But Religion comes at last to the aid of the Spiritual Man, couches the blind sight, and braces the paralytic limb; the Lord of Hosts is in the field, and the battle is won, his countenance pours light into our souls, and his hand stretched out imparts strength to us, by which we tower to our native skies! In treating of this subject, Mr. Irving introduced several powerful images and reflections, to show how feeble moral and intellectual motives are to contend with the allurements of sense and the example of the world. Reason alone, he said, was no more able to stem the tide of prejudice and fashion, than the swimmer with his single arm (here he used an appropriate and spirited gesture, which reminded us of the description of the heroic action of the swimmer in Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia) is able to oppose the raging torrent, as the voice of conscience was only heard in the tumultuous scenes of life like the faint cry of the sea-bird in the wide world of waters. He drew an animated but mortifying sketch of the progress of the Patriot and Politician, weaned by degrees from his attachment to young Liberty to hug old Corruption; and showed (strikingly enough) that this change from youthful ardour to a hoary, heartless old age of selfishness and ridicule (there were several Members of the Honourable House present) was not owing to increased wisdom or strength of sight, but to faltering resolution and weakness of hand, that could no longer hold out against the bribes, the snares, and gilded chains prepared for it. The romantic Tyro was right and free, the callous Courtier was a slave and self-conceited. All this was true; it was honest, downright, and well put. There was no cant in it, as far as regards the unequal odds and the hard battle that reason has to fight with pleasure, or ambition, or interest, or other antagonist motives. But does the objection apply to morality solely, or has not religion its share in it? Man is not what he ought to be—Granted; but is he not different from this ideal standard, in spite of religion as well as of morality? Is not the religious man often a slave to power, the victim of pleasure, the thrall of avarice, hard of heart, a sensual hypocrite, cunning, mercenary, miserable? If it be said that the really religious man is none of these, neither is the truly moral man. Real morality, as well as vital Christianity, implies right conduct and consistent principle. But the question simply at issue is, whether the profession or the belief of sound moral opinion implies these; and it certainly does it no more than the profession or belief of orthodox religious opinions does. The conviction of the good or ill consequences of our actions in this life does not absolutely conform the will or the desires to good; neither does the 283apprehension of future rewards or punishments produce this effect completely or necessarily. The candidate for Heaven is a backslider; the dread of eternal torments makes but a temporary impression on the mind. This is not a reason, in our judgment, for neglecting or giving up in despair the motives of religion or morality, but for strengthening and cultivating both. With Mr. Irving, it is a triumphant and unanswerable ground for discarding and denouncing morality, and for exalting religion, as the sovereign cure for all wounds, as the thaumaturgos, or wonder-worker, in the reform of mankind! We are at a loss to understand how this exclusive and somewhat intolerant view of the subject is reconcileable with sound reason or with history. Religion is no new experiment now first making on mankind; we live in the nineteenth century of the Christian æra; it is not as if we lived in the age of apostles, when we might (from novelty and inexperience of the intended dispensations of Providence) expect the earth to wear a new face, and darkness suddenly to flee away before the light of the gospel: nor do we apprehend that Mr. Irving is one of those who believe with Mr. Croly, that the millennium actually commenced with the battle of Waterloo; that event seems as far off, to all outward appearance, as it was two thousand years ago. What does this make against the doctrines of Christianity? Nothing; if, as far as they are implanted and take root, they bear fruit accordingly, notwithstanding the repugnance and thanklessness of the soil. Why then is Mr. Irving so hard upon the labours of philosophers, moralists, and men of letters, because they do not do all their work at once? Bishop Butler indeed wrote a most able and learned quarto volume, to prove that the slow growth and imperfect influence of Christianity was a proof of its divine origin, and that in this respect we had a right to look for a direct analogy between the operations of the world of grace and nature, both proceeding as they did from the same Almighty hands! Our deservedly popular preacher has, however, an answer to what we have here stated: he says, ‘the time MUST and WILL shortly come!’ We never contradict prophecies; we only speak to facts. In addressing himself to this point, Mr. Irving made a spirited digression to the Missionary Societies, and the impending propagation of the Gospel at home and abroad—all obstacles to it would speedily be surmounted:—‘The Negro slave was not so enchained but that the Gospel would set him free; the Hottentot was not so benighted but that its light would penetrate to him; the South Sea Islander was not so indolent and voluptuous but that he would rouse himself at its call; neither the cunning of the Italian, nor the superstition of the Spaniard, nor the tameness of the German, nor the levity of the French, nor the buoyancy of the Irish, nor the indomitable pride of the English, 284nor the fiery manhood of the Scotch, would be long able to withstand its all-pervading influence!’ We confess, when our Caledonian pastor launched his canoe from the South Sea Isles and landed on European terra firma, taking measure of the vices of each nation that were opposed to the spirit of Christianity, we did prick up our ears to know what fault he would, in due course of argument, find with his native country—it would go against the grain, no doubt, but still he had undertaken it, and he must speak out—When lo! for some sneaking vice or sordid pettifogging disposition, we have our own ‘best virtue’ palmed upon us as the only failing of the most magnanimous natives of the North—fiery manhood, quotha! The cold sweat of rankling malice, hypocrisy, and servility, would be nearer the mark—Eh! Sir Walter? Nay, good Mr. Blackwood, we meant no offence to you! ‘Fiery manhood’ is the Anti-Christian vice or virtue of the Scotch that meets true religion on the borders, and beats her back with suffocating breath! Is Christianity still then to be planted like oak timber in Scotland? What will Dr. Chalmers and the other labourers in the vineyard say to this?—‘We pause for a reply!’ The best and most impressive part of Mr. Irving’s discourse (Sunday, the 22nd June) was that, in which he gave a very beautiful account of what Christianity had done, or rather might do, in aid of morality and the regeneration of the spirit of man. It had made ‘corruption blossom,’ ‘annihilated time in the prospect of eternity,’ and ‘changed all nature, from a veil hiding the face of God, into a mirror reflecting his power and beneficence.’ We do not, however, see why in the fervour of his enthusiasm he should affirm ‘that Jesus Christ had destroyed melody,’ nor why, by any allowed licence of speech, he should talk of ‘the mouth of God being muzzled by man.’ We might not perhaps have noticed this last expression, considering it as a slip of the tongue; but Mr. Irving preaches from written notes, and his style is, on the whole, polished and ambitious. We can conceive of a deeper strain of argument, of a more powerful and overwhelming flood of eloquence; but altogether we deem him an able and attractive expounder of Holy Writ; and farther, we believe him to be an honest man. We suspect there is a radical ‘taint in him,’ and that Mr. Canning will be advised to withdraw himself from the congregation. His strokes aimed at iniquity in high places are bold, unsparing, and repeated. We would however suggest to him the propriety of containing his indignation at the advancement of the secular priesthood by ‘the powers that be;’ it is a thing of course, and his impatience of their elevation may be invidiously construed into a jealousy of the spoil. When we compare Mr. Irving with some other preachers that we have heard, and 285particularly with that crawling sycophant Daniel Wilson (who tendered his gratuitous submission to Nero the other day in the excess of his loyalty to George IV.) we are sorry that we have not been able to make our tribute of approbation unqualified as it is cordial, and to stifle their venal breath with the applauses bestowed upon him. ‘Oh! for an eulogy to kill’ all such with!

The Liberal.] [1823.

There was an account in the newspapers the other day of a fracas in the street, in which a Lord and one or two Members of Parliament were concerned. It availed them nought to plead the privilege of Peerage, or to have made speeches in the House—they were held to bail, like the vilest of the rabble, and the circumstance was not considered one to come before the public. Ah! it is that public that is the sad thing. It is the most tremendous ring that ever was formed to see fair play between man and man; it puts people on their good behaviour immediately; and wherever it exists, there is an end of the airs and graces which individuals, high in rank, and low in understanding and morals, may chuse to give themselves. While the affair is private and can be kept in a corner, personal fear and favour are the ruling principles, might prevails over right: but bring it before the world, and truth and justice stand some chance. The public is too large a body to be bribed or browbeat. Its voice, deep and loud, quails the hearts of princes: its breath would make the feather in a lord’s cap bend and cower before it, if its glance, measuring the real magnitude of such persons with their lofty, tiptoe, flaunting pretensions, had not long since taken the feathers out of their caps. A lord is now dressed (oh! degenerate world) like any other man; and a watchman will no sooner let go his grasp of his plain collar than he will that of a Commoner or any other man, who has his ‘fancies and good-nights.’ What a falling off is here from the time when if a ‘base cullionly fellow’ had dared to lay hands on a nobleman, on ‘one of quality,’ he would have whipped his sword out of its scabbard and run him through the body; the ‘beggarly, unmannered corse’ would have been thrown into the Thames or the next ditch; and woe to any person that should have attempted to make a stir in the matter! ‘The age of chivalry is gone, that of constables, legislators, and Grub-street writers, has succeeded, and the glory of heraldry is extinguished for ever.’

286Poor Sir Walter! the times are changed indeed, since a Duke of Buckingham could send a couple of bullies, equipped in his livery, with swords and ribbons, to carry off a young lady from a Peveril of the Peak, by main force, in the face of day, and yet the bye-standers not dare to interfere, from a dread of the Duke’s livery and the High Court of Star Chamber! It is no wonder that the present Duke of Buckingham (the old title new revived) makes speeches in the Upper House to prove that legitimate monarchs have a right, whenever they please, to run their swords through the heart of a nation and pink the liberties of mankind, thinking if this doctrine were once fully restored, the old times of his predecessor might come again,—

It is in tracing the history of private manners that we see (more than any thing else) the progress that has been made in public opinion and political liberty, and that may be still farther made. No one individual now sets up his will as higher than the law: no noble Duke or Baron bold acts the professed bully or glories in the character of a lawless ruffian, as a part of the etiquette and privileges of high rank: no gay, gaudy minion of the court takes the wall of the passengers, sword in hand, cuts a throat, washes his white, crimson-spotted hands, and then to dinner with the king and the ladies.—That is over with us at present; and while that is the case, Hampden will not have bled in the field, nor Sydney on the scaffold, in vain! Even the monarch in this country, though he is above the law, is subject to opinion; ‘submits,’ as Mr. Burke has it, both from choice and necessity, ‘to the soft collar of social esteem, and gives a domination, vanquisher of laws, to be subdued by manners!’

It is this which drives the Despots of the Continent mad, and makes their nobles and chief vassals league together, like a herd of tygers, to destroy the example of liberty which we (the people of England) have set to the rest of the world. They are afraid that if this example should spread and things go on much farther in the road they have taken, they will no longer be able to give their subjects and dependants the knout, to send them to the galleys or a dungeon without any warrant but their own unbridled will, and that a lord or a king will be no more above the law than any other man. Mankind, in short, till lately and except in this country, were considered as a herd of deer which the privileged classes were to use for their pleasure, or which they were to hunt down for spite or sport, as liked them best. That they should combine together with a knot of obscure philosophers and hair-brained philanthropists, to set up a plea not to be used at any man’s pleasure, or hunted down like vermin for any 287man’s sport, was an insult to be avenged with seas of blood, an attack upon the foundations of social order, and the very existence of all law, religion, and morality. In all the legitimate governments of Europe, there existed, and there still exist, a number of individuals who were exempted (by birth and title) from the law, who could offer every affront to religion, and commit every outrage upon morality with impunity, with insolence and loud laughter, and who pretended that in asserting this monstrous privilege of theirs to the very letter, the essence of all law, religion, and morality consisted. This was the case in France till the year 1789. The only law was the will of the rich to insult and harass the poor, the only religion a superstitious mummery, the only morality subserviency to the pleasures of the great. In the mild reign of Louis XV. only, there were fifteen thousand lettres de cachet issued for a number of private, nameless offences, such as the withholding a wife or daughter from the embraces of some man of rank, for having formerly received favours from a king’s mistress, or writing an epigram on a Minister of State. It was on the ruins of this flagitious system (no less despicable than detestable) that the French Revolution rose; and the towers of the Bastille, as they fell, announced the proud truth in welcome thunder to the human race—to all but those who thought they were born, and who only wished to live, to exercise their sweeping, wholesale, ruthless tyranny, or to vent the workings of their petty, rankling spleen, pride, bigotry, and malice, in endless, tormenting details on their fellow-creatures.

It will, I conceive, hereafter be considered as the greatest enormity in history, the stupidest and the most barefaced insult that ever was practised on the understandings or the rights of men, that we should interfere in this quarrel between liberty and slavery, take the wrong side, and endeavour to suppress the natural consequences of that very example of freedom we had set. That we should do this, we who had ‘long insulted the slavery of Europe by the loudness of our boasts of freedom,’ who had laughed at the Grand Monarque for the last hundred and fifty years, and treated his subjects with every indignity, as belonging to an inferior species to ourselves, for submitting to his cruel and enervated sway; that the instant they took us at our word and were willing to break the chains of Popery and Slavery that we never ceased to taunt them with, we should turn against them, stand passive by ‘with jealous leer malign,’ witnessing the machinations of despots to extinguish the rising liberties of the world, and with the first plausible protest, the first watch-word given (the blow aimed at the head of a king confederate with the enemies of his country against its freedom) should join the warwhoop, and 288continue it loudest and longest, and never rest, under one hollow, dastard, loathsome pretence or other, till we had put down ‘the last example of democratic rebellion’ (we, who are nothing but rebellion all over, from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot!) and had restored the doctrine of Divine Right, that had fallen headless from its throne of Ignorance and Superstition with the First Charles, long before it was condemned to the same fate in the person of the French king; that we should do this, and be led, urged on to the unhallowed task by a descendant of the House of Brunswick, who held his crown in contempt of the Stuarts, and grew old, blind, and crazed in the unsated, undiverted, sacred thirst of Legitimacy, is a thing that posterity will wonder at. We pretend to have interfered to put down the horrors of the French Revolution, when it was our interference (with that of others) that produced those horrors, of which we were glad as an excuse to justify our crooked policy and to screen the insidious, deadly, fatal blow aimed at liberty. No; the ‘cause was hearted’ in the breasts of those who reign, or who would reign, in contempt of the people, and with whom it rests to make peace or war. Is not the same principle at work still? What horrors have the Holy Alliance to plead in vindication of their interference with Spain? They have not a rag, a thread of all their hideous tissue of sophistry and lies to cover ‘the open and apparent shame’ of this sequel and consistent comment on their former conduct. It is a naked, barefaced, undisguised attack upon the rights and liberties of the world: it is putting the thing upon its true and proper footing—the claim of Kings to hold mankind as a property in perpetuity. There are no horrors, real or pretended, to warrant this new outrage on common sense and human nature. It stands on its own proud basis of injustice—it towers and mocks the skies in all the majesty of regal wrong. ‘The shame, the blood be upon their heads.’ If there are no horrors ready-made to their hands, they stand upon their privilege to commit wanton outrage and unqualified aggression; and if by these means they can provoke horrors, then the last are put first as the most plausible plea, as a handsome mask and soft lining to the hard gripe and features of Legitimacy—Religion consecrates, and Loyalty sanctions the fraud! But, should the scheme fail in spite of every art and effort, and the wrong they have meditated be retorted on their own heads, then we shall have, as before, an appeal made to Liberty and Humanity—the motto of despots will once more be peace on earth and good will to men—and we too shall join in the yell of blood and the whine of humanity. We are only waiting for an excuse now—till the threats and insults and cruelties of insolent invaders call forth reprisals, and lead to some 289act of popular fury or national justice that shall serve as a signal to rouse the torpid spirit of trade in the city, or to inflame the loyalty of country gentlemen deaf for the present to all other sounds but that appalling one of Rent! We must remain neuter while a grievous wrong is acting, unless we can get something by the change, or pick a quarrel with the right. We are peaceable, politic, when a nation’s liberty only is at stake, but were it a monarch’s crown that hung tottering in the air, oh! how soon would a patriot senate and people start out to avenge the idle cause: a single speech from the throne would metamorphose us into martyrs of self-interest, saviours of the world, deliverers of Europe from lawless violence and unexampled wrong. But here we have no heart to stir, because the name of liberty alone (without the cant of loyalty) has lost its magic charm on the ears of Englishmen—impotent to save, powerful only to betray and destroy themselves and others!

We want a Burke to give the thing a legitimate turn at present. I am afraid the Editor of the New Times can hardly supply his place. They could hardly have done before, without that eloquent apostate, that brilliant sophist, to throw his pen into the scale against truth and liberty. He varnished over a bad cause with smooth words, and had power to ‘make the worse appear the better reason’—the devil’s boast! The madness of genius was necessary to second the madness of a court; his flaming imagination was the torch that kindled the smouldering fire in the inmost sanctuary of pride and power, and spread havoc, dismay, and desolation through the world. The light of his imagination, sportive, dazzling, beauteous as it seemed, was followed by the stroke of death. It so happens that I myself have played all my life with his forked shafts unhurt, because I had a metaphysical clue to carry off the noxious particles, and let them sink into the earth, like drops of water. But the English nation are not a nation of metaphysicians, or they would have detected, and smiled or wept over the glittering fallacies of this half-bred reasoner, but, at the same time, most accomplished rhetorician that the world ever saw. But they are perplexed by sophistry, stupified by prejudice, staggered by authority. In the way of common sense and practical inquiry, they do well enough; but start a paradox, and they know not what to make of it. They either turn from it altogether, or, if interest or fear give them motives to attend to it, are fascinated by it. They cannot analyze or separate the true from the seeming good. Mr. Pitt, with his deep-mouthed common-places, was able to follow in the same track, and fill up the cry; but he could not have given the tone to political feeling, or led on the chase with ‘so musical a discord, such sweet; thunder.’ Burke strewed the flowers of his style over the rotten 290carcase of corruption, and embalmed it in immortal prose: he contrived, by the force of artful invective and misapplied epithets, to persuade the people of England that Liberty was an illiberal, hollow sound; that humanity was a barbarous modern invention, that prejudices were the test of truth; that reason was a strumpet, and right a fiction. Every other view of the subject but his (‘so well the tempter glozed’) seemed to be without attraction, elegance, or refinement. Politics became poetry in his hands, his sayings passed like proverbs from mouth to mouth, and his descriptions and similes were admired and repeated by the fashionable and the fair. Liberty from thenceforward became a low thing: philosophy was a spring-nailed, velvet-pawed tyger-cat, with green eyes, watching its opportunity to dart upon its prey: humanity was a lurking assassin. The emblems of our cardinal and favourite virtues were overturned: the whole vocabulary of national watch-words was inverted or displaced. This was a change indeed in our style of thinking, more alarming than that in our calendar formerly: and this change was brought about by Mr. Burke, who softened down hard reasons in the crucible of his fancy, and who gave to his epithets the force of nicknames. Half the business was done by his description of the Queen of France. It was an appeal to all women of quality; to all who were, or would be thought, cavaliers or men of honour; to all who were admirers of beauty, or rank, or sex. Yet what it had to do with the question, it would be difficult to say. If a woman is handsome, it is well: but it is no reason why she should poison her husband, or betray a country. If, instead of being young, beautiful, and free of manners, Marie Antoinette had been old, ugly, and chaste, all this mischief had been prevented. The author of the Reflections had seen or dreamt he saw a most delightful vision sixteen years before, which had thrown his brain into a ferment; and he was determined to throw his readers and the world into one too. It was a theme for a copy of verses, or a romance; not for a work in which the destinies of mankind were to be weighed. Yet she was the Helen that opened another Iliad of woes; and the world has paid for that accursed glance at youthful beauty with rivers of blood. If there was any one of sufficient genius now to deck out some Castilian maid, or village girl in the Army of the Faith, in all the colours of fancy, to reflect her image in a thousand ages and hearts, making a saint and a martyr of her; turning loyalty into religion, and the rights and liberties of the Spanish nation, and of all other nations, into a mockery, a bye-word, and a bugbear, how soon would an end be put to Mr. Canning’s present bizarre (almost afraid to know itself) situation! How gladly he would turn round on the 291pivot of his forced neutrality, and put all his drooping tropes and figures on their splendid war-establishment again!

Mr. Burke was much of a theatrical man. I do not mean that his high-wrought enthusiasm or vehemence was not natural to him; but the direction that he gave to it, was exceedingly capricious and arbitrary. It was for some time a doubtful question which way he should turn with respect to the French Revolution, whether for or against it. His pride took the alarm, that so much had been done with which he had nothing to do, and that a great empire had been overturned with his favourite engines, wit and eloquence, while he had been reforming the ‘turn-spit of the king’s kitchen,’ in set speeches far superior to the occasion. Rousseau and the Encyclopædists had lamentably got the start of him; and he was resolved to drag them back somehow by the heels, and bring what they had effected to an untimely end,—

The ‘Reflections on the French Revolution’ was a spiteful and dastard but too successful attempt to put a spoke in the wheels of knowledge and progressive civilization, and throw them back for a century and a half at least. In viewing the change, in the prospects of society, in producing which he had only a slight and indirect hand by his efforts in the cause of American freedom, he seemed to say, with Iago in the play,—

He went beyond his own most sanguine hopes, but did not live to witness their final accomplishment, by seeing France literally ‘blotted out of the map of Europe.’ He died in the most brilliant part of Buonaparte’s victorious and captain-like campaigns in Italy. If it could have been foreseen what an ‘ugly customer’ he was likely to prove, the way would have been to have bribed his vanity (a great deal stronger than his interest) over to the other side, by asking his opinion; and, indeed, he has thrown out pretty broad hints in the early stage of his hostility, and before the unexpected success of the French arms, and the whizzing arrows flung at him by his old friends and new antagonists had stung him to madness, that the great error of the National Assembly was in not having consulted able and experienced heads on this side the water, as to demolishing 292the old, and constructing the new edifice. If he had been employed to lay the first stone, or to assist, by an inaugural dissertation, at the baptism of the new French Constitution, the fabric of the Revolution would thenceforth have risen,—

without let or molestation from his tongue or pen. But he was overlooked. He was not called from his closet, or from his place in the House (where, it must be confessed, he was out of his place) to ‘ride in the whirlwind and direct the storm’; and therefore he tried, like some malicious hag, to urge the veering gale into a hurricane; to dash the labouring vessel of the state in pieces, and make shipwreck of the eternal jewel of man’s happiness, which it had on board—Liberty. The stores of practical and speculative knowledge which he had been for years collecting and digesting, and for which he had no use at home, were not called into play abroad. His genius had hitherto been always too mighty for the occasion; but here his utmost grasp of intellect would hardly have been sufficient to grapple with it. What an opportunity was lost! Something, therefore, was to be done, to relieve the galling sense of disappointed ambition and mortified self-consequence. Our political Busy body turned Marplot; and maliciously, and like a felon, strangled the babe that he was not professionally called in to swaddle, and dandle, and bring to maturity. He had his revenge: but so must others have their’s on his memory.

Burke was not an honest man. There was always a dash of insincerity, a sinister bias in his disposition. We see, from the letters that passed between him and his two brothers, and Barry the painter, that there was constantly a balancing of self-interest and principle in his mind; a thanking of God that he was in no danger of yielding to temptation, yet as if it were a doubtful or ticklish point; and a patient, pensive expectation of place and emolument, till he could reconcile it with integrity and fidelity to his party; which might easily be construed into a querulous hankering after it, and an opinion that this temporary self-denial implied a considerable sacrifice on his part, or that he displayed no small share of virtue in not immediately turning knave. All this, if narrowly looked into, has a very suspicious appearance. Burke, with all his capricious wildness and flighty impulses, was a self-seeker and more constant in his enmities than in his friendships. He bore malice, and did not forgive to the last. His cold, sullen behaviour to Fox, who shed tears when they had a quarrel in the House, and his refusal to see him afterwards, when the latter came to visit him on his death-bed, 293will for ever remain a stigma on his memory. He was, however, punished for his fault. In his latter writings, he complains bitterly of the solitariness of his old age, and of the absence of the friends of his youth—whom he had deserted. This is natural justice, and the tribute due to apostacy. A man may carry over his own conscience to the side of his vanity or interest, but he cannot expect, at the same time, to carry over along with him all those with whom he has been connected in thought and action, and whose society he will miss, sooner or later. Mr. Burke could hardly hope to find, in his casual, awkward, unaccountable intercourse with such men as Pitt or Dundas, amends for the loss of his old friends, Fox and Sheridan, to whom he was knit not only by political ties, but by old habitudes, lengthened recollections, and a variety of common studies and pursuits. Pitt was a mere politician; Dundas, a mere worldling. What would they care about him, and his ‘winged words’? No more of talk about the meetings at Sir Joshua’s—the Noctes cœnæque Deûm; about the fine portraits of that great colourist; about Johnson or Goldsmith, or Dunning or Barrè; or their early speeches; or the trying times in the beginning of the American war; or the classic taste and freeborn spirit of Greece and Rome;—

Perhaps, indeed, he would wish to forget most of these, as ungrateful topics; but when a man seeks for repose in oblivion of himself, he had better seek it, where he will soonest find it,—in the grave! Whatever the talents, or the momentary coincidence of opinion of his new allies, there would be a want of previous sympathy between them. Their notions would not amalgamate, or they would not be sure that they did. Every thing would require to be explained, to be reconciled. There would be none of the freedom of habitual intimacy. Friendships, like the clothes we wear, become the easier from custom. New friendships do not sit well on old or middle age. Affection is a science, to which it is too late to serve an apprenticeship after a certain period of life. This is the case with all patched-up, conventional intimacies; but it is worse when they are built on inveterate hostility and desertion from an opposite party, where their naturally crude taste is embittered by jealousy and rankling wounds. We think to exchange old friends and connections for new ones, and to be received with an additional welcome for the sacrifice we have made; but we gain nothing by it but the contempt of those whom we have left, and the suspicions of those whom we have joined. By betraying a cause, and turning our backs on a principle, we forfeit the esteem of the honest, and do not inspire one particle of 294confidence or respect in those who may profit by and pay us for our treachery.

Deserters are never implicitly trusted. There is, besides the sentiment or general principle of the thing, a practical reason for this. Their zeal, their eagerness to distinguish themselves in their new career, makes them rash and extravagant; and not only so, but there is always a leaven of their old principles remaining behind, which breaks out in spite of themselves, and which it is difficult for their encouragers and patrons to guard against. This was remarkably the case with the late Mr. Windham. He was constantly running a-muck at some question or other, and committing the Ministers. His old, free-thinking, opposition habits returned upon him before he was aware of it; and he was sure to hazard some paradox, or stickle for some objectionable point, contrary to the forms of office. The cabinet had contemplated no such thing. He was accordingly kept in check, and alarmed the treasury-bench whenever he rose. He was like a dog that gives mouth before the time, or is continually running on a stray scent: he was chid and fed! The same thing is observable in the present Poet-Laureat, whose jacobinical principles have taken such deep root in him (intus et in cute) that they break out even in his Court poems, like ‘a thick scurf’ on loyalty; and he presents them unconsciously, (as an offering of ‘sweet smelling gums,’) at the very foot of the throne. He at present retains his place apparently on condition of holding his tongue. He writes such Odes on kings, that it is next to impossible not to travestie them into lampoons!

The remarks I have made above apply strongly to him and some of his associates of the Lake School. I fancy he has felt, as much as anyone, the inconvenience of drawing off from a cause, and that by so doing we leave our oldest and our best friends behind. There are those among the favourers and admirers of his youth, whom his dim eyes discover not, and who do not count his grey hairs. Not one or two, but more;—men of character and understanding, who have pledged mutual faith, and drank the cup of freedom with him, warm from the wine-press, as well as the ‘dews of Castalie.’ He gave up a principle, and one left him;—he insulted a feeling, and another fled; he accepted a place, and received the congratulations of no one but Mr. Croker. He looks round for them in vain, with throbbing heart, (the heart of a poet can never lie still; he should take the more care what it is that agitates it!)—sees only the shadows or the carcases of old friendships; or stretches out his hand to grasp some new patron, and finds that also cold. If our friends are sometimes accused of short memories, our enemies make it up by 295having long ones. We had better adhere to the first; for we must despair of making cordial converts of the last. This double desolation is cheerless, and makes a man bethink himself. We may make a shift (a shabby one) without our self-respect; but it will never do to have it followed by the loss of the respect of those whose opinion we once valued most. We may tamper with our own consciences; but we feel at a loss without the testimony of others in our favour, which is seldom paid, except to integrity of purpose and principle. Perhaps, however, Mr. Southey consoles himself for a certain void without and within, by receiving the compliments of some Undergraduate of either of our Universities, on his last article in defence of Rotten Boroughs, in the Quarterly Review; or of a Dignitary of the Church, on his share in the Six Acts, and for suggesting to Lord Sidmouth the propriety of punishing the second conviction for libel with banishment. We do not know how this may be: but with us, it would barb the dart.

It would not matter, if these turn-coats were not in such violent extremes. Between the two, they must be strangely perplexed in their own minds, and scarcely know what to make of themselves. They must have singular qualms come over them at times—the apparitions of former acquaintance and opinions. If they were contented to correct, to qualify their youthful extravagancies, and to be taught by experience to steer a middle course, and pay some deference to the conclusions of others, it would be mighty well; but this is not their humour. They must be conspicuous, dogmatical, exclusive, intolerant, on whichever side they are: the mode may be different, the principle is the same. A man’s nature does not change, though he may profess different sentiments. A Socinian may become a Calvinist, or a Whig a Tory: but a bigot is always a bigot; an egotist never becomes humble. Besides, what excuse has a man, after thirty, to change about all of a sudden to the very opposite side? If he is an uneducated man, he may indeed plead ignorance yesterday of what he has learnt to-day: but a man of study and reading can’t pretend that a whole host of arguments has suddenly burst upon him, of which he never heard before, and that they have upset all his earlier notions: he must have known them long before, and if they made no impression on him then to modify his violent zeal (supposing them to be right now) it is a sign either of a disinclination, or of an incapacity, on his part, to give truth a fair hearing—a bad ground to build his present dogmatical and infallible tone upon! It is certain, that the common sense of the world condemns these violent changes of opinion; and if they do not prove that a man prefers his convenience to his virtue, they at least show that he 296prefers it to his reputation; for he loses his character by them. An apostate is a name that all men abhor, that no man ever willingly acknowledges; and the tergiversation which it denotes is not likely to come into much greater request, till it is no longer observed that a man seldom changes his principles except for his interest! Those who go over from the winning to the losing side, do not incur this appellation; and however we may count them fools, they can’t be called knaves into the bargain.

The London Weekly Review.] [November 17, 1827.

1. Why is the word comfort so continually in the mouths of the English?—Because the English are the most uncomfortable of all people: for being so liable to receive pain from outward objects, and being made uneasy by everything that is not as they wish it, they are obliged to remove, if possible, every source of annoyance, and have all their comforts about them.

2. Why are the English so fond of clubs, corporate bodies, joint-stock companies, and large associations of all kinds?—Because they are the most unsociable set of people in the world: for being mostly at variance with each other, they are glad to get any one else to join and be on their side; having no spontaneous attraction, they are forced to fasten themselves into the machine of society; and each holds out in his individual shyness and reserve, till he is carried away by the crowd, and borne with a violent, but welcome shock against some other mass of aggregate prejudice or self-interest. The English join together to get rid of their sharp points and sense of uncomfortable peculiarity. Hence, their clubs, their mobs, their sects, their parties, their spirit of co-operation, and previous understanding in every thing. An English mob is a collection of violent and headstrong humours, acting with double force from each man’s natural self-will, and the sense of opposition to others; and the same may be said of the nation at large. The French unite and separate more easily; and therefore do not collect into such formidable masses, and act with such unity and tenacity of purpose. It is the same with their ideas, which easily join together, and easily part company; but do not form large or striking masses: and hence, the French are full of wit and fancy, but without imagination and principle. The French are governed by fashion, the English by cabal.

2973. Why are the English a credulous nation, and the eager dupes of all sorts of quacks and impostors?—Because they are a dry, plodding, matter-of-fact people, and having, in general, no idea of the possibility of telling lies, think all they hear or read must be true, and are left at the mercy of every empiric or knavish pretender, who will take the trouble to impose on them. From their very gravity and seriousness, they are the dupes of superficial professions and appearances, which they think, (judging from themselves,) must imply all they pretend. Their folly and love of the marvellous takes a practical and mischievous turn; they despise the fictitious, and require to be amused by something that they think solid and useful. Hence, they swallow Dr. Brodum’s pills, Joanna Southcote’s prophecies, the Literary Gazette, and Blackwood’s Magazine, taking them all for gospel. They constantly have a succession of idols or bugbears. There is always some one to be hunted down at the time for their amusement, like a strange dog in a village; and some name, some work that is cried up for half-a-dozen years, as containing all wisdom, and then you hear no more of it. No people judge so much as the English at second-hand, except in mere matters of pounds, shillings, and pence; and even then they may be gulled by impudence and quackery. Every thing is either in collusion or collision. Thimble was a great man in the O. P. Row, and now regulates the debates in Parliament. If a man has a monstrous good opinion of himself, and nothing will drive him out of it, the English will come into his way of thinking, sooner than be left in a minority, or not appear to be in the secret! Lest they should seem stupid, they try to be knowing, as they become forward in aiming to be witty, and vulgar in affecting to be genteel.

The London Weekly Review.] [December 1, 1827.

‘Who shall go about to cozen fortune, or wear the badge of honour without the stamp of merit?’

A knowledge of the world is generally supposed to be the fruit of experience and observation, or of a various, practical acquaintance with men and things. On the contrary, it appears to me to be a kind of instinct, arising out of a peculiar construction and turn of mind. Some persons display this knowledge at their first outset in life: others, with all their opportunities and dear-bought lessons, never acquire it to the end of their career. In fact, a knowledge of the world only means a knowledge of our own interest; it is nothing but 298a species of selfishness or ramification of the law of self-preservation. There may be said to be two classes of people in the world, which remain for ever distinct: those who consider things in the abstract, or with a reference to the truth, and those who consider them only with a reference to themselves, or to the main-chance. The first, whatever may be their acquirements or discoveries, wander through life in a sort of absence of mind, or comparative state of sleep-walking: the last, though their attention is riveted to a single point of view, are always on the alert, know perfectly well what they are about, and calculate with the greatest nicety the effect which their words or actions will have on others. They do not trouble themselves about the arguments on any subject: they know the opinion entertained on it, and that is enough for them to regulate themselves by; the rest they regard as quite Utopian, and foreign to the purpose. ‘Subtle as the fox for prey, like warlike as the wolf for what they eat,’ they leave mere speculative points to those who, from some unaccountable bias or caprice take an interest in what does not personally concern them, and make good the old saying, that ‘the children of the world are wiser in their generation than the children of the light!’

The man of the world is to the man of science very much what the chamelion is to the armadillo: the one takes its hue from every surrounding object, and is undistinguishable from them; the other is shut up in a formal crust of knowledge, and clad in an armour of proof, from which the shaft of ridicule or the edge of disappointment falls equally pointless. It is no uncommon case to see a person come into a room, which he enters awkwardly enough, and has nothing in his dress or appearance to recommend him, but after the first embarrassments are over, sits down, takes his share in the conversation, in which he acquits himself creditably, shews sense, reading, and shrewdness, expresses himself with point, articulates distinctly, when he blunders on some topic which he might see is disagreeable, but persists in it the more as he finds others shrink from it; mentions a book of which you have not heard, and perhaps do not wish to hear, and he therefore thinks himself bound to favour you with the contents; gets into an argument with one, proses on with another on a subject in which his hearer has no interest; and when he goes away, people remark, ‘What a pity that Mr. —— has not more knowledge of the world, and has so little skill in adapting himself to the tone and manners of society!’ But will time and habit cure him of this defect? Never. He wants a certain tact, he has not a voluntary power over his ideas, but is like a person reading out of a book, or who can only pour out the budget of knowledge with which his brain is crammed in all places and companies alike. If you attempt to divert 299his attention from the general subject to the persons he is addressing, you puzzle and stop him quite. He is a mere conversing automaton. He has not the sense of personality—the faculty of perceiving the effect (as well as the grounds) of his opinions; and how then should failure or mortification give it him? It must be a painful reflection, and he must be glad to turn from it; or after a few reluctant and unsuccessful efforts to correct his errors, he will try to forget or harden himself in them. Finding that he makes so slow and imperceptible a progress in amending his faults, he will take his swing in the opposite direction, will triumph and revel in his supposed excellences, will launch out into the wide, untrammelled field of abstract speculation, and silence envious sneers and petty cavils by force of argument and dint of importunity. You will find him the same character at sixty that he was at thirty; or should time soften down some of his asperities, and tire him of his absurdities as he has tired others, nothing will transform him into a man of the world, and he will die in a garret, or a paltry second-floor, from not having been able to acquire the art ‘to see ourselves as others see us,’ or to dress his opinions, looks, and actions in the smiles and approbation of the world. On the other hand, take a youth from the same town (perhaps a school-fellow, and the dunce of the neighbourhood); he has ‘no figures, nor no fantasies which busy thought draws in the brains of men,’ no preconceived notions by which he must square his conduct or his conversation, no dogma to maintain in the teeth of opposition, no Shibboleth to which he must force others to subscribe; the progress of science or the good of his fellow-creatures are things about which he has not the remotest conception, or the smallest particle of anxiety—

all that he sees or attends to is the immediate path before him, or what can encourage or lend him a helping hand through it; his mind is a complete blank, on which the world may write its maxims and customs in what characters it pleases; he has only to study its humours, flatter its prejudices, and take advantage of its foibles; while walking the streets he is not taken up with solving an abstruse problem, but with considering his own and the appearance of others; instead of contradicting a patron, assents to all he hears; and in every proposition that comes before him asks himself only what he can get by it, and whether it will make him friends or enemies: such a one is said to possess great penetration and knowledge of the world, understands his place in society, gets on in it, rises from the counter to the 300counting-house, from the dependant to be a partner, amasses a fortune, gains in size and respectability as his affairs prosper, has his town and country house, and ends with buying up half the estates in his native county!

The great secret of a knowledge of the world, then, consists in a subserviency to the will of others, and the primary motive to this attention is a mechanical and watchful perception of our own interest. It is not an art that requires a long course of study, the difficulty is in putting one’s self apprentice to it. It does not surely imply any very laborious or profound inquiry into the distinctions of truth or falsehood, to be able to assent to whatever one hears; nor any great refinement of moral feeling, to approve of whatever has custom, power, or interest on its side. The only question is, ‘Who is willing to do so?’—and the answer is, those who have no other faculties or pretensions, either to stand in the way of or to assist their progress through life. Those are slow to wear the livery of the world who have any independent resources of their own. It is not that the philosopher or the man of genius does not see and know all this, that he is not constantly and forcibly reminded of it by his own failure or the success of others, but he cannot stoop to practice it. He has a different scale of excellence and mould of ambition, which has nothing in common with current maxims and time-serving calculations. He is a moral and intellectual egotist, not a mere worldly-minded one. In youth, he has sanguine hopes and brilliant dreams, which he cannot sacrifice for sordid realities—as he advances farther in life, habit and pride forbid his turning back. He cannot bring himself to give up his best-grounded convictions to a blockhead, or his conscientious principles to a knave, though he might make his fortune by so doing. The rule holds good here as well as in another sense—‘What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?’ If his convictions and principles had been less strong, they would have yielded long ago to the suggestions of his interest, and he would have relapsed into the man of the world, or rather he would never have had the temptation or capacity to be any thing else. One thing that keeps men honest, as well as that confirms them knaves, is their incapacity to do any better for themselves than nature has done for them. One person can with difficulty speak the truth, as another lies with a very ill grace. After repeated awkward attempts to change characters, they each very properly fall back into their old jog-trot path, as best suited to their genius and habits.

There are individuals who make themselves and every one else uncomfortable by trying to be agreeable, and who are only to be 301endured in their natural characters of blunt, plain-spoken people. Many a man would have turned rogue if he had known how. Non ex quovis ligno fit Mercurius. The modest man cannot be impudent if he would. The man of sense cannot play the fool to advantage. It is not the mere resolution to act a part that will enable us to do it, without a natural genius and fitness for it. Some men are born to be valets, as others are to be courtiers. There is the climbing genus in man as well as in plants. It is sometimes made a wonder how men of ‘no mark or likelihood’ frequently rise to court-preferment, and make their way against all competition. That is the very reason. They present no tangible point; they offend no feeling of self-importance. They are a perfect unresisting medium of patronage and favour. They aspire through servility; they repose in insignificance. A man of talent or pretension in the same circumstances would be kicked out in a week. A look that implied a doubt, a hint that suggested a difference of opinion, would be fatal. It is of no use, in parleying with absolute power, to dissemble, to suppress: there must be no feelings or opinions to dissemble or suppress. The artifice of the dependant is not a match for the jealousy of the patron: ‘The soul must be subdued to the very quality of its lord.’ Where all is annihilated in the presence of the sovereign, is it astonishing that nothings should succeed? Ciphers are as necessary in courts as eunuchs in seraglios.

The London Weekly Review.] [December 8, 1827,

I do not think Mr. Cobbett would succeed in an interview with the Prince. Bub Doddington said, ‘he would not justify before his Sovereign,’ even where his own character was at stake. I am afraid we could hardly reckon upon the same forbearance in Mr. Cobbett where his country’s welfare was at stake, and where he had an opportunity of vindicating it. He might have a great deal of reason on his side; but he might forget, or seem to forget, that as the king is above the law, he is also above reason. Reason is but a suppliant at the foot of thrones, and waits for their approval or rebuke. Salus populi suprema lex—may be a truism anywhere else. If reason dares to approach them at all, it must be in the shape of deference and humility, not of headstrong importunity and self-will. Instead of breathless awe, of mild entreaty, of humble remonstrance, it is Mr. Cobbett, who, upon very slight encouragement, would give the law, and the monarch who must kiss the rod. The upstart, the bully, and the dogmatist, would break out, and the King would assert himself. 302The reformer would be too full of his own opinion to allow an option even to Majesty, and the affair would have the same ending as that of the old ballad—

As I have brought Mr. Cobbett in here by the neck and shoulders, I may add that I do not think he belongs properly to the class, either of philosophical speculators, or men of the world. He is a political humourist. He is too much taken up with himself either to attend to right reason, or to judge correctly of what passes around him. He mistakes strength of purpose and passion, not only for truth but for success. Because he can give fifty good reasons for a thing, he thinks it not only ought to be, but must be. Because he is swayed so entirely by his wishes and humours, he believes others will be ready to give up their prejudices, interests, and resentments to oblige him. He persuades himself that he is the fittest person to represent Westminster in parliament, and he considers this point (once proved) tantamount to his return. He knows no more of the disposition or sentiments of the people of Westminster than of the inhabitants of the moon (except from what he himself chooses to say or write of them), and it is this want of sympathy which, as much as anything, prevents his being chosen. The exclusive force and bigotry of his opinions deprives them of half their influence and effect, by allowing no toleration to others, and consequently setting them against him.

Mr. Cobbett seemed disappointed, at one time, at not succeeding in the character of a legacy-hunter. Why, a person to succeed in this character, ought to be a mere skin or bag to hold money, a place to deposit it in, a shadow, a deputy, a trustee who keeps it for the original owner—so that the transfer is barely nominal, and who, if he were to return from the other world, would modestly yield it up—one who has no personal identity of his own, no will to encroach upon or dispose of it otherwise than his patron would wish after his death—not a hair-brained egotist, a dashing adventurer, to squander, hector and flourish away with it in wild schemes and ruinous experiments, every one of them at variance with the opinions of the testator; in new methods of turnip hoeing; in speculations in madder—this would be to tear his soul from his body twice over—

Mr. Cobbett complained, that in his last interview with Baron Mazeres, that gentleman was in his dotage, and that the reverend 303legatee sat at the bottom of the table, cutting a poor figure, and not contradicting a word the Baron said. No doubt, as he has put this in print in the exuberance of his dissatisfaction, he let both gentlemen see pretty plainly what he thought of them, and fancied that this expression of his contempt, as it gratified him, was the way to ensure the good will of the one to make over his whole estate, or the good word of the other to let him go snacks. This is a new way of being quits with one’s benefactors, and an egregious quid pro quo. If Baron Mazeres had left Mr. Cobbett 200,000l. it must have been not to write his epitaph, or visit him in his last moments!

A gossiping chambermaid who only smiles and assents when her mistress wishes her to talk, or an ignorant country clown who stands with his hat off when he has a favour to ask of the squire, (and if he is wise, at all other times,) knows more of the matter. A knowledge of mankind is little more than the Scotch instinct of bowing, or of ‘never standing upright in the presence of a great man,’ or of that great blockhead, the world. It is not a perception of truth, but a sense of power, and an instant determination of the will to submit to it. It is therefore less an intellectual acquirement than a natural disposition. It is on this account that I think both cunning and wisdom are a sort of original endowments, or attain maturity much earlier than is supposed, from their being moral qualities, and having their seat in the heart rather than the head. The difference depends on the manner of seeing things. The one is a selfish, the other is a disinterested view of nature. The one is the clear open look of integrity, the other is a contracted and blear-eyed obliquity of mental vision. If any one has but the courage and honesty to look at an object as it is in itself, or divested of prejudice, fear, and favour, he will be sure to see it pretty right; as he who regards it through the refractions of opinion and fashion, will be sure to see it distorted and falsified, however the error may rebound to his own advantage. Certainly, he who makes the universe tributary to his convenience, and subjects all his impressions of what is right or wrong, true or false, black or white, round or square, to the standard and maxims of the world, who never utters a proposition but he fancies a patron close at his elbow who overhears him, who is even afraid, in private, to suffer an honest conviction to rise in his mind, lest it should mount to his lips, get wind, and ruin his prospects in life, ought to gain something in exchange for the restraint and force put upon his thoughts and faculties: on the contrary, he who is confined by no such petty and debasing trammels, whose comprehension of mind is ‘in large heart enclosed,’ finds his inquiries and his views expand in a degree commensurate 304with the universe around him; makes truth welcome wherever he meets her, and receives her cordial embrace in return. To see things divested of passion and interest, is to see them with the eye of history and philosophy. It is easy to judge right, or at least to come to a mutual understanding in matters of history and abstract morality. Why then is it so difficult to arrive at the same calm certainty in actual life? Because the passions and interests are concerned, and it requires so much more candour, love of truth, and independence of spirit to encounter ‘the world and its dread laugh,’ to throw aside every sinister consideration, and grapple with the plain merits of the case. To be wiser than other men is to be honester than they; and strength of mind is only courage to see and speak the truth. Perhaps the courage may be also owing to the strength; but both go together, and are natural, and not acquired. Do we not see in fables the force of the moral principle in detecting the truth? The only effect of fables is, by making inanimate or irrational things actors in the scene, to remove the case completely from our own sphere, to take our self-love off its guard, to simplify the question; and yet the result of this obvious appeal is allowed to be universal and irresistible. Is not this another example that ‘the heart of man is deceitful above all things;’ or, that it is less our incapacity to distinguish what is right, than our secret determination to adhere to what is wrong, that prevents our discriminating one from the other? It is not that great and useful truths are not manifest and discernible in themselves; but little, dirty objects get between them and us, and from being near and gross, hide the lofty and distant! The first business of the patriot and the philanthropist is to overleap this barrier, to rise out of this material dross. Indignation, contempt of the base and grovelling, makes the philosopher no less than the poet; and it is the power of looking beyond self that enables each to inculcate moral truth and nobleness of sentiment, the one by general precepts, the other by individual example.

I have no quarrel with men of the world, mere muck-worms: every one after his fashion, ‘as the flesh and fortune shall serve;’ but I confess I have a little distaste to those, who, having set out as loud and vaunting enthusiasts, have turned aside to ‘tread the primrose path of dalliance,’ and to revile those who did not choose to follow so edifying an example. The candid brow and elastic spring of youth may be exchanged for the wrinkles and crookedness of age; but at least we should retain something of the erectness and openness of our first unbiassed thoughts. I cannot understand how any degree of egotism can dispense with the consciousness of personal identity. As we advance farther in life, we are naturally inclined to revert in imagination to its commencement; but what can those 305dwell upon there who find only feelings that they despise, and opinions that they have abjured? ‘If thine eye offend thee, pull it out and cast it from thee:’ but the operation is a painful one, and the body remains after it only a mutilated fragment. Generally, those who are cut off from this resource in former recollections, make up for it (as well as they can) by an exaggerated and uxorious fondness for their late-espoused convictions—a thing unsightly and indecent! Why does he, who, at one time, despises ‘the little chapel-bell,’ afterwards write ‘the Book of the Church?’ The one is not an atonement for the other: each shows only a juvenile or a superannuated precocity of judgment. It is uniting Camille-Desmoulins and Camille-Jourdan, (Jourdan of the Chimes) in one character. I should like (not out of malice, but from curiosity) to see Mr. Southey re-write the beautiful poem on ‘his own miniature-picture, when he was two years old,’ and see what he would substitute for the lines—

There must here, I think, be hiatus in manuscriptis: the verse must halt a little! The laureate and his friends say that they are still labouring on the same design as ever, correcting the outlines and filling up the unfinished sketch of their early opinions. They seem rather to have blotted them quite out, and to have taken a fresh canvas to begin another and no less extravagant caricature. Or their new and old theories remind one of those heads in picturedealers’ shops, where one half of the face is thoroughly cleaned and repaired, and the other left covered with stains and dirt, to show the necessity of the picture-scourer’s art: the transition offends the sight. It may be made a question whether men grow wiser as they grow older, any more than they grow stronger or healthier or honester. They may, in one sense, imbibe a greater portion of worldly wisdom, and have their romantic flights tamed to the level of every day’s practice and experience; but perhaps it would be better if some of the extravagance and enthusiasm of youth could be infused into the latter, instead of being absorbed (perforce) in that sink of pride, envy, selfishness, ignorance, conceit, prejudice, and hypocrisy. One thing is certain, that this is the present course of events, and that if the individual grows wiser as he gains experience, the world does not, and that the tardy penitent who is treading back his steps, may meet the world advancing as he is retreating, and adopting more and more of the genuine impulses and disinterested 306views of youth into its creed. It is, indeed, only by conforming to some such original and unsophisticated standard, that it can acquire either soundness or consistency. The appeal is a fair one, from the bad habits of society to the unprejudiced aspirations and impressions of human nature.

The London Weekly Review.] [December 15, 1827.

It seems, in truth, a hard case to have all the world against us, and to require uncommon fortitude (not to say presumption) to stand out single against such a host. The bare suggestion must ‘give us pause,’ and has no doubt overturned many an honest conviction. The opinion of the world, (as it pompously entitles itself,) if it means anything more than a set of local and party prejudices, with which only our interest, not truth, is concerned, is a shadow, a bugbear, and a contradiction in terms. Having all the world against us, is a phrase without a meaning; for in those points in which all the world agree, no one differs from the world. If all the world were of the same way of thinking, and always kept in the same mind, it would certainly be a little staggering to have them against you. But however widely and angrily they may differ from you, they differ as much so from one another, and even from themselves. What is gospel at one moment, is heresy the next:—different countries and climates have different notions of things. When you are put on your trial, therefore, for impugning the public opinion, you may always subpœna this great body against itself. For example, I have been twitted for somewhere calling Tom Paine a great writer, and no doubt his reputation at present ‘does somewhat smack:’ yet in 1792 he was so great, or so popular an author, and so much read and admired by numbers who would not now mention his name, that the Government was obliged to suspend the Constitution, and to go to war to counteract the effects of his popularity. His extreme popularity was then the cause (by a common and vulgar reaction) of his extreme obnoxiousness. If the opinion of the world, then, contradicts itself, why may not I contradict it, or choose at what time, and to what extent I will agree with it? I have been accused of abusing dissenters, and saying that sectaries, in general, are dry and suspicious; and I believe that all the world will say the same thing except themselves. I have said that the church people are proud and overbearing, which has given them umbrage, though in this I have all the sectaries on my side. I have laughed at the Methodists, 307and for this I have been accused of glancing at religion: yet who does not laugh at the Methodists as well as myself? But I also laugh at those who laugh at them. I have pointed out by turns the weak sides and foibles of different sects and parties, and they themselves maintain that they are perfect and infallible: and this is what is called having all the world against me. I have inveighed all my life against the insolence of the Tories, and for this I have the authority both of Whigs and Reformers; but then I have occasionally spoken against the imbecility of the Whigs, and the extravagance of the Reformers, and thus have brought all three on my back, though two out of the three regularly agree with all I say of the third party. Poets do not approve of what I have said of their turning prose-writers; nor do the politicians approve of my tolerating the fooleries of the fanciful tribe at all: so they make common cause to damn me between them. People never excuse the drawbacks from themselves, nor the concessions to an adversary: such is the justice and candour of mankind! Mr. Wordsworth is not satisfied with the praise I have heaped upon himself, and still less, that I have allowed Mr. Moore to be a poet at all. I do not think I have ever set my face against the popular idols of the day; I have been among the foremost in crying up Mrs. Siddons, Kean, Sir Walter Scott, Madame Pasta, and others; and as to the great names of former times, my admiration has been lavish, and sometimes almost mawkish. I have dissented, it is true, in one or two instances; but that only shows that I judge for myself, not that I make a point of contradicting the general taste. I have been more to blame in trying to push certain Illustrious Obscure into notice:—they have not forgiven the obligation, nor the world the tacit reproach. As to my personalities, they might quite as well be termed impersonalities. I am so intent on the abstract proposition and its elucidation, that I regard everything else as of very subordinate consequence: my friends, I conceive, will not refuse to contribute to so laudable an undertaking, and my enemies must! I have found fault with the French, I have found fault with the English; and pray, do they not find great, mutual, and just fault with one another? It may seem a great piece of arrogance in any one, to set up his individual and private judgment against that of ten millions of people; but cross the channel, and you will have thirty millions on your side. Even should the thirty millions come over to the opinions of the ten, (a thing that may happen to-morrow,) still one need not despair. I remember my old friend Peter Finnerty, laughing very heartily at something I had written about the Scotch, but it was followed up by a sketch of the Irish, on which he closed 308the book, looked grave, and said he disapproved entirely of all national reflections. Thus you have all the world on your side, except when it is the party concerned. What any set of people think or say of themselves is hardly a rule for others: yet, if you do not attach yourself to some one set of people and principles, and stick to them through thick and thin, instead of giving your opinion fairly and fully all round, you must expect to have all the world against you, for no other reason than because you express sincerely, and for their good, not only what they say of others, but what is said of themselves, which they would fain keep a profound secret, and prevent the divulging of it under the severest pains and penalties. When I told J—— that I had composed a work in which I had ‘in some sort handled’ about a score of leading characters, he said, ‘Then you will have one man against you, and the remaining nineteen for you!’ I have not found it so. In fact, these persons would agree pretty nearly to all that I say, and allow that, in nineteen points out of twenty, I am right; but the twentieth, that relates to some imperfection of their own, weighs down all the rest, and produces an unanimous verdict against the author. There is but one thing in which the world agree, a certain bigoted blindness, and conventional hypocrisy, without which, according to Mandeville, (that is, if they really spoke what they thought and knew of one another,) they would fall to cutting each other’s throats immediately.

We find the same contrariety and fluctuation of opinion in different ages, as well as countries and classes. For about a thousand years, during ‘the high and palmy state’ of the Romish hierarchy, it was agreed (nemine contradicente) that two and two made five: afterwards, for above a century, there was great battling and controversy to prove that they made four and a half; then, for a century more, it was thought a great stride taken to come down to four and a quarter; and, perhaps, in another century or two, it will be discovered for a wonder that two and two actually make four! It is said, that this slow advance and perpetual interposition of impediments is a salutary check to the rashness of innovation, and to hazardous experiments. At least, it is a very effectual one, amounting almost to a prohibition. One age is employed in building up an absurdity, and the next exhausts all its wit and learning, zeal and fury, in battering it down, so that at the end of two generations you come to the point where you set out, and have to begin again. These heats and disputes about external points of faith may be things of no consequence, since under all the variations of form or doctrine the essentials of practice remain the same. It does not seem so; at any rate, the non-essentials appear to excite all 309the interest, and ‘keep this dreadful pudder o’er our heads;’ and when the dogma is once stripped of mystery and intolerance, and reduced to common sense, no one appears to take any further notice of it.

The appeal, then, to the authority of the world, chiefly resolves itself into the old proverb, that ‘when you are at Rome you must do as those at Rome do;’ that is, it is a shifting circle of local prejudices and gratuitous assumptions, a successful conformity to which is best insured by a negation of all other qualities that might interfere with it: solid reason and virtue are out of the question. But it may be insisted, that there are qualities of a more practical order that may greatly contribute to and facilitate our advancement in life, such as presence of mind, convivial talents, insight into character, thorough acquaintance with the profounder principles and secret springs of society, and so forth. I do not deny that all this may be of advantage in extraordinary cases, and often abridge difficulties; but I do not think that it is either necessary or generally useful. For instance, habitual caution and reserve is a surer resource than that presence of mind, or quick-witted readiness of expedient, which, though it gets men out of scrapes, as often leads them into them by begetting a false confidence. Persons of agreeable and lively talents often find to their cost that one indiscretion procures them more enemies then ten agreeable sallies do friends. A too great penetration into character is less desirable than a certain power of hoodwinking ourselves to their defects, unless the former is accompanied with a profound hypocrisy, which is also liable to detection and discomfiture: and as to general maxims and principles of worldly knowledge, I conceive that an instinctive sympathy with them is much more profitable than their incautious discovery and formal announcement. Thus, the politic rule, ‘When a great wheel goes up a hill, cling fast to it; when a great wheel runs down a hill, let go your hold of it,’ may be useful as a hint or warning to the shyness or fidelity of an Englishman; a North Briton feels its truth instinctively, and acts upon it unconsciously. When it is observed in the History of a Foundling, that ‘Mr. Alworthy had done so many charitable actions that he had made enemies of the whole parish,’ the sarcasm is the dictate of a generous indignation at ingratitude rather than a covert apology for selfish niggardliness. Misanthropic reflections have their source in philanthropic sentiments; the real despiser of the world keeps up appearances with it, and is at pains to varnish over its vices and follies, even to himself, lest his secret should be betrayed, and do him an injury. Those who see completely into the world begin to play tricks with it, and overreach themselves by being too knowing: it is even possible to out-cant it, and get laughed at that 310way. Fielding knew something of the world, yet he did not make a fortune. Sir Walter Scott has twice made a fortune by descriptions of nature and character, and has twice lost it by the same fondness for speculative gains. Wherever there is a strong faculty for anything, the exercise of that faculty becomes its own end and reward, and produces an indifference or inattention to other things; so that the best security for success in the world is an incapacity for success in any other way. A bookseller to succeed in his business should have no knowledge of books, except as marketable commodities: the instant he has a taste, an opinion of his own on the subject, he may consider himself as a ruined man. In like manner, a picture-dealer should know nothing of pictures but the catalogue price, the cant of the day. The moment he has a feeling for the art, he will be tenacious of it: a Guido, a Salvator ‘will be the fatal Cleopatra for which he will lose all he is worth, and be content to lose it.’ Should a general then know nothing of war, a physician of medicine? No: because this is an art and not a trick, and the one has to contend with nature, and the other with an enemy, and not to pamper or cajole the follies of the world. It requires also great talents to overturn the world; not, to push one’s fortune in it: to rule the state like Cromwell or Buonaparte; not, to rise in it like Castlereagh or Croker. Yet, even in times of crisis and convulsion, he who outrages the feeling of the moment and echoes the wildest extravagance, succeeds; as, in times of peace and tranquillity, he does so who acquiesces most tamely in the ordinary routine of things. This may serve to point out another error, common to men of the world, who sometimes, giving themselves credit for more virtue than they possess, declare very candidly that if they had to begin life over again, they would have been great rogues. The answer to this is, that then they would have been hanged! No: the way to get on in the world is to be neither more nor less wise, neither better nor worse than your neighbours, neither to be a ‘reformer nor a house-breaker,’ neither to advance before the age nor lag behind it, but to be as like it as possible, to reflect its image and superscription at every turn, and then you will be its darling and its delight, and it will dandle you and fondle you, and make much of you, as a monkey doats upon its young! The knowledge of vice—that is, of statutable vice—is not the knowledge of the world: otherwise a Bow-street runner and the keeper of a house of ill fame, would be the most knowing characters, and would soon rise above their professions.

The London Weekly Review.] [March 29, 1828.

Food, warmth, sleep, and a book; these are all I at present ask—the ultima thule of my wandering desires. Do you not then wish for

Expected, well enough:—gone, still better. Such attractions are strengthened by distance. Nor a mistress? ‘Beautiful mask! I know thee!’ When I can judge of the heart from the face, of the thoughts from the lips, I may again trust myself. Instead of these, give me the robin red-breast, pecking the crumbs at the door, or warbling on the leafless spray, the same glancing form that has followed me wherever I have been, and ‘done its spiriting gently;’ or the rich notes of the thrush that startle the ear of winter, and seem to have drunk up the full draught of joy from the very sense of contrast. To these I adhere and am faithful, for they are true to me; and, dear in themselves, are dearer for the sake of what is departed, leading me back (by the hand) to that dreaming world, in the innocence of which they sat and made sweet music, waking the promise of future years, and answered by the eager throbbings of my own breast. But now ‘the credulous hope of mutual minds is o’er,’ and I turn back from the world that has deceived me, to nature that lent it a false beauty, and that keeps up the illusion of the past. As I quaff my libations of tea in a morning, I love to watch the clouds sailing from the west, and fancy that ‘the spring comes slowly up this way.’ In this hope, while ‘fields are dank and ways are mire,’ I follow the same direction to a neighbouring wood, where, having gained the dry, level greensward, I can see my way for a mile before me, closed in on each side by copse-wood, and ending in a point of light more or less brilliant, as the day is bright or cloudy. What a walk is this to me! I have no need of book or companion—the days, the hours, the thoughts of my youth are at my side, and 322blend with the air that fans my cheek. Here I can saunter for hours, bending my eye forward, stopping and turning to look back, thinking to strike off into some less trodden path, yet hesitating to quit the one I am in, afraid to snap the brittle threads of memory. I remark the shining trunks and slender branches of the birch trees, waving in the idle breeze; or a pheasant springs up on whirring wing; or I recall the spot where I once found a wood-pigeon at the foot of a tree, weltering in its gore, and think how many seasons have flown since ‘it left its little life in air.’ Dates, names, faces come back—to what purpose? Or why think of them now? Or rather, why not think of them oftener? We walk through life, as through a narrow path, with a thin curtain drawn around it; behind are ranged rich portraits, airy harps are strung—yet we will not stretch forth our hands and lift aside the veil, to catch glimpses of the one, or sweep the chords of the other. As in a theatre, when the old-fashioned green curtain drew up, groups of figures, fantastic dresses, laughing faces, rich banquets, stately columns, gleaming vistas appeared beyond; so we have only at any time to ‘peep through the blanket of the past,’ to possess ourselves at once of all that has regaled our senses, that is stored up in our memory, that has struck our fancy, that has pierced our hearts:—yet to all this we are indifferent, insensible, and seem intent only on the present vexation, the future disappointment. If there is a Titian hanging up in the room with me, I scarcely regard it: how then should I be expected to strain the mental eye so far, or to throw down, by the magic spells of the will, the stone-walls that enclose it in the Louvre? There is one head there of which I have often thought, when looking at it, that nothing should ever disturb me again, and I would become the character it represents—such perfect calmness and self-possession reigns in it! Why do I not hang an image of this in some dusky corner of my brain, and turn an eye upon it ever and anon, as I have need of some such talisman to calm my troubled thoughts? The attempt is fruitless, if not natural; or, like that of the French, to hang garlands on the grave, and to conjure back the dead by miniature pictures of them while living! It is only some actual coincidence, or local association that tends, without violence, to ‘open all the cells where memory slept.’ I can easily, by stooping over the long-sprent grass and clay-cold clod, recall the tufts of primroses, or purple hyacinths, that formerly grew on the same spot, and cover the bushes with leaves and singing-birds, as they were eighteen summers ago; or prolonging my walk and hearing the sighing gale rustle through a tall, strait wood at the end of it, can fancy that I distinguish the cry of hounds, and the fatal group issuing from it, as in 323the tale of Theodore and Honoria. A moaning gust of wind aids the belief; I look once more to see whether the trees before me answer to the idea of the horror-stricken grove, and an air-built city towers over their grey tops.

I return home resolved to read the entire poem through, and, after dinner, drawing my chair to the fire, and holding a small print close to my eyes, launch into the full tide of Dryden’s couplets (a stream of sound), comparing his didactic and descriptive pomp with the simple pathos and picturesque truth of Boccacio’s story, and tasting with a pleasure, which none but an habitual reader can feel, some quaint examples of pronunciation in this accomplished versifier.

These trifling instances of the wavering and unsettled state of the language give double effect to the firm and stately march of the verse, and make me dwell with a sort of tender interest on the difficulties and doubts of an earlier period of literature. They pronounced words then in a manner which we should laugh at now; and they wrote verse in a manner which we can do anything but laugh at. The pride of a new acquisition seems to give fresh confidence to it; to impel the rolling syllables through the moulds provided for them, and to overflow the envious bounds of rhyme into time-honoured triplets. I am much pleased with Leigh Hunt’s mention of Moore’s involuntary admiration of Dryden’s free, unshackled verse, and of his repeating con amore, and with an Irish spirit and accent, the fine lines—

What sometimes surprises me in looking back to the past, is, with the exception already stated, to find myself so little changed in the time. The same images and trains of thought stick by me: I have the same tastes, likings, sentiments, and wishes that I had then. One great ground of confidence and support has, indeed, been struck from under my feet; but I have made it up to myself by proportionable 324pertinacity of opinion. The success of the great cause, to which I had vowed myself, was to me more than all the world: I had a strength in its strength, a resource which I knew not of, till it failed me for the second time.

It was not till I saw the axe laid to the root, that I found the full extent of what I had to lose and suffer. But my conviction of the right was only established by the triumph of the wrong; and my earliest hopes will be my last regrets. One source of this unbendingness, (which some may call obstinacy,) is that, though living much alone, I have never worshipped the Echo. I see plainly enough that black is not white, that the grass is green, that kings are not their subjects; and, in such self-evident cases, do not think it necessary to collate my opinions with the received prejudices. In subtler questions, and matters that admit of doubt, as I do not impose my opinion on others without a reason, so I will not give up mine to them without a better reason; and a person calling me names, or giving himself airs of authority, does not convince me of his having taken more pains to find out the truth than I have, but the contrary. Mr. Gifford once said, that ‘while I was sitting over my gin and tobacco-pipes, I fancied myself a Leibnitz.’ He did not so much as know that I had ever read a metaphysical book:—was I therefore, out of complaisance or deference to him, to forget whether I had or not? I am rather disappointed, both on my own account and his, that Mr. Hunt has missed the opportunity of explaining the character of a friend, as clearly as he might have done. He is puzzled to reconcile the shyness of my pretensions with the inveteracy and sturdiness of my principles. I should have thought they were nearly the same thing. Both from disposition and habit, I can assume nothing in word, look, or manner. I cannot steal a march upon public opinion in any way. My standing upright, speaking loud, entering a room gracefully, proves nothing; therefore I neglect these ordinary means of recommending myself to the good graces and admiration of strangers, (and, as it appears, even of philosophers and friends). Why? Because I have other resources, or, at least, am absorbed in other studies and pursuits. Suppose this absorption to be extreme, and even morbid, that I have brooded over an idea till it has become a kind of substance in my brain, that I have reasons for a thing which I have found out with much labour and pains, and to which I can scarcely do justice without the utmost violence of exertion (and that only to a few persons,)—is this a reason for my playing off my 325out-of-the-way notions in all companies, wearing a prim and self-complacent air, as if I were ‘the admired of all observers?’ or is it not rather an argument, (together with a want of animal spirits,) why I should retire into myself, and perhaps acquire a nervous and uneasy look, from a consciousness of the disproportion between the interest and conviction I feel on certain subjects, and my ability to communicate what weighs upon my own mind to others? If my ideas, which I do not avouch, but suppose, lie below the surface, why am I to be always attempting to dazzle superficial people with them, or smiling, delighted, at my own want of success?

What I have here stated is only the excess of the common and well-known English and scholastic character. I am neither a buffoon, a fop, nor a Frenchman, which Mr. Hunt would have me to be. He finds it odd that I am a close reasoner and a loose dresser. I have been (among other follies) a hard liver as well as a hard thinker; and the consequences of that will not allow me to dress as I please. People in real life are not like players on a stage, who put on a certain look or costume, merely for effect. I am aware, indeed, that the gay and airy pen of the author does not seriously probe the errors or misfortunes of his friends—he only glances at their seeming peculiarities, so as to make them odd and ridiculous; for which forbearance few of them will thank him. Why does he assert that I was vain of my hair when it was black, and am equally vain of it now it is grey, when this is true in neither case? This transposition of motives makes me almost doubt whether Lord Byron was thinking so much of the rings on his fingers as his biographer was. These sort of criticisms should be left to women. I am made to wear a little hat, stuck on the top of my head the wrong way. Nay, I commonly wear a large slouching hat over my eyebrows; and if ever I had another, I must have twisted it about in any shape to get rid of the annoyance. This probably tickled Mr. Hunt’s fancy, and retains possession of it, to the exclusion of the obvious truism, that I naturally wear ‘a melancholy hat.’

I am charged with using strange gestures and contortions of features in argument, in order to ‘look energetic.’ One would rather suppose that the heat of the argument produced the extravagance of the gestures, as I am said to be calm at other times. It is like saying that a man in a passion clenches his teeth, not because he is, but in order to seem, angry. Why should everything be construed into air and affectation? With Hamlet, I may say, ‘I know not seems.’

Again, my old friend and pleasant ‘Companion’ remarks it, as an anomaly in my character, that I crawl about the Fives Court like a 326cripple till I get the racket in my hand, when I start up as if I was possessed with a devil. I have then a motive for exertion; I lie by for difficulties and extreme cases. Aut Cæsar aut nullus. I have no notion of doing nothing with an air of importance, nor should I ever take a liking to the game of battledoor and shuttlecock. I have only seen by accident a page of the unpublished Manuscript relating to the present subject, which I dare say is, on the whole, friendly and just, and which has been suppressed as being too favourable, considering certain prejudices against me.

In matters of taste and feeling, one proof that my conclusions have not been quite shallow or hasty, is the circumstance of their having been lasting. I have the same favourite books, pictures, passages that I ever had: I may therefore presume that they will last me my life—nay, I may indulge a hope that my thoughts will survive me. This continuity of impression is the only thing on which I pride myself. Even L——, whose relish of certain things is as keen and earnest as possible, takes a surfeit of admiration, and I should be afraid to ask about his select authors or particular friends, after a lapse of ten years. As to myself, any one knows where to have me. What I have once made up my mind to, I abide by to the end of the chapter. One cause of my independence of opinion is, I believe, the liberty I give to others, or the very diffidence and distrust of making converts. I should be an excellent man on a jury: I might say little, but should starve ‘the other eleven obstinate fellows’ out. I remember Mr. Godwin writing to Mr. Wordsworth, that ‘his tragedy of Antonio could not fail of success.’ It was damned past all redemption. I said to Mr. Wordsworth that I thought this a natural consequence; for how could any one have a dramatic turn of mind who judged entirely of others from himself? Mr. Godwin might be convinced of the excellence of his work; but how could he know that others would be convinced of it, unless by supposing that they were as wise as himself, and as infallible critics of dramatic poetry—so many Aristotles sitting in judgment on Euripides! This shows why pride is connected with shyness and reserve; for the really proud have not so high an opinion of the generality as to suppose that they can understand them, or that there is any common measure between them. So Dryden exclaims of his opponents with bitter disdain—

I have not sought to make partisans, still less did I dream of making enemies; and have therefore kept my opinions myself, whether they were currently adopted or not. To get others to come into our 327ways of thinking, we must go over to theirs; and it is necessary to follow, in order to lead. At the time I lived here formerly, I had no suspicion that I should ever become a voluminous writer; yet I had just the same confidence in my feelings before I had ventured to air them in public as I have now. Neither the outcry for or against moves me a jot: I do not say that the one is not more agreeable than the other.

Not far from the spot where I write, I first read Chaucer’s Flower and Leaf, and was charmed with that young beauty, shrouded in her bower, and listening with ever-fresh delight to the repeated song of the nightingale close by her—the impression of the scene, the vernal landscape, the cool of the morning, the gushing notes of the songstress,

is as vivid as if it had been of yesterday; and nothing can persuade me that that is not a fine poem. I do not find this impression conveyed in Dryden’s version, and therefore nothing can persuade me that that is as fine. I used to walk out at this time with Mr. and Miss L—— of an evening, to look at the Claude Lorraine skies over our heads, melting from azure into purple and gold, and to gather mushrooms, that sprung up at our feet, to throw into our hashed mutton at supper. I was at that time an enthusiastic admirer of Claude, and could dwell for ever on one or two of the finest prints from him hung round my little room; the fleecy flocks, the bending trees, the winding streams, the groves, the nodding temples, the air-wove hills, and distant sunny vales; and tried to translate them into their lovely living hues. People then told me that Wilson was much superior to Claude. I did not believe them. Their pictures have since been seen together at the British Institution, and all the world have come into my opinion. I have not, on that account, given it up. I will not compare our hashed mutton with Amelia’s; but it put us in mind of it, and led to a discussion, sharply seasoned and well sustained, till midnight, the result of which appeared some years after in the Edinburgh Review. Have I a better opinion of those criticisms on that account, or should I therefore maintain them with greater vehemence and tenaciousness? Oh no! Both rather with less, now that they are before the public, and it is for them to make their election.

It is in looking back to such scenes that I draw my best consolation for the future. Later impressions come and go, and serve to fill up the intervals; but these are my standing resource, my true classics. If I have had few real pleasures or advantages, my ideas, 328from their sinewy texture, have been to me in the nature of realities; and if I should not be able to add to the stock, I can live by husbanding the interest. As to my speculations, there is little to admire in them but my admiration of others; and whether they have an echo in time to come or not, I have learned to set a grateful value on the past, and am content to wind up the account of what is personal only to myself and the immediate circle of objects in which I have moved, with an act of easy oblivion,

The London Weekly Review.] [April 5, 1828.

I am much surprised at Lord Byron’s haste to return a volume of Spenser, which was lent him by Mr. Hunt, and at his apparent indifference to the progress and (if he pleased) advancement of poetry up to the present day. Did he really think that all genius was concentred in his own time, or in his own bosom? With his pride of ancestry, had he no curiosity to explore the heraldry of intellect? or did he regard the Muse as an upstart—a mere modern bluestocking and fine lady? I am afraid that high birth and station, instead of being (as Mr. Burke predicates,) ‘a cure for a narrow and selfish mind,’ only make a man more full of himself, and, instead of enlarging and refining his views, impatient of any but the most inordinate and immediate stimulus. I do not recollect, in all Lord Byron’s writings, a single recurrence to a feeling or object that had ever excited an interest before; there is no display of natural affection—no twining of the heart round any object: all is the restless and disjointed effect of first impressions, of novelty, contrast, surprise, grotesque costume, or sullen grandeur. His beauties are the houris of Paradise, the favourites of a seraglio, the changing visions of a feverish dream. His poetry, it is true, is stately and dazzling, arched like a rainbow, of bright and lovely hues, painted on the cloud of his own gloomy temper—perhaps to disappear as soon! It is easy to account for the antipathy between him and Mr. Wordsworth. Mr. Wordsworth’s poetical mistress is a Pamela; Lord Byron’s an Eastern princess or a Moorish maid. It is the extrinsic, the uncommon that captivates him, and all the rest he holds in sovereign contempt. This is the obvious result of pampered luxury and high-born sentiments. The mind, like the 329palace in which it has been brought up, admits none but new and costly furniture. From a scorn of homely simplicity, and a surfeit of the artificial, it has but one resource left in exotic manners and preternatural effect. So we see in novels, written by ladies of quality, all the marvellous allurements of a fairy tale, jewels, quarries of diamonds, giants, magicians, condors and ogres.^[55] The author of the Lyrical Ballads describes the lichen on the rock, the withered fern, with some peculiar feeling that he has about them: the author of Childe Harold describes the stately cypress, or the fallen column, with the feeling that every schoolboy has about them. The world is a grown schoolboy, and relishes the latter most. When Rousseau called out—‘Ah! voila de la pervenche!’ in a transport of joy at sight of the periwinkle, because he had first seen this little blue flower in company with Madame Warens thirty years before, I cannot help thinking, that any astonishment expressed at the sight of a palm-tree, or even of Pompey’s Pillar, is vulgar compared to this! Lord Byron, when he does not saunter down Bond-street, goes into the East: when he is not occupied with the passing topic, he goes back two thousand years, at one poetic, gigantic stride! But instead of the sweeping mutations of empire, and the vast lapses of duration, shrunk up into an antithesis, commend me to the ‘slow and creeping foot of time,’ in the commencement of Ivanhoe, where the jester and the swine-herd watch the sun going down behind the low-stunted trees of the forest, and their loitering and impatience make the summer’s day seem so long, that we wonder how we have ever got to the end of the six hundred years that have passed since! That where the face of nature has changed, time should have rolled on its course, is but a common-place discovery; but that where all seems the same, (the long rank grass, and the stunted oaks, and the innocent pastoral landscape,) all should have changed—this is to me the burthen and the mystery. The ruined pile is a memento and a monument to him that reared it—oblivion has here done but half its work; but what yearnings, what vain conflicts with its fate come over the soul in the other case, which makes man seem like a grasshopper—an insect of the hour, and all that he is, or that others have been—nothing!

The London Weekly Review.] [December 13, 1828.

We sometimes deceive ourselves, and think worse of human nature than it deserves, in consequence of judging of character from names, and classes, and modes of life. No one is simply and absolutely any one thing, though he may be branded with it as a name. Some persons have expected to see his crimes written in the face of a murderer, and have been disappointed because they did not, as if this impeached the distinction between virtue and vice. Not at all. The circumstance only showed that the man was other things, and had other feelings besides those of a murderer. If he had nothing else,—if he had fed on nothing else,—if he had dreamt of nothing else, but schemes of murder, his features would have expressed nothing else: but this perfection in vice is not to be expected from the contradictory and mixed nature of our motives. Humanity is to be met with in a den of robbers; nay, modesty in a brothel. Even among the most abandoned of the other sex, there is not unfrequently found to exist (contrary to all that is generally supposed) one strong and individual attachment, which remains unshaken to the last. Virtue may be said to steal, like a guilty thing, into the secret haunts of vice and infamy; it clings to their devoted victim, and will not be driven quite away. Nothing can destroy the human heart. Again, there is a heroism in crime, as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have also their altars and their religion. This makes nothing in their favour, but is a proof of the heroical disinterestedness of man’s nature, and that whatever he does, he must fling a dash of romance and sublimity into it; just as some grave biographer has said of Shakespeare, that ‘even when he killed a calf, he made a speech and did it in a great style.’

It is then impossible to get rid of this original distinction and contradictory bias, and to reduce everything to the system of French levity and Epicurean indifference. Wherever there is a capacity of conceiving of things as different from what they are, there must be a principle of taste and selection—a disposition to make them better, and a power to make them worse. Ask a Parisian milliner if she does not think one bonnet more becoming than another—a Parisian 337dancing-master if French grace is not better than English awkwardness—a French cook if all sauces are alike—a French blacklegs if all throws are equal on the dice? It is curious that the French nation restrict rigid rules and fixed principles to cookery and the drama, and maintain that the great drama of human life is entirely a matter of caprice and fancy. No one will assert that Raphael’s histories, that Claude’s landscapes are not better than a daub: but if the expression in one of Raphael’s faces is better than the most mean and vulgar, how resist the consequence that the feeling so expressed is better also? It does not appear to me that all faces or all actions are alike. If goodness were only a theory, it were a pity it should be lost to the world. There are a number of things, the idea of which is a clear gain to the mind. Let people, for instance, rail at friendship, genius, freedom, as long as they will—the very names of these despised qualities are better than anything else that could be substituted for them, and embalm even the most envenomed satire against them. It is no small consideration that the mind is capable even of feigning such things. So I would contend against that reasoning which would have it thought that if religion is not true, there is no difference between mankind and the beasts that perish;—I should say, that this distinction is equally proved, if religion is supposed to be a mere fabrication of the human mind; the capacity to conceive it makes the difference. The idea alone of an over-ruling Providence, or of a future state, is as much a distinctive mark of a superiority of nature, as the invention of the mathematics, which are true,—or of poetry, which is a fable. Whatever the truth or falsehood of our speculations, the power to make them is peculiar to ourselves.

The contrariety and warfare of different faculties and dispositions within us has not only given birth to the Manichean and Gnostic heresies, and to other superstitions of the East, but will account for many of the mummeries and dogmas both of Popery and Calvinism,—confession, absolution, justification by faith, &c.; which, in the hopelessness of attaining perfection, and our dissatisfaction with ourselves for falling short of it, are all substitutes for actual virtue, and an attempt to throw the burthen of a task, to which we are unequal or only half disposed, on the merits of others, or on outward forms, ceremonies, and professions of faith. Hence the crowd of

If we do not conform to the law, we at least acknowledge the jurisdiction of the court. A person does wrong; he is sorry for it; and as he still feels himself liable to error, he is desirous to make 338atonement as well as he can, by ablutions, by tithes, by penance, by sacrifices, or other voluntary demonstrations of obedience, which are in his power, though his passions are not, and which prove that his will is not refractory, and that his understanding is right towards God. The stricter tenets of Calvinism, which allow of no medium between grace and reprobation, and doom man to eternal punishment for every breach of the moral law, as an equal offence against infinite truth and justice, proceed (like the paradoxical doctrine of the Stoics) from taking a half-view of this subject, and considering man as amenable only to the dictates of his understanding and his conscience, and not excusable from the temptations and frailty of human ignorance and passion. The mixing up of religion and morality together, or the making us accountable for every word, thought, or action, under no less a responsibility than our everlasting future welfare or misery, has also added incalculably to the difficulties of self-knowledge, has superinduced a violent and spurious state of feeling, and made it almost impossible to distinguish the boundaries between the true and false, in judging of human conduct and motives. A religious man is afraid of looking into the state of his soul, lest at the same time he should reveal it to Heaven; and tries to persuade himself that by shutting his eyes to his true character and feelings, they will remain a profound secret both here and hereafter. This is a strong engine and irresistible inducement to self-deception; and the more zealous any one is in his convictions of the truth of religion, the more we may suspect the sincerity of his pretensions to piety and morality.

Thus, though I think there is very little downright hypocrisy in the world, I do think there is a great deal of cant—‘cant religious, cant political, cant literary,’ &c. as Lord Byron said. Though few people have the face to set up for the very thing they in their hearts despise, we almost all want to be thought better than we are, and affect a greater admiration or abhorrence of certain things than we really feel. Indeed, some degree of affectation is as necessary to the mind as dress is to the body; we must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all. There was formerly the two hours’ sermon, the long-winded grace, the nasal drawl, the uplifted hands and eyes; all which, though accompanied with some corresponding emotion, expressed more than was really felt, and were in fact intended to make up for the conscious deficiency. As our interest in anything wears out with time and habit, we exaggerate the outward symptoms of zeal as mechanical helps to devotion, dwell the longer on our words as they are less felt, and hence the very origin of the term, cant. The cant of sentimentality has succeeded to that of religion. There is a cant of humanity, of patriotism and loyalty—not 339that people do not feel these emotions, but they make too great a fuss about them, and drawl out the expression of them till they tire themselves and others. There is a cant about Shakespeare. There is a cant about Political Economy just now. In short, there is and must be a cant about everything that excites a considerable degree of attention and interest, and that people would be thought to know and care rather more about than they actually do. Cant is the voluntary overcharging or prolongation of a real sentiment; hypocrisy is the setting up a pretension to a feeling you never had and have no wish for. Mr. Coleridge is made up of cant, that is, of mawkish affectation and sensibility; but he has not sincerity enough to be a hypocrite, that is, he has not hearty dislike or contempt enough for anything, to give the lie to his puling professions of admiration and esteem for it. The fuss that Mr. Liberal Snake makes about Political Economy is not cant, but what Mr. Theodore Hook politely calls humbug; he himself is hardly the dupe of his own pompous reasoning, but he wishes to make it the stalking-horse of his ambition or interest to sneak into a place and curry favour with the Government....

The Atlas.] [March 8, 1829.

As there are two kinds of rhyme, one that is rhyme to the ear, and another to the eye only; so there may be said to be two kinds of poetry, one that is a description of objects to those who have never seen or but slightly studied them; the other is a description of objects addressed to those who have seen and are intimately acquainted with them, and expressing the feeling which is the result of such knowledge. It is needless to add that the first kind of poetry is comparatively superficial and common-place; the last profound, lofty, nay often divine. Take an example (one out of a thousand) from Shakspeare. In enumerating the wished-for contents of her basket of flowers, Perdita in the Winter’s Tale mentions among others——

340This passage which knocks down John Bull with its perfumed and melting softness, and savours of ‘that fine madness which our first poets had,’ is a mystery, an untranslateable language, to all France: Racine could not have conceived what it was about—the stupidest Englishman feels a certain pride and pleasure in it. What a privilege (if that were all) to be born on this the cloudy and poetical side of the Channel! We may in part clear up this contradiction in tastes by the clue above given. The French are more apt at taking the patterns of their ideas from words; we, who are slower and heavier, are obliged to look closer at things before we can pronounce upon them at all, which in the end perhaps opens a larger field both of observation and fancy. Thus the phrase ‘violets dim,’ to those who have never seen the object, or who, having paid no attention to it, refer to the description for their notion of it, seems to convey a slur rather than a compliment, dimness being no beauty in itself; so this part of the story would not have been ventured upon in French or tinsel poetry. But to those who have seen, and been as it were enamoured of the little hedge-row candidate for applause, looking at it again and again (as misers contemplate their gold—as fine ladies hang over their jewels), till its image has sunk into the soul, what other word is there that (far from putting the reader out of conceit with it) so well recals its deep purple glow, its retired modesty, its sullen, conscious beauty? Those who have not seen the flower cannot form an idea of its character, nor understand the line without it. Its aspect is dull, obtuse, faint, absorbed; but at the same time soft, luxurious, proud, and full of meaning. People who look at nature without being sensible to these distinctions and contrarieties of feeling, had better (instead of the flower) look only at the label on the stalk. Connoisseurs in French wines pretend to know all these depths and refinements of taste, though connoisseurs in French poetry pretend to know them not. To return to our text——

How bizarre! cries one hypercritic. What far-fetched metaphors! exclaims another. We shall not dwell on the allusion to ‘Cytherea’s breath,’ it is obvious enough: but how can the violet’s smell be said to be ‘sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes?’ Oh! honeyed words, how ill understood! And is there no true and rooted analogy between our different sensations, as well as a positive and literal identity? Is there not a sugared, melting, half-sleepy look in some eyelids, like the luscious, languid smell of flowers? How otherwise 341express that air of scorn and tenderness which breathes from them? Is there not a balmy dew upon them which one would kiss off? Speak, ye lovers! if any such remain in these degenerate days to take the part of genuine poetry against cold, barren criticism; for poetry is nothing but an intellectual love——Nature is the poet’s mistress, and the heart in his case lends words and harmonious utterance to the tongue.——Again, how full of truth and pity is the turn which is given to the description of the pale and faded primrose, watching for the sun’s approach as for the torch of Hymen! Milton has imitated this not so well in ‘cowslips wan that hang the pensive head.’ Cowslips are of a gold colour, rather than wan. In speaking of the daffodils, it seems as if our poet had been struck with these ‘lowly children of the ground’ on their first appearance, and seeing what bright and unexpected guests they were at that cold, comfortless season, wondered how ‘they came before the swallow (the harbinger of summer) dared,’ and being the only lovely thing in nature, fancied the winds of March were taken with them, and tamed their fury at the sight. No one but a poet who has spent his youth in the company of nature could so describe it, as no reader who has not experienced the same elementary sensations, their combinations and contrasts, can properly enter into it when so described. The finest poetry, then, is not a paradox nor a trite paraphrase; but a bold and happy enunciation of truths and feelings deeply implanted in the mind——Apollo, the god of poetry and day, evolving the thoughts of the breast, as he does the seed from the frozen earth, or enables the flower to burst its folds. Poetry is, indeed, a fanciful structure; but a fanciful structure raised on the ground-work of the strongest and most intimate associations of our ideas: otherwise, it is good for nothing, vox et preterea nihil. A literal description goes for nothing in poetry, a pure fiction is of as little worth; but it is the extreme beauty and power of an impression with all its accompaniments, or the very intensity and truth of feeling, that pushes the poet over the verge of matter-of-fact, and justifies him in resorting to the licence of fiction to express what without his ‘winged words’ must have remained for ever untold. Thus the feeling of the contrast between the roughness and bleakness of the winds of March and the tenderness and beauty of the flowers of spring is already in the reader’s mind, if he be an observer of nature: the poet, to show the utmost extent and conceivable effect of this contrast, feigns that the winds themselves are sensible of it and smit with the beauty on which they commit such rude assaults. Lord Byron, whose imagination was not of this compound character, and more wilful than natural, produced splendid exaggerations. Mr. Shelley, who felt the want of originality without 342the power to supply it, distorted every thing from what it was, and his pen produced only abortions. The one would say that the sun was a ‘ball of dazzling fire;’ the other, not knowing what to say, but determined ‘to elevate and surprize,’ would swear that it was black. This latter class of poetry may be denominated the Apocalyptical.

The Atlas.] [March 15, 1829.

This is one of those subjects on which the human understanding has played the fool, almost as egregiously, though with less dire consequences, than on many others; or rather one on which it has not chosen to exert itself at all, being hoodwinked and led blindfold by mere precedent and authority. Scholars who have made and taught from English grammars were previously and systematically initiated in the Greek and Latin tongues, so that they have, without deigning to notice the difference, taken the rules of the latter and applied them indiscriminately and dogmatically to the former. As well might they pretend that there is a dual number in the Latin language because there is one in the Greek.

The Definitions alone are able to corrupt a whole generation of ingenuous youth. They seem calculated for no other purpose than to mystify and stultify the understanding, and to inoculate it betimes with a due portion of credulity and verbal sophistry. After repeating them by rote, to maintain that two and two makes five is easy, and a thing of course. What appears most extraordinary is that notwithstanding the complete exposure of their fallacy and nonsense by Horne Tooke and others, the same system and method of instruction should be persisted in; and that grammar succeeds grammar and edition edition, re-echoing the same point-blank contradictions and shallow terms. Establishments and endowments of learning (which subsist on a ‘foregone conclusion’) may have something to do with it; independently of which, and for each person’s individual solace, the more senseless the absurdity and the longer kept up, the more reluctant does the mind seem to part with it, whether in the greatest things or mere trifles and technicalities; for in the latter, as the retracting an error could produce no startling sensation, and be accompanied with no redeeming enthusiasm, its detection must be a pure loss and pitiful mortification. One might suppose, that out of so many persons as have their attention directed to this subject, some few would find out their mistake and protest against the common practice; but the greater 343the number of professional labourers in the vineyard, who seek not truth but a livelihood, and can pay with words more currently than with things, the less chance must there be of this, since the majority will always set their faces against it, and insist upon the old Mumpsimus in preference to the new Sumpsimus. A schoolmaster who should go so far out of his way as to take the Diversions of Purley for a text-book, would be regarded by his brethren of the rod as ‘a man of Ind,’ and would soon have the dogs of the village bark at him. It is said without blushing, by both masters and ushers who do not chuse to be ‘wise above what is written,’ that a noun is the name of a thing, i.e. substance, as if love, honour, colour, were the names of substances. An adjective is defined to be the name of a quality; and yet in the expressions, a gold snuff-box, a wooden spoon, an iron chest, &c., the words gold, wooden, iron, are allowed by all these profound writers, grammarians, and logicians, to be essentially adjectives. A verb is likewise defined to be a word denoting being, action, or suffering; and yet the words being, action, suffering (or passion), are all substantives; so that these words cannot be supposed to have any reference to the things whose names they bear, if it be the peculiar and sole office of the verb to denote them. If a system were made in burlesque and purposely to call into question and expose its own nakedness, it could not go beyond this, which is gravely taught in all seminaries, and patiently learnt by all school-boys as an exercise and discipline of the intellectual faculties. Again, it is roundly asserted that there are six cases (why not seven?) in the English language; and a case is defined to be a peculiar termination or inflection added to a noun to show its position in the sentence. Now in the Latin language there are no doubt a number of cases, inasmuch as there are a number of inflections;^[56] and for the same reason (if words have a meaning) in the English Language there are none, or only one, the genitive; because if we except this, there is no inflection or variety whatever in the terminations. Thus to instance in the present noun—A case, Of a case, To a case, A case, O case, From a case—they tell you that the word case is here its own nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, and ablative, though the deuce of any case—that is inflection of the noun—is there in the case. Nevertheless, many a pedagogue would swear till he was black in the face that it is so; and would lie awake many a restless night boiling with rage and vexation that any one should be so lost to shame and reason as to suspect that there is here also a distinction without a difference. In strictness, in the Latin word there are only four, casus, casui, casum, casu; and the rest are conceded out of 344uniformity with other cases where the terminations are six times varied:^[57] but why insist on the full complement, where there is no case in the whole language (but for the arbitrary one already excepted) to bear it out? Again, it is agreed on all hands, that English nouns have genders. Except with a few, where the termination is borrowed from another language, such as Empress, &c., there is no possibility of generally telling the sex implied from the form of the termination: but men looking at the point with their Latin eyes, see genders wherever they have been accustomed to find them in a foreign tongue. The difference of sex is vernacularly conveyed in English by a different word—man, woman, stag, deer, king, queen, &c.; and there is no such thing as conventional gender in neutral things—house, church, field, and so on. All this might be excusable as a prejudice or oversight; but then why persist in it in the thirty-eighth edition of a standard book published by the great firm in Paternoster-row? We sometimes think mankind have a propensity to lying not more in matters-of-fact than theory. They maintain what they know to be without a shadow of foundation, and in the sheer spirit of contradiction, or because they hate to be convinced. In the same manner as the cases and genders of nouns, the whole ramification of the verb is constructed, and hung up for the admiration of the credulous upon the ideal of the Latin and Greek verb, with all its tenses, persons, moods, and participles, whether there be anything more than a mere skeleton of a resemblance to suspend all this learned patch-work upon or not. ‘I love, thou lovest he loves; we, ye, they love.’ There is a difference in the three first, so that from announcing the verb, you know the prefix; but in the three last, what difference is there, what sign of separation from one another, or from the first person singular? ‘I loved’ is the past tense doubtless: it is a difference of inflection denoting time: but ‘I did love, I have loved, I will, can, shall, would love,’ are not properly tenses or moods of the verb love, but other verbs with the infinitive or participle of the first verb appended to them. Thus is our irregular verb professionally licked into regularity and shape. When the thing is wanting it is supplied by the name. Empedocles was a cobbler, even when he did not cobble. A conjunction is held to be a part of speech without any meaning in itself, but that serves to connect sentences together, such as that, and, &c. It is proved by Mr. Horne Tooke, that the conjunction that is no other than the pronoun that (with the words thing or proposition understood)—as and is the imperative of the old Saxon verb anandad (to add), upon a similar principle—‘I say this and (or add) that’—and though it is above fifty years since this luminous discovery was published to the world, no hint of 345it has crept into any Grammar used in schools, and by authority. It seems to be taken for granted that all sound and useful knowledge is by rote, and that if it ceased to be so, the Church and State might crumble to pieces like the conjunctions and and that. There may be some truth in that.

It is strange that Mr. Horne Tooke, with all his logical and etymological acuteness, should have been so bad a metaphysician as to argue that all language was merely a disjointed tissue of names of objects (with certain abbreviations), and that he should have given or attempted no definition of the verb. He barely hints at it in one place, viz.—that the verb is quod loquimur, the noun de quo; that is, the noun expresses the name of any thing or points out the object; the verb signifies the opinion or will of the speaker concerning it. What then becomes of the infinitive mood, which neither affirms, denies, nor commands any thing, but is left like a log of wood in the high road of grammar, to be picked up by the first jaunting-car of ‘winged words’ that comes that way with its moods, persons, and tenses, flying, and turned to any use that may be wanted? Mr. Tooke was in the habit of putting off his guests at Wimbledon with promising to explain some puzzle the following Sunday; and he left the world in the dark as to the definition of the verb, much in the same spirit of badinage and mystery. We do not know when the deficiency is likely to be supplied, unless it has been done by Mr. Fearn in his little work called Anti-Tooke. We have not seen the publication, but we know the author to be a most able and ingenious man, and capable of lighting upon nice distinctions which few but himself would ever dream of. An excess of modesty, which doubts every thing, is much more favourable to the discovery of truth than that spirit of dogmatism which presumptuously takes every thing for granted; but at the same time it is not equally qualified to place its conclusions in the most advantageous and imposing light; and we accordingly too often find our quacks and impostors collecting a crowd with their drums, trumpets, and placards of themselves at the end of a street, while the ‘still, small’ pipe of truth and simplicity is drowned in the loud din and bray, or forced to retire to a distance to solace itself with its own low tones and fine-drawn distinctions. Having touched upon this subject, we may be allowed to add that some of our most eminent writers, as, for instance, Mr. Maculloch with his Principles of Political Economy, and Mr. Mill with his Elements of Political Economy, remind us of two barrel-organ grinders in the same street, playing the same tune and contending for precedence and mastery. What is Mozart to any of the four?

The Atlas.] [April 5, 1829.

This celebrated wit and character lived to a great age, and retained his spirit and faculties to the last. In person he did not at all answer to Mr. Cobbett’s description of authors, as a lean, starveling, puny race—‘men made after supper of a cheese-paring’—he was large, robust, portly, and florid; or in Chaucer’s phrase,

In his latter years he was blind, and had his head close shaved; and as he sat bare-headed, presented the appearance of a fine old monk—a Luther or a Friar John, with the gravity of the one and the wit and fiery turbulence of the other. Peter had something clerical in his aspect: he looked like a venerable father of poetry, or an unworthy son of the church, equally fitted to indict a homily and preach a crusade, or to point an epigram, and was evidently one of those children of Momus in whom the good things of the body had laid the foundation of and given birth to the good things of the mind. He was one of the few authors who did not disappoint the expectations raised of them on a nearer acquaintance; and the reason probably was what has been above hinted at, namely, that he did not take to this calling from nervous despondency and constitutional poverty of 349spirit, but from the fulness and exuberance of his intellectual resources and animal spirits. Our satirist was not a mere wit, but a man of strong sense and observation, critical, argumentative, a good declaimer, and with a number of acquirements of various kinds. His poetry, instead of having absorbed all the little wit he had (which is so often the case), was but ‘the sweepings of his mind.’ He said just as good things every hour in the day. He was the life and soul of the company where he was—told a story admirably, gave his opinion freely, spoke equally well, and with thorough knowledge of poetry, painting, or music, could ‘haloo an anthem’ with stentorian lungs in imitation of the whole chorus of children at St. Paul’s, or bring the black population of the West Indies before you like a swarm of flies in a sugar-basin, by his manner of describing their antics and odd noises. Dr. Wolcot’s conversation was rich and powerful (not to say overpowering)—there was an extreme unction about it, but a certain tincture of grossness. His criticism was his best. We remember in particular his making an excellent analysis of Dryden’s Alexander’s Feast in a controversy on its merits with Mr. Curran; and as a specimen of his parallelisms between the sister-arts, he used to say of Viotti (the celebrated violin-player), that ‘he was the Michael Angelo of the fiddle.’ He had a heresy in painting, which was, that Claude Lorraine was inferior to Wilson; but the orthodox believers were obliged to be silent before him. A short time before his death he had a private lodging at Somers’ Town, where he received a few friends. He sat and talked familiarly and cheerfully, asking you whether you thought his head would not make a fine bust? He had a decanter of rum placed on the table before him, from which he poured out a glass-full as he wanted it and drank it pure, taking no other beverage, but not exceeding in this. His infirmities had made no alteration in his conversation, except perhaps a little more timidity and hesitation; for blindness is the lameness of the mind. He could not see the effect of what he said lighting up the countenances of others; and in this case, the tongue may run on the faster, but hardly so well. After coffee, which he accompanied with the due quantity of merum sal, he would ask to be led down into a little parlour below, which was hung round with some early efforts of his own in landscape-painting, and with some of Wilson’s unfinished sketches. Though he could see them no longer, otherwise than in his mind’s eye, he was evidently pleased to be in the room with them, as they brought back former associations. Youth and age seem glad to meet as it were on the last hill-top of life, to shake hands once more and part for ever! He spoke slightingly of his own performances (though they were by no means contemptible), but launched out with great 350fervour in praise of his favourite Wilson, and in disparagement of Claude, enlarging on the fine broad manner and bold effects of the one, and on the finical littleness of the other, and ‘making the worse appear the better reason.’ It was here we last parted with this fine old man, and it is with mixed pleasure and regret we turn to the subject. Peter Pindar, besides his vein of comic humour, excelled when he chose in the serious and pathetic; and his ‘Lines to a Fly drowned in Treacle,’ and ‘To an Expiring Taper,’ are among his best pieces.

The Atlas.] [April 12, 1829.

Much has been said and written of the importance of logic to the advancement of truth and learning, but not altogether convincingly. Its use is chiefly confined by some to being a guide to the mind when first feeling its way out of the night of ignorance and barbarism, or a curb to the wilful and restive spirit that is a rebel to reason and common sense. But the extent of the benefit in either case may be doubted; since the rude and uninstructed will not submit to artificial trammels, or get up into this go-cart of the understanding, and the perverse and obstinate will jump out of it whenever their prejudices or passions are wound up to a height to make its restraints necessary. The wilful man will have his way in spite of the dictates of his reason or the evidence of his senses either. The study of logic has been compared to the getting ready and sharpening the tools with which the mind works out the truth; but all that is of value in it is more like the natural use of our hands, or resembles the mould in which truth must be cast, and which is born with us, rather than an external instrument with which it must be fashioned; for all syllogisms reduce themselves either to identical propositions, or to certain forms and relations of ideas in the understanding, which are antecedent to, and absolutely govern, our conclusions with the rules for drawing them. The mind cannot make an instrument to make truth, as it contrives an instrument to make a certain object; for in the latter case, the object depends upon the act and will of the mind; but in the former, the mind is passive to the impression of given objects upon it, and this depends on certain laws over which it has itself no control. Logic at best only lays down the rules and laws by which our reason operates; but it must operate according to those rules and laws equally whether they are adverted to or not, or they could not be laid down as infallible. Truth is, in a word, the shape which our 351ideas take in the moulds of the understanding, just as the potter’s clay derives its figure (whether round or square) from the mould in which it is cast. Thus, if we are told that one wine-glass is less than another, and that the larger wine-glass is less than a third, we know that the third wine-glass is larger than the first, without either comparing them or having any general rule to prove it by. We can no more conceive it otherwise, or do away that regular gradation and proportion between the objects so defined and characterised, than we can imagine the same thing to grow bigger and become less at the same time. Reasoning is allowed (at least by the schoolmen and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, though not by our wise sceptical moderns) to be the linking of one judgment on to two others: this and that being given, why then something else follows. Thus, suppose two roads to take a diverging direction, you are sure, without measuring, that the farther you go in the one, the farther you get from the other. You know that you advance: you infer that you recede. Now the difficulty lies here—if the premises are the same with the conclusion, it amounts only to an identical proposition: if they are different, what is the connection between them? But in the example just given, there are two circumstances, or properties, stated at the outset of the question, viz.—not merely the existence, but the direction, of the road; and to sustain the inference, all that seems necessary is, that both these circumstances should be borne in mind. For if the road do not continue to diverge, the conclusion will not hold good; and if it still continue to diverge, what is this but saying, not only that it advances, but that it advances in a direction which, by the supposition, carries it farther at every step from the former road? That is, two things are affirmed of a given object; the mind sets out with a complex proposition, and what it has to do is not to forget one half of it by the way. It would be long enough before the abstract idea of a road would imply its distance from another; but it would also be hard if a diverging road—that is, a road that recedes while it advances—did not recede. A mathematical line and its direction are not two things, like the feet of a pair of compasses—that while the line is moving one way, the direction may be going astray in another—but mutually implied and inseparably connected together in nature or the understanding—let the realists or idealists determine which they please. Or, as the wise man said to the daughter of King Cophetua, ‘That which is, is; for what is that but that, and is but is?’^[58] The worst 352of the matter is, that the most important conclusions are not to be so easily enclosed in pews and forms of words and definitions; and that to catch the truth as it flies, is as nice a point as hedging the cuckoo: though they say that its wings have been lately clipped and a pound built for it somewhere in Westminster. Not to proceed farther in this subject, and get ‘over shoes, over boots’ in the mire of metaphysics, we shall conclude this article with what we meant to state at the commencement of it, to wit—that the commonest form of the syllogism is the worst of all, being a downright fallacy and petitio principii. It consists in including the individual in the species, and runs thus: ‘All men are mortal; John is a man; therefore John is mortal.’ Let any one deny this at his peril; but what is, or can be gained by such parroting? The first branch of the premises takes for granted and supposes that you already know all that you want to prove in the conclusion. For before you are entitled to assert roundly that all men are mortal, you must know this of John in particular, who is a man, which is the point you are labouring to establish; or, if you do not know this of every individual man, and of John among the rest, then you have no right to make such a sweeping general assertion, which falls to the ground of itself. Either the premises are hasty or false, and the conclusion rotten that way; or if they be sound, and proved as matter-of-fact to the extent which is pretended, then you have anticipated your conclusion, and your syllogism is pedantic and superfluous. In fact, this form of the syllogism is an unmeaning play upon words, or resolves itself into the merely probable or analogical argument, that because all other men have died, John, who is one of of them, will die also. The inference relating to historical truth, and founded on the customary connection between cause and effect, is very different from logical proof, or the impossibility of conceiving of certain things otherwise than as inseparable. Suppose I see a row of pillars before me, and that I chuse to affirm—‘Those hundred pillars 353are all of white marble; the pillar directly facing me is one of the hundred; therefore that pillar is also of white marble’—would not this be arrant trifling both with my own understanding and with that of any one who had patience to hear me? But if I were to see a number of pillars resembling each other in outward appearance, and on examining all of them but one, found them of white marble and concluded that that one was of white marble too, there would be some common sense in this, but no logic. The mind, however, has a natural bias to wrap up its conclusions (of whatever kind or degree) in regular forms of words, and to deposit them in an imposing framework of demonstration; it prefers the shadow of certainty to the substance of truth and candour; and will not, if it can help it, leave a single loop-hole for doubt to creep in at. Hence the tribe of logicians, dogmatists, and verbal pretenders of all sorts.

The Atlas.] [April 26, 1829.

This celebrated wit and orator in his latter days was a little in the back-ground. He had lodgings at Brompton; and riding into town one day, and hearing two gentlemen in the Park disputing about Mathews’s Curran, he said—‘In faith, it’s the only Mr. Curran, that is ever talked of now-a-days.’ He had some qualms about certain peccadillos of his past life, and wanted to make confessors of his friends. Certainly, a monastery is no unfit retreat for those who have been led away by the thoughtless vivacity of youth, and wish to keep up the excitement by turning the tables on themselves in age. The crime and the remorse are merely the alternations of the same passionate temperament. Mr. Curran had a flash of the eye, a musical intonation of voice, such as we have never known excelled. Mr. Mathews’s imitation of him, though it had been much admired, does not come up to the original. Some of his bursts of forensic eloquence deserve to be immortal, such as that appalling expression applied to a hired spy and informer, that he ‘had been buried as a man, and was dug up a witness.’ A person like this might find language to describe the late shots at Edinburgh. Mr. Curran did not shine so much in Parliament; but he sometimes succeeded admirably in turning the laugh against his opponents. He compared the situation of government after they had brought over a member of Opposition to their side, and found the renegado of no use to them, to the story of the country-gentleman who bought Punch and complained of his turning out dull company. Some of 354Mr. Curran’s bon-mots and sallies of humour were first-rate. He sometimes indulged in poetry, in which he did not excel. His taste in it was but indifferent. He neither liked Paradise Lost nor Romeo and Juliet. He had an ear for music, and both played and sung his native ballads delightfully. He contended that the English had no national music. He was an enthusiastic admirer of Mrs. Siddons. He said of John Kemble, that, ‘he had an eye rather to look at than to look with.’ His great passion was a love of English literature and the society of literary men. He occasionally found his account in it. Being one day in a group of philosophers, and the invention of fire being spoken of, one of the party suggested that it was from seeing a horse’s shoe strike fire; ‘and I suppose,’ said Curran triumphantly, ‘the horse-shoe was afterwards made with that fire.’

The Atlas.] [June 7, 1829.

M.—Have you seen the Court Journal?

G.—No: I only read some ‘Maxims on Love,’ which I seemed to have met with in some pre-existent work.

M.—Then you may tell C— from me it will not last three months. People of fashion do not want to read accounts of themselves, written by those who know nothing of the matter. This eternal babble about high life is an affront to every one else, and an impertinence with respect to those whom it is stupidly meant to flatter. What do those care about tiresome descriptions of satin ottomans and ormolu carvings, who are sick of seeing them from morning till night? No! they would rather read an account of Donald Bean Lean’s Highland cave, strewed with rushes, or a relation of a row in a night-cellar in St. Giles’s. What they and all mankind want, is to vary the monotonous round of their existence; to go out of themselves as much as possible; and not to have their own oppressive and idle pretensions served up to them again in a hash of mawkish affectation. They read Cobbett—it is like an electrical shock to them, or a plunge in a cold-bath: it braces while it jars their enervated fibres. He is a sturdy, blunt yeoman: the other is a foppish footman, dressed up in cast-off finery. Or if Lord L—— is delighted with a description (not well-done) of his own house and furniture, do you suppose that Lord H——, who is his rival in gewgaws and upholstery, will not be equally uneasy at it? As to the vulgar, what they like is to see fine sights and not to hear of them. They like to get inside a fine house, to see fine 355things and touch them if they dare, and not to be tantalized with a vapid inventory, which does not gratify their senses, and mortifies their pride and sense of privation. The exaggerated admiration only makes the exclusion more painful: it is like a staring sign to a show which one has not money in one’s pocket to pay for seeing. Mere furniture or private property can never be a subject to interest the public: the possessor is entitled to the sole benefit of it. If there were an account in the newspaper that all this finery was burnt to ashes, then all the world would be eager to read it, saying all the time how sorry they were, and what a shocking thing it was.

G.—Servants and country people always turn to the accidents and offences in a newspaper.

M.—And their masters and mistresses too. Did you never read the Newgate Calendar?

G.—Yes.

M.—Well, that is not genteel. This is what renders the Beggar’s Opera so delightful; you despise the actors in the scene, and yet the wit galls and brings down their betters from their airy flight with all their borrowed plumage, so that we are put absolutely at our ease for the time with respect to our own darling pretensions. G—— was here the other evening; he said he thought the Beggar’s Opera came after Shakspeare. I wonder who put that in his head; it was hardly his own discovery.

G.—It seems neither Lord Byron nor Burke liked the Beggar’s Opera.

M.—They were the losers by that opinion: but how do you account for it?

G.—Lord Byron was a radical peer, Burke an upstart plebeian; neither of them felt quite secure in the niche where they had stationed themselves from the random-shots that were flying on the stage. They could not say with Hamlet, ‘Our withers are unwrung.’ As to Lord Byron, he might not relish the point of Mrs. Peachum’s speech, ‘Married a highwayman! Why, hussey, you will be as ill-treated and as much neglected as if you had married a lord!’ Did you ever hear the story of Miss ——, when she was quite a girl, going to see Mrs. Siddons in the Fatal Marriage, and being taken out fainting into the lobby, and calling out, ‘Oh Biron, Biron!’—‘Egad!’ said the cool narrator of the story, ‘she has had enough of Byron since!’ With regard to Burke, there was a rotten core, a Serbonian bog in his understanding, in which not only Gay’s masterpiece but the whole of what modern literature, wit, and reason had done for the world, sunk and was swallowed up in a fetid abyss for ever! But I am sorry you think no better of the Court Journal. I was in hopes 356it might succeed, as a very old friend of mine has something to do with it.

M.—Oh! but mischief must be put a stop to. This is the most nauseous toad-eating, and it is as awkwardly done as it is ill-meant. There is a fulsome pretence set up in one paper that rank consists in birth and blood. It is at once to neutralise all the present race of fashion. The civil wars of York and Lancaster put an end to almost all the old nobility—there are none of the Plantagenets left now. Those who go to court think themselves lucky if they can trace as far back as the Nell Gwynns and Duchess of Clevelands in Charles the Second’s days. Besides, all this prejudice about nobility and ancestry should be understood and worshipped in silence and at a distance, not thrown in the teeth of such people, as if they had nothing else to boast of. They should be told of perfections which they have not, as you praise a wit for her beauty and a fool for her wit. Your friend should read Count Grammont to learn how to flatter and cajole. Does not Mr. C—— know enough from experience of the desire of lords and ladies to turn authors, and shine, not in a ballroom, but on his counter?

G.—He expects the K—— to write; nay, it was with difficulty he was dissuaded from offering a round sum.

M.—How much, pray?

G.—Five thousand guineas for half a page.

M.—It would not sell a single copy. People would think it was a hoax and would not buy it. Those who believed it would not read it. Oh! there is a letter of Louis XVIII. in a late number, on the death of some lady he was attached to: it is prettily done, but it is such good English, that I suspect it can hardly be a translation or an original. If they could procure curious documents of this kind, and had a magazine of the secrets, anecdotes, and correspondence of people of high rank, undoubtedly it would answer; but this would be another edition of the Jockey Club, and very different from its present insipidity. Even children will not be crammed with honey.

G.—I understand there is to be no scandal. All the great are to be supposed to be elegantly good, and to wear virtue with a grace peculiar to people of fashion.

M.—That will at any rate be new. And then I see there are criticisms on pictures: the writer is thrown into raptures with the portraits of Lord and Lady Castlereagh. And this is followed by a drawling, pitiable account of two little Corregios, as if they were miracles and had descended from heaven—the ‘Madonna’ and ‘Mercury teaching Cupid to read.’ They are well enough, though Sir Joshua has done the same thing better. But higher praise could not 357be lavished on the ‘St. Jerome’ or the ‘Night at Dresden,’ or the ‘Ceiling at Parma,’ which is his best, though it has fallen into decay.

G.—Collectors think one Corregio just as good as another; and it is to meet this feeling, probably, that the article is written.

The Atlas.] [June 14, 1829.

The epithet of the late could not be applied to this celebrated character in the sense in which it has been turned upon some late wits and dinner-hunters as never being in time; if he had a fault, it was that of being precipitate and premature, of sitting down to the banquet which he had prepared for others before it was half-done; of seeing things with too quick and hasty a glance, of finding them in embryo, and leaving them too often in an unfinished state. This turn of his intellect had to do with his natural temper—he was impatient, somewhat peevish and irritable in little things, though not from violence or acerbity, but from seeing what was proper to be done quicker than others, and not liking to wait for an absurdity. On great and trying occasions, he was calm and resigned, having been schooled by the lessons of religion and philosophy, or, perhaps, from being, as it were, taken by surprise, and never having been accustomed to the indulgence of strong passions or violent emotions. His frame was light, fragile, neither strong nor elegant; and in going to any place, he walked on before his wife (who was a tall, powerful woman) with a primitive simplicity, or as if a certain restlessness and hurry impelled him on with a projectile force before others. His personal appearance was altogether singular and characteristic. It belonged to the class which may be called scholastic. His feet seemed to have been entangled in a gown, his features to have been set in a wig or taken out of a mould. There was nothing to induce you to say with the poet, that ‘his body thought’; it was merely the envelop of his mind. In his face there was a strange mixture of acuteness and obtuseness; the nose was sharp and turned up, yet rounded at the end, a keen glance, a quivering lip, yet the aspect placid and indifferent, without any of that expression which arises either from the close workings of the passions or an intercourse with the world. You discovered the prim, formal look of the Dissenter—none of the haughtiness of the churchman nor the wildness of the visionary. He was, in fact, always the student in his closet, moved in or out, as it happened, with no perceptible variation: 358he sat at his breakfast with a folio volume before him on one side and a note-book on the other; and if a question were asked him, answered it like an absent man. He stammered, spoke thick, and huddled his words ungracefully together. To him the whole business of life consisted in reading and writing; and the ordinary concerns of this world were considered as a frivolous or mechanical interruption to the more important interests of science and of a future state. Dr. Priestley might, in external appearance, have passed for a French priest, or the lay-brother of a convent: in literature, he was the Voltaire of the Unitarians. He did not, like Mr. Southey, to be sure (who has been denominated the English Voltaire,) vary from prose to poetry, or from one side of a question to another; but he took in a vast range of subjects of very opposite characters, treated them all with the same acuteness, spirit, facility, and perspicuity, and notwithstanding the intricacy and novelty of many of his speculations, it may be safely asserted that there is not an obscure sentence in all he wrote. Those who run may read. He wrote on history, grammar, law, politics, divinity, metaphysics, and natural philosophy—and those who perused his works fancied themselves entirely, and were in a great measure, masters of all these subjects. He was one of the very few who could make abstruse questions popular; and in this respect he was on a par with Paley with twenty times his discursiveness and subtlety. Paley’s loose casuistry, which is his strong-hold and chief attraction, he got (every word of it) from Abraham Tucker’s Light of Nature. A man may write fluently on a number of topics with the same pen, and that pen a very blunt one; but this was not Dr. Priestley’s case; the studies to which he devoted himself with so much success and eclat required different and almost incompatible faculties. What for instance can be more distinct or more rarely combined than metaphysical refinement and a talent for experimental philosophy? The one picks up the grains, the other spins the threads of thought. Yet Dr. Priestley was certainly the best controversialist of his day, and one of the best in the language; and his chemical experiments (so curious a variety in a dissenting minister’s pursuits) laid the foundation and often nearly completed the superstructure of most of the modern discoveries in that science. This is candidly and gratefully acknowledged by the French chemists, however the odium theologicum may slur over the obligation in this country, or certain fashionable lecturers may avoid the repetition of startling names. Priestley’s Controversy with Dr. Price is a masterpiece not only of ingenuity, vigour, and logical clearness, but of verbal dexterity and artful evasion of difficulties, if any one need a model of this kind. His antagonist stood no chance with him in ‘the dazzling 359fence of argument,’ and yet Dr. Price was no mean man. We should like to have seen a tilting-bout on some point of scholastic divinity between the little Presbyterian parson and the great Goliath of modern Calvinism, Mr. Irving; he would have had his huge Caledonian boar-spear, his Patagonian club out of his hands in a twinkling with his sharp Unitarian foil. The blear-eyed demon of vulgar dogmatism and intolerance would have taken his revenge by gnashing his teeth, rolling his eyes in a resistless phrenzy, and denouncing as out of the pale of Christian charity a man who placed his chief comfort in this life in his hope of the next, and who would have walked firmly and cheerfully to a stake in the fulness of his belief of the Christian revelation. Out upon these pulpit demigorgons, ‘Anthropagi and men who eat each other,’ to gratify the canine malice and inward gnawing of their morbid understandings, and worse than the infuriated savage, not contented to kill the body, would ‘cast both body and soul into hell;’ and unless they can see from their crazy thrones of spiritual pride and mountebank effrontery, the whole world cowering like one outstretched congregation in a level sea of bare heads and upturned wondering looks at their feet, prone and passive, and aghast under the thunders of their voice, the flashes of their eye—would snatch Heaven’s own bolt to convert the solid globe into a sea of fire to torture millions of their fellow-creatures in for the slightest difference of opinion from them, or dissent from the authority of a poor, writhing, agonised reptile, who works himself up in imagination by raving and blasphemy into a sort of fourth person in the Trinity, and would avenge his mortified ambition, his moonstruck-madness, and ebbing popularity as the wrongs of the Most High!—‘Nay, an you mouth, we’ll rant as well as you!’—To return to Dr. Priestley and common sense, if it be possible to get down these from the height of melo-dramatic and apocalyptic orthodoxy. We do not place the subject of this notice in the first class of metaphysical reasoners either for originality or candour: but in boldness of inquiry, quickness, and elasticity of mind, and ease in making himself understood, he had no superior. He had wit too, though this was a resource to which he resorted only in extreme cases. Mr. Coleridge once threw a respectable dissenting congregation into an unwonted forgetfulness of their gravity, by reciting a description, from the pen of the transatlantic fugitive, of the manner in which the first man might set about making himself, according to the doctrine of the Atheists. Mr. Coleridge put no marks of quotation either before or after the passage, which was extremely grotesque and ludicrous; but imbibed the whole of the applause it met with in his flickering smiles and oily countenance. Dr. Priestley’s latter years 360were unhappily embittered by his unavailing appeals to the French philosophers in behalf of the Christian religion; and also by domestic misfortunes, to which none but a Cobbett could have alluded in terms of triumph. We see no end to the rascality of human nature; all that there is good in it is the constant butt of the base and brutal.

The Atlas.] [August 2, 1829.

We from our souls sincerely hate all cabals and coteries; and this is our chief objection to sects and parties. People who set up to judge for themselves on every question that comes before them, and quarrel with received opinions and established usages, find so little sympathy from the rest of the world that they are glad to get any one to agree with them, and with that proviso the poorest creature becomes their Magnus Apollo. The mind sets out indeed in search of truth and on a principle of independent inquiry; but is so little able to do without leaning on someone else for encouragement and support, that we presently see those who have separated themselves from the mere mob, and the great masses of prejudice and opinion, forming into little groups of their own and appealing to one another’s approbation, as if they had secured a monopoly of common sense and reason. Wherever two or three of this sort are gathered together, there is self-conceit in the midst of them. ‘You grant me judgment, and I grant you wit’—is the key-note from which an admirable duett, trio, or quartett of the understanding may be struck up at any time to the entire satisfaction of the parties concerned, though the bye-standers may be laughing at or execrating the unwelcome discord. The principle of all reform is this, that there is a tendency to dogmatism, to credulity and intolerance in the human mind itself, as well as in certain systems of bigotry or superstition; and until reformers are themselves aware of, and guard carefully against, the natural infirmity which besets them in common with all others, they must necessarily run into the error which they cry out against. Without this self-knowledge and circumspection, though the great wheel of vulgar prejudice and traditional authority may be stopped or slackened in its course, we shall only have a number of small ones of petulance, contradiction, and partisanship set a-going to our frequent and daily annoyance in its place: or (to vary the figure) instead of crowding into a common stage-coach or hum-drum vehicle of opinion to arrive at a conclusion, every man will be for mounting his own velocipede, run up against his neighbours, and exhaust his breath and agitate his 361limbs in vain. In Mr. Bentham’s Book of Fallacies we apprehend are not to be found the crying sins of singularity, rash judgment, and self-applause. What boots it, we might ask, to get rid of tests and subscription to thirty-nine articles of orthodox belief, if, in lieu of this wholesale and comprehensive mode of exercising authority over our fellows, a Dogma is placed upon the table at breakfast time, sits down with us to dinner, or is laid on our pillow at night, rigidly prescribing what we are to eat, drink, and how many hours we are to sleep? Or be it that the authority of Aristotle and the schoolmen is gone by, what shall the humble and serious inquirer after truth profit by it, if he still cannot say that his soul is his own for the sublime dulness of Mr. Maculloch, and the Dunciad of political economists? The imprimatur of the Star Chamber, the cum privilegio regis is taken off from printed books—what does the freedom of the press or liberality of sentiment gain, if a board of Utility at Charing Cross must affix its stamp, before a jest can find its way into a newspaper, or must knock a flower of speech on the head with the sledge-hammer of cynical reform? The cloven-foot, the overweening, impatient, exclusive spirit breaks out in different ways, in different times and circumstances. While men are quite ignorant and in the dark, they trust to others, and force you to do so under pain of fire and faggot:—when they have learned a little they think they know every thing, and would compel you to conform to that opinion, under pain of their impertinence, maledictions, and sarcasms, which are the modern rack and thumb-screw. The mode of torture, it must be confessed, is refined, though the intention is the same. Their ill-temper and want of toleration fall the hardest on their own side, for those who adhere to fashion and power care no more about their good or ill word, than about the short, unmelodious gruntings of any other sordid stye. But how is any poor devil who has got into their clutches to shelter himself from their malevolence and party-spite? Why, by enlisting under their banners, swearing to all that they say, and going all lengths with them. Otherwise, he is a black sheep in the flock, and made a butt of by the rest. This is a self-evident process. For the fewer people any sect or party have to sympathise with them, the more entire must that sympathy be: it must be without flaw or blemish, as a set-off to the numbers on the other side; and they who set up to be wiser than all the world put together, cannot afford to acknowledge themselves wrong in any particular. You must, therefore, agree to all their sense or nonsense, allow them to be judges equally of what they do or do not understand, adopt their cant, repeat their jargon, have no notions but what they have, caricature their absurdities, make yourself obnoxious for their satisfaction, and a slave 362and lacquey to their opinions, humours, and convenience; or they black-ball you, send you to Coventry, and play the devil with you. Thus, for any writer in a highly enlightened and liberal morning paper, not merely to question the grand arcanum of population or the doctrine of rent, would be both great and petty treason; but it would be as much as his place was worth, to suggest a hint that Mrs. Chatterley is not a fine woman and a charming actress. Fanatics and innovators formerly appealed in support of their dreams and extravagancies to inspiration and an inward light; the modern race of philosophical projectors, not having this resource, are obliged to fortify themselves in a double crust of confidence in themselves, and contempt for their predecessors and contemporaries. It is easy to suppose what a very repulsive sort of people they must be! Indeed, to remedy what was thought a hard exterior and an intolerable air of assumption on the part of the professors of the new school, a machine, it is said, has been completed in Mr. Bentham’s garden in Westminster, which turns out a very useful invention of jurisprudence, morals, logic, political economy, constitutions, and codifications, as infallibly and with as little variation as a barrel-organ plays ‘God save the King,’ or ‘Rule Britannia’:—nay, so well does it work and so little trouble or attendance does it require from the adepts, that the latter mean to sign a truce with gravity and ‘wise saws,’ some of them having entered at the bar, others being about to take orders in the church, others having got places in the India-house, and all being disposed to let the Bentham-machine shift for itself! Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci:—Mr. Bentham is old, and doubtless has made his will! Reformers will hardly see themselves in religious schismatics and sectarians, whom they despise. Perhaps others may be struck with the likeness. Rational dissenters, for example, think, because they alone profess the title, they alone possess the thing. All rational dissenters are with them wise and good. An Unitarian is another name for sense and honesty; and must it not be so, when to those of an opposite faith it is a name of enmity and reproach? But the intolerance on one side, though it accounts for, does not disprove the weakness on the other. We have heard of devotees who employ a serious baker, a serious tailor, a serious cobbler, etc. So there are staunch reformists who would prefer a radical compositor, a radical stationer or bookbinder, to all others; and think little of those on their side of the question who, besides adhering to a principle, have not, in their over-zeal and contempt for their adversaries, contrived to render it offensive or ridiculous. A sound practical consistency does not satisfy the wilful restlessness of the advocates of change. They must have the piquancy of startling paradoxes, the pruriency of 363romantic and ticklish situations, the pomp of itinerant professors of patriotism and placarders of their own lives, travels, and opinions. Why must a man stand up in a three-cornered hat and canonicals to bear testimony against the Christian religion, and in favour of reform? We hate all such impertinent masquerading and double entendre. Those who are accustomed to judge for themselves, and express their convictions at some risk and loss, are too apt to come from thinking that opinions may be right, though they are singular, to conclude that they are right, because they are singular. The more they differ from the world, the more convinced they are, because it flatters their self-love; and they are only quite satisfied and at their ease when they shock and disgust every one around them. They no longer consider the connexion between the conclusion and the premises, but between any idle hypothesis and their personal vanity. They cling obstinately to opinions, as they have been hastily formed; and patronize every whim that they fancy is their own. They are most confident of ‘what they are least assured;’ and will stake all they are worth on the forlorn hope of their own imaginary sagacity and clearness. An idiosyncrasy steals into every thing; their way is best. Always regarding the world at large as an old dotard, they think any single individual in it quite beneath their notice—unless it is an alter idem of the select coterie—neither consult you about their affairs, nor deign you an answer on your own, and have a model of perfection in their minds to which they refer all public and private transactions. There are methodists in business as well as in religion, who have a peculiar happy knack in folding a letter, or in saying How d’ye do, who postpone the main object to some pragmatical theory or foppish punctilio, and who might take for their motto—all for conceit or the world well lost.

The Atlas.] [September 20, 1829.

T.—Windham was very intimate with Gilray afterwards—or perhaps before; for he also had been on both sides.

J.—What I object to in Hogarth is, that he was not accomplished enough even for the task he undertook. An instance occurred the other day. A servant-girl had been decoyed from her situation, and on complaint being made before the magistrate, the officers traced her to Duke’s-place, and brought her back to her friends in Wardour-Street. She was dressed up quite in the height of the fashion; and every one that went to see her, came away astonished at her perfect 364beauty. Could Hogarth have painted this? Yet here was a scene quite in his way. He selects what is bad in St. Giles’s, not what is best in nature. That old Mother W—— lives for ever. It was she who decoyed away Emily Coventry that sat to Sir Joshua for his Thais. She was a chimney-sweeper’s daughter, or something of that kind; but she was a vast beauty, and Mother W—— found her out in spite of her rags and dirt. She had a hawk’s eye for anything of this sort. I sat facing her once in an upper box at the Opera. I never saw such an expression—her look went through you.

T.—But I suppose you looked at her again.

J.—Fielding has tried to describe Sophia as a beauty, but makes a wretched hand of it. He says first she was a beauty; and then to let you know what sort of a beauty she was, that she was like the Venus of Medici; then that her nose inclined to be Roman, which the Venus de Medici’s does not; then that she resembled Kneller’s portrait of Lady Ranelagh, which is like neither. The truth is, he did not know what she was like; nor that he could not in words give a description of beauty, which is the painter’s province.

T.—Coleridge used to remark that description was the vice of poetry, and allegory of painting.

J.—Nothing can be better said. Since you told me that remark of his about Paul and Virginia, he has risen vastly in my estimation. Again, why does the correspondent in the Atlas take me up short for saying that ‘we laugh at a person who is rolled in the gutter?’ He observes on this, ‘if it is an accident, the laughter is silly, and not a case in point; if inflicted as a punishment for some petty injustice, we do not laugh, but rub our hands.’ So that we are to laugh in neither case. Is the ridicule merited where the cobbler, in the ‘Election Dinner,’ has smutted the face of his next neighbour? Or does the cobbler laugh the less, or will he not laugh on for ever, on this account? Has not Hogarth immortalised this piece of silliness in this disgraceful scene? Who will set limits (by the author’s crambo) to the length to which he lolls out his tongue, or to the portentous rolling of his eyes in a squint of ecstasy? Is the sly leer and drooping of the widow’s eyelids, or the position of the parson’s hands in the ‘Harlot’s Funeral,’ drawing as well as character and invention? Or is the fighting of the dog and the man for the bone on a perfect footing of equality (to show that hunger levels all distinctions), or the mother letting the child fall over the wall in the ‘Gin-lane,’ or the girl in the ‘Noon,’ ‘with her pie-dish tottering like her virtue, and the contents running over,’ (as I have seen it somewhere expressed,) an example of skill in drawing? It is easy to paint a face without a nose, or with a wry one; the difficulty is to make it 365straight. Few persons can draw a circle; any one may draw a crooked line.

T.—But has not Hogarth hit off the exact character and expression; and is not that a proof of the painter’s hand and eye?

J.—It may be so; but you cannot be sure of it. The correspondent of the paper laughs at the idea of Hogarth’s coming under the article of writing. He has come under the article of writing. Does not the critic speak of his ‘immortal tales?’ Does Mr. Lamb expatiate on the drawing, colour, and effects of light and shade, or only on the moral and story? He has left out one half of the language of painting in the prints; and they are the better for it. Nor do I see what objection there is to the comparison of Hogarth to buffoons on the stage. For my part, I think Liston comes much nearer to Hogarth than Emery’s Tyke; and I am sure his Lord Grizzle is just as good in its way as anything can possibly be. Why then does the critic scout the comparison? Because it would be ridiculous to say, that Liston’s Lord Grizzle is as fine as Mrs. Siddons’s Lady Macbeth; that both fulfilled their parts equally, and that neither could do more without infringing on the integrity of their characters. Yet if the dignity of the subject is to be left out of the question, Liston may be put into the scale with Mrs. Siddons just as well as Emery; but if not, then neither one nor the other can. Any one for me may say he likes Punch and the puppet-show as well as the finest tragedy—I should think it honest and natural enough—but I hate putting up at a half-way house between farce and tragedy, and pretending that there is no difference in the case. Persons who have no taste for, but an aversion to whatever is great and elevated, are ashamed openly to patronise farce, lest they should be laughed at; and they, therefore, get something intermediate between that and tragedy, and set it up as the finest thing in the world, to escape ridicule and satisfy their own perverse inclination. It is necessary to set one’s face against such vulgar critics; for, like other vulgar people, if you do not keep them quite out, they will constantly encroach and turn you out of your most settled convictions with their mongrel theories.

T.—What is the aim of all high tragedy? It is to resolve the sense of pain or suffering into the sense of power by the aid of imagination, and by grandeur of conception and character. What is the object of Hogarth’s tragicomedy? To reverse this order: that is, he gives us the extremest distress in the most revolting circumstances and in connection with the most unfeeling and weakest characters, so as either to produce the utmost disgust or excite as little sympathy as possible. Why must maternal affection be displayed, and, as it were, 366outraged in the strength of attachment to a most brutish and worthless moon-calf of a son? The moral may be strictly true, but the mode of conveying it is no less a penance. Why must the feeling of love be exemplified in the persevering attachment of the victim of seduction to her profligate and contemptible seducer? This is essential to Hogarth’s conception of passion, that it should be at variance with its object, incongruous, and bordering on the absurd and ludicrous. Why must a fine feeling or sentiment be dragged through the kennel or stuck in the pillory before it can be tolerated in his graphic designs? There is neither unity nor grandeur. Mr. Lamb admires the expression of the losing gamester in the ‘Rake’s Progress:’ it is exactly what Liston would give in attempting such a part, and not unlike him. Why show the extreme of passion in faces unsusceptible of it, or kill the sympathy by the meanness and poverty of the associations? Mr. Lamb despises Kean’s face in Othello: I prefer it to any of Hogarth’s tragic faces, which are generally of the mock-heroic class.^[59] The Methodist preacher in the cart with the Idle Apprentice is another Mawworm, a fantastic figure, tossed about by the wind or the spirit, though the conception would be fine for a novel or written story: the apprentice himself is a scare-crow, the sport of the mob, with whose indifference you take part, not with the sufferings of the hero, if he is supposed to have any. The whole is a game at tragic cross-purposes. The sublimity (such as it is) rests on a foundation of the squalid and scurrilous. The incongruous was Hogarth’s element, and he could not get out of his own or (what is I fear) the national character, which delights in laughing at and exulting over the defects and mishaps of others, not from any concern for them, but as a foil to its own discontented humour and conscious want of higher resources. Defoe, who was in the same age and class, had more imagination. His Robinson Crusoe is in perfect keeping. He is not solitary, but solitude: from being shut out from the world, he fills the universe with himself, and his being expands to the circumference of the ocean and sky. Hogarth would have shut him up in a workhouse or a gaol, with boys hooting at him through the bars, and no escape left on the wings of the imagination or the strength of will. This may be very intense, but it is not to my taste. A disciple of this school should not go to see Madame Pasta act. He would like Madame Pesaroni better, for she is ugly, squat, and her voice is masculine and loud. The other, who is all harmony, would oppress and make him uneasy for want of some salvo to his 367self-love. Would a critic of this order like to see a tragic actress with a wooden leg? For this is Hogarth. Mr. Lamb admires Moll Flanders; would he marry Moll Flanders? There ought to be something in common in our regard for the original and the copy. A taste for the odd and eccentric eats like a canker into the mind; and if not checked, drives out all relish for the noble and consistent as stiff and pedantic. The drollery is certainly less; and if there is not some set-off in earnestness and dignity, the serious must be at a low ebb indeed, and Hudibras is finer than Paradise Lost. It would be a proof of bad taste to like to look at a mean or ill-formed face, for the sake of laughing at it, rather than at a fine one. And so in art: the representation of brutality, coarseness, and want of capacity and feeling is surely less desirable than the representation of the opposite qualities; or it is saying that you laugh at and despise a thing for falling short of a certain excellence and perfection, and when it gains that excellence and perfection, it is no better than it was before.

J.—You remember the drawing I showed you by Lane, after the ‘Possessed Boy’ of Domenichino? There was there infinite sensibility, infinite delicacy, agony with sweetness, beauty in the midst of distortion. You saw there that every fine feeling had passed through the painter’s mind, or he could not have expressed them; you were made to sympathise with them, and to understand and revere them as a part of your own nature. Compared with works like this, which are the pure mirrors of truth and beauty, Hogarth’s subjects are the very ‘measles’ of art—the scum and offal—it is like going on a voyage in a convict-ship, with an alternation of the same humours and the same horrors—it is a bad prospect for life.

T.—There is some limit. The late Edinburgh murders would not bear being transferred to the canvass, though the group at Ambrose’s would make a subject for a sketch, so nice are the distinctions of taste.

J.—The comic sets off the serious by contrast, and is a necessary relief; but how little a way does the sense of defect go towards a conception of, or power to embody the reverse! Look at Hogarth’s attempts at dignified subjects, and see how poor and feeble they are. His ‘Pool of Bethesda’ is pitiable; but in the burlesque composition, where he introduces the devil cutting away the leg of the stool on which St. Paul is preaching, he is himself again, and worthy of all imitation. The critic in the Atlas asks what I mean by originality, as if I thought it independent of any prototypes in nature? No, originality consists in seeing nature for yourself; but it does not follow that everyone can do this or is to see nature alike, or there would be nothing remarkable in it.

368T.—Crabbe is an original writer; but it is to be hoped he will have few followers. Mr. Lamb, by softening the disagreeableness of one of his tales, has taken out the sting.

J.—Hogarth is an exception to general rules; I said so before. He is the only great comic painter; and he is so for this reason—that painting is not the mother-tongue of comedy. Would not this be allowed of sculpture? I have not seen the ‘Tam O’Shanter’; but some Scotch critics are already, I hear, for exploding the antique. Painting is a dry, plodding art; a bottle-nose, if you come to examine it closely, becomes a very dull affair. We talk of a hump-back or a sore leg, which is enough of a good thing; the painter is obliged to give them entire, which is too much. Neither can he carry off this grossness by brilliancy of illustration, or rapidity of narrative. The eye and the mind take in a group or a succession of incidents in an instant; the hand follows lamely and slowly after, and naturally loses, in the mechanical details of each object, the surprise, odd starts, and contrasts, which are the life of comedy. Hogarth alone, by his double allusions, and by his giving motion (which is time) overcame this difficulty, or painted as if he were no painter, but set down each figure by a stroke of the pencil, or in a kind of short-hand of the art, being obliged to run neither into caricature nor still-life. This extreme facility or tenaciousness (amounting to a two-fold language) was his peculiar forte, and that in which he was, and will remain, unrivalled. Ducrow acts romances on horseback; but it is not the best way of acting them; and few will imitate him without breaking their necks.

T.—Do not the same remarks apply in some measure to painting history?

J.—In some measure, they do; and therefore grand and dignified subjects are in general to be preferred to the more violent and distressing ones. Therefore Titian’s portraits are on a par with history. You who admire Titian, how you must look at Hogarth! You see they avoid the sight of blood even on the stage. In short, it is a question, whether low and disagreeable subjects are fit to be painted; and Sir Joshua, among others, did not much approve of them. It is not a question whether grace and grandeur are fit subjects for painting—this alone settles the preference, and is some excuse for the author of the Discourses in perhaps making it a little too exclusive. If it were true that Hogarth is universal, or contains the highest kind of excellence, no one would dispute about him. After all, a hurdygurdy is neither a lute nor an organ.

The Atlas] [September 27 and October 4, 1829.

I. There is no flattery so gross or extravagant but it will be acceptable. It leaves some sting of pleasure behind, since its very excess seems to imply that there must be some foundation for it. Tell the ugliest person in the world that he is the handsomest, the greatest fool that he is a wit, and he will believe and thank you. There is a possibility at least that you may be sincere. Even the sycophant’s 371ironical laugh turns to a smile of self-complacency at our own fancied perfections.

II. There is no abuse so foul or unprovoked but some part of it will stick. Ill words break the charm of good deeds. Call a man names all the year round, and at the end of the year (for no other reason) his best friends will not care to mention his name. It is no pleasant reflection that a man has been accused, however unjustly, of a folly or a crime. We involuntarily associate words with things; and the imagination retains an unfavourable impression long after the understanding is disabused. Or if we repel the charge and resent the injustice, this is making a toil of a pleasure, and our cowardice and indolence soon take part with the malice of mankind. The assailants are always the more courageous party. It degrades a man even to be subjected to undeserved reproach, for it seems as if without some flaw or blemish no one would dare to attack him; so that the viler and more unprincipled the abuse, the lower it sinks, not him who offers, but him who is the object of it, in general estimation. If we see a man covered with mud we avoid him without expressing the cause. The favourites of the public, like Cæsar’s wife, must not be suspected; and it is enough if we admire and bear witness to the superiority of another under the most favourable circumstances—to do this in spite of secret calumny and vulgar clamour is a pitch of generosity which the world has not arrived at.

III. A certain manner makes more conquests than either wit or beauty. Suppose a woman to have a graceful ease of deportment, and a mild self-possession pervading every look and tone of voice; this exercises an immediate influence on a person of an opposite and irritable temperament—it calms and enchants him at once. It is like soft music entering the room—from that time he can only breathe in her presence, and to be torn from her is to be torn from himself for ever.

IV. Fame and popularity are disparate quantities, having no common measure. A poet or painter now living may be as great as any poet or painter that ever did live; and if he be so, he will be so thought of by future ages, but he cannot by the present. Persons of overweening vanity and short-sighted ambition, who would forestall the meed of fame, show themselves unworthy of it, for they reduce it to a level with the reputation they have already earned. They should surely leave something to look forward to. It is weighing dross against gold—comparing a meteor with the polar star. Lord Byron’s narrowness or presumption in this respect was remarkable. 372What! did he not hope to live two hundred years himself, that he should say it was merely a fashion to admire Milton and Shakspeare as it was the fashion to admire him? Those who compare Sir Walter Scott with Shakspeare do not know what they are doing. They may blunt the feeling with which we regard Shakspeare as an old and tried friend, though they cannot transfer it to Sir Walter Scott, who is, after all, but a new and dazzling acquaintance. To argue that there is no difference in the circumstances is not to put the author of ‘Waverley’ into actual possession of the reversion of fame, but to say that he shall never enjoy it, since it is no better than a chimera and an illusion. It is striking at the foundation of true and lasting renown, and overturning with impatient and thoughtless hands the proud pre-eminence, the golden seats and blest abodes which the predestined heirs of immortality wait for beyond the tomb. The living are merely candidates (more or less successful) for popular applause, the dead are a religion, or they are nothing.

V. Persons who tell an artist that he is equal to Claude, or a writer that he is as great as Bacon, do not add to the satisfaction of their hearers, but pay themselves a left-handed compliment, by supposing that their judgment is equivalent to the suffrage of posterity.

VI. A French artist advised young beginners against being too fond of a variety of colours, which might do very well on a smaller scale, but when they came to paint a large picture they would find they had soon lavished all their resources. So superficial writers may deck out their barren round of common-places in the finest phrases imaginable; but those who are accustomed to work out a subject by dint of study, must not use up their whole stock of eloquence at once, they must bring forward their most appropriate expressions as they approach nearer to the truth, and raise their style with their thoughts. A good general keeps his reserve, the élite of his troops, to charge at the critical moment.

VII. ‘Procrastination is the thief of time.’ It is singular that we are so often loth to begin what gives us great satisfaction in the progress, and what, after we have once begun it, we are as loth to leave off. The reason is, that the imagination is not excited till the first step is taken or the first blow is struck. Before we begin a certain task, we have little notion how we shall set about it, or how we shall proceed: it is like attempting something of which we have no knowledge, and which we feel we are incapable of doing. It is no wonder, therefore, that a strong repugnance accompanies this seeming inaptitude: it is having to make bricks without straw. But 373after the first effort is over, and we have turned our minds to the subject, one thing suggests another, our ideas pour in faster than we can use them, and we launch into the stream which bears us on with ease and pleasure to ourselves. The painter who did not like to mix his colours or begin on a new canvas in the morning, sees the light close in upon him with unwilling eyes; and the essayist, though gravelled for a thought, or at a loss for words at the outset of his labours, winds up with alacrity and spirit.

VIII. Conversation is like a game at tennis, or any other game of skill. A person shines in one company who makes no figure in another—just as a tolerably good cricketer, who might be an acquisition to a country club, would have his wicket struck down at the first bowl at Lord’s-ground. The same person is frequently dull at one time and brilliant at another: sometimes those who are most silent at the beginning of an entertainment are most loquacious at the end. There is a run in the luck both in cards and conversation. Some people are good speakers but bad hearers: these are put out, unless they have all the talk to themselves. Some are best in a tête-à-tête; others in a mixed company. Some persons talk well on a set subject, who can hardly answer a common question, still less pay a compliment or make a repartee. Conversation may be divided into the personal or the didactic: the one resembles the style of a lecture, the other that of a comedy. There are as many who fail in conversation from aiming at too high a standard of excellence, and wishing only to utter oracles or jeux-d’esprit, as there are who expose themselves from having no standard at all, and saying whatever comes into their heads. Pedants and gossips compose the largest class. Numbers talk on without paying any attention to the effect they produce upon their audience: some few take no part in the discourse but by assenting to everything that is said, and these are not the worst companions in the world. An outcry is sometimes raised against dull people, as if it were any fault of theirs. The most brilliant performers very soon grow dull, and we like people to begin as they end. There is then no disappointment nor false excitement. The great ingredient in society is good-will. He who is pleased with what he himself has to say, and listens in his turn with patience and good-humour, is wise and witty enough for us. We do not covet those parties where one wit dares not go, because another is expected. How delectable must the encounter of such pretenders be to one another! How edifying to the bye-standers!

IX. It was well said by Mr. Coleridge, that people never improve by contradiction, but by agreeing to differ. If you discuss a question 374amicably you may gain a clear insight into it; if you dispute about it you only throw dust in one another’s eyes. In all angry or violent controversy, your object is not to learn wisdom, but to prove your adversary a fool; and in this respect, it must be admitted, both parties usually succeed.

X. Envy is the ruling passion of mankind. The explanation is obvious. As we are of infinitely more importance in our own eyes than all the world beside, the chief bent and study of the mind is directed to impress others with this self-evident but disputed distinction, and to arm ourselves with the exclusive signatures and credentials of our superiority, and to hate and stifle all that stands in the way of, or obscures, our absurd pretensions. Each individual looks upon himself in the light of a dethroned monarch, and the rest of the world as his rebellious subjects and runaway slaves, who withhold the homage that is his natural due, and burst the chains of opinion he would impose upon them: the madman in Hogarth (sooth to say), with his crown of straw and wooden sceptre, is but a type and common-place emblem of every-day life.

XI. It has been made a subject of regret that in forty or fifty years’ time (if we go on as we have done) no one will read Fielding. What a falling off! Already, if you thoughtlessly lend Joseph Andrews to a respectable family, you find it returned upon your hands as an improper book. To be sure, people read ‘Don Juan’; but that is in verse. The worst is, that this senseless fastidiousness is more owing to an affectation of gentility than to a disgust at vice. It is not the scenes that are described at an alehouse, but the alehouse at which they take place that gives the mortal stab to taste and refinement. One comfort is, that the manners and characters which are objected to as low in Fielding have in a great measure disappeared or taken another shape; and this at least is one good effect of all excellent satire—that it destroys ‘the very food whereon it lives.’ The generality of readers, who only seek for the representation of existing models, must therefore, after a time, seek in vain for this obvious verisimilitude in the most powerful and popular works of the kind; and will be either disgusted or at a loss to understand the application. People of sense and imagination, who look beyond the surface or the passing folly of the day, will always read Tom Jones.

XII. There is a set of critics and philosophers who have never read anything but what has appeared within the last ten years, and to whom every mode of expression or turn of thought extending beyond that period has a very odd effect. They cannot comprehend how 375people used such out-of-the-way phrases in the time of Shakspeare; the style of Addison would not do now—even Junius, they think, would make but a shabby thread-bare figure in the columns of a modern newspaper—all the riches that the language has acquired in the course of time, all the idiomatic resources arising from study or accident, are utterly discarded—sink under-ground: and all that is admired by the weak or sought after by the vain, is a thin surface of idle affectation and glossy innovations. Even spelling and pronunciation have undergone such changes within a short time, that Pope and Swift require a little modernizing to accommodate them to ‘ears polite;’ and that a bluestocking belle would be puzzled in reciting Dryden’s sounding verse with its occasional barbarous, old-fashioned accenting, if it were the custom to read Dryden aloud in those serene, morning circles. There is no class more liable to set up this narrow superficial standard, than people of fashion, in their horror of what is vulgar and ignorance of what really is so; they have a jargon of their own, but scout whatever does not fall in with it as Gothic and outré; the English phrases handed down from the last age they think come east of Temple-bar, and they perform a sedulous quarantine against them. The Times, having found it so written in some outlandish depêche of the Marquis of Wellesley’s, chose as a mark of the haute literature, to spell dispatch with an e, and for a long time he was held for a novice or an affected and absolute writer who spelt it otherwise. The Globe, with its characteristic good sense and sturdiness of spirit has restored the old English spelling in defiance of scandal. Some persons who were growing jealous that the author of Waverley had eclipsed their favourite luminaries may make themselves easy; he himself is on the wane with those whose opinions ebb and flow with the ‘inconstant moon’ of fashion, and has given way (if Mr. Colburn’s advertisements speak true, ‘than which what’s truer?’) to a set of titled nonentities. Nothing solid is to go down, or that is likely to last three months; instead of the standing dishes of old English literature we are to take up with the nicknacks and whipt syllabubs of modern taste; are to be occupied with a stream of titlepages, extracts, and specimens, like passing figures in a camera obscura, and are to be puzzled in a mob of new books as in the mob of new faces in what was formerly the narrow part of the Strand.

XIII. Never pity people because they are ill-used. They only wait the opportunity to use others just as ill. Hate the oppression and prevent the evil if you can; but do not fancy there is any virtue in being oppressed, or any love lost between the parties. The unfortunate are not a jot more amiable than their neighbours, though they 376give themselves out so, and our pity takes part with those who have disarmed our envy.

XIV. The human mind seems to improve, because it is continually in progress. But as it moves forward to new acquisitions and trophies, it loses its hold on those which formerly were its chief boast and employment. Men are better chemists than they were, but worse divines; they read the newspapers, it is true, but neglect the classics. Everything has its turn. Neither is error extirpated so much as it takes a new form and puts on a more artful disguise. Folly shifts its ground, but finds its level: absurdity is never left without a subterfuge. The dupes of dreams and omens in former times, are now the converts to graver and more solemn pieces of quackery. The race of the sanguine, the visionary, and the credulous, of those who believe what they wish, or what excites their wonder, in preference to what they know, or can have rationally explained, will never wear out; and they only transfer their innate love of the marvellous from old and exploded chimeras to fashionable theories, and the terra incognita of modern science.

XV. It is a curious speculation to take a modern belle, or some accomplished female acquaintance, and conceive what her great-great-grandmother was like, some centuries ago. Who was the Mrs. —— of the year 200? We have some standard of grace and elegance among eastern nations 3000 years ago, because we read accounts of them in history; but we have no more notion of, or faith in, our own ancestors than if we had never had any. We cut the connexion with the Druids and the Heptarchy; and cannot fancy ourselves (by any transformation) inmates of caves and woods, or feeders on acorns and sloes. We seem engrafted on that low stem—a bright, airy, and insolent excrescence.

XVI. There is this advantage in painting, if there were no other, that it is the truest and most self-evident kind of history. It shows that there were people long ago, and also what they were, not in a book darkly, but face to face. It is not the half-formed clay, the old-fashioned dress, as we might conceive; but the living lineaments, the breathing expression. You look at a picture by Vandyke, and there see as in an enchanted mirror, an English woman of quality two hundred years ago, sitting in unconscious state with her child playing at her feet, and with all the dove-like innocence of look, the grace and refinement that it is possible for virtue and breeding to bestow. It is enough to make us proud of our nature and our countrywomen; and dissipates at once 377the idle, upstart prejudice that all before our time was sordid and scarce civilised. If our progress does not appear so great as our presumption has suggested, what does it signify? With such models kept in view, our chief object ought to be not to degenerate; and though the future prospect is less gaudy and imposing, the retrospect opens a larger and brighter vista of excellence.

XVII. I am by education and conviction inclined to republicanism and puritanism. In America they have both; but I confess I feel a little staggered in the practical efficacy and saving grace of first principles, when I ask myself, ‘Can they throughout the United States, from Boston to Baltimore, produce a single head like one of Titian’s Venetian nobles, nurtured in all the pride of aristocracy and all the blindness of popery?’ Of all the branches of political economy, the human face is perhaps the best criterion of value.

The Atlas.] [October 11, 1829.

Common sense is a rare and enviable quality. It may be truly said that ‘its price is above rubies.’ How many learned men, how many wits, how many geniuses, how many dull and ignorant people, how many cunning knaves, how many well-meaning fools are without it! How few have it, and how little do they or others know of it, except from the infallible results—for one of its first requisites is the utter absence of all pretension! The vulgar laugh at the pedant and enthusiast for the want of it, while they themselves mistake bigotry and narrow-minded notions for it. It is not one of the sciences, but has been well pronounced to be ‘fairly worth the seven.’ It is a kind of mental instinct, that feels the air of truth and propriety as the fingers feel objects of touch. It does not consist with ignorance, for we cannot pronounce on what we do not know; and on the other hand, the laying in a stock of knowledge, or mastering any art or science, seems to destroy that native simplicity, and to warp and trammel the unbiassed freedom of mind which is necessary to its receiving and giving their due weight to ordinary and casual impressions. Common sense is neither a peculiar talent nor a laborious acquirement, but may be regarded as a sound and impartial judgment operating on the daily practice of life, or on what ‘comes home to the business and bosoms of men’; combined with great attainments and speculative inquiries, it would justly earn the title of wisdom; but of the latter we have never known a single instance, though we have met with a few of the former; that is, we have known a number of 378persons who were wise in the affairs of the world and in what concerned their own interest, but none who, beyond this, and in judging of general questions, were not the dupes of some flaw of temper, of some weakness or vanity, or even striking advantage of their own. To give an example of two in illustration. A person may be an excellent scholar, a good mathematician, well versed in law and history, a first-rate chess-player, a dazzling fencer, in a word, a sort of admirable Crichton—you are disposed to admire or envy so many talents united—you smile to see him wanting in common sense, and getting into a dispute about a douceur to a paltry police-officer, and thinking to interest all Europe and both Houses of Parliament in his success. It is true, he has law and reason on his side, has Grotius and Puffendorf and the statutes at large doubled down in dog-ears for the occasion, has a vast and lively apparatus of well-arranged premises and conclusions ready to play off against his adversaries; but he does not consider that he has to deal with interest and custom, those impalpable, intangible essences, that ‘fear no discipline of human wit.’ Does he think to check-mate the police? Will he stop the mouth of a hungry tide-waiter with a syllogism? Or supersede a perquisite by the reductio ad absurdum? It is a want of common sense, or the not distinguishing properly between the definite and the indefinite. No one can have arrived at years of discretion without knowing or feeling that he cannot take a single step without some compromise with existing circumstances; that the path of life is intercepted with innumerable turnpike-gates, at which he must pay down the toll of his own convictions and of strict justice; that he cannot walk the streets but by tacit allowance; and that to disregard all impediments in the right line of reason and written forms is to imitate the conduct of Commodore Trunnion, who mistook the land for the sea, and went to be married by the wind and compass. The proofs of this occur every hour of the day—they may not be registered, they may not be remembered, but they are virtually and effectively noted down by the faculty of common sense, which does not feel its way the less surely because it proceeds often mechanically and blindly. There may be exceptions indeed to ordinary rules, on which a man may go to martyrdom and a stake (such as that of Hampden and ship-money), but these occur once in a century, and are only met with at the corners of streets by those who have an excess of logical discrimination, and have to pay a certain tax for being too clever by half. It is the fashion at present among the philosophical vulgar to decry feeling, both the name and the thing. It would be difficult, however, to do without it: for this word embraces all that mass of knowledge and of common sense which lies between the extremes of positive proof or 379demonstration and downright ignorance; and those who would pragmatically confine their own convictions or those of others to what is absolutely known and understood, would at best become scientific pedants and artificial barbarians. There are some persons who are the victims of argument; as there are others who are the slaves of minute details and matters of fact. One class will have a reason for every thing, and will admit the greatest absurdities that are formally proposed to them; the other must have facts to support every conclusion, and can never see an inch beyond their noses. The last have the organ of individuality largely developed, and are proportionably deficient in common sense. Their ideas are all local and literal. To borrow the language of a great but obscure metaphysician, their minds are epileptic; that is, are in perpetual throes and convulsions, fasten on every object in their way not to help but to hinder their progress, and have no voluntary power to let go their hold of a particular circumstance, to grasp the whole of any question, or suspend their judgment for an instant. The fact that is before them is every thing; the rest goes for nothing. They are always at cross-purposes with themselves, for their decisions are the result of the last evidence, without any corrective or qualifier in common sense; in the hunt after proofs, they forget their principles, and gain their point, though they lose their cause.

The Scotch have much of this matter-of-fact understanding, and bigotry to personal and actual statistics. They would persuade you that there is no country but Scotland, nothing but what is Scotch. Mr. Mac Alpine shifts the discourse from the metropolis, hurries rapidly over the midland counties, crosses the border, and sits down to an exordium in praise of the ‘kindly Scot.’ Charity has its home and hearth by Tweed-side, where he was born and bred, Scotch beggars were quite different from English beggars: there was none of the hard-heartedness towards them that was always shown in England. His mother, though not a rich woman, always received them kindly, and had a bag of meal out of which she always gave them something, as they went their rounds. ‘Lord! Mr. Mac Alpine!’ says Mrs. Mac Alpine, ‘other people have mothers as well as you, and there are beggars in England as well as Scotland. Why, in Yorkshire, where I was brought up, common beggars used to come round just as you describe, and my mother, who was no richer than yours, used to give them a crust of bread or broken victuals just in the same way; you make such a fuss about nothing.’ Women are best to set these follies to rights:—

380If no great philosophers, they do not want common sense; and are only misled in what lies beyond their sphere of feeling and observation, by taking up the opinions of their better halves. The common people in like manner do not want common sense in what falls under their especial cognizance and daily practice. A country-shoemaker or plough-man understands shoemaking, and can ‘crack of ploughs and kine,’ though he knows nothing of the Catholic question. If an old woman in a country-town believes she shall be burnt at a stake, now that this question is settled, it is because she is told so by those who ought to know better, and who impose their prejudices upon her ignorance. Vulgar errors which are taken on trust, or are traditional, or are the blunders of ignorance on points of learning, have nothing to do with common sense, which decides only on facts and feelings which have come under its own notice. Common sense and common-place are also the antipodes of each other: the one is a collection of true experiences, the other a routine of cant phrases. All affectation is the death of common sense, which requires the utmost simplicity and sincerity. Liars must be without common sense, for instead of considering what things really are, their whole time and attention are taken up in imposing false appearances on themselves and their neighbours. No conceited person can have the faculty we have been speaking of, since all objects are tinged and changed from their proper hue by the idle reflection of their fancied excellence and superiority. Great talkers are in the same predicament, for they sacrifice truth to a fine speech or sentiment, and conceal the real consequences of things from their view by a cloud of words, of empty breath. They look at nature not to study what it is, but to discover what they can say about it. Passionate people are generally thought to be devoid of judgment. They may be so, when their passions are touched to the quick; but without a certain degree of natural irritability, we do not conceive truth leaves sufficient stings in the mind, and we judge correctly of things according to the interest we take in them. No one can be a physiognomist, for example, or have an insight into character and expression, without the correspondent germs of these in his own breast. Phlegmatic C——, with all his husbandry acquirements, is but half a philosopher, half a clown. Poets, if they have not common sense, can do very well without it. What need have they to conform their ideas to the actual world, when they can create a world according to their fancy? We know of no remedy for want of tact and insight into human affairs, any more than for the defect of any other organ. Tom Jones is, we think, the best horn-book for students in this way; and if the novice should rise up no wiser from its repeated perusal, at least such an employment of his time will be 381better than playing the fool or talking nonsense. After all, the most absurd characters are those who are so, not from a want of common sense, but who act in defiance of their better knowledge. The capricious and fickle who change every moment, the perverse who aim only at what is placed out of their reach, the obstinate who pursue a losing cause, the idle and vicious who ruin themselves and every one connected with them, do it as often with their eyes open as from blind infatuation; and it is the bias of their wills, not the deficiency of their understandings, that is in fault. The greatest fools in practice are sometimes the wisest men in theory, for they have all the advantage of their own experience and self-reflection to prompt them; and they can give the best advice to others, though they do not conceive themselves bound to follow it in their own instance. Video meliora proboque, etc. Their judgments may be clear and just, but their habits and affections lie all the wrong way; and it is as useless as it would be cruel to expect them to reform, since they only delight and can only exist in their darling absurdities and daily and hourly escapades from common sense and reason.

The Atlas.] [January 31, 1830.

The Spirit of Controversy has often been arraigned as the source of much bitterness and vexation, as productive of ‘envy, malice, and all uncharitableness’: and the charge, no doubt, is too well founded. But it is said to be an ill wind that blows nobody good; and there are few evils in life that have not some qualifying circumstance attending them. It is one of the worst consequences of this very spirit of controversy that it has led men to regard things too much in a single and exaggerated point of view. Truth is not one thing, but has many aspects and many shades of difference; it is neither all black nor all white; sees something wrong on its own side, something right in others; makes concessions to an adversary, allowances for human frailty, and is nearer akin to charity than the dealers in controversy or the declaimers against it are apt to imagine. The bigot and partisan (influenced by the very spirit he finds fault with) sees nothing in the endless disputes which have tormented and occupied men’s thoughts but an abuse of learning and a waste of time: the philosopher may still find an excuse for so bad and idle a practice. One frequent objection made to the incessant wrangling and collision of sects and parties is, What does it all come to? And the answer is, What would they have done without it? The pleasure of the chase, or the benefit 382derived from it, is not to be estimated by the value of the game after it is caught, so much as by the difficulty of starting it and the exercise afforded to the body and the excitement of the animal spirits in hunting it down: and so it is in the exercises of the mind and the pursuit of truth, which are chiefly valuable (perhaps) less for their results when discovered, than for their affording continual scope and employment to the mind in its endeavours to reach the fancied goal, without its being ever (or but seldom) able to attain it. Regard the end, is an ancient saying, and a good one, if it does not mean that we are to forget the beginning and the middle. By insisting on the ultimate value of things when all is over, we may acquire the character of grave men, but not of wise ones. Passe pour cela. If we would set up such a sort of fixed and final standard of moral truth and worth, we had better try to construct life over again, so as to make it a punctum stans, and not a thing in progress; for as it is, every end, before it can be realised, implies a previous imagination, a warm interest in, and an active pursuit of, itself, all which are integral and vital parts of human existence, and it is a begging of the question to say that an end is only of value in itself, and not as it draws out the living resources, and satisfies the original capacities of human nature. When the play is over, the curtain drops, and we see nothing but a green cloth; but before this, there have been five acts of brilliant scenery and high-wrought declamation, which, if we come to plain matter-of-fact and history, are still something. According to the contrary theory, nothing is real but a blank. This flatters the paradoxical pride of man, whose motto is, all or none. Look at that pile of school divinity! Behold where the demon of controversy lies buried! The huge tomes are mouldy and worm-eaten:—did their contents the less eat into the brain, or corrode the heart, or stir the thoughts, or fill up the void of lassitude and ennui in the minds of those who wrote them? Though now laid aside and forgotten, if they had not once had a host of readers, they would never have been written; and their hard and solid bulk asked the eager tooth of curiosity and zeal to pierce through it. We laugh to see their ponderous dulness weighed in scales, and sold for waste paper. We should not laugh too soon. On the smallest difference of faith or practice discussed in them, the fate of kingdoms hung suspended; and not merely so (which was a trifle) but Heaven and Hell trembled in the balance, according to the full persuasion of our pious forefathers. Many a drop of blood flowed in the field or on the scaffold, from these tangled briars and thorns of controversy; many a man marched to a stake to bear testimony to the most frivolous and incomprehensible of their dogmas. This was an untoward consequence; but if it was an 383evil to be burnt at a stake, it was well and becoming to have an opinion (whether right or wrong) for which a man was willing to be burnt at a stake. Read Baxter’s Controversial Works: consider the flames of zeal, the tongues of fire, the heights of faith, the depths of subtlety, which they unfold, as in a darkly illuminated scroll; and then ask how much we are gainers by an utter contempt and indifference to all this? We wonder at the numberless volumes of sermons that have been written, preached, and printed on the Arian and Socinian controversies, on Calvinism and Arminianism, on surplices and stoles, on infant or adult baptism, on image-worship and the defacing of images; and we forget that it employed the preacher all the week to prepare his sermon (be the subject what it would) for the next Lord’s day, with infinite collating of texts, authorities, and arguments; that his flock were no less edified by listening to it on the following Sunday; and how many David Deans’s came away convinced that they had been listening to the ‘root of the matter’! See that group collected after service-time and pouring over the gravestones in the churchyard, from whence, to the eye of faith, a light issues that points to the skies! See them disperse; and as they take different paths homeward while the evening closes in, still discoursing of the true doctrine and the glad tidings they have heard, how ‘their hearts burn within them by the way’! Then again, we should set down, among other items in the account, how the schoolboy is put to it to remember the text, and how the lazy servant-wench starts up to find herself asleep in church-time! Such is the business of human life; and we, who fancy ourselves above it, are only so much the more taken up with follies of our own. We look down in this age of reason on those controverted points and nominal distinctions which formerly kept up such ‘a coil and pudder’ in the world, as idle and ridiculous, because we are not parties to them; but if it was the egotism of our predecessors that magnified them beyond all rational bounds, it is no less egotism in us who undervalue their opinions and pursuits because they are not ours; and, indeed, to leave egotism out of human nature, is ‘to leave the part of Hamlet out of the play of Hamlet.’ Or what are we the better with our Utilitarian Controversies, Mr. Taylor’s discourses (delivered in canonicals) against the evidence of the Christian religion, or the changes of ministry and disagreements between the Duke of Wellington and the Duke of Newcastle?

But the prevalence of religious controversy is reproached with 384fomenting spiritual pride and intolerance, and sowing heart-burnings, jealousies, and fears, ‘like a thick scurf o’er life;’ yet, had it not been for this, we should have been tearing one another to pieces like savages for fragments of raw flesh, or quarrelling with a herd of swine for a windfall of acorns under an oak-tree. The world has never yet done, and will never be able to do, without some apple of discord—some bone of contention—any more than courts of law can do without pleadings, or hospitals without the sick. When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest. Why need we regret the various hardships and persecutions for conscience-sake, when men only clung closer to their opinions in consequence? They loved their religion in proportion as they paid dear for it. Nothing could keep the Dissenters from going to a conventicle while it was declared an unlawful assembly, and was the highroad to a prison or the plantations—take away tests and fines, and make the road open and easy, and the sect dwindles gradually into insignificance. A thing is supposed to be worth nothing that costs nothing. Besides, there is always pretty nearly the same quantity of malice afloat in the world; though with the change of time and manners it may become a finer poison, and kill by more unseen ways. When the sword has done its worst, slander, ‘whose edge is sharper than the sword,’ steps in to keep the blood from stagnating. Instead of slow fires and paper caps fastened round the heads of the victims, we arrive at the same end by a politer way of nicknames and anonymous criticism. Blackwood’s Magazine is the modern version of Fox’s Book of Martyrs. Discard religion and politics (the two grand topics of controversy), and people would hate each other as cordially, and torment each other as effectually about the preference to be given to Mozart or Rossini, to Malibran or Pasta. We indeed fix upon the most excellent things, as God, our country, and our King, to account for the excess of our zeal; but this depends much less upon the goodness of our cause than on the strength of our passions, and our overflowing gall and rooted antipathy to whatever stands in the way of our conceit and obstinacy. We set up an idol (as we set up a mark to shoot at) for others to bow down to, on peril of our utmost displeasure, let the value of it be what it may——

It is, however, but fair to add, in extenuation of the evils of controversy, that if the points at issue had been quite clear, or the 385advantage all on one side, they would not have been so liable to be contested about. We condemn controversy, because we would have matters all our own way, and think that ours is the only side that has a title to be heard. We imagine that there is but one view of a subject that is right; and that all the rest being plainly and wilfully wrong, it is a shocking waste of speech, and a dreadful proof of prejudice and party spirit, to have a word to say in their defence. But this is a want of liberality and comprehension of mind. For in general we dispute either about things respecting which we are a good deal in the dark, and where both parties are very possibly in the wrong, and may be left to find out their mutual error; or about those points, where there is an opposition of interests and passions, and where it would be by no means safe to cut short the debate by making one party judges for the other. They must, therefore, be left to fight it out as well as they can; and, between the extremes of folly and violence, to strike a balance of common sense and even-handed justice. Every sect or party will, of course, run into extravagance and partiality; but the probability is, that there is some ground of argument, some appearance of right, to justify the grossest bigotry and intolerance. The fury of the combatants is excited because there is something to be said on the other side of the question. If men were as infallible as they suppose themselves, they would not dispute. If every novelty were well founded, truth might be discovered by a receipt; but as antiquity does not always turn out an old woman, this accounts for the vis inertiæ of the mind in so often pausing and setting its face against innovation. Authority has some advantages to recommend it as well as reason, or it would long ago have been scouted. Aristocracy and democracy, monarchy and republicanism, are not all pure good or pure evil, though the abettors or antagonists of each think so, and that all the mischief arises from others entertaining any doubt about the question, and insisting on carrying their absurd theories into practice. The French and English are grossly prejudiced against each other; but still the interests of each are better taken care of under this exaggerated notion than if that vast mass of rights and pretensions, which each is struggling for, were left to the tender mercies and ruthless candour of the other side. ‘Every man for himself and God for us all’ is a rule that will apply here. Controversy, therefore, is a necessary evil or good (call it which you will) till all differences of opinion or interest are reconciled, and absolute certainty or perfect indifference alike takes away the possibility or the temptation to litigation and quarrels. We need be under no immediate alarm of coming to such a conclusion. There is always room for doubt, food for contention. While we are 386engrossed with one controversy, indeed, we think every thing else is clear; but as soon as one point is settled, we begin to cavil and start objections to that which has before been taken for gospel. The Reformers thought only of opposing the Church of Rome, and never once anticipated the schisms and animosities which arose among Protestants: the Dissenters, in carrying their point against the Church of England, did not dream of that crop of infidelity and scepticism which, to their great horror and scandal, sprung up in the following age, from their claim of free inquiry and private judgment. The non-essentials of religion first came into dispute; then the essentials. Our own opinion, we fancy, is founded on a rock; the rest we regard as stubble. But no sooner is one out-work of established faith or practice demolished, than another is left a defenceless mark for the enemy, and the engines of wit and sophistry immediately begin to batter it. Thus we proceed step by step, till, passing through the several gradations of vanity and paradox, we came to doubt whether we stand on our head or our heels, alternately deny the existence of spirit and matter, maintain that black is white, call evil good and good evil, and defy any one to prove the contrary. As faith is the prop and cement that upholds society by opposing fixed principles as a barrier against the inroads of passion, so reason is the menstruum which dissolves it by leaving nothing sufficiently firm or unquestioned in our opinions to withstand the current and bias of inclination. Hence the decay and ruin of states—then barbarism, sloth, and ignorance—and so we commence the circle again of building up all that it is possible to conceive out of a rude chaos, and the obscure shadowings of things, and then pulling down all that we have built up, till not a trace of it is left. Such is the effect of the ebb and flow and restless agitation of the human mind.

The Atlas.] [February 14, 1830.

Envy is the grudging or receiving pain from any accomplishment or advantage possessed by another. It is one of the most tormenting and odious of the passions, inasmuch as it does not consist in the enjoyment or pursuit of any good to ourselves, but in the hatred and jealousy of the good fortune of others and the debarring and defrauding them of their due and what is of no use to us, on the dog in the manger principle; and it is at the same time as mean as it is revolting, as being accompanied with a sense of weakness and a desire to conceal and tamper with the truth and its own convictions, out of paltry spite and 387vanity. It is, however, but an excess or excrescence of the other passions (such as pride or avarice) or of a wish to monopolise all the good things of life to ourselves, which makes us impatient and dissatisfied at seeing any one else in possession of that to which we think we have the only fair title. Envy is the deformed and distorted offspring of egotism; and when we reflect on the strange and disproportioned character of the parent, we cannot wonder at the perversity and waywardness of the child. Such is the absorbing and exorbitant quality of our self-love, that it represents us as of infinitely more importance in our own eyes than the whole universe put together, and would sacrifice the claims and interest of all the world beside to the least of its caprices or extravagances; need we be surprised then that this little, upstart, overweening self, that would trample on the globe itself and then weep for new ones to conquer, should be uneasy, mad, mortified, eaten up with chagrin and melancholy, and hardly able to bear its own existence, at seeing a single competitor among the crowd cross its path, jostle its pretensions, and stagger its opinion of its exclusive right to admiration and superiority? This it is that constitutes the offence, that gives the shock, that inflicts the wound, that some poor creature (as we would fain suppose) whom we had before overlooked and entirely disregarded as not worth our notice, should of a sudden enter the lists and challenge comparison with us. The presumption is excessive; and so is our thirst of revenge. From the moment, however, that the eye fixes on another as the object of envy, we cannot take it off; for our pride and self-conceit magnify that which obstructs our success and lessens our self-importance into a monster; we see nothing else, we hear of nothing else, we dream of nothing else, it haunts us and takes possession of our whole souls; and as we are engrossed by it ourselves, so we fancy that all the rest of the world are equally taken up with our petty annoyances and disappointed pride. Hence the ‘jealous leer malign’ of envy, which, not daring to look that which provokes it in the face, cannot yet keep its eyes from it, and gloats over and becomes as it were enamoured of the very object of its loathing and deadly hate. We pay off the score which our littleness and vanity has been running up, by ample and gratuitous concessions to the first person that gives a check to our swelling self-complacency, and forces us to drag him into an unwilling comparison with ourselves. It is no matter who the person is, what his pretensions—if they are a counterpoise to our own, we think them of more consequence than anything else in the world. This often gives rise to laughable results. We see the jealousies among servants, hackney-coachmen, cobblers in a stall; we are amused with the rival advertisements of quacks and stage-coach 388proprietors, and smile to read the significant intimation on some shop window, ‘No connection with the next door;’ but the same folly runs through the whole of life; each person thinks that he who stands in his way or outstrips him in a particular pursuit, is the most enviable, and at the same time the most hateful character in the world. Nothing can show the absurdity of the passion of envy in a more striking point of view than the number of rival claims which it entirely overlooks, while it would arrogate all excellence to itself. The loftiness of our ambition and the narrowness of our views are equal, and indeed both depend upon the same cause. The player envies only the player, the poet envies only the poet, because each confines his idea of excellence to his own profession and pursuit, and thinks, if he could but remove some hapless competitor out of his way, he should have a clear stage to himself, or be a ‘Phœnix gazed by all:’ as if, though we crushed one rival, another would not start up; or as if there were not a thousand other claims, a thousand other modes of excellence and praiseworthy acquirements, to divide the palm and defeat his idle pretension to the sole and unqualified admiration of mankind. Professors of every class see merit only in their own line; yet they would blight and destroy that little bit of excellence which alone they acknowledge to exist, except as it centres in themselves. Speak in praise of an actor to another actor, and he turns away with impatience and disgust: speak disparagingly of the first as an actor in general, and the latter eagerly takes up the quarrel as his own: thus the esprit de corps only comes in as an appendage to our self-love. It is perhaps well that we are so blind to merit out of our immediate sphere, for it might only prove an additional eye-sore, increase the obliquity of our mental vision, multiply our antipathies, or end in total indifference and despair. There is nothing so bad as a cynical apathy and contempt for every art and science from a superficial smattering and general acquaintance with them all. The merest pedantry and the most tormenting jealousy and heart-burnings of envy are better than this. Those who are masters of different advantages and accomplishments, are seldom the more satisfied with them: they still aim at something else (however contemptible) which they have not or cannot do. So Pope says of Wharton—

The world, indeed, are pretty even with these constellations of splendid and superfluous qualities in their fastidious estimate of their 389own pretensions, for (if possible) they never give any individual credit for more than one leading attainment. If a man is an artist, his being a fine musician adds nothing to his fame. When the public strain a point to own one claim, it is on condition that the fortunate candidate waives every other. The mind is prepared with a plausible antithesis in such cases against the formidable encroachments of vanity: one qualification is regularly made a foil to another. We allow no one to be two things at a time: it quite unsettles our notions of personal identity. If we allow a man wit, it is part of the bargain that he wants judgment: if style he wants matter. Rich, but a fool or miser—a beauty, but vain; so runs the bond. ‘But’ is the favourite monosyllable of envy and self-love. Raphael could draw and Titian could colour—we shall never get beyond this point while the world stands; the human understanding is not cast in a mould to receive double proofs of entire superiority to itself. It is folly to expect it. If a farther claim be set up, we call in question the solidity of the first, incline to retract it, and suspect that the whole is a juggle and a piece of impudence, as we threaten a common beggar with the stocks for following us to ask a second alms. This is, in fact, one source of the prevalence and deep root which envy has in the human mind: we are incredulous as to the truth and justice of the demands which are so often made upon our pity or our admiration; but let the distress or the merit be established beyond all controversy, and we open our hearts and purses on the spot, and sometimes run into the contrary extreme when charity or admiration becomes the fashion. No one envies the Author of Waverley, because all admire him, and are sensible that admire him how they will, they can never admire him enough. We do not envy the sun for shining, when we feel the benefit and see the light. When some persons start an injudicious parallel between him and Shakspeare, we then may grow jealous and uneasy, because this interferes with our older and more firmly rooted conviction of genius, and one which has stood a severer and surer test. Envy has, then, some connexion with a sense of justice—is a defence against imposture and quackery. Though we do not willingly give up the secret and silent consciousness of our own worth to vapouring and false pretences, we do homage to the true candidate for fame when he appears, and even exult and take a pride in our capacity to appreciate the highest desert. This is one reason why we do not envy the dead—less because they are removed out of our way, than because all doubt and diversity of opinion is dismissed from the question of their title to veneration and respect. Our tongue, having a license, grows wanton in their praise. We do not envy or stint our admiration of Rubens, 390because the mists of uncertainty or prejudice are withdrawn by the hand of time from the splendour of his works. Fame is to genius—

We give full and unbounded scope to our impressions when they are confirmed by successive generations; as we form our opinions coldly and slowly while we are afraid our judgment may be reversed by posterity. We trust the testimony of ages, for it is true; we are no longer in pain lest we should be deceived by varnish and tinsel; and feel assured that the praise and the work are both sterling. In contemporary reputation, the greater and more transcendant the merit, the less is the envy attending it; which shows that this passion is not, after all, a mere barefaced hatred and detraction from acknowledged excellence. Mrs. Siddons was not an object of envy; her unrivalled powers defied competitors or gainsayers. If Kean had a party against him, it was composed of those who could not or would not see his merits through his defects; and in like manner, John Kemble’s elevation to the tragic throne was not carried by loud and tumultuous acclamation, because the stately height which he attained was the gradual result of labour and study, and his style of acting did not flash with the inspiration of the God. We are backward to bestow a heaped measure of praise, whenever there is any inaptitude or incongruity that acts to damp or throw a stumbling-block in the way of our enthusiasm. Hence the jealousy and dislike shown towards upstart wealth, as we cannot in our imaginations reconcile the former poverty of the possessors with their present magnificence—we despise fortune-hunters in ambition as well as in love—and hence, no doubt, one strong ground of hereditary right. We acquiesce more readily in an assumption of superiority that in the first place implies no merit (which is a great relief to the baser sort), and in the second, that baffles opposition by seeming a thing inevitable, taken for granted, and transmitted in the common course of nature. In contested elections, where the precedence is understood to be awarded to rank and title, there is observed to be less acrimony and obstinacy than when it is supposed to depend on individual merit and fitness for the office; no one willingly allows another more ability or honesty than himself, but he cannot deny that another may be better born. Learning again is more freely admitted than genius, because it is of a more positive quality, and is felt to be less essentially a part of a man’s self; and with regard to the grosser and more invidious distinction of wealth, it may be difficult to substitute any finer test of respectability for it, since it 391is hard to fathom the depth of a man’s understanding, but the length of his purse is soon known; and besides, there is a little collusion in the case:—

We bow to a patron who gives us a good dinner and his countenance for our pains, and interest bribes and lulls envy asleep. The most painful kind of envy is the envy towards inferiors; for we cannot bear to think that a person (in other respects utterly insignificant) should have or seem to have an advantage over us in any thing we have set our hearts upon, and it strikes at the very root of our self-love to be foiled by those we despise. There is some dignity in a contest with power and acknowledged reputation: but a triumph over the sordid and the mean is itself a mortification, while a defeat is intolerable.

The Atlas.] [April 11, 1830.

Prejudice, in its ordinary and literal sense, is prejudging any question without having sufficiently examined it, and adhering to our opinion upon it through ignorance, malice, or perversity, in spite of every evidence to the contrary. The little that we know has a strong alloy of misgiving and uncertainty in it: the mass of things of which we have no means of judging, but of which we form a blind and confident opinion as if we were thoroughly acquainted with them, is monstrous. Prejudice is the child of ignorance; for as our actual knowledge falls short of our desire to know, or curiosity and interest in the world about us, so must we be tempted to decide upon a greater number of things at a venture; and having no check from reason or inquiry, we shall grow more obstinate and bigoted in our conclusions, according as they have been rash and presumptuous. The absence of proof, instead of suspending our judgments, only gives us an opportunity to make things out according to our wishes and fancies; mere ignorance is a blank canvas on which we lay what colours we please, and paint objects black or white, as angels or devils, magnify or diminish them at our option; and in the vacuum either of facts or arguments, the weight of prejudice and passion falls with double force, and bears down everything before it. If we enlarge the circle of our previous knowledge ever so little, we may meet with something to create doubt and difficulty; but as long as we remain confined to the cell of our native ignorance, while we know nothing beyond the routine of sense and custom, we shall refer everything to that standard, 392or make it out as we would have it to be, like spoiled children who have never been from home, and expect to find nothing in the world that does not accord with their wishes and notions. It is evident, that the fewer things we know, the more ready we shall be to pronounce upon and condemn, what is new and strange to us; that is, the less capable we shall be of varying our conceptions, and the more prone to mistake a part for the whole. What we do not understand the meaning of must necessarily appear to us ridiculous and contemptible; and we do not stop to inquire, till we have been taught by repeated experiments and warnings of our own fallibility, whether the absurdity is in ourselves or in the object of our dislike and scorn. The most ignorant people are rude and insolent, as the most barbarous are cruel and ferocious. All our knowledge at first lying in a narrow compass (bounded by local and physical causes) whatever does not conform to this shocks us as out of reason and nature. The less we look abroad, the more our ideas are introverted; and our habitual impressions, from being made up of a few particulars always repeated, grow together into a kind of concrete substance, which will not bear taking to pieces, and where the smallest deviation destroys the whole feeling. Thus the difference of colour in a black man was thought to forfeit his title to belong to the species, till books of voyages and travels, and old Fuller’s quaint expression of ‘God’s image carved in ebony,’ have brought the two ideas into a forced union, and Mr. Murray no longer libels men of colour with impunity. The word republic has a harsh and incongruous sound to ears bred under a constitutional monarchy; and we strove hard for many years to overturn the French republic, merely because we could not reconcile it to ourselves that such a thing should exist at all, notwithstanding the examples of Holland, Switzerland, and many others. This term has hardly yet performed quarantine: to the loyal and patriotic it has an ugly taint in it, and is scarcely fit to be mentioned in good company. If, however, we are weaned by degrees from our prejudices against certain words that shock opinion, this is not the case with all; for those that offend good manners grow more offensive with the progress of refinement and civilization, so that no writer now dare venture upon expressions that unwittingly disfigure the pages of our elder writers, and in this respect, instead of becoming callous or indifferent, we appear to become more fastidious every day. There is then a real grossness which does not depend on familiarity or custom. This account of the concrete nature of prejudice, or of the manner in which our ideas by habit and the dearth of general information coalesce together into one indissoluble form, will show (what otherwise seems unaccountable) how such violent antipathies and animosities have been 393occasioned by the most ridiculous or trifling differences of opinion, or outward symbols of it; for, by constant custom, and the want of reflection, the most insignificant of these was as inseparably bound up with the main principle as the most important, and to give up any part was to give up the whole essence and vital interests of religion, morals, and government. Hence we see all sects and parties mutually insist on their own technical distinctions as the essentials and fundamentals of religion, and politics, and, for the slightest variation in any of these, unceremoniously attack their opponents as atheists and blasphemers, traitors and incendiaries. In fact, these minor points are laid hold of in preference, as being more obvious and tangible, and as leaving more room for the exercise of prejudice and passion. Another thing that makes our prejudices rancorous and inveterate, is, that as they are taken up without reason, they seem to be self-evident; and we thence conclude, that they not only are so to ourselves, but must be so to others, so that their differing from us is wilful, hypocritical, and malicious. The Inquisition never pretended to punish its victims for being heretics or infidels, but for avowing opinions which with their eyes open they knew to be false. That is, the whole of the Catholic faith, ‘that one entire and perfect chrysolite,’ appeared to them so completely without flaw and blameless, that they could not conceive how any one else could imagine it to be otherwise, except from stubbornness and contumacy, and would rather admit (to avoid so improbable a suggestion) that men went to a stake for an opinion, not which they held, but counterfeited, and were content to be burnt for the pleasure of playing the hypocrite. Nor is it wonderful that there should be so much repugnance to admit the existence of a serious doubt in matters of such vital and eternal interest, and on which the whole fabric of the church hinged, since the first doubt that was expressed on any single point drew all the rest after it; and the first person who started a conscientious scruple, and claimed the trial by reason, threw down, as if by a magic spell, the strongholds of bigotry and superstition, and transferred the determination of the issue from the blind tribunal of prejudice and implicit faith to a totally different ground, the fair and open field of argument and inquiry. On this ground a single champion is a match for thousands. The decision of the majority is not here enough: unanimity is absolutely necessary to infallibility; for the only secure plea on which such a preposterous pretension could be set up is, by taking it for granted that there can be no possible doubt entertained upon the subject, and by diverting men’s minds from ever asking themselves the question of the truth of certain dogmas and mysteries, any more than whether two and two make four. Prejudice in short 394is egotism: we see a part, and substitute it for the whole; a thing strikes us casually and by halves, and we would have the universe stand proxy for our decision, in order to rivet it more firmly in our own belief; however insufficient or sinister the grounds of our opinions, we would persuade ourselves that they arise out of the strongest conviction, and are entitled to unqualified approbation; slaves of our own prejudices, caprice, ignorance, we would be lords of the understandings and reason of others; and (strange infatuation!) taking up an opinion solely from our own narrow and partial point of view, without consulting the feelings of others, or the reason of things, we are still uneasy if all the world do not come into our way of thinking.

The Atlas.] [April 18, 1830.

The most dangerous enemies to established opinions are those who, by always defending them, call attention to their weak sides. The priests and politicians, in former times, were therefore wise in preventing the first approaches of innovation and inquiry; in preserving inviolate the smallest link in the adamantine chain with which they had bound the bodies and the souls of men; in closing up every avenue or pore through which a doubt could creep in; for they knew that through the slightest crevice floods of irreligion and heresy would break in like a tide. Hence the constant alarm at free discussion and inquiry; hence the clamour against innovation and reform; hence our dread and detestation of those who differ with us in opinion, for this at once puts us on the necessity of defending ourselves, or of owning ourselves weak or in the wrong, if we cannot, and converts that which was before a bed of roses, while we slept undisturbed upon it, into a cushion of thorns; and hence our natural tenaciousness of those points which are most vulnerable, and of which we have no proof to offer; for, as reason fails us, we are more annoyed by the objections and require to be soothed and supported by the concurrence of others. Bigotry and intolerance, which pass as synonymous, are, if rightly considered, a contradiction in terms; for, if in drawing up the articles of our creed, we are blindly bigoted to our impressions and views, utterly disregarding all others, why should we afterwards be so haunted and disturbed by the last, as to wish to exterminate every difference of sentiment with fire and sword? The difficulty is only solved by considering that unequal compound, the human mind, alternately swayed by individual biasses and abstract pretensions, and 395where reason so often panders to, or is made the puppet of, the will. To show at once the danger and extent of prejudice, it may be sufficient to observe that all our convictions, however arrived at, and whether founded on strict demonstration or the merest delusion, are crusted over with the same varnish of confidence and conceit, and afford the same firm footing both to our theories and practice; or if there be any difference, we are in general ‘most ignorant of what we are most assured,’ the strength of will and impatience of contradiction making up for the want of evidence. Mr. Burke says, that we ought to ‘cherish our prejudices because they are prejudices;’ but this view of the case will satisfy the demands of neither party, for prejudice is never easy unless it can pass itself off for reason, or abstract undeniable truth: and again, in the eye of reason, if all prejudices are to be equally respected as such, then the prejudices of others are right, and ours must in their turn be wrong. The great stumbling-block to candour and liberality is the difficulty of being fully possessed of the excellence of any opinion or pursuits of our own, without proportionably condemning whatever is opposed to it; nor can we admit the possibility that when our side of the shield is black, the other should be white. The largest part of our judgments is prompted by habit and passion; but because habit is like a second nature, and we necessarily approve what passion suggests, we will have it that they are founded entirely on reason and nature, and that all the world must be of the same opinion, unless they wilfully shut their eyes to the truth. Animals are free from prejudice, because they have no notion or care about anything beyond themselves, and have no wish to generalise or talk big on what does not concern them: man alone falls into absurdity and error by setting up a claim to superior wisdom and virtue, and to be a dictator and lawgiver to all around him, and on all things that he has the remotest conception of. If mere prejudice were dumb, as well as deaf and blind, it would not so much signify; but as it is, each sect, age, country, profession, individual, is ready to prove that they are exclusively in the right, and to go together by the ears for it. ‘Rings the earth with the vain stir?’ It is the trick for each party to raise an outcry against prejudice; as by this they flatter themselves, and would have it supposed by others, that they are perfectly free from it, and have all the reason on their own side. It is easy indeed, to call names, or to separate the word prejudice from the word reason; but not so easy to separate the two things. Reason seems a very positive and palpable thing to those who have no notion of it but as expressing their own views and feelings; as prejudice is evidently a very gross and shocking absurdity (that no one can fall into who wishes to avoid it), as long as we 396continue to apply this term to the prejudices of other people. To suppose that we cannot make a mistake is the very way to run headlong into it; for, if the distinction were so broad and glaring as our self-conceit and dogmatism lead us to imagine it is, we could never, but by design, mistake truth for falsehood. Those, however, who think they can make a clear stage of it, and frame a set of opinions on all subjects by an appeal to reason alone, and without the smallest intermixture of custom, imagination, or passion, know just as little of themselves as they do of human nature. The best way to prevent our running into the wildest excesses of prejudice and the most dangerous aberrations from reason, is, not to represent the two things as having a great gulph between them, which it is impossible to pass without a violent effort, but to show that we are constantly (even when we think ourselves most secure) treading on the brink of a precipice; that custom, passion, imagination, insinuate themselves into and influence almost every judgment we pass or sentiment we indulge, and are a necessary help (as well as hindrance) to the human understanding; and that, to attempt to refer every question to abstract truth and precise definition, without allowing for the frailty of prejudice, which is the unavoidable consequence of the frailty and imperfection of reason, would be to unravel the whole web and texture of human understanding and society. Such daring anatomists of morals and philosophy think that the whole beauty of the mind consists in the skeleton; cut away, without remorse, all sentiment, fancy, taste, as superfluous excrescences; and, in their own eager, unfeeling pursuit of scientific truth and elementary principles, they ‘murder to dissect.’ But of this I may say something in another paper.

It is a mistake, however, to suppose that all prejudices are false, though it is not an easy matter to distinguish between true and false prejudice. Prejudice is properly an opinion or feeling, not for which there is no reason, but of which we cannot render a satisfactory account on the spot. It is not always possible to assign a ‘reason for the faith that is in us,’ not even if we take time and summon up all our strength; but it does not therefore follow that our faith is hollow and unfounded. A false impression may be defined to be an effect without a cause, or without any adequate one; but the effect may remain and be true, though the cause is concealed or forgotten. The grounds of our opinions and tastes may be deep, and be scattered 397over a large surface; they may be various, remote and complicated, but the result will be sound and true, if they have existed at all, though we may not be able to analyse them into classes, or to recall the particular time, place, and circumstances of each individual case or branch of the evidence. The materials of thought and feeling, the body of facts and experience, are infinite, are constantly going on around us, and acting to produce an impression of good or evil, of assent or dissent to certain inferences; but to require that we should be prepared to retain the whole of this mass of experience in our memory, to resolve it into its component parts, and be able to quote chapter and verse for every conclusion we unavoidably draw from it, or else to discard the whole together as unworthy the attention of a rational being, is to betray an utter ignorance both of the limits and the several uses of the human capacity. The feeling of the truth of anything, or the soundness of the judgment formed upon it from repeated, actual impressions, is one thing: the power of vindicating and enforcing it, by distinctly appealing to or explaining those impressions, is another. The most fluent talkers or most plausible reasoners are not always the justest thinkers.

To deny that we can, in a certain sense, know and be justified in believing anything of which we cannot give the complete demonstration, or the exact why and how, would only be to deny that the clown, the mechanic (and not even the greatest philosopher), can know the commonest thing; for in this new and dogmatical process of reasoning, the greatest philosopher can trace nothing above, nor proceed a single step without taking something for granted;^[60] and it is well if he does not take more things for granted than the most vulgar and illiterate, and what he knows a great deal less about. A common mechanic can tell how to work an engine better than the mathematician who invented it. A peasant is able to foretell rain from the appearance of the clouds, because (time out of mind) he has seen that appearance followed by that consequence; and shall a pedant catechise him out of a conviction which he has found true in innumerable instances, because he does not understand the composition of the elements, or cannot put his notions into a logical shape? There may also be some collateral circumstance (as the time of day), as well as the appearance of the clouds, which he may forget to state 398in accounting for his prediction; though, as it has been a part of his familiar experience, it has naturally guided him in forming it, whether he was aware of it or not. This comes under the head of the well-known principle of the association of ideas; by which certain impressions, from frequent recurrence, coalesce and act in unison truly and mechanically—that is, without our being conscious of anything but the general and settled result. On this principle it has been well said, that ‘there is nothing so true as habit;’ but it is also blind: we feel and can produce a given effect from numberless repetitions of the same cause; but we neither inquire into the cause, nor advert to the mode. In learning any art or exercise, we are obliged to take lessons, to watch others, to proceed step by step, to attend to the details and means employed; but when we are masters of it, we take all this for granted, and do it without labour and without thought, by a kind of habitual instinct—that is, by the trains of our ideas and volitions having been directed uniformly, and at last flowing of themselves into the proper channel.

We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it. This is the reason why it is so difficult for any but natives to speak a language correctly or idiomatically. They do not succeed in this from knowledge or reflection, but from inveterate custom, which is a cord that cannot be loosed. In fact, in all that we do, feel, or think, there is a leaven of prejudice (more or less extensive), viz. something implied, of which we do not know or have forgotten the grounds.

If I am required to prove the possibility, or demonstrate the mode of whatever I do before I attempt it, I can neither speak, walk, nor see; nor have the use of my hands, senses, or common understanding. I do not know what muscles I use in walking, nor what organs I employ in speech: those who do, cannot speak or walk better on that account; nor can they tell how these organs and muscles themselves act. Can I not discover that one object is near, and another at a distance, from the eye alone, or from continual impressions of sense and custom concurring to make the distinction, without going through a course of perspective and optics?—or am I not to be allowed an opinion on the subject, or to act upon it, without being accused of being a very prejudiced and obstinate person? An artist knows that, to imitate an object in the horizon, he must use less colour; and the naturalist knows that this effect is produced by the intervention of a greater quantity of air: but a country fellow, who knows nothing of either circumstance, must not only be ignorant but a blockhead, if he could be persuaded that a hill ten miles off was close before him, only because he could not state the grounds of his 399opinion scientifically. Not only must we (if restricted to reason and philosophy) distrust the notices of sense, but we must also dismiss all that mass of knowledge and perception which falls under the head of common sense and natural feeling, which is made up of the strong and urgent, but undefined impressions of things upon us, and lies between the two extremes of absolute proof and the grossest ignorance. Many of these pass for instinctive principles and innate ideas; but there is nothing in them ‘more than natural.’

Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room; nor know how to conduct myself in any circumstances, nor what to feel in any relation of life. Reason may play the critic, and correct certain errors afterwards; but if we were to wait for its formal and absolute decisions in the shifting and multifarious combinations of human affairs, the world would stand still. Even men of science, after they have gone over the proofs a number of times, abridge the process, and jump at a conclusion: is it therefore false, because they have always found it to be true? Science after a certain time becomes presumption; and learning reposes in ignorance. It has been observed, that women have more tact and insight into character than men, that they find out a pedant, a pretender, a blockhead, sooner. The explanation is, that they trust more to the first impressions and natural indications of things, without troubling themselves with a learned theory of them; whereas men, affecting greater gravity, and thinking themselves bound to justify their opinions, are afraid to form any judgment at all, without the formality of proofs and definitions, and blunt the edge of their understandings, lest they should commit some mistake. They stay for facts, till it is too late to pronounce on the characters. Women are naturally physiognomists, and men phrenologists. The first judge by sensations; the last by rules. Prejudice is so far then an involuntary and stubborn association of ideas, of which we cannot assign the distinct grounds and origin; and the answer to the question, ‘How do we know whether the prejudice is true or false?’ depends chiefly on that other, whether the first connection between our ideas has been real or imaginary. This again resolves into the inquiry—Whether the subject in dispute falls under the province of our own experience, feeling, and observation, or is referable to the head of authority, tradition, and fanciful conjecture? Our practical conclusions are in this respect generally right; our speculative opinions are just as likely to be wrong. What we derive from our personal acquaintance with things (however narrow in its scope or imperfectly digested), is, for the most part, built on a solid foundation—that of Nature; it is in trusting to others (who give themselves out for 400guides and doctors) that we are all abroad, and at the mercy of quackery, impudence, and imposture. Any impression, however absurd, or however we may have imbibed it, by being repeated and indulged in, becomes an article of implicit and incorrigible belief. The point to consider is, how we have first taken it up, whether from ourselves or the arbitrary dictation of others. ‘Thus shall we try the doctrines, whether they be of nature or of man.’

So far then from the charge lying against vulgar and illiterate prejudice as the bane of truth and common sense, the argument turns the other way; for the greatest, the most solemn, and mischievous absurdities that mankind have been the dupes of, they have imbibed from the dogmatism and vanity or hypocrisy of the self-styled wise and learned, who have imposed profitable fictions upon them for self-evident truths, and contrived to enlarge their power with their pretensions to knowledge. Every boor sees that the sun shines above his head; that ‘the moon is made of green cheese,’ is a fable that has been taught him. Defoe says, that there were a hundred thousand stout country-fellows in his time ready to fight to the death against popery, without knowing whether popery was a man or a horse. This, then, was a prejudice that they did not fill up of their own heads. All the great points that men have founded a claim to superiority, wisdom, and illumination upon, that they have embroiled the world with, and made matters of the last importance, are what one age and country differ diametrically with each other about, have been successively and justly exploded, and have been the levers of opinion and the grounds of contention, precisely because, as their expounders and believers are equally in the dark about them, they rest wholly on the fluctuations of will and passion, and as they can neither be proved nor disproved, admit of the fiercest opposition or the most bigoted faith. In what ‘comes home to the business and bosoms of men,’ there is less of this uncertainty and presumption; and there, in the little world of our own knowledge and experience, we can hardly do better than attend to the ‘still, small voice’ of our own hearts and feelings, instead of being browbeat by the effrontery, or puzzled by the sneers and cavils of pedants and sophists, of whatever school or description.

If I take a prejudice against a person from his face, I shall very probably be in the right; if I take a prejudice against a person from hearsay, I shall quite as probably be in the wrong. We have a prejudice in favour of certain books, but it is hardly without knowledge, if we have read them with delight over and over again. Fame itself is a prejudice, though a fine one. Natural affection is a prejudice: for though we have cause to love our nearest connections better than 401others, we have no reason to think them better than others. The error here is, when that which is properly a dictate of the heart passes out of its sphere, and becomes an overweening decision of the understanding. So in like manner of the love of country; and there is a prejudice in favour of virtue, genius, liberty, which (though it were possible) it would be a pity to destroy. The passions, such as avarice, ambition, love, &c., are prejudices, that is amply exaggerated views of certain objects, made up of habit and imagination beyond their real value; but if we ask what is the real value of any object, independently of its connection with the power of habit, or its affording natural scope for the imagination, we shall perhaps be puzzled for an answer. To reduce things to the scale of abstract reason would be to annihilate our interest in them, instead of raising our affections to a higher standard; and by striving to make man rational, we should leave him merely brutish.

Animals are without prejudice: they are not led away by authority or custom, but it is because they are gross, and incapable of being taught. It is, however, a mistake to imagine that only the vulgar and ignorant, who can give no account of their opinions, are the slaves of bigotry and prejudice; the noisiest declaimers, the most subtle casuists, and most irrefragable doctors, are as far removed from the character of true philosophers, while they strain and pervert all their powers to prove some unintelligible dogma, instilled into their minds by early education, interest, or self-importance; and if we say the peasant or artisan is a Mahometan because he is born in Turkey, or a papist because he is born in Italy, the mufti at Constantinople or the cardinal at Rome is so, for no better reason, in the midst of all his pride and learning. Mr. Hobbes used to say, that if he had read as much as others, he should have been as ignorant as they.

After all, most of our opinions are a mixture of reason and prejudice, experience and authority. We can only judge for ourselves in what concerns ourselves, and in things about us: and even there we must trust continually to established opinion and current report; in higher and more abstruse points we must pin our faith still more on others. If we believe only what we know at first hand, without trusting to authority at all, we shall disbelieve a great many things that really exist; and the suspicious coxcomb is as void of judgment as the credulous fool. My habitual conviction of the existence of such a place as Rome is not strengthened by my having seen it; it might be almost said to be obscured and weakened, as the reality falls short of the imagination. I walk along the streets without fearing that the houses will fall on my head, though I have not examined their foundation; and I believe firmly in the Newtonian system, 402though I have never read the Principia. In the former case, I argue that if the houses were inclined to fall they would not wait for me; and in the latter I acquiesce in what all who have studied the subject, and are capable of understanding it, agree in, having no reason to suspect the contrary. That the earth turns round is agreeable to my understanding, though it shocks my sense, which is however too weak to grapple with so vast a question.

The Atlas.] [April 25, 1830.

Party spirit is one of the profoundnesses of Satan, or in more modern language, one of the dexterous equivoques and contrivances of our self-love, to prove that we, and those who agree with us, combine all that is excellent and praiseworthy in our own persons (as in a ring-fence) and that all the vices and deformity of human nature take refuge with those who differ from us. It is extending and fortifying the principle of the amour-propre, by calling to its aid the esprit de corps and screening and surrounding our favourite propensities and obstinate caprices in the hollow squares or dense phalanxes of sects and parties. This is a happy mode of pampering our self-complacency, and persuading ourselves that we and those that side with us, are ‘the salt of the earth;’ of giving vent to the morbid humours of our pride, envy, and all uncharitableness, those natural secretions of the human heart, under the pretext of self-defence, the public safety, or a voice from Heaven, as it may happen; and of heaping every excellence into one scale, and throwing all the obloquy and contempt into the other, in virtue of a nickname, a watch-word of party, a badge, the colour of a ribbon, the cut of a dress. We thus desolate the globe, or tear a country in pieces, to show that we are the only people fit to live in it; and fancy ourselves angels, while we are playing the devil. In this manner, the Huron devours the Iroquois, because he is an Iroquois, and the Iroquois the Huron for a similar reason; neither suspects that he does it, because he himself is a savage and no better than a wild beast; and is convinced in his own breast that the difference of name and tribe makes a total difference in the case. The Papist persecutes the Protestant, the Protestant persecutes the Papist in his turn; and each fancies that he has a plenary right to do so, while he keeps in view only the offensive epithet which ‘cuts the common link of brotherhood between them.’ The church of England ill-treated the Dissenters, and the Dissenters, when they had the opportunity, did not spare the church of England. The Whig 403calls the Tory a knave, the Tory compliments the Whig with the same title, and each thinks the abuse sticks to the party-name, and has nothing to do with himself or the generic name of man. On the contrary, it cuts both ways; but while the Whig says ‘The Tory is a knave, because he is a Tory,’ this is as much as to say, ‘I cannot be a knave, because I am a Whig;’ and by exaggerating the profligacy of his opponent, he imagines he is laying the sure foundation, and raising the lofty superstructure of his own praises. But if he says, which is the truth, ‘The Tory is not a rascal because he is a Tory, but because human nature in power, and with the temptation, is a rascal,’ then this would imply that the seeds of depravity are sown in his own bosom, and might shoot out into full growth and luxuriance if he got into place, which he does not wish to appear till he does get into place.

We may be intolerant even in advocating the cause of Toleration, and so bent on making proselytes to Free-thinking as to allow no one to think freely but ourselves. The most boundless liberality in appearance may amount in reality to the most monstrous ostracism of opinion—not in condemning this or that tenet, or standing up for this or that sect or party, but in assuming a supercilious superiority to all sects and parties alike, and proscribing in the lump and in one sweeping clause all arts, sciences, opinions, and pursuits but our own. Till the time of Locke and Toland a general toleration was never dreamt of: it was thought right on all hands to punish and discountenance heretics and schismatics, but each party alternately claimed to be true Christians and orthodox believers. Daniel Defoe, who spent his whole life, and wasted his strength in asserting the right of the Dissenters to a toleration (and got no thanks for it but the pillory), was scandalized at the proposal of the general principle, and was equally strenuous in excluding Quakers, Anabaptists, Socinians, Sceptics, and all who did not agree in the essentials of Christianity, that is, who did not agree with him, from the benefit of such an indulgence to tender consciences. We wonder at the cruelties formerly practised upon the Jews: is there anything wonderful in it? They were at the time the only people to make a butt and a bugbear of, to set up as a mark of indignity and as a foil to our self-love, for the feræ naturæ principle that is within us and always craving its prey to hunt down, to worry and make sport of at discretion, and without mercy—the unvarying uniformity and implicit faith of the Catholic church had imposed silence, and put a curb on our jarring dissensions, heart-burnings, and ill-blood, so that we had no pretence for quarrelling among ourselves for the glory of God or the salvation of men:—a Jordanus Bruno, an Atheist or sorcerer, once in a way, would hardly suffice to stay 404the stomach of our theological rancour, we therefore fell with might and main upon the Jews as a forlorn hope in this dearth of objects of spite or zeal; or, as the whole of Europe was reconciled in the bosom of holy mother church, went to the holy land in search of a difference of opinion and a ground of mortal offence; but no sooner was there a division of the Christian world than Papist fell upon Protestant, Protestants upon schismatics, and schismatics upon one another, with the same loving fury as they had before fallen upon Turks and Jews. The disposition is always there, like a muzzled mastiff—the pretext only is wanting; and this is furnished by a name, which, as soon as it is affixed to different sects or parties, gives us a license, we think, to let loose upon them all our malevolence, domineering humour, love of power and wanton mischief, as if they were of different species. The sentiment of the pious English bishop was good, who, on seeing a criminal led to execution, exclaimed, ‘There goes my wicked self!’

If we look at common patriotism, it will furnish an illustration of party-spirit. One would think by an Englishman’s hatred of the French, and his readiness to die fighting with and for his countrymen, that all the nation were united as one man in heart and hand—and so they are in war-time—and as an exercise of their loyalty and courage; but let the crisis be over, and they cool wonderfully, begin to feel the distinctions of English, Irish, and Scotch, fall out among themselves upon some minor distinction; the same hand that was eager to shed the blood of a Frenchman will not give a crust of bread or a cup of cold water to a fellow-countryman in distress; and the heroes who defended the wooden walls of Old England are left to expose their wounds and crippled limbs to gain a pittance from the passenger, or to perish of hunger, cold, and neglect in our highways. Such is the effect of our boasted nationality: it is active, fierce in doing mischief; dormant, lukewarm in doing good. We may also see why the greatest stress is laid on trifles in religion, and why the most violent animosities arise out of the smallest differences in politics and religion. In the first place, it would never do to establish our superiority over others by the acquisition of greater virtues, or by discarding our vices; but it is charming to do this by merely repeating a different formula of prayer, or turning to the east instead of the west. He should fight boldly for such a distinction, who is persuaded it will furnish him with a passport to the other world, and entitle him to look down on the rest of his fellows as given over to perdition. Secondly, we often hate those most with whom we have only a slight shade of difference, whether in politics or religion; because as the whole in a contest for precedence and infallibility, we find it 405more difficult to draw the line of distinction where so many points are conceded, and are staggered in our conviction by the arguments of those whom we cannot despise as totally and incorrigibly in the wrong. The high-church party in Queen Anne’s time were disposed to sacrifice the low church and Dissenters to the Papists, because they were more galled by their arguments and disconcerted with their pretensions. In private life, the reverse of the foregoing reasoning holds good; that is, trades and professions present a direct contrast to sects and parties. A conformity in sentiment strengthens our party and opinion; but those who have a similarity of pursuit are rivals in interest; and hence the old maxim, that two of a trade cannot agree.

When I was about fourteen (as long ago as the year 1792), in consequence of a dispute, one day after coming out of meeting, between my father and an old lady of the congregation, respecting the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts and the limits of religious toleration, I set about forming in my head (the first time I ever attempted to think) the following system of political rights and general jurisprudence.

It was this circumstance that decided the fate of my future life; or rather, I would say it was from an original bias or craving to be satisfied of the reason of things, that I seized hold of this accidental opportunity to indulge in its uneasy and unconscious determination. Mr. Currie, my old tutor at Hackney, may still have the rough draught of this speculation, which I gave him with tears in my eyes, and which he good-naturedly accepted in lieu of the customary themes, and as a proof that I was no idler, but that my inability to produce a line on the ordinary school topics arose from my being involved in more difficult and abstruse matters. He must smile at the so oft-repeated charge against me of florid flippancy and tinsel. If from those briars I have since plucked roses, what labour has it not cost me? The Test and Corporation Acts were repealed the other day. How would my father have rejoiced if this had happened in his time, and in concert with his old friends Dr. Price, Dr. Priestley, and others! but now that there is no one to care about it, they give as a boon to indifference what they so long refused to justice, and thus ascribed by some to the liberality of the age! Spirit of contradiction! when wilt thou cease to rule over sublunary affairs, as the moon 406governs the tides? Not till the unexpected stroke of a comet throws up a new breed of men and animals from the bowels of the earth; nor then neither, since it is included in the very idea of all life, power, and motion. For and against are inseparable terms. But not to wander any farther from the point—

I began with trying to define what a right meant; and this I settled with myself was not simply that which is good or useful in itself, but that which is thought so by the individual, and which has the sanction of his will as such. 1. Because the determining what is good in itself is an endless question. 2. Because one person’s having a right to any good, and another being made the judge of it, leaves him without any security for its being exercised to his advantage, whereas self-love is a natural guarantee for our self-interest. 3. A thing being willed is the most absolute moral reason for its existence: that a thing is good in itself is no reason whatever why it should exist, till the will clothes it with a power to act as a motive; and there is certainly nothing to prevent this will from taking effect (no law or admitted plea above it) but another will opposed to it, and which forms a right on the same principle. A good is only so far a right, inasmuch as it virtually determines the will; for a right meant that which contains within itself, and as respects the bosom in which it is lodged, a cogent and unanswerable reason why it should exist. Suppose I have a violent aversion to one thing and as strong an attachment to something else, and that there is no other being in the world but myself, shall I not have a self-evident right, full title, liberty, to pursue the one and avoid the other? That is to say, in other words, there can be no authority to interpose between the strong natural tendency of the will and its desired effect, but the will of another. It may be replied that reason, that affection, may interpose between the will and the act; but there are motives that influence the conduct by first altering the will; and the point at issue is, that these being away, what other principle or lever is there always left to appeal to, before we come to blows? Now, such a principle is to be found in self-interest; and such a barrier against the violent will is erected by the limits which this principle necessarily sets to itself in the claims of different individuals. Thus, then, a right is not that which is right in itself, or best for the whole, or even for the individual, but that which is good in his own eyes, and according to his own will; and to which, among a number of equally selfish and self-willed beings, he can lay claim, allowing the same latitude and allowance to others. Political justice is that which assigns the limits of these individual rights in society, or it is the adjustment of force against force, of will against will, to prevent worse consequences. In the savage state there 407is nothing but an appeal to brute force, or the right of the strongest; Politics lays down a rule to curb and measure out the wills of individuals in equal portions; Morals has a higher standard still, and ought never to appeal to force in any case whatever. Hence I always found something wanting in Mr. Godwin’s Enquiry concerning Political Justice (which I read soon after with great avidity, and hoped, from its title and its vast reputation, to get entire satisfaction from it), for he makes no distinction between political justice, which implies an appeal to force, and moral justice, which implies only an appeal to reason. It is surely a distinct question, what you can persuade people to do by argument and fair discussion, and what you may lawfully compel them to do, when reason and remonstrance fail. But in Mr. Godwin’s system the ‘omnipotence of reason’ supersedes the use of law and government, merges the imperfection of the means in the grandeur of the end, and leaves but one class of ideas or motives, the highest and the least attainable possible. So promises and oaths are said to be of no more value than common breath; nor would they, if every word we uttered was infallible and oracular, as if delivered from a Tripod. But this is pragmatical, and putting an imaginary for a real state of things. Again, right and duties, according to Mr. Godwin, are reciprocal. I could not comprehend this without an arbitrary definition that took away the meaning. In my sense, a man might have a right, a discriminating power, to do something, which others could not deprive him of, without a manifest infraction of certain rules laid down for the peace and order of society, but which it might be his duty to waive upon good reasons shown; rights are seconded by force, duties are things of choice. This is the import of the words in common speech: why then pass over this distinction in a work confessedly rhetorical as well as logical, that is, which laid an equal stress on sound and sense? Right, therefore, has a personal or selfish reference, as it is founded on the law which determines a man’s actions in regard to his own being and well-being; and political justice is that which assigns the limits of these individual rights on their compatibility or incompatibility with each other in society. Right, in a word, is the duty which each man owes to himself; or it is that portion of the general good of which (as being principally interested) he is made the special judge, and which is put under his immediate keeping.

The next question I asked myself was, what is law and the real and necessary ground of civil government? The answer to this is found in the former statement. Law is something to abridge, or, more properly speaking, to ascertain, the bounds of the original right, and to coerce the will of individuals in the community. Whence, 408then, has the community such a right? It can only arise in self-defence, or from the necessity of maintaining the equal rights of every one, and of opposing force to force in case of any violent and unwarrantable infringement of them. Society consists of a given number of individuals; and the aggregate right of government is only the consequence of these inherent rights, balancing and neutralising one another. How those who deny natural rights get at any sort of right, divine or human, I am at a loss to discover; for whatever exists in combination, exists beforehand in an elementary state. The world is composed of atoms, and a machine cannot be made without materials. First, then, it follows that law or government is not the mere creature of a social compact, since each person has a certain right which he is bound to defend against another without asking that other’s leave, or else the right would always be at the mercy of whoever chose to invade it. There would be a right to do wrong, but none to resist it. Thus I have a natural right to defend my life against a murderer, without any mutual compact between us; hence society has an aggregate right of the same kind, and to make a law to that effect, forbidding and punishing murder. If there be no such immediate value and attachment to life felt by the individual, and a consequent justifiable determination to defend it, then the formal pretension of society to vindicate a right, which, according to this reasoning, has no existence in itself, must be founded on air, on a word, or a lawyer’s ipse dixit. Secondly, society, or government, as such, has no right to trench upon the liberty or rights of the individuals its members, except as these last are, as it were, forfeited by interfering with and destroying one another, like opposite mechanical forces or quantities in arithmetic. Put the basis that each man’s will is a sovereign law to itself: this can only hold in society as long as he does not meddle with others; but as long as he does not do this, the first principle retains its force, for there is no other principle to impeach or overrule it. The will of society is not a sufficient plea; since this is, or ought to be, made up of the wills or rights of the individuals composing it, which by the supposition remain entire, and consequently without power to act. The good of society is not a sufficient plea, for individuals are only bound (on compulsion) not to do it harm, or to be barely just: benevolence and virtue are voluntary qualities. For instance, if two persons are obliged to do all that is possible for the good of both, this must either be settled voluntarily between them, and then it is friendship, and not force; or if this is not the case, it is plain that one must be the slave, and lie at the caprice and mercy of the other: it will be one will forcibly regulating two bodies. But if each is left master of his own person and actions, 409with only the implied proviso of not encroaching on those of the other, then both may continue free and independent, and contented in their several spheres. One individual has no right to interfere with the employment of my muscular powers, or to put violence on my person, to force me to contribute to the most laudable undertaking if I do not approve of it, any more than I have to force him to assist me in the direct contrary: if one has not, ten have not, nor a million, any such arbitrary right over me. What one can be made to do for a million is very trifling: what a million may do by being left free in all that merely concerns themselves, and not subject to the perpetual caprice and insolence of authority, and pretext of the public good, is a very different calculation. By giving up the principle of political independence, it is not the million that will govern the one, but the one that will in time give law to the million. There are some things that cannot be free in natural society, and against which there is a natural law; for instance, no one can be allowed to knock out another’s brains or to fetter his limbs with impunity. And government is bound to prevent the same violations of liberty and justice. The question is, whether it would not be possible for a government to exist, and for a system of laws to be framed, that confined itself to the punishment of such offences, and left all the rest (except the suppression of force by force) optional or matter of mutual compact. What are a man’s natural rights? Those, the infringement of which cannot on any supposition go unpunished: by leaving all but cases of necessity to choice and reason, much would be perhaps gained, and nothing lost.

Corollary 1. It results from the foregoing statement, that there is nothing naturally to restrain or oppose the will of one man, but the will of another meeting it. Thus, in a desert island, it is evident that my will and rights would be absolute and unlimited, and I might say with Robinson Crusoe, ‘I am monarch of all I survey.’

Corollary 2. It is coming into society that circumscribes my will and rights, by establishing equal and mutual rights, instead of the original uncircumscribed ones. They are still ‘founded as the rock,’ though not so broad and general as the casing air, for the only thing that limits them is the solidity of another right, no better than my own, and, like stones in a building, or a mosaic pavement, each remains not the less firmly riveted to its place, though it cannot encroach upon the next to it. I do not belong to the state, nor am I a nonentity in it, but I am one part of it, and independent in it, for that very reason that every one in it is independent of me. Equality, instead of being destroyed by society, results from and is improved by it; for in politics, as in physics, the action and reaction are the same: 410the right of resistance on their part implies the right of self-defence on mine. In a theatre, each person has a right to his own seat, by the supposition that he has no right to intrude into any one else’s. They are convertible propositions. Away, then, with the notion that liberty and equality are inconsistent. But here is the artifice: by merging the rights and independence of the individual in the fictitious order of society, those rights become arbitrary, capricious, equivocal, removable at the pleasure of the state or ruling power; there is nothing substantial or durable implied in them: if each has no positive claim, naturally, those of all taken together can mount up to nothing; right and justice are mere blanks to be filled up with arbitrary will, and the people have thenceforward no defence against the government. On the other hand, suppose these rights to be not empty names or artificial arrangements, but original and inherent like solid atoms, then it is not in the power of government to annihilate one of them, whatever may be the confusion arising from their struggle for mastery, or before they can settle into order and harmony. Mr. Burke talks of the reflections and refractions of the rays of light as altering their primary essence and direction. But if there were no original rays of light, there could be neither refraction, nor reflections. Why, then, does he try by cloudy sophistry to blot the sun out of heaven? One body impinges against and impedes another in the fall, but it could not do this, but for the principle of gravity. The author of the Sublime and Beautiful would have a single atom outweigh the great globe itself; or an empty title, a bloated privilege, or a grievous wrong overturn the entire mass of truth and justice. The question between the author and his opponents appears to be simply this: whether politics, or the general good, is an affair of reason or imagination! and this seems decided by another consideration, viz., that Imagination is the judge of individual things, and Reason of generals. Hence the great importance of the principle of universal suffrage; for if the vote and choice of a single individual goes for nothing, so, by parity of reasoning, may that of all the rest of the community: but if the choice of every man in the community is held sacred, then what must be the weight and value of the whole.

Many persons object that by this means property is not represented, and so, to avoid that, they would have nothing but property represented, at the same time that they pretend that if the elective franchise were thrown open to the poor, they would be wholly at the command of the rich, to the prejudice and exclusion of the middle and independent classes of society. Property always has a natural influence and authority; it is only people without property that have no natural protection, and require every artificial and legal one. Those that have 411much, shall have none; and those that have little, shall have less. This proverb is no less true in public than in private life. The better orders (as they are called, and who, in virtue of this title, would assume a monopoly in the direction of state affairs) are merely and in plain English those who are better off than others; and as they get the wished-for monopoly into their hands, others will be uniformly worse off, and will sink lower and lower in the scale; so that it is essentially requisite to extend the elective franchise in order to counteract the excess of the great and increasing goodness of the better orders to themselves. I see no reason to suppose that in any case popular feeling (if free course were given to it) would bear down public opinion. Literature is at present pretty nearly on the footing of universal suffrage, yet the public defer sufficiently to the critics; and when no party bias interferes, and the government do not make a point of running a writer down, the verdict is tolerably fair and just. I do not say that the result might not be equally satisfactory, when literature was patronised more immediately by the great; but then lords and ladies had no interest in praising a bad piece and condemning a good one. If they could have laid a tax on the town for not going to it, they would have run a bad play forty nights together, or the whole year round, without scruple. As things stand, the worse the law, the better for the lawmakers: it takes everything from others to give it to them. It is common to insist on universal suffrage and the ballot together. But if the first were allowed, the second would be unnecessary. The ballot is only useful as a screen from arbitrary power. There is nothing manly or independent to recommend it.

Corollary 3. If I was out at sea in a boat with a jure divino monarch, and he wanted to throw me overboard, I would not let him. No gentleman would ask such a thing, no freeman would submit to it. Has he, then, a right to dispose of the lives and liberties of thirty millions of men? Or have they more right than I have to resist his demands? They have thirty millions of times that right, if they had a particle of the same spirit that I have. It is not the individual, then, whom in this case I fear (to me ‘there’s no divinity doth hedge a king’), but thirty millions of his subjects that call me to account in his name, and who are of a most approved and indisputable loyalty, and who have both the right and power. The power rests with the multitude, but let them beware how the exercise of it turns against their own rights! It is not the idol but the worshippers that are to be dreaded, and who, by degrading one of their fellows, render themselves liable to be branded with the same indignities.

Corollary 4. No one can be born a slave; for my limbs are my own, and the power and the will to use them are anterior to all laws, 412and independent of the control of every other person. No one acquires a right over another but that other acquires some reciprocal right over him; therefore the relation of master and slave is a contradiction in political logic. Hence, also, it follows that combinations among labourers for the rise of wages are always just and lawful, as much as those among master manufacturers to keep them down. A man’s labour is his own, at least as much as another’s goods; and he may starve if he pleases, but he may refuse to work except on his own terms. The right of property is reducible to this simple principle, that one man has not a right to the produce of another’s labour, but each man has a right to the benefit of his own exertions and the use of his natural and inalienable powers, unless for a supposed equivalent and by mutual consent. Personal liberty and property therefore rest upon the same foundation. I am glad to see that Mr. Macculloch, in his Essay on Wages, admits the right of combination among journeymen and others. I laboured this point hard, and, I think, satisfactorily, a good while ago, in my Reply to Mr. Malthus. ‘Throw your bread upon the waters, and after many days you shall find it again.’

There are four things that a man may especially call his own. 1. His person. 2. His actions. 3. His property. 4. His opinions. Let us see how each of these claims unavoidably circumscribes and modifies those of others, on the principle of abstract equity and necessity and independence above laid down.

First, as to the Rights of Persons. My intention is to show that the right of society to make laws to coerce the will of others, is founded on the necessity of repelling the wanton encroachment of that will on their rights; that is, strictly on the right of self-defence or resistance to aggression. Society comes forward and says, ‘Let us alone, and we will let you alone, otherwise we must see which is strongest;’ its object is not to patronise or advise individuals for their good, and against their will, but to protect itself: meddling with others forcibly on any other plea or for any other purpose is impertinence. But equal rights destroy one another; nor can there be a right to impossible or impracticable things. Let A, B, C, D, &c., be different component parts of any society, each claiming to be the centre and master of a certain sphere of activity and self-determination: as long as each keeps within his own line of demarcation there is no harm done, nor any penalty incurred—it is only the superfluous and overbearing will of particular persons that must be restrained or lopped off by the axe of the law. Let A be the culprit; B, C, D, &c., or the rest of the community, are plaintiffs against A, and wish to prevent his taking any unfair or unwarranted advantage over them. 413They set up no pretence to dictate or domineer over him, but merely to hinder his dictating to and domineering over them; and in this, having both might and right on their side, they have no difficulty in putting it in execution. Every man’s independence and discretionary power over what peculiarly and exclusively concerns himself, is his castle (whether round, square, or, according to Mr. Owen’s new map of improvements, in the form of a parallelogram). As long as he keeps within this, he is safe—society has no hold of him: it is when he quits it to attack his neighbours that they resort to reprisals, and make short work of the interloper. It is, however, time to endeavour to point out in what this natural division of right, and separate advantage consists. In the first place, A, B, C, D have the common and natural rights of persons, in so far that none of these has a right to offer violence to, or cause bodily pain or injury to any of the others. Sophists laugh at natural rights: they might as well deny that we have natural persons; for while the last distinction holds true and good by the constitution of things, certain consequences must and will follow from it—‘while this machine is to us Hamlet,’ &c. For instance, I should like to know whether Mr. Burke, with his Sublime and Beautiful fancies, would deny that each person has a particular body and senses belonging to him, so that he feels a peculiar and natural interest in whatever affects these more than another can, and whether such a peculiar and paramount interest does not imply a direct and unavoidable right in maintaining this circle of individuality inviolate. To argue otherwise is to assert that indifference, or that which does not feel either the good or the ill, is as capable a judge and zealous a discriminator of right and wrong as that which does. The right, then, is coeval and co-extended with the interest, not a product of convention, but inseparable from the order of the universe; the doctrine itself is natural and solid; it is the contrary fallacy that is made of air and words. Mr. Burke, in such a question, was like a man out at sea in a haze, and could never tell the difference between land and clouds. If another break my arm by violence, this will not certainly give him additional health or strength; if he stun me by a blow or inflict torture on my limbs, it is I who feel the pain, and not he; and it is hard if I, who am the sufferer, am not allowed to be the judge. That another should pretend to deprive me of it, or pretend to judge for me, and set up his will against mine, in what concerns this portion of my existence—where I have all at stake and he nothing—is not merely injustice but impudence. The circle of personal security and right, then, is not an imaginary and arbitrary line fixed by law and the will of the prince, or the scaly finger of Mr. Hobbes’s Leviathan, but is real and inherent in the nature of 414things, and itself the foundation of law and justice. ‘Hands off is fair play’—according to the old adage. One, therefore, has not a right to lay violent hands on another, or to infringe on the sphere of his personal identity; one must not run foul of another, or he is liable to be repelled and punished for the offence. If you meet an Englishman suddenly in the street, he will run up against you sooner than get out of your way, which last he thinks a compromise of his dignity and a relinquishment of his purpose, though he expects you to get out of his. A Frenchman in the same circumstances will come up close to you, and try to walk over you, as if there was no one in his way; but if you take no notice of him, he will step on one side, and make you a low bow. The one is a fellow of stubborn will, the other a petit maître. An Englishman at a play mounts upon a bench, and refuses to get down at the request of another, who threatens to call him to account the next day. ‘Yes,’ is the answer of the first, ‘if your master will let you!’ His abuse of liberty, he thinks, is justified by the other’s want of it. All an Englishman’s ideas are modifications of his will; which shows, in one way, that right is founded on will, since the English are at once the freest and most wilful of all people. If you meet another on the ridge of a precipice, are you to throw each other down? Certainly not. You are to pass as well as you can. ‘Give and take,’ is the rule of natural right, where the right is not all on one side and cannot be claimed entire. Equal weights and scales produce a balance, as much as where the scales are empty: so it does not follow (as our votaries of absolute power would insinuate) that one man’s right is nothing because another’s is something. But suppose there is not time to pass, and one or other must perish, in the case just mentioned, then each must do the best for himself that he can, and the instinct of self-preservation prevails over everything else. In the streets of London, the passengers take the right hand of one another and the wall alternately; he who should not conform to this rule would be guilty of a breach of the peace. But if a house were falling, or a mad ox driven furiously by, the rule would be, of course, suspended, because the case would be out of the ordinary. Yet I think I can conceive, and have even known, persons capable of carrying the point of gallantry in political right to such a pitch as to refuse to take a precedence which did not belong to them in the most perilous circumstances, just as a soldier may waive a right to quit his post, and takes his turn in battle. The actual collision or case of personal assault and battery, is, then, clearly prohibited, inasmuch as each person’s body is clearly defined: but how if A use other means of annoyance against B, such as a sword or poison, or resort to what causes other painful sensations besides tangible ones, for instance, 415certain disagreeable sounds and smells? Or, if these are included as a violation of personal rights, then how draw the line between them and the employing certain offensive words and gestures or uttering opinions which I disapprove? This is a puzzler for the dogmatic school; but they solve the whole difficulty by an assumption of utility, which is as much as to tell a person that the way to any place to which he asks a direction is ‘to follow his nose.’ We want to know by given marks and rules what is best and useful; and they assure us very wisely, that this is infallibly and clearly determined by what is best and useful. Let us try something else. It seems no less necessary to erect certain little fortalices, with palisades and outworks about them, for Right to establish and maintain itself in, than as landmarks to guide us across the wide waste of Utility. If a person runs a sword through me, or administers poison, or procures it to be administered, the effect, the pain, disease or death is the same, and I have the same right to prevent it, on the principle that I am the sufferer; that the injury is offered to me, and he is no gainer by it, except for mere malice or caprice, and I therefore remain master and judge of my own remedy, as in the former case; the principle and definition of right being to secure to each individual the determination and protection of that portion of sensation in which he has the greatest, if not a sole interest, and, as it were, identity with it. Again, as to what are called nuisances, to wit offensive smells, sounds, &c., it is more difficult to determine on the ground that one man’s meat is another man’s poison. I remember a case occurred in the neighbourhood where I was, and at the time I was trying my best at this question, which puzzled me a good deal. A rector of a little town in Shropshire, who was at variance with all his parishioners, had conceived a particular spite to a lawyer who lived next door to him, and as a means of annoying him, used to get together all sorts of rubbish, weeds, and unsavoury materials, and set them on fire, so that the smoke should blow over into his neighbour’s garden; whenever the wind set in that direction, he said, as a signal to his gardener,’It’s a fine Wicksteed wind to-day;’ and the operation commenced. Was this an action of assault and battery, or not? I think it was, for this reason, that the offence was unequivocal, and that the only motive for the proceeding was the giving this offence. The assailant would not like to be served so himself. Mr. Bentham would say, the malice of the motive was a set-off to the injury. I shall leave that prima philosophia consideration out of the question. A man who knocks out another’s brains with a bludgeon may say it pleases him to do so; but will it please him to have the compliment returned? If he still persists, in spite of this punishment, there is no preventing him; but 416if not, then it is a proof that he thinks the pleasure less than the pain to himself, and consequently to another in the scales of justice. The lex talionis is an excellent test. Suppose a third person (the physician of the place) had said, ‘It is a fine Egerton wind to-day,’ our rector would have been non-plussed; for he would have found that, as he suffered all the hardship, he had the right to complain of and to resist an action of another, the consequences of which affected principally himself. Now mark: if he had himself had any advantage to derive from the action, which he could not obtain in any other way, then he would feel that his neighbour also had the same plea and right to follow his own course (still this might be a doubtful point); but in the other case it would be sheer malice and wanton interference; that is, not the exercise of a right, but the invasion of another’s comfort and independence. Has a person, then, a right to play on the horn or on a flute, on the same staircase? I say, yes; because it is for his own improvement and pleasure, and not to annoy another; and because, accordingly, every one in his own case would wish to reserve this or a similar privilege to himself. I do not think a person has a right to beat a drum under one’s window, because this is altogether disagreeable, and if there is any extraordinary motive for it, then it is fit that the person should be put to some little inconvenience in removing his sphere of liberty of action to a reasonable distance. A tallow-chandler’s shop or a steam-engine is a nuisance in a town, and ought to be removed into the suburbs; but they are to be tolerated where they are least inconvenient, because they are necessary somewhere, and there is no remedying the inconvenience. The right to protest against and to prohibit them rests with the suffering party; but because this point of the greatest interest is less clear in some cases than in others, it does not follow that there is no right or principle of justice in the case. 3. As to matters of contempt and the expression of opinion, I think these do not fall under the head of force, and are not, on that ground, subjects of coercion and law. For example, if a person inflicts a sensation upon me by material means, whether tangible or otherwise, I cannot help that sensation; I am so far the slave of that other, and have no means of resisting him but by force, which I would define to be material agency. But if another proposes an opinion to me, I am not bound to be of this opinion; my judgment and will is left free, and therefore I have no right to resort to force to recover a liberty which I have not lost. If I do this to prevent that other from pressing that opinion, it is I who invade his liberty, without warrant, because without necessity. It may be urged that material agency, or force, is used in the adoption of sounds or letters of the alphabet, which I cannot help seeing 417or hearing. But the injury is not here, but in the moral and artificial inference, which I am at liberty to admit or reject, according to the evidence. There is no force but argument in the case, and it is reason, not the will of another, that gives the law. Further, the opinion expressed, generally concerns not one individual, but the general interest; and of that my approbation or disapprobation is not a commensurate or the sole judge. I am judge of my own interests, because it is my affair, and no one’s else; but by the same rule, I am not judge, nor have I a veto on that which appeals to all the world, merely because I have a prejudice or fancy against it. But suppose another expresses by signs or words a contempt for me? Answer. I do not know that he is bound to have a respect for me. Opinion is free; for if I wish him to have that respect, then he must be left free to judge for himself, and consequently to arrive at and to express the contrary opinion, or otherwise the verdict and testimony I aim at could not be obtained; just as players must consent to be hissed, if they expect to be applauded. Opinion cannot be forced, for it is not grounded on force, but on evidence and reason, and therefore these last are the proper instruments to control that opinion, and to make it favourable to what we wish, or hostile to what we disapprove. In what relates to action, the will of another is force, or the determining power: in what relates to opinion, the mere will or ipse dixit of another is of no avail but as it gains over other opinions to its side, and therefore neither needs nor admits of force as a counteracting means to be used against it. But in the case of calumny or indecency: 1. I would say that it is the suppression of truth that gives falsehood its worst edge. What transpires (however maliciously or secretly) in spite of the law, is taken for gospel, and as it is impossible to prevent calumny, so it is impossible to counteract it on the present system, or while every attempt to answer it is attributed to the people’s not daring to speak the truth. If any single fact or accident peeps out, the whole character, having this legal screen before it, is supposed to be of a piece; and the world, defrauded of the means of coming to their own conclusion, naturally infer the worst. Hence the saying, that reputation once gone never returns. If, however, we grant the general license or liberty of the press, in a scheme where publicity is the great object, it seems a manifest contre-sens that the author should be the only thing screened or kept a secret: either, therefore, an anonymous libeller would be heard with contempt, or if he signed his name thus —, or thus — —, it would be equivalent to being branded publicly as a calumniator, or marked with the T. F. (travail forcé) or the broad R. (rogue) on his back. These are thought sufficient punishments, and yet they rest on opinion without stripes or 418labour. As to indecency, in proportion as it is flagrant is the shock and resentment against it; and as vanity is the source of indecency, so the universal discountenance and shame is its most effectual antidote. If it is public, it produces immediate reprisals from public opinion which no brow can stand; and if secret, it had better be left so. No one can then say it is obtruded on him; and if he will go in search of it, it seems odd he should call upon the law to frustrate the object of his pursuit. Further, at the worst, society has its remedy in its own hands whenever its moral sense is outraged, that is, it may send to Coventry, or excommunicate like the church of old; for though it may have no right to prosecute, it is not bound to protect or patronise, unless by voluntary consent of all parties concerned. Secondly, as to rights of action, or personal liberty. These have no limit but the rights of persons or property aforesaid, or to be hereafter named. They are the channels in which the others run without injury and without impediment, as a river within its banks. Every one has a right to use his natural powers in the way most agreeable to himself, and which he deems most conducive to his own advantage, provided he does not interfere with the corresponding rights and liberties of others. He has no right to coerce them by a decision of his individual will, and as long as he abstains from this he has no right to be coerced by an expression of the aggregate will, that is, by law. The law is the emanation of the aggregate will, and this will receives its warrant to act only from the forcible pressure from without, and its indispensable resistance to it. Let us see how this will operate to the pruning and curtailment of law. The rage of legislation is the first vice of society; it ends by limiting it to as few things as possible, 1. There can, according to the principle here imperfectly sketched, be no laws for the enforcement of morals; because morals have to do with the will and affections, and the law only puts a restraint on these. Every one is politically constituted the judge of what is best for himself; it is only when he encroaches on others that he can be called to account. He has no right to say to others, You shall do as I do; how then should they have a right to say to him, You shall do as we do? Mere numbers do not convey the right, for the law addresses not one, but the whole community. For example, there cannot rightly be a law to set a man in the stocks for getting drunk. It injures his health, you say. That is his concern, and not mine. But it is detrimental to his affairs; if so, he suffers most by it. But it is ruinous to his wife and family: he is their natural and legal guardian. But they are thrown upon the parish: the parish need not take the burden upon itself, unless it chooses or has agreed to do so. If a man is not kind to or fond of his wife I see no law to make him. If he beats her, or threatens her life, she as clearly has a right to call in the 419aid of a constable or justice of peace. I do not see, in like manner, how there can be law against gambling (against cheating there may), nor against usury. A man gives twenty, forty, a hundred per cent. with his eyes open, but would he do it if strong necessity did not impel him? Certainly no man would give double if he could get the same advantage for half. There are circumstances in which a rope to save me from drowning, or a draught of water, would be worth all I have. In like manner, lotteries are fair things; for the loss is inconsiderable, and the advantage may be incalculable. I do not believe the poor put into them, but the reduced rich, the shabby-genteel. Players were formerly prohibited as a nuisance, and fortune-tellers still are liable to the Vagrant Act, which the parson of the parish duly enforces, in his zeal to prevent cheating and imposture, while he himself has his two livings, and carries off a tenth of the produce of the soil. Rape is an offence clearly punishable by law; but I would not say that simple incontinence is so. I will give one more example, which, though quaint, may explain the distinction I aim at. A man may commit suicide if he pleases, without being responsible to any one. He may quit the world as he would quit the country where he was born. But if any person were to fling himself from the gallery into the pit of a play-house, so as to endanger the lives of others, if he did not succeed in killing himself, he would render himself liable to punishment for the attempt, if it were to be supposed that a person so desperately situated would care about consequences. Duelling is lawful on the same principle, where every precaution is taken to show that the act is voluntary and fair on both sides. I might give other instances, but these will suffice. 2. There should be a perfect toleration in matters of religion. In what relates to the salvation of a man’s soul, he is infinitely more concerned than I can be; and to pretend to dictate to him in this particular is an infinite piece of impertinence and presumption. But if a man has no religion at all? That does not hinder me from having any. If he stood at the church door and would not let me enter, I should have a right to push him aside; but if he lets me pass by without interruption, I have no right to turn back and drag him in after me. He might as well force me to have no religion as I force him to have one, or burn me at a stake for believing what he does not. Opinion, ‘like the wild goose, flies unclaimed of any man:’ heaven is like ‘the marble air, accessible to all;’ and therefore there is no occasion to trip up one another’s heels on the road, or to erect a turnpike gate to collect large sums from the passengers. How have I a right to make another pay for the saving of my soul, or to assist me in damning his? There should be no secular interference in sacred things; no laws to suppress or establish any church or sect in religion, no religious persecutions, tests, or 420disqualifications; the different sects should be left to inveigle and hate each other as much as they please; but without the love of exclusive domination and spiritual power there would be little temptation to bigotry and intolerance.

3. As to the Rights of Property. It is of no use a man’s being left to enjoy security, or to exercise his freedom of action, unless he has a right to appropriate certain other things necessary to his comfort and subsistence to his own use. In a state of nature, or rather of solitary independence, he has a right to all he can lay his hands on: what then limits this right? Its being inconsistent with the same right in others. This strikes a mathematical or logical balance between two extreme and equal pretensions. As there is not a natural and indissoluble connection between the individual and his property, or those outward objects of which he may have need (they being detached, unlimited, and transferable), as there is between the individual and his person, either as an organ of sensation or action, it is necessary, in order to prevent endless debate and quarrels, to fix upon some other criterion or common ground of preference. Animals, or savages, have no idea of any other right than that of the strongest, and seize on all they can get by force, without any regard to justice or an equal claim. 1. One mode of settling the point is to divide the spoil. That is allowing an equal advantage to both. Thus boys, when they unexpectedly find anything, are accustomed to cry ‘Halves!’ But this is liable to other difficulties, and applies only to the case of joint finding. 2. Priority of possession is a fair way of deciding the right of property; first, on the mere principle of a lottery, or the old saying, ‘First come, first served;’ secondly, because the expectation having been excited, and the will more set upon it, this constitutes a powerful reason for not violently forcing it to let go its hold. The greater strength of volition is, we have seen, one foundation of right; for supposing a person to be absolutely indifferent to anything, he could properly set up no claim to it. 3. Labour, or the having produced a thing or fitted it for use by previous exertion, gives this right, chiefly, indeed, for moral and final causes; because if one enjoyed what another had produced, there would be nothing but idleness and rapacity; but also in the sense we are inquiring into, because on a merely selfish ground the labour undergone, or the time lost, is entitled to an equivalent, cæteris manentibus. 4. If another, voluntarily, or for a consideration, resigns to me his right in anything, it to all intents and purposes becomes mine. This accounts not only for gifts, the transfer of property by bargains, &c., but for legacies and the transmission of property in families or otherwise. It is hard to make a law to circumscribe this right of disposing of what we have as we 421please; yet the boasted law of primogeniture, which is professedly the bulwark and guardian of property is in direct violation of this principle. 5, and lastly. Where a thing is common, and there is enough for all, and no one contributes to it, as air or water, there can be no property in it. The proximity to a herring-fishery, or the having been the first to establish a particular traffic in such commodities, may perhaps give this right by aggravating our will, as having a nearer or longer power over them; but the rule is the other way. It is on same principle that poaching is a kind of honest thieving, for that which costs no trouble and is confined to no limits seems to belong to no one exclusively (why else do poachers or country people seize on this kind of property with the least reluctance, but that it is the least like stealing?); and as the game laws and the tenaciousness of the rights to that which has least the character of property, as most a point of honour, produced a revolution in one country, so they are not unlikely to produce it in another. The object and principle of the laws of property, then, is this: 1. To supply individuals and the community with what they need. 2. To secure an equal share to each individual, other circumstances being the same. 3. To keep the peace and promote industry and plenty, by proportioning each man’s share to his own exertions, or to the good-will and discretion of others. The intention, then, being that no individual should rob another, or be starved but by his refusing to work (the earth and its produce being the natural estate of the community, subject to these regulations of individual right and public welfare), the question is, whether any individual can have a right to rob or starve the whole community: or if the necessary discretion left in the application of the principle has led to a state of things subversive of the principle itself, and destructive to the welfare and existence of the state, whether the end being defeated, the law does not fall to the ground, or require either a powerful corrective or a total reconstruction. The end is superior to the means, and the use of a thing does not justify its abuse. If a clock is quite out of order and always goes wrong, it is no argument to say it was set right at first and on true mechanical principles, and therefore it must go on as it has done, according to all the rules of art; on the contrary, it is taken to pieces, repaired, and the whole restored to the original state, or, if this is impossible, a new one is made. So society, when out of order, which it is whenever the interests of the many are regularly and outrageously sacrificed to those of the few, must be repaired, and either a reform or a revolution cleanse its corruptions and renew its elasticity. People talk of the poor laws as a grievance. Either they or a national bankruptcy, or a revolution, are necessary. The labouring 422population have not doubled in the last forty years; there are still no more than are necessary to do the work in husbandry, &c., that is indispensably required; but the wages of a labouring man are no higher than they were forty years ago, and the price of food and necessaries is at least double what it was then, owing to taxes, grants, monopolies, and immense fortunes gathered during the war by the richer or more prosperous classes, who have not ceased to propagate in the geometrical ratio, though the poor have not done it, and the maintaining of whose younger and increasing branches in becoming splendour and affluence presses with double weight on the poor and labouring classes. The greater part of a community ought not to be paupers or starving; and when a government by obstinacy and madness has reduced them to that state, it must either take wise and effectual measures to relieve them from it, or pay the forfeit of its own wickedness and folly.

It seems, then, that a system of just and useful laws may be constructed nearly, if not wholly, on the principle of the right of self-defence, or the security for person, liberty, and property. There are exceptions, such, for instance, as in the case of children, idiots, and insane persons. These common sense dictates for a general principle can only hold good where the general conditions are complied with. There are also mixed cases, partaking of civil and moral justice. Is a man bound to support his children? Not in strict political right; but he may be compelled to forego all the benefits of civil society, if he does not fulfil an engagement which, according to the feelings and principles of that society, he has undertaken. So in respect to marriage. It is a voluntary contract, and the violation of it is punishable on the same plea of sympathy and custom. Government is not necessarily founded on common consent, but on the right which society has to defend itself against all aggression. But am I bound to pay or support the government for defending the society against any violence or injustice? No: but then they may withdraw the protection of the law from me if I refuse, and it is on this ground that the contributions of each individual to the maintenance of the state are demanded. Laws are, or ought to be, founded on the supposed infraction of individual rights. If these rights, and the best means of maintaining them, are always clear, and there could be no injustice or abuse of power on the part of the government, every government might be its own lawgiver: but as neither of these is the case, it is necessary to recur to the general voice for settling the boundaries of right and wrong, and even more for preventing the government, under pretence of the general peace and safety, from subjecting the whole liberties, rights, and resources of the community to its own advantage and sole will.

It is an axiom in modern philosophy (among many other false ones) that belief is absolutely involuntary, since we draw our inferences from the premises laid before us and cannot possibly receive any other impression of things than that which they naturally make upon us. This theory, that the understanding is purely passive in the reception of truth, and that our convictions are not in the power of our will, was probably first invented or insisted upon as a screen against religious persecution, and as an answer to those who imputed bad motives to all who differed from the established faith, and thought they could reform heresy and impiety by the application of fire and the sword. No doubt, that is not the way: for the will in that case irritates itself and grows refractory against the doctrines thus absurdly forced upon it; and as it has been said, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. But though force and terror may not be always the surest way to make converts, it does not follow that there may not be other means of influencing our opinions, besides the naked and abstract evidence for any proposition: the sun melts the resolution which the storm could not shake. In such points as, whether less an object is black or white, or whether two and two make four,^[61] we 440may not be able to believe as we please or to deny the evidence of our reason and senses: but in those points on which mankind differ, or where we can be at all in suspense as to which side we shall take, the truth is not quite so plain or palpable; it admits of a variety of views and shades of colouring, and it should appear that we can dwell upon whichever of these we choose, and heighten or soften the circumstances adduced in proof, according as passion and inclination throw their casting-weight into the scale. Let any one, for instance, have been brought up in an opinion, let him have remained in it all his life, let him have attached all his notions of respectability, of the approbation of his fellow-citizens or his own self-esteem to it, let him then first hear it called in question and a strong and unforeseen objection stated to it, will not this startle and shock him as if he had seen a spectre, and will he not struggle to resist the arguments that would unsettle his habitual convictions, as he would resist the divorcing of soul and body? Will he come to the consideration of the question impartially, indifferently, and without any wrong bias, or give the painful and revolting truth the same cordial welcome as the long-cherished and favourite prejudice? To say that the truth or falsehood of a proposition is the only circumstance that gains it admittance into the mind, independently of the pleasure or pain it affords us, is itself an assertion made in pure caprice or desperation. A person may have a profession or employment connected with a certain belief, it may be the means of livelihood to him, and the changing it may require considerable sacrifices or may leave him almost without resource (to say nothing of mortified pride)—this will not mend the matter. The evidence against his former opinion may be so strong (or may appear so to him) that he may be obliged to give it up, but not without a pang and after having tried every artifice and strained every nerve to give the utmost weight to the arguments favouring his own side, and to make light of and throw those against him into the back-ground. And nine times in ten this bias of the will and tampering with the proofs will prevail. It is only with very vigorous or very candid minds, that the understanding exercises its just and boasted prerogative and induces its votaries to relinquish a profitable delusion and embrace the dowerless truth. Even then they have the sober and discreet part of the world, all the bons pères de famille, who look principally to the main-chance, against them, and they are regarded as little better than lunatics or profligates to fling up a good salary and a provision for themselves and families for the sake of that foolish thing, a Conscience! With the herd, belief on all abstract and disputed topics is voluntary, that is, is determined by considerations of personal ease and convenience, in the teeth of logical 441analysis and demonstration, which are set aside as mere waste of words. In short, generally speaking, people stick to an opinion that they have long supported and that supports them. How else shall we account for the regular order and progression of society: for the maintenance of certain opinions in particular professions and classes of men, as we keep water in cisterns, till in fact they stagnate and corrupt: and that the world and every individual in it is not ‘blown about with every wind of doctrine’ and whisper of uncertainty? There is some more solid ballast required to keep things in their established order than the restless fluctuation of opinion and ‘infinite agitation of wit.’ We find that people in Protestant countries continue Protestants and in Catholic countries Papists. This, it may be answered, is owing to the ignorance of the great mass of them; but is their faith less bigoted, because it is not founded on a regular investigation of the proofs, and is merely an obstinate determination to believe what they have been told and accustomed to believe? Or is it not the same with the doctors of the church and its most learned champions, who read the same texts, turn over the same authorities, and discuss the same knotty points through their whole lives, only to arrive at opposite conclusions? How few are shaken in their opinions, or have the grace to confess it! Shall we then suppose them all impostors, and that they keep up the farce of a system, of which they do not believe a syllable? Far from it: there may be individual instances, but the generality are not only sincere but bigots. Those who are unbelievers and hypocrites scarcely know it themselves, or if a man is not quite a knave, what pains will he not take to make a fool of his reason, that his opinions may tally with his professions? Is there then a Papist and a Protestant understanding—one prepared to receive the doctrine of transubstantiation and the other to reject it? No such thing: but in either case the ground of reason is preoccupied by passion, habit, example—the scales are falsified. Nothing can therefore be more inconsequential than to bring the authority of great names in favour of opinions long established and universally received. Cicero’s being a Pagan was no proof in support of the Heathen mythology, but simply of his being born at Rome before the Christian era; though his lurking scepticism on the subject and sneers at the augurs told against it, for this was an acknowledgment drawn from him in spite of a prevailing prejudice. Sir Isaac Newton and Napier of Marchiston both wrote on the Apocalypse; but this is neither a ground for a speedy anticipation of the Millennium, nor does it invalidate the doctrine of the gravitation of the planets or the theory of logarithms. One party would borrow the sanction of these great names in support of their wildest and most mystical opinions; 442others would arraign them of folly and weakness for having attended to such subjects at all. Neither inference is just. It is a simple question of chronology, or of the time when these celebrated mathematicians lived, and of the studies and pursuits which were then chiefly in vogue. The wisest man is the slave of opinion, except on one or two points on which he strikes out a light for himself and holds a torch to the rest of the world. But we are disposed to make it out that all opinions are the result of reason, because they profess to be so; and when they are right, that is, when they agree with ours, that there can be no alloy of human frailty or perversity in them; the very strength of our prejudice making it pass for pure reason, and leading us to attribute any deviation from it to bad faith or some unaccountable singularity or infatuation. Alas, poor human nature! Opinion is for the most part only a battle, in which we take part and defend the side we have adopted, in the one case or the other, with a view to share the honour or the spoil. Few will stand up for a losing cause or have the fortitude to adhere to a proscribed opinion; and when they do, it is not always from superior strength of understanding or a disinterested love of truth, but from obstinacy and sullenness of temper. To affirm that we do not cultivate an acquaintance with truth as she presents herself to us in a more or less pleasing shape, or is shabbily attired or well-dressed, is as much as to say that we do not shut our eyes to the light when it dazzles us, or withdraw our hands from the fire when it scorches us.

Are we not averse to believe bad news relating to ourselves—forward enough if it relates to others? If something is said reflecting on the character of an intimate friend or near relative, how unwilling we are to lend an ear to it, how we catch at every excuse or palliating circumstance, and hold out against the clearest proof, while we instantly believe any idle report against an enemy, magnify the commonest trifles into crimes, and torture the evidence against him to our heart’s content! Do not we change our opinion of the same person, and make him out to be black or white according to the terms we happen to be on? If we have a favourite author, do we not exaggerate his beauties and pass over his defects, and vice versâ? The human mind plays the interested advocate much oftener than the upright and inflexible judge, in the colouring and relief it gives to the facts brought before it. We believe things not more because they are true or probable, than because we desire, or (if the imagination once takes that turn) because we dread them. ‘Fear has more devils than vast 443hell can hold.’ The sanguine always hope, the gloomy always despond, from temperament and not from forethought. Do we not disguise the plainest facts from ourselves if they are disagreeable. Do we not flatter ourselves with impossibilities? What girl does not look in the glass to persuade herself she is handsome? What woman ever believes herself old, or does not hate to be called so: though she knows the exact year and day of her age, the more she tries to keep up the appearance of youth to herself and others? What lover would ever acknowledge a flaw in the character of his mistress, or would not construe her turning her back on him into a proof of attachment? The story of January and May is pat to our purpose; for the credulity of mankind as to what touches our inclinations has been proverbial in all ages: yet we are told that the mind is passive in making up these wilful accounts, and is guided by nothing but the pros and cons of evidence. Even in action and where we still may determine by proper precaution the event of things, instead of being compelled to shut our eyes to what we cannot help, we still are the dupes of the feeling of the moment, and prefer amusing ourselves with fair appearances to securing more solid benefits by a sacrifice of Imagination and stubborn Will to Truth. The blindness of passion to the most obvious and well known consequences is deplorable. There seems to be a particular fatality in this respect. Because a thing is in our power till we have committed ourselves, we appear to dally, to trifle with, to make light of it, and to think it will still be in our power after we have committed ourselves. Strange perversion of the reasoning faculties, which is little short of madness, and which yet is one of the constant and practical sophisms of human life! It is as if one should say—I am in no danger from a tremendous machine unless I touch such a spring and therefore I will approach it, I will play with the danger, I will laugh at it, and at last in pure sport and wantonness of heart, from my sense of previous security, I will touch it—and there’s an end. While the thing remains in contemplation, we may be said to stand safe and smiling on the brink: as soon as we proceed to action we are drawn into the vortex of passion and hurried to our destruction. A person taken up with some one purpose or passion is intent only upon that: he drives out the thought of every thing but its gratification: in the pursuit of that he is blind to consequences: his first object being attained, they all at once, and as if by magic, rush upon his mind. The engine recoils, he is caught in his own snare. A servant-girl, for some pique, or for an angry word, determines to poison her mistress. She knows before hand (just as well as she does afterwards) that it is at least a hundred chances to one she will be hanged if she succeeds, yet this has no more effect 444upon her than if she had never heard of any such matter. The only idea that occupies her mind and hardens it against every other, is that of the affront she has received, and the desire of revenge; she broods over it; she meditates the mode, she is haunted with her scheme night and day; it works like poison; it grows into a madness, and she can have no peace till it is accomplished and off her mind; but the moment this is the case, and her passion is assuaged, fear takes place of hatred, the slightest suspicion alarms her with the certainty of her fate from which she before wilfully averted her thoughts; she runs wildly from the officers before they know any thing of the matter; the gallows stares her in the face, and if none else accuses her, so full is she of her danger and her guilt, that she probably betrays herself. She at first would see no consequences to result from her crime but the getting rid of a present uneasiness; she now sees the very worst. The whole seems to depend on the turn given to the imagination, on our immediate disposition to attend to this or that view of the subject, the evil or the good. As long as our intention is unknown to the world, before it breaks out into action, it seems to be deposited in our own bosoms, to be a mere feverish dream, and to be left with all its consequences under our imaginary control: but no sooner is it realised and known to others, than it appears to have escaped from our reach, we fancy the whole world are up in arms against us, and vengeance is ready to pursue and overtake us. So in the pursuit of pleasure, we see only that side of the question which we approve: the disagreeable consequences (which may take place) make no part of our intention or concern, or of the wayward exercise of our will: if they should happen we cannot help it; they form an ugly and unwished-for contrast to our favourite speculation: we turn our thoughts another way, repeating the adage quod sic mihi ostendis incredulus odi. It is a good remark in ‘Vivian Grey,’ that a bankrupt walks the streets the day before his name is in the Gazette with the same erect and confident brow as ever, and only feels the mortification of his situation after it becomes known to others. Such is the force of sympathy, and its power to take off the edge of internal conviction! As long as we can impose upon the world, we can impose upon ourselves, and trust to the flattering appearances, though we know them to be false. We put off the evil day as long as we can, make a jest of it as the certainty becomes more painful, and refuse to acknowledge the secret to ourselves till it can no longer be kept from all the world. In short, we believe just as little or as much as we please of those things in which our will can be supposed to interfere; and it is only by setting aside our own interests and inclinations on more general questions that we stand any chance of 445arriving at a fair and rational judgment. Those who have the largest hearts have the soundest understandings; and he is the truest philosopher who can forget himself. This is the reason why philosophers are often said to be mad, for thinking only of the abstract truth and of none of its worldly adjuncts,—it seems like an absence of mind, or as if the devil had got into them! If belief were not in some degree voluntary, or were grounded entirely on strict evidence and absolute proof, every one would be a martyr to his opinions, and we should have no power of evading or glossing over those matter-of-fact conclusions for which positive vouchers could be produced, however painful these conclusions might be to our own feelings, or offensive to the prejudices of others.

Wit is the putting together in jest, i.e. in fancy, or in bare supposition, ideas between which there is a serious, i.e. a customary incompatibility, and by this pretended union, or juxtaposition, to point out more strongly some lurking incongruity. Or, wit is the dividing a sentence or an object into a number of constituent parts, as suddenly and with the same vivacity of apprehension to compound them again with other objects, ‘wherein the most distant resemblance or the most partial coincidence may be found.’ It is the polypus power of the mind, by which a distinct life and meaning is imparted to the different parts of a sentence or object after they are severed from each other; or it is the prism dividing the simplicity and candour of our ideas into a parcel of motley and variegated hues; or it is the mirror broken into pieces, each fragment of which reflects a new light from surrounding objects; or it is the untwisting the chain of our ideas, whereby each link is made to hook on more readily to others than when they were all bound up together by habit, and with a view to a set purpose. Ideas exist as a sort of fixtures in the understanding; they are like moveables (that will also unscrew and take to pieces) in the wit or fancy. If our grave notions were always well founded; if there were no aggregates of power, of prejudice, and absurdity; if the value and importance of an object went on increasing with the opinion entertained of it, and with the surrender of our faith, freedom, and every thing else to aggrandise it, then ‘the squandering glances’ of the wit, ‘whereby the wise man’s folly is anatomised,’ would be as impertinent as they would be useless. But while gravity and imposture not only exist, but reign triumphant; while the proud, obstinate, sacred tumours rear their heads on high, and are trying to get a new lease of for 446ever and a day; then oh! for the Frenchman’s art (‘Voltaire’s?—the same’) to break the torpid spell, and reduce the bloated mass to its native insignificance! When a Ferdinand still rules, seated on his throne of darkness and blood, by English bayonets and by English gold (that have no mind to remove him thence) who is not glad that an Englishman has the wit and spirit to translate the title of King Ferdinand into Thing Ferdinand; and does not regret that, instead of pointing the public scorn and exciting an indignant smile, the stroke of wit has not the power to shatter, to wither, and annihilate in its lightning blaze the monstrous assumption, with all its open or covert abettors? This would be a set-off, indeed, to the joint efforts of pride, ignorance, and hypocrisy: as it is, wit plays its part, and does not play it ill, though it is too apt to cut both ways. It may be said that what I have just quoted is not an instance of the decomposition of an idea or word into its elements, and finding a solid sense hid in the unnoticed particles of wit, but is the addition of another element or letter. But it was the same lively perception of individual and salient points, that saw the word King stuck up in capital letters, as it were, and like a transparency in the Illuminated Missal of the Fancy, that enabled the satirist to conjure up the letter T before it, and made the transition (urged by contempt) easy. For myself, with all my blind, rooted prejudices against the name, it would be long enough before I should hit upon so happy a mode of expressing them. My mind is not sufficiently alert and disengaged. I cannot run along the letters composing it like the spider along its web, to see what they are or how to combine them anew; I am crushed like the worm, and writhing beneath the load. I can give no reasons for the faith that is in me, unless I read a novel of Sir Walter’s, but there I find plenty of examples to justify my hatred of kings in former times, and to prevent my wishing to ‘revive the ancient spirit of loyalty’ in this! Wit, then, according to this account of it, depends on the rapid analysis or solution of continuity in our ideas, which, by detaching, puts them into a condition to coalesce more readily with others, and form new and unexpected combinations: but does all analysis imply wit, or where is the difference? Does the examining the flowers and leaves in the cover of a chair-bottom, or the several squares in a marble pavement, constitute wit? Does looking through a microscope amount to it? The painter analyses the face into features—nose, eyes, and mouth—the features into their component parts: but this process of observation and attention to details only leads him to discriminate more nicely, and not to confound objects. The mathematician abstracts in his reasonings, and considers the same line, now as forming the side of a triangle, now of a square figure; but does he laugh at 447the discovery, or tell it to any one else as a monstrous good jest? These questions require an answer; and an evasive one will not do. With respect to the wit of words, the explanation is not difficult; and if all wit were verbal, my task would be soon ended. For language, being in its own nature arbitrary and ambiguous; or consisting of ‘sounds significant,’ which are now applied to one thing, now to something wholly different and unconnected, the most opposite and jarring mixtures may be introduced into our ideas by making use of this medium which looks two ways at once, either by applying the same word to two different meanings, or by dividing it into several parts, each probably the sign of a different thing, and which may serve as the starting-post of a different set of associations. The very circumstance which at first one might suppose would convert all the world into punsters and word-catchers, and make a Babel and chaos of language, viz. the arbitrary and capricious nature of the symbols it uses, is that which prevents them from becoming so; for words not being substantive things in themselves, and utterly valueless and unimportant except as the index of thought, the mind takes no notice of or lays no kind of stress upon them, passes on to what is to follow, uses them mechanically and almost unconsciously; and thus the syllables of which a word may be composed, are lost in its known import, and the word itself in the general context. We may be said neither to hear nor see the words themselves; we attend only to the inference, the intention they are meant to communicate. This merging of the sound in the sense, of the means in the end, both common sense, the business of life, and the limitation of the human faculties dictate. But men of wit and leisure are not contented with this; in the discursiveness of their imaginations and with their mercurial spirits, they find it an amusement to attend not only to the conclusion or the meaning of words, but to criticise and have an eye to the words themselves. Dull, plodding people go no farther than the literal, or more properly, the practical sense; the parts of a word or phrase are massed together in their habitual conceptions; their rigid understandings are confined to the one meaning of any word predetermined by its place in the sentence, and they are propelled forward to the end without looking to the right or the left. The others, who are less the creatures of habit and have a greater quantity of disposable activity, take the same words out of harness, as it were, lend them wings, and flutter round them in all sorts of fantastic combinations, and in every direction that they choose to take. For instance: the word elder signifies in the dictionary either age or a certain sort of tree or berry; but if you mention elder wine all the other senses sink into the dictionary as superfluous and nonsensical, and you think only of the wine 448which happens to bear this name. It required, therefore, a man of Mr. Lamb’s wit and disdain of the ordinary trammels of thought, to cut short a family dispute over some very excellent wine of this description, by saying, ‘I wonder what it is that makes elder wine so very pleasant, when elder brothers are so extremely disagreeable?’ Compagnons du lys, may mean either the companions of the order of the flower-de-luce, or the companions of Ulysses—who were transformed into swine—according as you lay the emphasis. The French wits, at the restoration of Louis XVIII., with admirable point and truth, applied it in this latter sense. Two things may thus meet, in the casual construction and artful encounters of language, wide as the poles asunder and yet perfectly alike; and this is the perfection of wit, when the physical sound is the same, the physical sense totally unlike, and the moral sense absolutely identical. What is it that in things supplies the want of the double entendre of language?—Absurdity. And this is the very signification of the term. For it is only when the two contradictory natures are found in the same object that the verbal wit holds good, and the real wit or jeu d’esprit exists and may be brought out wherever this contradiction is obvious with or without the jeu-de-mots to assist it. We can comprehend how the evolving or disentangling an unexpected coincidence, hid under the same name, is full of ambiguity and surprise; but an absurdity may be written on the face of a thing without the help of language; and it is in detecting and embodying this that the finest wit lies. Language is merely one instrument or handle that forwards the operation: Fancy is the midwife of wit. But how?—If we look narrowly and attentively, we shall find that there is a language of things as well as words, and the same variety of meaning, a hidden and an obvious, a partial and a general one, in both the one and the other. For things, any more than words, are not detached, independent existences, but are connected and cohere together by habit and circumstances in certain sets of association, and consist of an alphabet, which is thus formed into words and regular propositions, which being once done and established as the understood order of the world, the particular ideas are either not noticed, or determined to a set purpose and ‘foregone conclusion,’ just as the letters of a word are sunk in the word, or the different possible meanings of a word adjusted by the context. One part of an object being habitually associated with others, or one object with a set of other objects, we lump the whole together, take the general rule for granted, and merge the details in a blind and confused idea of the aggregate result. This, then, is the province of wit; to penetrate through the disguise or crust with which indolence and custom ‘skin and slur over’ our ideas, to move this slough of prejudice, and to 449resolve these aggregates or bundles of things into their component parts by a more lively and unshackled conception of their distinctions, and the possible combinations of these, so as to throw a glancing and fortuitous light upon the whole. There is then, it is obvious, a double meaning in things or ideas as well as in words (each being ordinarily regarded by the mind merely as the mechanical signs or links to hold together other ideas connected with them)—and it is in detecting this double meaning that wit in either case is shown. Having no books at hand to refer to for examples, and in the dearth of imagination which I naturally labour under, I must look round the room in search of illustrations. I see a number of stars or diamond figures in the carpet, with the violent contrast of red and yellow and fantastic wreaths of flowers twined round them, without being able to extract either edification or a particle of amusement from them: a joint-stool and a fire-screen in a corner are equally silent on the subject—the first hint I receive (or glimmering of light) is from a pair of tongs which, placed formally astride on the fender, bear a sort of resemblance to the human figure called long legs and no body. The absurdity is not in the tongs (for that is their usual shape) but in the human figure which has borrowed a likeness foreign to itself. With this contre-sens, and the uneasiness and confusion in our habitual ideas which it excites, and the effort to clear up this by throwing it from us into a totally distinct class of objects, where by being made plain and palpable, it is proved to have nothing to do with that into which it has obtruded itself, and to which it makes pretensions, commences the operation of wit and the satisfaction it yields to the mind. This I think is the cause of the delightful nature of wit, and of its relieving, instead of aggravating, the pains of defect or deformity, by pointing it out in the most glaring colours, inasmuch as by so doing, we, as it were, completely detach the peccant part and restore the sense of propriety which, in its undetected and unprobed state, it was beginning to disturb. It is like taking a grain of sand out of the eye, a thorn out of the foot. We have discharged our mental reckoning, and had our revenge. Thus, when we say of a snub-nose, that it is like an ace of clubs, it is less out of spite to the individual than to vindicate and place beyond a doubt the propriety of our notions of form in general. Butler compares the knight’s red, formal-set beard to a tile:—

we laugh in reading this, but the triumph is less over the wretched precisian than it is the triumph of common sense. So Swift exclaims:—

450Here, if the satire was just, the characteristics of want of solidity, of incongruity, and fantastical arrangement were inherent in the building, and written on its front to the discerning eye, and only required to be brought out by the simile of the goose-pie, which is an immediate test and illustration (being an extreme case) of those qualities. The absurdity, which before was either admired, or only suspected, now stands revealed, and is turned into a laughing stock, by the new version of the building into a goose-pie (as much as if the metamorphosis had been effected by a play of words, combining the most opposite things), for the mind in this case having narrowly escaped being imposed upon by taking a trumpery edifice for a stately pile, and perceiving the cheat, naturally wishes to cut short the dispute by finding out the most discordant object possible, and nicknames the building after it. There can be no farther question whether a goose-pie is a fine building. Butler compares the sun rising after the dark night to a lobster boiled, and ‘turned from black to red.’ This is equally mock-wit and mock-poetry, as the sun can neither be exalted nor degraded by the comparison. It is a play upon the ideas, like what we see in a play upon words, without meaning. In a pantomime at Sadler’s Wells, some years ago, they improved upon this hint, and threw a young chimney-sweeper into a cauldron of boiling water, who came out a smart, dapper volunteer. This was practical wit; so that wit may exist not only without the play upon words, but even without the use of them. Hogarth may be cited as an instance, who abounds in wit almost as much as he does in humour, considering the inaptitude of the language he used, or in those double allusions which throw a reflected light upon the same object, according to Collins’s description of wit,

Mark Supple’s calling out from the Gallery of the House of Commons—‘A song from Mr. Speaker!’ when Addington was in the chair and there was a pause in the debate, was undoubtedly wit, though the relation of any such absurd circumstance actually taking place, would only have been humour. A gallant calling on a courtesan (for it is fair to illustrate these intricacies how we can) observed, ‘he should only make her a present every other time.’ She answered, ‘Then come only every other time.’ This appears to me to offer a sort of touchstone to the question. The sense here is, ‘Don’t come unless you pay.’ There is no wit in this: the wit then consists in the mode of conveying the hint: let us see into what this resolves itself. The object is to point out as strongly as can be, the absurdity of not paying; and in order to do this, an impossibility is assumed by running a 451parallel on the phrases, ‘paying every other time,’ and ‘coming every other time,’ as if the coming went for nothing without paying, and thus, by the very contrast and contradiction in the terms, showing the most perfect contempt for the literal coming, of which the essence, viz. paying, was left out. It is, in short, throwing the most killing scorn upon, and fairly annihilating the coming without paying, as if it were possible to come and not to come at the same time, by virtue of an identical proposition or form of speech applied to contrary things. The wit so far, then, consists in suggesting, or insinuating indirectly, an apparent coincidence between two things, to make the real incongruity, by the recoil of the imagination, more palpable than it could have been without this feigned and artificial approximation to an union between them. This makes the difference between jest and earnest, which is essential to all wit. It is only make-believe. It is a false pretence set up, or the making one thing pass in supposition for another, as a foil to the truth when the mask is removed. There need not be laughter, but there must be deception and surprise: otherwise, there can be no wit. When Archer, in order to bind the robbers, suddenly makes an excuse to call out to Dorinda, ‘Pray lend me your garter, Madam,’ this is both witty and laughable. Had there been any propriety in the proposal or chance of compliance with it, it would no longer have been a joke: had the question been quite absurd and uncalled-for, it would have been mere impudence and folly; but it is the mixture of sense and nonsense, that is, the pretext for the request in the fitness of a garter to answer the purpose in question, and the totally opposite train of associations between a lady’s garter (particularly in the circumstances which had just happened in the play) and tying a rascally robber’s hands behind his back, that produces the delightful equivoque and unction of the passage in Farquhar. It is laughable, because the train of inquiry it sets in motion is at once on pleasant and on forbidden ground. We did not laugh in the former case—‘Then only come every other time’—because it was a mere ill-natured exposure of an absurdity, and there was an end of it: but here, the imagination courses up and down along a train of ideas, by which it is alternately repelled and attracted, and this produces the natural drollery or inherent ludicrousness. It is the difference between the wit of humour and the wit of sense. Once more, suppose you take a stupid, unmeaning likeness of a face, and throwing a wig over it, stick it on a peg, to make it look like a barber’s block—this is wit without words. You give that which is stupid in itself the additional accompaniments of what is still more stupid, to enhance and verify the idea by a falsehood. We know the head so placed is not a barber’s block; but it might, we see, very 452well pass for one. This is caricature or the grotesque. The face itself might be made infinitely laughable, and great humour be shown in the delineation of character: it is in combining this with other artificial and aggravating circumstances, or in the setting of this piece of lead that the wit appears.^[62] Recapitulation. It is time to stop short in this list of digressions, and try to join the scattered threads together. We are too apt, both from the nature of language and the turn of modern philosophy, which reduces every thing to simple sensations, to consider whatever bears one name as one thing in itself, which prevents our ever properly understanding those mixed modes and various clusters of ideas, to which almost all language has a reference. Thus if we regard wit as something resembling a drop of quicksilver, or a spangle from off a cloak, a little nimble substance, that is pointed and glitters (we do not know how) we shall make no progress in analysing its varieties or its essence; it is a mere word or an atom: but if we suppose it to consist in, or be the result of, several sets and sorts of ideas combined together or acting upon each other (like the tunes and machinery of a barrel-organ) we may stand some chance of explaining and getting an insight into the process. Wit is not, then, a single idea or object, but it is one mode of viewing and representing nature, or the differences and similitudes, harmonies and discords in the links and chains of our ideas of things at large. If all our ideas were literal, physical, confined to a single impression of the object, there could be no faculty for, or possibility of, the existence of wit, for its first principle is mocking or making a jest of anything, and its first condition or postulate, therefore, is the distinction between jest and earnest. First of all, wit implies a jest, that is, the bringing forward a pretended or counterfeit illustration of a thing; which, being presently withdrawn, makes the naked truth more apparent by contrast. It is lessening and undermining our faith in any thing (in which the serious consists) by heightening or exaggerating the vividness of our idea of it, so as by carrying it to extremes to show the error in the first concoction, and from a received practical truth and object of grave assent, to turn it into a laughing stock to the fancy. This will apply to Archer and the lady’s garter, which is ironical: but how does it connect with the comparison of Hudibras’s beard to a tile, which is only an exaggeration; or the Compagnons d’Ulysse, which is meant for a literal and severe truth, as well as a play upon words? More generally then, wit is the conjuring up in the fancy any illustration of an idea by likeness, combination of other images, or by a form of words, that being intended to point out the eccentricity or 453departure of the original idea from the class to which it belongs does so by referring it contingently and obliquely to a totally opposite class, where the surprise and mere possibility of finding it, proves the inherent want of congruity. Hudibras’s beard is transformed (by wit) into a tile: a strong man is transformed (by imagination) into a tower. The objects, you will say, are unlike in both cases; yet the comparison in one case is meant seriously, in the other it is merely to tantalize. The imagination is serious, even to passion, and exceeds truth by laying a greater stress on the object; wit has no feeling but contempt, and exceeds truth to make light of it. In a poetical comparison there cannot be a sense of incongruity or surprise; in a witty one there must. The reason is this: It is granted stone is not flesh, a tile is not hair, but the associated feelings are alike, and naturally coalesce in one instance, and are discordant and only forced together by a trick of style in the other. But how can that be, if the objects occasioning these feelings are equally dissimilar?—Because the qualities of stiffness or squareness and colour, objected to in Hudibras’s beard, are themselves peculiarities and oddities in a beard, or contrary to the nature or to our habitual notion of that class of objects; and consequently (not being natural or rightful properties of a beard) must be found in the highest degree in, and admit of, a grotesque and irregular comparison with a class of objects, of which squareness and redness^[63] are the essential characteristics (as of a tile), and which can have, accordingly, no common point of union in general qualities or feeling with the first class, but where the ridicule must be just and pointed from this very circumstance, that is, from the coincidence in that one particular only, which is the flaw and singularity of the first object. On the other hand, size and strength, which are the qualities on which the comparison of a man to a tower hinges, are not repugnant to the general constitution of man, but familiarly associated with our ideas of him: so that there is here no sense of impropriety in the object, nor of incongruity or surprise in the comparison: all is grave and decorous, and instead of burlesque, bears the aspect of a loftier truth. But if strength and magnitude fall within our ordinary contemplations of man as things not out of the course of nature, whereby he is enabled, with the help of imagination, to rival a tower of brass or stone, are not littleness and weakness the counterpart of these, and subject to the same rule? What shall we say, then, to the comparison of a dwarf to a pigmy, or to Falstaff’s comparison of Silence to ‘a forked radish, or a man made after supper of a cheese-paring?’ Once more then, strength and magnitude are qualities which impress the imagination in a powerful and substantive manner; if they are an excess above the 454ordinary or average standard, it is an excess to which we lend a ready and admiring belief, that is, we will them to be if they are not, because they ought to be—whereas, in the other case of peculiarity and defect, the mind is constantly at war with the impression before it; our affections do not tend that way; we will it not to be; reject, detach, and discard it from the object as much and as far as possible; and therefore it is, that there being no voluntary coherence but a constant repugnance between the peculiarity (as of squareness) and the object (as a beard), the idea of a beard as being both naturally and properly of a certain form and texture remains as remote as ever from that of a tile; and hence the double problem is solved, why the mind is at once surprised and not shocked by the allusion; for first, the mind being made to see a beard so unlike a beard, is glad to have the discordance increased and put beyond controversy, by comparing it to something still more unlike one, viz., a tile; and secondly, squareness never having been admitted as a desirable and accredited property of a beard as it is of a tile, by which the two classes of ideas might have been reconciled and compromised (like those of a man and a tower) through a feeling or quality common (in will) to both, the transition from one to the other continues as new and startling, that is, as witty as ever;—which was to be demonstrated. I think I see my way clearly so far. Wit consists in two things, the perceiving the incongruity between an object and the class to which it generally belongs, and secondly, the pointing out or making this incongruity more manifest, by transposing it to a totally different class of objects in which it is prescriptively found in perfection. The medium or link of connexion between the opposite classes of ideas is in the unlikeness of one of the things in question to itself, i.e. the class it belongs to: this peculiarity is the narrow bridge or line along which the fancy runs to link it to a set of objects in all other respects different from the first, and having no sort of communication, either in fact or inclination, with it, and in which the pointedness and brilliancy, or the surprise and contrast of wit consists. The faculty by which this is done is the rapid, careless decomposition and recomposition of our ideas, by means of which we easily and clearly detach certain links in the chain of our associations from the place where they stand, and where they have an infirm footing, and join them on to others, to show how little intimacy they had with the former set.

The motto of wit seems to be, Light come, light go. A touch is sufficient to dissever what already hangs so loose as folly, like froth on the surface of the wave; and an hyperbole, an impossibility, a pun or a nickname will push an absurdity, which is close upon the verge of it, over the precipice. It is astonishing how much wit or laughter 455there is in the world—it is one of the staple commodities of daily life—and yet, being excited by what is out of the way and singular, it ought to be rare, and gravity should be the order of the day. Its constant recurrence from the most trifling and trivial causes, shows that the contradiction is less to what we find things than to what we wish them to be. A circle of milliner’s-girls laugh all day long at nothing, or day after day at the same things—the same cant phrase supplies the wags of the town with wit for a month—the same set of nicknames has served the John Bull and Blackwood’s Magazine ever since they started. It would appear by this that its essence consisted in monotony, rather than variety. Some kind of incongruity however seems inseparable from it, either in the object or language. For instance, admiration and flattery become wit by being expressed in a quaint and abrupt way. Thus, when the dustman complimented the Duchess of Devonshire by saying, as she passed, ‘I wish that lady would let me light my pipe at her eyes,’ nothing was meant less than to ridicule or throw contempt, yet the speech was wit and not serious flattery. The putting a wig on a stupid face and setting it on a barber’s pole is wit or humour:—the fixing a pair of wings on a beautiful figure to make it look more like an angel is poetry; so that the grotesque is either serious or ludicrous, as it professes to exalt or degrade. Whenever any thing is proposed to be done in the way of wit, it must be in mockery or jest; since if it were a probable or becoming action, there would be no drollery in suggesting it; but this does not apply to illustrations by comparison, there is here no line drawn between what is to take place and what is not to take place—they must only be extreme and unexpected. Mere nonsense, however, is not wit. For however slight the connexion, it will never do to have none at all; and the more fine and fragile it is in some respects, the more close and deceitful it should be in the particular one insisted on. Farther, mere sense is not wit. Logical subtilty or ingenuity does not amount to wit (although it may mimic it) without an immediate play of fancy, which is a totally different thing. The comparing the phrenologist’s division of the same portion of the brain into the organs of form and colour to the cutting a Yorkshire pudding into two parts, and calling the one custard and the other plum-cake may pass for wit with some, but not with me. I protest (if required) against having a grain of wit.^[64]

The emancipation of the Jews is but a natural step in the progress of civilisation. Laws and institutions are positive things: opinions and sentiments are variable; and it is in conforming the stubbornness and perversity of the former to the freedom and boldness of the latter, that the harmony and beauty of the social order consist. But it is 462said, ‘The Jews at present have few grievances to complain of; they are well off, and should be thankful for the indulgence they receive.’ It is true, we no longer burn them at a stake, or plunder them of their goods: why then continue to insult and fix an idle stigma on them? At Rome a few years ago they made the Jews run races (naked) in the Corso on Good Friday. At present, they only oblige them to provide asses to run races on the same day for the amusement of the populace, and to keep up the spirit of the good old custom, though by altering it they confess that the custom was wrong, and that they are ashamed of it. They also shut up the Jews in a particular quarter of the city (called Il Ghetto Judaico), and at the same time will not suffer the English as heretics to be buried within the walls of Rome. An Englishman smiles or is scandalised at both these instances of bigotry; but if he is asked, ‘Why, then, do you not yourselves emancipate the Catholics and the Jews?’ he may answer, ‘We have emancipated the one.’ And why not the other? ‘Because we are intolerant.’ This and this alone is the reason.

We throw in the teeth of the Jews that they are prone to certain sordid vices. If they are vicious it is we who have made them so. Shut out any class of people from the path to fair fame, and you reduce them to grovel in the pursuit of riches and the means to live. A man has long been in dread of insult for no just cause, and you complain that he grows reserved and suspicious. You treat him with obloquy and contempt, and wonder that he does not walk by you with an erect and open brow.

We also object to their trades and modes of life; that is, we shut people up in close confinement and complain that they do not live in the open air. The Jews barter and sell commodities, instead of raising or manufacturing them. But this is the necessary traditional consequence of their former persecution and pillage by all nations. They could not set up a trade when they were hunted every moment from place to place, and while they could count nothing their own but what they could carry with them. They could not devote themselves to the pursuit of agriculture, when they were not allowed to possess a foot of land. You tear people up by the roots and trample on them like noxious weeds, and then make an outcry that they do not take root in the soil like wholesome plants. You drive them like a pest from city to city, from kingdom to kingdom, and then call them vagabonds and aliens.

When reason fails, the Christian religion is, as usual, called in aid of persecution. The admission of the Jews, it is said, to any place of trust or emolument in the state ought not to be sanctioned, because they expect the coming of the Messiah, and their restoration, one 463day or other, to their own country: and Christianity, it is said, is part of the law of the land.

As to their exclusion because they expect the coming of the Messiah, and their restoration, one day or other, to their own country, a few words will be sufficient. Even if it is too much for a people, with this reversion in the promised land, to have a ‘stake in the country’ added to it; and the offer of a seat in the House of Commons is too much for any one who looks forward to a throne in the New Jerusalem: this objection comes with but an ill grace from the followers of him who has declared, ‘My kingdom is not of this world;’ and who on that plea profess to keep all the power and authority in their own hands. Suppose an attempt were made to exclude Christians from serving the office of constable, jury-man, or knight of the shire, as expressly contrary to the great principle of their religion, which inculcates an entire contempt for the things of this life, and a constant preparation for a better. Would not this be considered as an irony, and not a very civil one? Yet it is the precise counterpart of this argument. The restoration of the Jews to their own country, however firmly believed in as an article of faith, has been delayed eighteen hundred years, and may be delayed eighteen hundred more. Are they to remain indifferent to the good or evil, to the respectability or odium that may attach to them all this while? The world in general do not look so far; and the Jews have not been accused, more than others, of sacrificing the practical to the speculative. But according to this objection, there can be no amalgamation of interests with a people of such fantastic principles and abstracted ties; they cannot care how soon a country goes to ruin, which they are always on the point of quitting. Suppose a Jew to have amassed a large fortune in the last war, and to have laid by money in the funds, and built himself a handsome house in the neighbourhood of the metropolis; would he be more likely by his vote in the House of Commons to promote a revolution, so as to cause a general bankruptcy; or to encourage the mob to pull down his house, or root up his favourite walks, because after all, at the end of several centuries, he and the rest of his nation indulge in the prospect of returning to their own country? The most clear-sighted John Bull patriotism hardly reaches beyond ourselves and our heirs.

As to the assertion that Christianity is part of the law of the land, as Popery is a part of the law of the land at Rome, and a good reason for hunting Jews and refusing Christian burial to Protestants, by whom is it made? Not by our Divines. They do not distrust the power of our religion; and they will tell you that if Christianity, as sanctioning these cruelties or any miserable remnant of them, is part 464of the law of the land, then the law of the land is no part of Christianity. They do not forget the original character of the Jewish people, and will not say anything against it. We and modern Europe derived from them the whole germ of our civilisation, our ideas on the unity of the Deity, or marriage, on morals,

The great founder of the Christian religion was himself born among that people, and if the Jewish Nation are still to be branded with his death, it might be asked on what principle of justice ought we to punish men for crimes committed by their co-religionists near two thousand years ago? That the Jews, as a people, persist in their blindness and obstinacy is to be lamented; but it is at least, under the circumstances, a proof of their sincerity; and as adherents to a losing cause, they are entitled to respect and not contempt. Is it the language of Lawyers? They are too intelligent, and, in the present times, not favourers of hypocrisy. They know that this law is not on our statute book, and if it were, that it would be law as long as it remained there and no longer; they know that the supposition originated in the unadvised dictum of a Judge, and, if it had been uttered by a Puritan Divine, it would have been quoted at this day as a specimen of puritanical nonsense and bigotry. Religion cannot take on itself the character of law without ceasing to be religion; nor can law recognise the obligations of religion for its principles, nor become the pretended guardian and protector of the faith, without degenerating into inquisitorial tyranny.

The proposal to admit Jews to a seat in Parliament in this country is treated as an irony or a burlesque on the Catholic question. At the same time, it is said to be very proper and rational in France and America, Denmark and the Netherlands, because there, though they are nominally admitted, court influence excludes them in the one, and popular opinion in the other, so that the law is of no avail: that is, in other words, in England as there is neither court influence nor popular prejudice; and as every thing in this country is done by money alone, the Stock Exchange would soon buy up the House of Commons, and if a single Jew were admitted, the whole would shortly be a perfect Sanhedrim. This is a pleasant account of the spirit of English patriotism, and the texture of the House of Commons. All the wealth of the Jews cannot buy them a single seat there; but if a certain formal restriction were taken off, Jewish gold would buy up the fee simple of the consciences, prejudices and interests of the country, and turn the kingdom topsy-turvy. Thus the bed-rid imagination of prejudice sees some dreadful catastrophe in 465every improvement, and no longer feeling the ground of custom under its feet, fancies itself on an abyss of ruin and lawless change. How truly has it been said of prejudice, ‘that it has the singular ability of accommodating itself to all the possible varieties of the human mind. Some passions and vices are but thinly scattered among mankind, and find only here and there a fitness of reception. But prejudice, like the spider, makes every where its home. It has neither taste nor choice of place, and all that it requires is room. There is scarcely a situation, except fire and water, in which a spider will not live. So let the mind be as naked as the walls of an empty and forsaken tenement, gloomy as a dungeon, or ornamented with the richest abilities of thinking; let it be hot, cold, dark or light, lonely or inhabited, still prejudice, if undisturbed, will fill it with cobwebs, and live like the spider, where there seems nothing to live on. If the one prepares her food by poisoning it to her palate and her use, the other does the same; and as several of our passions are strongly characterised by the animal world, prejudice may be denominated the spider of the mind.’

Three hundred years ago all this was natural and in order, because it accorded with the prejudices of the time; now it is absurd and Gothic, because it is contrary to men’s reason and feelings. Hatred is the food and growth of ignorance. While we know nothing but ourselves and our own notions, we can conceive of nothing else as possible; and every deviation from our practice or opinions gives a shock to our faith that nothing can expiate but blows. Those who differ from us in the smallest particular are considered as of a different species, and we treat them accordingly. But this barrier of prejudice, which is founded on ignorance, is thrown down by the diffusion of light and knowledge; nor can any thing build it up again. In the good old times a Jew was regarded by the vulgar and their betters as a sort of monster, a lusus naturæ whose existence they could not account for, and would not tolerate. The only way to get rid of the obnoxious opinion was to destroy the man. Besides, in those dark ages, they wanted some object of natural antipathy, as in country places they get a strange dog or an idiot to hunt down and be the bugbear of the village. But it is the test of reason and refinement to be able to subsist without bugbears. While it was supposed that ‘the Jews eat little children,’ it was proper to take precautions against them. But why keep up ill names and the ill odour of a prejudice when the prejudice has ceased to exist? It has long ceased amongst the reflecting part of the community; and, although the oldest prejudices are, it is to be lamented, preserved longest in the highest places, and governments have been slow to learn good manners, we 466cannot but be conscious that these errors are passing away. We begin to see, if we do not fully see, that we have no superiority to boast of but reason and philosophy, and that it is well to get rid of vulgar prejudices and nominal distinctions as fast as possible.

The view which has been taken of the subject by Beccaria and other modern writers appears to be erroneous or defective in some of the most important circumstances relating to this question.

First objection. It is assumed as a general maxim, that, ‘it is not the intensity of punishment, but its duration, which makes the greatest impression on the human mind.’

This maxim will be found to be in direct opposition to all experience, and to every principle of human nature. It supposes that a number of impressions, feeble in themselves, and dissipated over a long interval of time, produce a stronger effect upon the mind, than a single object, however powerful and striking, presented to it at once: that is, that the passions are excited more by reason than imagination, by the real, than by the apparent quantity of good or evil. This principle is indeed, in general, denied by Mr. Bentham, but admitted by him, as far as relates to the influence of the fear of death on malefactors. If it be true with respect to them in particular (which there is reason to doubt,) it is not because the fear of a continued punishment influences them more than the fear of an intense one, but because death is to them not an intense punishment.

Again, it has been said, that ‘crimes are more effectually prevented by the certainty than by the severity of the punishment.’ Now I cannot think that this is either self-evident, or true universally and in the abstract. It is not true of human nature in general, and it is still less so as applied to the more lawless and abandoned classes of the community. It is evident from the very character of such persons, that if they are not to be acted upon by violent motives, by what appeals strongly to their imagination and their passions, they cannot be acted upon at all, they are out of the reach of all moral discipline. The dull, sober certainties of common life, and the real consequences of things when set in competition with any favourite inclination, or vicious indulgence, they altogether despise. It is only when the certainty of punishment is immediate, obvious, and connected with circumstances, which strike upon the imagination, that it operates effectually in the prevention of crimes. This principle is however true, as it has been sometimes applied to cases where the law has become a dead 467letter. When a moderate punishment is strictly and vigorously enforced, and a severe punishment is as generally and systematically evaded, the mind will, undoubtedly, be more affected by what it considers as a serious reality, than by what it will regard as an idle threat. So far the principle is true in its application, but no farther.

First maxim. It is not the real, but the apparent severity of the punishment which most effectually deters from the commission of crimes. For this reason, an intense punishment will have more effect than a continued one, because more easily apprehended. Neither is the certainty of punishment to be depended on, except when it is apparent. It is not the calculation of consequences, but their involuntary and irresistible impression on the mind that produces action. The laws to prevent crimes must appeal to the passions of men, and not to their reason: for crimes proceed from passion, and not from reason. If men were governed by reason, laws would be unnecessary.

Second objection. It seems to be taken for granted by speculative writers, (at least the contrary is not stated with sufficient distinctness) that punishment operates by terror alone, or by the fear which each individual has of the consequences to himself.

It is indeed a prevailing maxim of philosophy, that self-interest is the sole spring of action, and it has thus probably been inferred, that the fear of punishment could only operate on this principle of cool, calculating self-interest. But it is quite certain that sympathy with others, whatever may be its origin, is, practically speaking, an independent and powerful principle of action. The opinions and feelings of others do actually and constantly influence our conduct, in opposition to our strongest interests and inclinations. That punishment, therefore, will not be the most dreaded, nor, consequently, the most effectual, which is the greatest to the individual, unless it is at the same time thought so by others, and expresses the greatest general disapprobation of the crime. Thus, though a malefactor, consulting only his own inclinations or feelings, might prefer death to perpetual imprisonment and hard labour, yet he may regard it as the worst of punishments, in as far as it demonstrates the greatest abhorrence and indignation in the community against the crime.

Second maxim. Punishment operates by sympathy, as well as by terror. Penal laws have a tendency to repress crimes not more by exciting a dread of the consequences, than by marking the strong sense entertained by others of their enormity, and the detestation in which they are held by mankind in general. The most severe laws will always be the most effectual, as long as they are expressions of the public sentiment; but they will become ineffectual, in proportion as the sentiment is wanting. The disproportion between the crime 468and the punishment in the public opinion, will then counteract the dread of the severity of the law. Setting this feeling aside, the most severe laws will be the most effectual. The argument drawn from the inefficacy of severe punishments, when inflicted on trifling or common offences, does not prove that they must be ineffectual, when applied to great crimes, which rouse the public indignation and justify the severity.

Third objection. It is farther implied in the foregoing statements, that the only object of punishment is to prevent actual crimes, or that those laws are the best, which most effectually answer this end by deterring criminals.

This I also conceive to be a narrow and imperfect view of the question, which respects not merely the motives and conduct of criminals, but the motives and sentiments of the community at large. It is of the first importance that the ill disposed should be coerced, but it is also of importance that they should be coerced in such a manner, and by such means, as it is most consistent with the public morals to employ. In defending the state, we are not to forget that the state ought to be worth defending. As the sentiments of society have a powerful effect in enforcing the laws, so the laws re-act powerfully on the sentiments of society. This is evident with respect to barbarous punishments. The evil of a law operating in this way on manners, by holding out an example of cruelty and injustice, however effectual it might be found, is not denied. In like manner, a law falling short of or disappointing the just indignation and moral sense of the community, is, for the same reason, faulty as one that exceeds and outrages it. One end of punishment, therefore, is to satisfy this natural sense of justice in the public mind, and to strengthen the opinion of the community by its act. As the arm of justice ought not to be mocked and baffled by the impunity of offences, so neither ought it to be unnerved by thwarting and prevaricating with the common sentiments of mankind, or by substituting remote, indirect, and artificial punishments for obvious and direct ones. I call a punishment natural when it is dictated by the passion excited against the crime. A punishment will therefore be the most beneficial when it arises out of, and co-operates with that strong sense of right or wrong, that firm and healthy tone of public sentiment, which is the best preservative against crime.

Illustration. Thus even if it were shewn that perpetual imprisonment and hard labour would be equally effectual in deterring malefactors from the commission of murder, it would by no means necessarily follow, that this mode of punishment would be preferable to capital punishment, unless it could at the same time be made to 469appear that it would equally enforce the principle of the connexion between the crime and the punishment, or the rule of natural justice, by which he who shews himself indifferent to the life of another, forfeits his own. There is a natural and home-felt connexion between the hardened obduracy which has shewn itself insensible to the cries of another for mercy and the immediate burst of indignation which dooms the criminal to feel that he has no claims on the pity of others: but there is no connexion, because there is no ascertainable proportion, in the mind either of the criminal or the public, between the original crime, and the additional half-hour in the day after the lapse of twenty years, which the malefactor is condemned to labour, or the lash of the whip which urges him to complete his heavy task. That reasoning which stops the torrent of public indignation, and diverts it from its object only to dole it out to its miserable victim, drop by drop, and day by day, through a long protracted series of time with systematic, deliberate, unrelenting severity, is in fact neither wise nor humane. Punishments of this kind may be so contrived as to intimidate the worst part of mankind, but they will also be the aversion of the best, and will confound and warp the plain distinctions between right and wrong.

Third maxim. The end of punishment is not only to prevent actual crimes, but to form a standard of public opinion, and to confirm and sanction the moral sentiments of the community. The mode and degree of the punishment ought, therefore, to be determined with a view to this object, as well as with a view to the regulation of the police.

Fourth objection. The theory here alluded to, is farther objectionable in this, that it makes familiarity with the punishment essential to its efficacy, and therefore recommends those punishments, the example of which is the most lasting, and, as it were, constantly before the eyes of the public, as the most salutary. On the contrary, those punishments are the best which require the least previous familiarity with objects of guilt and misery to make them formidable, which come least into contact with the mind, which tell at a distance, the bare mention of which startles the ear, which operate by an imaginary instead of an habitual dread, and which produce their effect once for all, without destroying the erectness and elasticity of social feeling by the constant spectacle of the degradation of the species. No one would wish to have a gibbet placed before his door, to deter his neighbours from robbing him. Punishments which require repeated ocular inspection of the evils which they occasion, cannot answer their end in deterring individuals, without having first operated as a penance on society. They are a public benefit only so far as they are a public nuisance. Laws framed entirely on this 470principle, would convert the world into a large prison, and divide mankind into two classes, felons and their keepers!

Maxim fourth. Those punishments are the best which produce the strongest apprehension, with the least actual suffering or contemplation of evil. Such is in general the effect of those punishments which appeal to the imagination, rather than to our physical experience; which are immediately connected with a principle of honour, with the passions in general, with natural antipathies, the fear of pain, the fear of death, etc. These punishments are, in Mr. Bentham’s phrase, the most economical; they do their work with the least expense of individual suffering, or abuse of public sympathy. Private punishments are, so far, preferable to public ones.

General inference. There ought to be a gradation of punishments proportioned to the offence, and adapted to the state of society.

In order to strike the imagination and excite terror, severe punishments ought not to be common.^[66]

To be effectual, from the sympathy of mankind in the justice of the sentence, the highest punishments ought not to be assigned to the lowest or to very different degrees of guilt. The absence of the sanction of public opinion not only deadens the execution of the law, but by giving confidence to the offender, produces that sort of resistance to it, which is always made to oppression. The ignominy attached to the sentence of the law, is thus converted into pity. If the law is enacted but not enforced, this must either be to such a degree as to take away the terror of the law, or if the terror still remains, it will be a terror of injustice, which will necessarily impair the sense of right and wrong in the community. But if the law is regularly carried into execution, the effect will be still worse. In general, all laws are bad which are not seconded by the manners of the people, and laws are not in conformity with the manners of the people when they are not executed. This is the case at present with a great proportion of the English laws. Is it to be wondered at that they should be so? Manners have changed, and will always change insensibly, and irresistibly, from the force of circumstances. The laws, as things of positive institution, remain the same. So that without a constant, gradual assimilation of the laws to the manners, the manners will, in time, necessarily become at variance with the laws, and will render them odious, ineffectual, and mischievous—a clog, instead of a furtherance to the wheels of justice.