The Collected Works of William Hazlitt Volume Eleven

In the following Essays I shall attempt to give some account of the rise and progress of modern metaphysics, to state the opinions of the principal writers who have treated on the subject, from the time of Lord Bacon to the present day, and to examine the arguments by which they are supported. In the first place, it will be my object to shew what the real conclusions of the most celebrated authors were, and the steps by which they arrived at them: to trace the connexion or point out the difference between their several systems, as well as to inquire into the peculiar bias and turn of their minds, and in what their true strength or weakness lay. This will undoubtedly be best done by an immediate reference to their works whenever the nature of the subject admits of it, or whenever their mode of reasoning is not so loose and desultory as to render the quotation of particular passages a useless as well as endless labour. In the History of English Philosophy, of which I published a prospectus some time ago, I intended to have gone regularly through with all the writers of any considerable note who fell within the limits of my plan, and to have given a detailed analysis of their several subjects and arguments. But this would lead to much greater length and minuteness of inquiry than seems consistent with my present object, and would besides, I am afraid, prove (what Hobbes, speaking of these subjects in general, calls) ‘but dry discourse.’ To avoid this as much as possible, I shall pass over all those writers who have not been distinguished either by the boldness of their opinions, or the logical 26precision of their arguments. Indeed I shall confine my attention more particularly to those who have made themselves conspicuous by deviating from the beaten track, and who have struck out some original discovery or brilliant paradox; whose metaphysical systems trench the closest on morality, or whose speculations, by the interest as well as novelty attached to them, have become topics of general conversation.

Secondly, besides stating the opinions of others, one principal object which I shall have in view will be to act as judge or umpire between them, to distinguish, as far as I am able, the boundaries of true and false philosophy, and to try if I cannot lay the foundation of a system more conformable to reason and experience, and, in its practical results at least, approaching nearer to the common sense of mankind, than the one which has been generally received by the most knowing persons who have attended to such subjects within the last century; I mean the material or modern philosophy, as it has been called. According to this philosophy, as I understand it, all thought is to be resolved into sensation, all morality into the love of pleasure, and all action into mechanical impulse. These three propositions, taken together, embrace almost every question relating to the human mind, and in their different ramifications and intersections form a net, not unlike that used by the enchanters of old, which, whosoever has once thrown over him, will find all his efforts to escape vain, and his attempts to reason freely on any subject in which his own nature is concerned, baffled and confounded in every direction.

This system, which first rose at the suggestion of Lord Bacon, on the ruins of the school-philosophy, has been gradually growing up to its present height ever since, from a wrong interpretation of the word experience, confining it to a knowledge of things without us; whereas it in fact includes all knowledge relating to objects either within or out of the mind, of which we have any direct and positive evidence. We only know that we ourselves exist, the most certain of all truths, from the experience of what passes within ourselves. Strictly speaking, all other facts of which we are not immediately conscious, are so in a secondary and subordinate sense only. Physical experience is indeed the foundation and the test of that part of philosophy which relates to physical objects: further, physical analogy is the only rule by which we can extend and apply our immediate knowledge, or infer the effects to be produced by the different objects around us. But to say that physical experiment is either the test or source or guide of that other part of philosophy which relates to our internal perceptions, that we are to look to external nature for the form, the substance, the colour, the very life and being of whatever exists in our minds, or 27that we can only infer the laws which regulate the phenomena of the mind from those which regulate the phenomena of matter, is to confound two things entirely distinct. Our knowledge of mental phenomena from consciousness, reflection, or observation of their correspondent signs in others is the true basis of metaphysical inquiry, as the knowledge of facts, commonly so called, is the only solid basis of natural philosophy.

To say that the operations of the mind and the operations of matter are in reality the same, so that we may always make the one exponents of the other, is to assume the very point in dispute, not only without any evidence, but in defiance of every appearance to the contrary. Lord Bacon was undoubtedly a great man, indeed one of the greatest that have adorned this or any other country. He was a man of a clear and active spirit, of a most fertile genius, of vast designs, of general knowledge, and of profound wisdom. He united the powers of imagination and understanding in a greater degree than almost any other writer. He was one of the strongest instances of those men, who by the rare privilege of their nature are at once poets and philosophers, and see equally into both worlds. The schoolmen and their followers attended to nothing but essences and species, to laboured analyses and artificial deductions. They seem to have alike disregarded both kinds of experience, that relating to external objects, and that relating to the observation of our own internal feelings. From the imperfect state of knowledge, they had not a sufficient number of facts to guide them in their experimental researches; and intoxicated with the novelty of their vain distinctions, taught by rote, they would be tempted to despise the clearest and most obvious suggestions of their own minds. Subtile, restless, and self-sufficient, they thought that truth was only made to be disputed about, and existed no where but in their demonstrations and syllogisms. Hence arose their ‘logomachy’—their everlasting word-fights, their sharp debates, their captious, bootless controversies.

As Lord Bacon expresses it, ‘they were made fierce with dark keeping,’ signifying that their angry and unintelligible contests with one another were owing to their not having any distinct objects to engage their attention. They built altogether on their own whims and fancies, and buoyed up by their specific levity, they mounted in their airy disputations in endless flights and circles, clamouring like birds of prey, till they equally lost sight of truth and nature. This great man therefore intended an essential service to philosophy, in wishing to recall the attention to facts and ‘experience’ which had been almost entirely neglected; and thus, by incorporating the abstract with the concrete, and general reasoning with individual observation, to give to our conclusions that solidity and firmness which they must 28otherwise always want. He did nothing but insist on the necessity of ‘experience,’ more particularly in natural science; and from the wider field that is open to it there, as well as the prodigious success it has met with, this latter application of the word, in which it is tantamount to physical experiment, has so far engrossed the whole of our attention, that mind has for a good while past been in some danger of being overlaid by matter. We run from one error into another; and as we were wrong at first, so in altering our course, we have turned about to the opposite extreme. We despised ‘experience’ altogether before; now we would have nothing but ‘experience,’ and that of the grossest kind.

We have, it is true, gained much by not consulting the suggestions of our own minds in questions where they inform us of nothing; namely, in the particular laws and phenomena of the natural world; and we have hastily concluded, reversing the rule, that the best way to arrive at the knowledge of ourselves also, was to lay aside the dictates of our own consciousness, thoughts, and feelings, as deceitful and insufficient guides, though they are the only means by which we can obtain the least light upon the subject. We seem to have resigned the natural use of our understandings, and to have given up our own existence as a nonentity. We look for our thoughts and the distinguishing properties of our minds in some image of them in matter, as we look to see our faces in a glass. We no longer decide physical problems by logical dilemmas, but we decide questions of logic by the evidences of the senses. Instead of putting our reason and invention to the rack indifferently on all questions, whether we have any previous knowledge of them or not, we have adopted the easier method of suspending the use of our faculties altogether, and settling tedious controversies by means of ‘four champions fierce—hot, cold, moist and dry,’ who with a few more of the retainers and hangers-on of matter determine all questions relating to the nature of man and the limits of the human understanding very learnedly. That which we seek however, namely, the nature of the mind and the laws by which we think, feel, and act, we must discover in the mind itself or not at all. The mind has laws, powers, and principles of its own, and is not the mere puppet of matter. This general bias in favour of mechanical reasoning and physical experiment, which was the consequence of the previous total neglect of them in matters where they were strictly necessary, was strengthened by the powerful aid of Hobbes, who was indeed the father of the modern philosophy. His strong mind and body appear to have resisted all impressions but those which were derived from the downright blows of matter: all his ideas seemed to lie like substances in his brain: what was not a 29solid, tangible, distinct, palpable object was to him nothing. The external image pressed so close upon his mind that it destroyed the power of consciousness, and left no room for attention to any thing but itself. He was by nature a materialist. Locke assisted greatly in giving popularity to the same scheme, as well by espousing many of Hobbes’s metaphysical principles as by the doubtful resistance which he made to the rest. And it has been perfected and has received its last polish and roundness in the hands of some French philosophers, as Condillac and others. It has been generally supposed that Mr. Locke was the first person who, in his ‘Essay on the Human Understanding’ established the modern metaphysical system on a solid and immoveable basis. This is a great mistake. The system, such as it is, existed entire in all its general principles in Hobbes before him; this was never unequivocally or explicitly avowed by the author of the ‘Essay on the Human Understanding.’ Locke merely endeavoured to accommodate Hobbes’s leading principle to the more popular opinions of the time; and all that succeeding writers have done to improve upon his system, and clear it of inconsistent and extraneous matter, has only tended to reduce it back to the purity and simplicity in which it is to be found in Hobbes. The immediate and professed object of both these writers is indeed the same, namely, to account for our ideas and the formation of the human understanding from sensible impressions. But in the execution of this design, Mr. Locke has deviated widely and at almost every step from his predecessor. This difference would almost unavoidably arise from the natural character of their minds, which were the most opposite conceivable. Hobbes had the utmost reliance on himself, and was impatient of the least doubt or contradiction. He saw from the beginning to the end of his system. He is always therefore on firm ground, and never once swerves from his object. He is at no pains to remove objections, or soften consequences. Granting his first principle, all the rest follows of course. There is an air of grandeur in the stern confidence with which he stands alone in the world of his own opinions, regardless of his contemporaries, and conscious that he is the founder of a new race of thinkers. Locke, on the other hand, was a man, who without the same comprehensive grasp of thought had a greater deference for the opinions of others, and was of a much more cautious and circumspect turn of mind. He could not but meet with many things in the peremptory assertions of Hobbes that must make him pause, that he would be at a loss to reconcile to an attentive observation of what passed in his own mind, and that would equally shock the prevailing notions both of the learned and the ignorant. He was therefore led to consider the different 30objections to the system which had been left unanswered and unnoticed, to make a compromise between the received doctrines, and the violent paradoxes contained in the ‘Leviathan’ and the ‘Treatise of Human Nature,’ or to admit these last with so many qualifications, with so much circumlocution and preparation, and after such an appearance of the most mature and candid examination, and of willingness to be convinced on the other side of the question, as to obviate the offensive and harsh effect which accompanies the abrupt dogmatism of the original author. It was perhaps necessary that the opinions of Hobbes should undergo this sort of metamorphosis before they could gain a hearing: as the direct rays of the sun must be blunted and refracted by passing through some denser medium in order to be borne by common eyes. So sheathed and softened, their sharp, unpleasant points taken off, his doctrines almost immediately met with a favourable reception, and became popular. The general principle being once established without its particular consequences, and the public mind assured, it was soon found an easy task to point out the inconsistency of Mr. Locke’s reasoning in many respects, and to give a more decided tone to his philosophical system. Berkeley was one of the first who tried the experiment of pushing his principles into the verge of paradox on the question of abstract ideas, which he has done with admirable dexterity and clearness, but without going beyond the explicitness of Hobbes on the same question. Subsequent writers added different chapters to supply the deficiencies of the Essay, which, with scarcely a single exception, may be found essentially comprized in that institute and digest of modern philosophy, our author’s ‘Leviathan.’

In thus giving the praise of originality and force of mind to Hobbes, and regarding Locke merely as his follower, I may be thought to venture on dangerous ground, or to lay unhallowed hands on a reputation which is dear to every lover of truth. But if something is due to fame, something is also due to justice. I confess however, that having brought this charge against the ‘Essay on the Human Understanding,’ I am bound to make it good in the fullest manner; otherwise, I shall be inexcusable.

What I therefore propose in the remainder of the present Essay is to show that Mr. Locke was not really the founder of the modern system of philosophy as it respects the human mind; and I shall think that I have sufficiently established this point, if I can make it appear, both that the principle itself on which that system rests, and all the striking consequences which have been deduced from it, are to be found in the writings of Hobbes, more clearly, decidedly, and forcibly expressed than they are in the ‘Essay on the Human Understanding.’ 31When I speak of the principle of the modern metaphysical system, I mean the assumption that the operations of the intellect are only a continuation of the impulses existing in matter, or that all the thoughts and conceptions of the mind are nothing more nor less than various modifications of the original impressions of things on a being endued with sensation or simple perception. This system considers ideas merely as they are caused by external objects, acting on the organs of sense, and tries to account for them on that hypothesis solely. It is upon this principle of excluding the understanding as a distinct faculty or power from all share in its own operations, that the whole of Hobbes’s reasoning proceeds. Let us see what he makes of it.

The first part of the ‘Leviathan,’ entitled ‘Of Man,’ begins in this manner:

Chapter I.—Of Sense.—‘Concerning the thoughts of man, I will consider them, first singly, and afterwards in train, or dependence upon one another. Singly, they are every one a representation or appearance of some quality or other accident of a body without us; which is commonly called an object: Which object worketh on the eyes, ears, and other parts of man’s body; and by diversity of working, produceth diversity of appearances.

‘The Original of them all is that which we call Sense: For there is no conception in a man’s mind which hath not at first, totally or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense. The rest are derived from that original.

‘The cause of sense is the external body or object which presseth the organ proper to each sense, either immediately as in the taste and touch, or mediately as in seeing, hearing, and smelling: which pressure by the mediation of nerves, and other strings and membranes of the body, continued inwards to the Brain and Heart, causeth there a resistance or counter-pressure, or endeavour of the heart to deliver itself: which endeavour, because outward, seemeth to be some matter without. And this seeming or fancy is that which men call sense: and consisteth to the eye, in a light or colour figured; to the ear, in a sound; to the nostril, in an odour; to the tongue and palate, in a savour, and to the rest of the body in heat, cold, hardness, softness, and such other qualities, as we discern by feeling. All which qualities called sensible are in the object that causeth them but so many several motions of the matter by which it presseth our organs diversely. Neither in us that are pressed are they any thing else but divers motions; for motion produceth nothing but motion. But their appearance to us is fancy, the same waking as dreaming. And as pressing, rubbing, or striking the eye maketh us fancy a light, and 32pressing the ear produceth a din, so do the bodies also we see or hear produce the same by their strong, though unobserved action. For if those colours and sounds were in the bodies or objects that cause them, they could not be severed from them, as by glasses and in echoes by reflection we see they are: where we know the thing we see is in one place, the appearance in another, and though at some certain distance, the real and very object seems invested with the fancy it begets in us; yet still the object is one thing, the image or fancy is another. So that sense in all cases is nothing else but original fancy; caused, as I have said, by the pressure, that is, by the motion of external things upon our eyes, ears, and other organs thereunto ordained.

‘But the Philosophy-schools, through all the universities of Christendom, grounded upon certain texts of Aristotle, teach another doctrine; and say, For the cause of vision, that the thing seen sendeth forth on every side a visible species, (in English) a visible show, apparition, aspect, or being seen; the receiving whereof into the eye, is seeing. And for the cause of hearing, that the thing heard sendeth forth an audible species, that is, an audible aspect, or audible being seen; which entering at the ear, maketh hearing. Nay, for the cause of understanding also, they say the thing understood sendeth forth an intelligible species, that is an intelligible being seen; which coming into the understanding, makes us understand. I say not this as disapproving the use of universities: but because I am to speak hereafter of their office in a commonwealth, I must let you see on all occasions by the way, what things would be amended in them; amongst which the frequency of insignificant speech is one.’—Leviathan, p. 4.

Thus far our author. It is evident that in this account he has laid the foundation of Berkeley’s ideal system, though he does not seem any where to have gone the whole length of that doctrine. He has entered more at large into this point in the ‘Discourse of Human Nature,’ published in 1640, ten years before the ‘Leviathan’; and as the subject is curious, and treated in a very decisive way, I will quote the concluding passage, which is a recapitulation of the rest.

‘As colour is not inherent in the object, but an effect thereof upon us, caused by such motion in the object as hath been described; so neither is sound in the thing we hear, but in ourselves. One manifest sign thereof is, that as a man may see, so also he may hear double or treble, by multiplication of echoes, which echoes are sounds as well as the original, and not being in one and the same place, cannot be inherent in the body that maketh them. And to proceed to the rest 33of the senses, it is apparent enough that the smell and taste of the same thing are not the same to every man, and therefore are not in the thing smelt or tasted, but in the men. So likewise the heat we feel from the fire is manifestly in us, and is quite different from the heat which is in the fire: for our heat is pleasure or pain, according as it is great or moderate; but in the coal there is no such thing. By this the fourth and last proposition is proved; viz. That as in vision, so also in conceptions that arise from other senses, the subject of their inherence is not in the object, but in the sentient. And from hence also it followeth that whatsoever accidents or qualities our senses make us think there be in the world, they be not there, but are seeming and apparitions only: the things that really are in the world without us, are those motions by which these seemings are caused. And this is the great deception of sense, which also is to be by sense corrected: for as sense telleth me, when I see directly, that the colour seemeth to be in the object; so also sense telleth me when I see by reflection, that colour is not in the object.’—Human Nature, chap. ii. p. 9.

The second chapter of the ‘Leviathan’ contains an account of the manner in which our ideas are generated, and is as follows:

‘That when a thing lies still, unless somewhat else stir it, it will lie still for ever, is a truth that no man doubts of. But that when a thing is in motion, it will eternally be in motion, unless somewhat else stay it, though the reason be the same (namely, that nothing can change itself) is not so easily assented to. For men measure not only other men, but all other things by themselves; and because they find themselves subject after motion to pain and lassitude, think every thing else grows weary of motion, and seeks repose of its own accord; little considering whether it be not some other motion wherein that desire of rest they find in themselves consisteth. From hence it is, that the Schools say, heavy bodies fall downward out of an appetite to rest, and to conserve their nature in that place which is most proper for them: ascribing appetite and knowledge of what is good for their conservation (which is more than man has) to things inanimate, absurdly.

‘When a body is once in motion, it moveth (unless something else hinder it) eternally: and whatsoever hindereth it, cannot in an instant, but in time and by degrees quite extinguish it. And as we see in the water, though the wind cease, the waves give not over rolling for a long time after; so also it happeneth in that motion which is made in the internal parts of a man then, when he sees, hears, &c. For after the object is removed or the eye shut, we still retain an image of the thing seen, though more obscure than when 34we see it. And this is it the Latins call imagination, from the image made in seeing; and apply the same, though improperly, to all the other senses. But the Greeks call it fancy; which signifies appearance, and is as proper to one sense, as to another. Imagination is therefore nothing but decaying sense; and is found in man and many other living creatures, as well sleeping as waking.

‘The decay of sense in men waking is an obscuring of it in such manner as the light of the sun obscureth the light of the stars, which stars do no less exercise their virtue by which they are visible in the day than in the night. But because amongst many strokes, which our eyes, ears, and other organs receive from external bodies, the predominant only is sensible, therefore the light of the sun being predominant, we are not affected with the action of the stars. And any object being removed from our eyes, though the impression it made in us remain; yet other objects more present succeeding, and working on us, the imagination of the past is obscured, and made weak; as the voice of a man is in the noise of the day. From whence it follows, that the longer the time is, after the sight or sense of any objects the weaker is the imagination. For the continual change of man’s body destroys in time the parts which in sense were moved: so that distance of time and of place hath one and the same effect in us. For as at a great distance of place, that which we look at appears dim, and without distinction of the smaller parts, and as voices grow weak and inarticulate, so also after great distance of time, our imagination of the past is weak; and we lose (for example) of cities we have seen many particular streets, and of actions, many particular circumstances. This decaying sense, when we would express the thing itself (I mean fancy itself) we call Imagination, as I said before: but when we would express the decay, and signify that the sense is fading, old and past, it is called Memory. So that imagination and memory are but one thing which for divers considerations hath divers names. Much memory or memory of many things is called Experience.

‘Again, imagination being only of those things which have been formerly perceived by sense, either all at once, or by parts at several times, the former (which is the imagining the whole object as it was presented to the sense) is simple imagination; as when one imagineth a man or horse which he hath seen before. The other is compounded, as when from the sight of a man at one time, and of a horse at another, we conceive in our mind a centaur. So when a man compoundeth the image of his own person with the image of the actions of another man; as when a man conceives himself a Hercules or an Alexander (which happeneth often to them which are much taken 35with the reading of Romaunts) it is a compound imagination, and properly but a fiction of the mind.

‘There be also other imaginations that rise in man, (though waking) from the great impression made in sense: as from gazing upon the sun, the impression leaves an image of the sun before our eyes a long time after; and from being long and vehemently attent upon geometrical figures, a man shall in the dark (though awake) have the image of lines and angles before his eyes: which kind of fancy hath no particular name; as being a thing that doth not commonly fall into men’s discourse.

‘The imaginations of them that sleep are those we call dreams: and these also (as all other imaginations) have been before, either totally or by parcels in the sense, and because the brain and nerves, which are the necessary organs of sense, are so benumbed in sleep, as not easily to be moved by the action of external objects, there can happen in sleep no imagination; and therefore no dream but what proceeds from the agitation of the inward parts of man’s body; which inward parts, for the connexion they have with the brain and other organs, when they be distempered, do keep the same in motion; whereby the imaginations there formerly made, appear as if a man were waking; saving that the organs of sense being now benumbed, so as there is no new object, which can master and obscure them with a more vigorous impression, a dream must needs be more clear in this silence of sense, than are our waking thoughts. And hence it cometh to pass, that it is a hard matter, and by many thought impossible, to distinguish exactly between sense and dreaming. For my part, when I consider that in dreams I do not often, nor constantly think of the same persons, places, subjects, and actions that I do waking; nor remember so long a train of coherent thoughts dreaming, as at other times; and because waking I often observe the absurdity of dreams, but never dream of the absurdities of my waking thoughts,—I am well satisfied, that being awake, I know I dream not; though when I dream, I think myself awake.’—Leviathan, pp. 4, 5, 6.

The concluding paragraph of this Chapter is remarkable.

‘The imagination that is raised in man (or any other creature endued with the faculty of imagining) by words or other voluntary signs, is that we generally call Understanding: and is common to man and beast. For a dog by custom will understand the call or rating of his master, and so will many other beasts. That understanding which is peculiar to man, is the understanding not only his will, but his conceptions and thoughts, by the sequel and contexture of the names of things into affirmations, negations, and other forms of 36speech; and of this kind of understanding I shall speak hereafter.’—Page 8.

As in the first two chapters Mr. Hobbes endeavours to show that all our thoughts, considered singly or in themselves, have their origin in sensation, so in the next chapter, he resolves all their combinations or connexions one with another into the principle of association, or the coexistence of their sensible impressions.

‘By consequence or train of thoughts,’ he says, ‘I understand that succession of one thought to another, which is called (to distinguish it from discourse in words) mental discourse.’

‘When a man thinketh on any thing whatsoever, his next thought after it is not altogether so casual as it seems to be. Not every thought to every thought succeeds indifferently. But as we have no imagination, whereof we have not formerly had sense in whole or in parts; so we have no transition from one imagination to another, whereof we never had the like before in our senses. The reason whereof is this. All fancies are motions within us, reliques of those made in sense: and those motions that succeeded one another in the sense, continue also together after sense: insomuch as the former coming again to take place, and be predominant, the latter followeth, by coherence of the matter moved, in such manner, as water upon a plane table is drawn which way any one part of it is guided by the finger. But because in sense to one and the same thing perceived, sometimes one thing, sometimes another succeedeth, it comes to pass in time, that in the imagining of any thing, there is no certainty what we shall imagine next. Only this is certain, it shall be something that succeeded the same before, at one time or another.’—Page 9.

The comprehension and precision with which the law of association is here unfolded as the key to every movement of the mind, and as regulating every wandering thought, cannot be too much admired; it is enough to say that Hartley, who certainly understood more of the power of association than any other man, has added nothing to this short passage, as far as relates to the succession of ideas. He has indeed extended its application in unravelling the fine web of our affections and feelings, by showing how one idea transfers the feeling of pleasure or pain to others associated with it, which is not here noticed. Whether this principle really has all the extent and efficacy ascribed to it by either of these writers will be made the subject of a future inquiry. How well our author understood the question, and how much it had assumed a consistent and systematic form in his mind will appear from the instances he brings in illustration of this intricate and at the time almost unthought-of subject.

‘The train of thoughts or mental discourse is of two sorts. The 37first is unguided, without design and inconstant; wherein there is no passionate thought to govern and direct those that follow to itself as the end and scope of some desire or other passion; in which case the thoughts are said to wander and seem impertinent one to another as in a dream. Such are commonly the thoughts of men, that are not only without company, but also without care of any thing: though even then their thoughts are as busy as at other times, but without harmony, as the sound which a lute out of tune would yield to any man, or in tune to one that could not play. And yet in this wild ranging of the mind, a man may ofttimes perceive the way of it, and the dependence of one thought upon another. For in a discourse of our present civil war, what could seem more impertinent than to ask (as one did) what was the value of a Roman penny? Yet the coherence to me was manifest enough. For the thoughts of the war introduced the thought of the delivering up the king to his enemies; the thought of that brought in the thought of the delivering up of Christ; and that again the thought of the thirty pence, which was the price of that treason: and thence easily followed that malicious question; and all this in a moment of time; for thought is quick.

‘The second’ [that is the second sort of association] ‘is more constant, as being regulated by some desire, and design. For the impression made by such things as we desire or fear, is strong and permanent, or, if it cease for a time, of quick return; so strong it is sometimes as to hinder and break our sleep. From desire ariseth the thought of some means we have seen produce the like of what we aim at: and from the thought of that, the thought of means to that mean, and so continually till we come to some beginning within our own power.’

He adds,—‘This train of regulated thoughts is of two kinds: one, when of an effect imagined, we seek the causes or means that produce it; and this is common to man and beast. The other is when imagining anything whatsoever, we seek all the possible effects that can by it be produced: that is to say, we imagine what we can do with it when we have it. Of which I have not at any time seen any sign but in man only; for this is a curiosity hardly incident to the nature of any living creature that has no other passion but sensual, such as are hunger, thirst, lust, and anger. In sum, the discourse of the mind when it is governed by design, is nothing but seeking or the faculty of invention, which the Latins call sagacitas and solertia, a finding out of the causes of some effect, present or past; or of the effects of some present or past cause. Sometimes a man desires to know the event of an action; and then he thinketh of some like action past, and the events thereof one after another; supposing like events will follow like 38actions. As he that foresees what will become of a criminal, re-cons what he has seen follow on the like crime before; having this order of thoughts, the crime, the officer, the prison, the judge, and the gallows, which kind of thoughts is called foresight, and prudence or providence; and sometimes wisdom; though such conjecture, through the difficulty of observing all circumstances, be very fallacious. But this is certain; by how much one man has more experience of things past than another; by so much also he is more prudent; and his expectations the seldomer fail him. The present only has a being in nature; things past have a being in the memory only, but things to come have no being at all; the future being but a fiction of the mind, applying the sequels of actions past to the actions that are present; which with most certainty is done by him that has most experience; but not with certainty enough, and though it be called prudence when the event answereth our expectation, yet in its own nature it is but presumption; for the foresight of things to come, which is providence, belongs only to him by whose will they are to come: from him only, and supernaturally, proceeds prophecy. The best prophet naturally is the best guesser; and the best guesser, he that is most versed and studied in the matters he guesses at; for he hath most signs to guess by.’—Page 10.

After this account he immediately adds,—

‘There is no other act of man’s mind that I can remember, naturally planted in him, so as to need no other thing to the exercise of it but to be born a man, and live with the use of his five senses. Those other faculties, of which I shall speak by and by, and which seem proper to man only, are acquired, and increased by study and industry; and of most men learned by instruction and discipline; and proceed all from the invention of words and speech: for besides sense and thoughts, and the train of thoughts, the mind of man has no other motion, though by the help of speech and method, the same faculties may be improved to such a height, as to distinguish men from all other living creatures.’—Page 11.

The conclusion of this chapter in which the author treats of the limits of the imagination is too important, and has laid the foundation of too many speculations, to be passed over. ‘Whatsoever we imagine is finite. Therefore there is no idea, or conception of any thing we call infinite. No man can have in his mind an image of infinite magnitude; nor conceive infinite swiftness, infinite time, or infinite force, or infinite power. When we say any thing is infinite, we signify only that we are not able to conceive the ends and bounds of the thing named; having no conception of the thing, but of our own inability: and therefore the name of God is used, not to make us conceive him 39(for he is incomprehensible and his greatness and power are inconceivable) but that we may honour him. And because whatsoever we conceive has been perceived first by sense, either all at once, or by parts, a man can have no thought, representing any thing, not subject to sense. No man, therefore, can conceive any thing, but he must conceive it in some place, and indued with some determinate magnitude, and which may be divided into parts; not that any thing is all in this place, and all in another place at the same time; nor that two or more things can be in one and the same place at once: for none of these things ever have, nor can be incident to sense; but are absurd speeches, taken upon credit (without any signification at all), from deceived philosophers, and deceived, or deceiving schoolmen.’—Page 11.

By the extracts which I shall next borrow from his account of language and reasoning, it will appear that our author not only threw out the first hints of the modern system, which reduces all reasoning and understanding to the mechanism of language, but that by a very high kind of abstraction, he carried it to perfection at once. The whole race of plodding commentators, or dashing paradox-mongers since his time have not advanced a step beyond him. I shall give this part somewhat at large, both because the question is intricate in itself, and as it will serve as a specimen of his general mode of writing, in which dry sarcasm, keen observation, extensive thought, and the most rigid logic conveyed in a concise and masterly style, are all brought to bear upon the same object.

‘The invention of printing,’ he says, ‘though ingenious, compared with the invention of letters is no great matter. But who was the first that found the use of letters, is not known. He that first brought them into Greece, men say, was Cadmus, the son of Agenor, King of Phœnicia. A profitable invention for continuing the memory of time past, and the conjunction of mankind, dispersed into so many and distant regions of the earth; and withal difficult, as proceeding from a watchful observation of the divers motions of the tongue, palate, lips, and other organs of speech, whereby to make as many differences of characters to remember them; but the most noble and profitable invention of all other, was that of speech, consisting of names or appellations, and their connections; whereby men register their thoughts, recall them when they are past, and also declare them one to another for mutual utility and conversation; without which there had been amongst men, neither commonwealth, nor society, nor contract, nor peace, no more than amongst lions, bears, and wolves. The first author of speech was God himself, that instructed Adam how to name such creatures as he presented to his sight; for the scripture goeth no farther in this matter. But this was sufficient to direct him to add 40more names, as the experience and use of the creatures should give him occasion; and to join them in such manner by degrees, as to make himself understood, and so by succession of time, so much language might be gotten, as he had found use for; though not so copious as an orator or philosopher has need of: for I do not find any thing in the scripture, out of which, directly or by consequence can be gathered, that Adam was taught the names of all figures, numbers, measures, colours, sounds, fancies, relations; much less the names of words and speech, as, general, special, affirmative, negative, interrogative, optative, infinitive, all which are useful; and least of all, of entity, intentionality, quiddity, and other insignificant words of the school.

‘The manner how speech serveth to the remembrance of the consequence of causes and effects, consisteth in the imposing of names, and the connexion of them. Of names, some are proper, and singular to one only thing; as Peter, John, this man, this tree: and some are common to many things; man, horse, tree; every of which though but one name, is nevertheless the name of divers particular things; in respect of all which together, it is called an universal; there being nothing in the world universal but names; for the things named are every one of them individual and singular. One universal name is imposed on many things for their similitude in some quality, or other accident: and whereas a proper name bringeth to mind one thing only, universals recall any one of those many. By this imposition of names, some of larger, some of stricter signification, we turn the reckoning of the consequences of things imagined in the mind, into a reckoning of the consequences of appellations. For example: a man that hath no use of speech at all, that is born and remains perfectly deaf and dumb, if he set before his eyes a triangle, and by it two right angles (such as are the corners of a square figure,) he may by meditation compare and find, that the three angles of that triangle are equal to those two right angles that stand by it: but if another triangle be shown him different in shape from the former, he cannot know without a new labour, whether the three angles of that also be equal to the same. But he that hath the use of words, when he observes that such equality was consequent, not to the length of the sides, nor to any other particular thing in his triangle but only to this, that the sides were straight, and the angles three and that that was all for which he named it a triangle, will boldly conclude universally that such equality of angles is in all triangles whatsoever, and register his invention in these general terms: every triangle hath its three angles equal to two right angles. And thus the consequence found in one particular, comes to be registered and remembered as an universal rule; discharges our mental reckoning of time and place; delivers us from all labour of the mind, saving the first, and makes 41that which was found true here, and now, to be true in all times and places. But the use of words in registering our thoughts, is in nothing so evident as in numbering. A natural fool that could never learn by heart the order of numeral words, as one, two, and three, may observe every stroke of the clock, and nod to it, or say one, one; but can never know what hour it strikes. And it seems, there was a time when those names of number were not in use, and men were fain to apply their fingers of one or both hands to those things they desired to keep account of; and that thence it proceeds, that now our numeral words are but ten, in any nation, and in some but five, and then they begin again. And he that can tell ten, if he recite them out of order, will lose himself, and not know when he hath done: much less will he be able to add, and subtract, and perform all other operations of arithmetic. So that without words there is no possibility of reckoning of numbers; much less of magnitudes, of swiftness, of force, and other things, the reckoning whereof is necessary to the being, or well-being of mankind.’—Leviathan, chap. iv., pp. 12, 14.

The same train of reasoning occurs in the ‘Discourse of Human Nature,’ with some variation in the expression.

‘By the advantage of names it is that we are capable of science, which beasts for want of them are not; nor man, without the use of them; for as a beast misseth not one or two out of her many young ones, for want of those names of order, one, two, and three, and which we call number; so neither would a man without repeating orally or mentally those words of number, know how many pieces of money or other things lie before him. Seeing there be many conceptions of one and the same thing, and that for every conception we give it a several name, it followeth that for one and the same thing, we have many names or attributes; as to the same man we give the appellations of just, valiant, strong, comely, &c. And again, because from divers things we receive like conceptions, many things must needs have the same appellations: as to all things we see we give the name of visible. Those names we give to many, are called universal to them all: as the name of man to every particular of mankind. Such appellations as we give to one only thing, we call individual, or singular; as Socrates and other proper names, or by circumlocution, He that writ the Iliads, for Homer.

‘The universality of one name to many things hath been the cause that men think the things are themselves universal: and so seriously contend that besides Peter and John, and all the rest of the men that are, have been, or shall be in the world, there is yet something else that we call man, viz. Man in general, deceiving themselves by taking the universal or general appellation for the thing it signifieth. For 42if one should desire the painter to make him the picture of a man, which is as much as to say of a man in general, he meaneth no more but that the painter should choose what man he pleaseth to draw, which must needs be some of them that are or have been or may be, none of which are universal. But when he would have him to draw the king or any particular person, he limiteth the painter to that one person he chooseth. It is plain therefore there is nothing universal but names, which are therefore called indefinite, because we limit them not ourselves, but leave them to be applied by the hearer: whereas a singular name is limited and restrained to one of the many things it signifieth, as when we say, This man, pointing to him, or giving him his proper name, or in some such way.’—Human Nature, chap. v. pp. 25, 26.

We shall have occasion to see, in the course of this inquiry, how exactly Berkeley’s account of the process of abstraction, in contradiction to Locke’s opinion, corresponds in every particular with this passage of our author. To return to his account of truth, reason, &c.

‘When two names are joined together into a consequence or affirmation, by the help of this little verb, is, as thus: a man is a living creature; if the latter name, living creature, signify all that the former name, man, signifieth, then the affirmation or consequence is true; otherwise false. For True and False are attributes of speech, not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither truth nor falsehood. Error there may be, as when we expect that which shall not be, or suspect what has not been: but in neither case can a man be charged with untruth.

‘Seeing, then, that truth consisteth in the right ordering of names in our affirmations, a man that seeketh precise truth had need to remember what every name he uses stands for, and to place it accordingly: or else he will find himself entangled in words, as a bird in lime-twigs. And therefore in Geometry (which is the only science that it has pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind) men begin at settling the significations of their words, which settling of significations they call definitions, and place them in the beginning of their reckoning. By this it appears how necessary it is for any man that aspires to true knowledge to examine the definitions of former authors, and either to correct them when they are negligently set down, or to make them himself. For the errors of definition multiply themselves according as the reckoning proceeds; and lead men into absurdities which they at last see, but cannot avoid without reckoning anew from the beginning. From whence it happens that they which trust to books do as they that cast up many little sums into a greater, without 43considering whether those little sums were rightly cast up or not, and at last finding the error visible, and not mistrusting their first grounds, know not which way to clear themselves, but spend time in fluttering over their books, as birds that entering by the chimney, and finding themselves enclosed in a chamber, flutter at the false light of a glass window, for want of wit to consider which way they came in. So that in the right definition of names, lies the first use of speech, which is the acquisition of science, and in wrong or no definitions lies the first abuse, from which proceed all false and senseless tenets; which make them that take their instruction from the authority of books and not from their own meditations, to be as much below the condition of ignorant men, as men endued with true science are above it. For between true science and erroneous doctrines, ignorance is in the middle. Natural sense and imagination are not subject to absurdity. Nature itself cannot err; and as men abound in copiousness of language, so they become more wise or more mad than ordinary. Nor is it possible without letters for any man to become either excellently wise or (unless his memory be hurt by disease or ill constitution of organs) excellently foolish. For words are wise men’s counters, they do but reckon by them: but they are the money of fools, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, a Thomas Aquinas, or any other doctor whatsoever.

‘Subject to names is whatsoever can enter into, or be considered in an account, and be added one thing to another to make a sum, or subtracted one from another and leave a remainder. The Latins called accounts of money rationes, and accounting, ratiocinatio, and that which we in bills or books of accounts call items, they call nomina, or names; and thence it seems to proceed that they extended the word ratio to the faculty of reckoning in all other things. The Greeks have but one word, λογος for both speech and reason, not that they thought there was no speech without reason, but no reason without speech: and the act of reasoning they call syllogism, which signifieth summing up (or putting together) the consequences of one saying to another. For reason is nothing but reckoning (that is, adding and subtracting) of the consequences of general names agreed upon for the marking and signifying of our thoughts; I say marking them, when we reckon by ourselves, and signifying them, when we demonstrate or approve our reckonings to other men.

‘And as in arithmetic, unpractised men must, and professors themselves may, often err, and cast up false, so also in any other subject of reasoning, the ablest, most attentive, and most practised men may deceive themselves, and infer false conclusions: not but that reason itself is always right reason, as well as arithmetic is a certain and 44infallible art. But no one man’s reason, nor the reason of any number of men makes the certainty: no more than an account is therefore well cast up, because a great many men have unanimously approved it. And, therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord set up for right reason the reason of some arbitrator or judge, so it is in all debates of what kind soever: and when men that think themselves wiser than all others, clamour and demand right reason for judge, yet seek no more but that things should be determined by no other men’s reason but their own, it is as intolerable in the society of men as it is in play, after trump is turned, to use for trump on every occasion that suit whereof they have most in their hand. For they do nothing else that will have every of their passions, as it comes to bear sway in them, to be taken for right reason, and that in their own controversies, betraying their want of right reason by the claim they lay to it.

‘When a man reckons without the use of words, which may be done in particular things (as when upon the sight of any one thing, we conjecture what was likely to have preceded, or is likely to follow upon it), if that which he thought likely to have preceded it, hath not preceded it, this is called error, to which even the most prudent men are subject. But when we reason in words of general signification, and fall upon a general inference which is false, though it be commonly called error, it is indeed an absurdity or senseless speech. For error is but a deception in presuming that somewhat is past, or to come, of which, though it were not past, or not to come, yet there was no impossibility discoverable. But when we make a general assertion, unless it be a true one, the possibility of it is inconceivable. And words whereby we conceive nothing but the sound, are those we call absurd, insignificant, and nonsense. And, therefore, if a man should talk to me of a round quadrangle, or accidents of bread in cheese, or immaterial substances, or of a free subject, a free-will, or any free but free from being hindered by opposition; I should not say he were in an error, but that his words were without meaning, that is to say, absurd.’—Chap. iv. v., pp. 15, 18, &c.

The account of the passions and affections which follows next in order, is the same in almost every particular as that which is given in modern treatises on this subject, except that Mr. Hobbes seems to make curiosity or the desire of knowledge, an original passion of the mind, peculiar to man. From this part I shall only quote two passages, and then proceed to his treatise on the ‘Doctrine of Necessity,’ which will conclude my account of this author.

The first passage is the one from which Locke has copied his famous definition of the difference between wit and judgment. After 45observing (Chap. viii.) that the difference of men’s talents does not depend on natural capacity, which, he says, is nothing else but sense, wherein men differ so little from one another, or from brutes, that it is not worth the reckoning, he goes on:

‘This difference of quickness in imagining is caused by the difference of men’s passions, that love and dislike, some one thing, some another, and therefore some men’s thoughts run one way, some another, and are held to and observe differently the things that pass through their imagination. And whereas in this succession of thoughts there is nothing to observe in the things they think on, but either in what they be like one another or in what they be unlike—those that observe their similitudes, in case they be such as are but rarely observed by others, are said to have a good wit, by which is meant on this occasion a good fancy. But they that observe their differences and dissimilitudes, which is called distinguishing and discerning and judging between thing and thing, in case such discerning be not easy, are said to have a good judgment; and particularly, in matter of conversation and business, wherein times, places, and persons are to be discerned, this virtue is called discretion. The former, that is, fancy, without the help of judgment, is not commended for a virtue, but the latter which is judgment or discretion, is commended for itself, without the help of fancy.’ p. 32. This definition, which Locke took entire from our author without acknowledgment, and which has been so often referred to, is evidently false, for as Harris, the author of ‘Hermes,’ has very well observed, the finding out the equality of the three angles of a triangle to two right ones would upon the principle here stated, be a piece of wit instead of an act of the understanding or judgment, and ‘Euclid’s Elements’ a collection of epigrams.^[5] The other passage which I proposed to quote chiefly as an instance of our author’s power of imagination, is as follows. In speaking of the degree of madness, as in fanatics and others, he says:

46‘Though the effect of folly in them that are possessed of an opinion of being inspired be not always visible in one man, by any very extravagant action that proceedeth from such passion, yet when many of them conspire together, the rage of the whole multitude is visible enough. For what greater argument of madness can there be than to clamour, strike, and throw stones at our best friends? Yet this is somewhat less than such a multitude will do. For they will clamour, fight against, and destroy those, by whom, all their lifetime before, they have been protected and secured from injury. And if this be madness in the multitude, it is the same in every particular man. For as in the midst of the sea, though a man perceive no sound of that part of the water next him, yet he is well assured that part contributes as much to the roaring of the sea as any other part of the same quantity, so also though we perceive no great unquietness in one or two men, yet we may be well assured that their singular passions are parts of the seditious roaring of a troubled nation.’ Even Mr. Burke did not disdain to borrow one of Hobbes’s images. The author of the ‘Leviathan’ compares those who attempt to reform a decayed commonwealth to ‘the foolish daughters of Pelias who desiring to renew the youth of their decrepit father did by the counsel of Medea cut him in pieces and boil him, together with strange herbs, but made not of him a new man.’

I think this is better expressed than the same allusion in Burke, which is I dare say well known to my readers.

I shall not here enter into the doctrine of Liberty and Necessity, which Hobbes has stated with great force and precision as a general question of cause and effect, and without any particular reference to his mechanical theory of the mind, as I shall fully investigate this subject in my next Essay.

I have thus taken a review of the metaphysical writings of Hobbes, as far as was necessary to establish what I at first proposed, namely, the general conformity, and almost entire coincidence between his opinions, and the principles of the modern system of philosophy. The praise of originality at least, of boldness and vigour of mind, belongs to him. The strength of reason which his application of a general principle to explain almost all the phenomena of human nature implies, can hardly be surpassed. The truth of the system is another question, which I shall hereafter proceed to consider.

I will first, however, distinctly enumerate the leading principles of his philosophy, as they are to be found in Hobbes, and in the latest writers of the same School. They are, I conceive, as follows:

1. That all our ideas are derived from external objects, by means of the senses alone.

472. That as nothing exists out of the mind but matter and motion, so it is itself with all its operations nothing but matter and motion.

3. That thoughts are single, or that we can think of only one object at a time. In other words, that there is no comprehensive power or faculty of understanding in the mind.

4. That we have no general or abstract ideas.

5. That the only principle of connexion between one thought and another is association, or their previous connexion in sense.

6. That reason and understanding depend entirely on the mechanism of language.

7 and 8. That the sense of pleasure and pain is the sole spring of action, and self-interest the source of all our affections.

9. That the mind acts from a mechanical or physical necessity, over which it has no controul, and consequently is not a moral or accountable agent.—The manner of stating and reasoning upon this point is the only circumstance of importance in which modern writers differ from Hobbes.

10. That there is no difference in the natural capacities of men, the mind being originally passive to all impressions alike, and becoming whatever it is from circumstances.

All of these positions it is my intention to oppose to the utmost of my ability. Except the first, they are most or all of them either denied or doubtfully admitted by Locke. And as it is his admission of the first principle which has opened a door, directly or indirectly, to all the rest, I shall devote the Essay next but one to an examination of the account which he gives of the origin of our ideas from sensation.

It may perhaps be thought, that the neglect into which Hobbes’s metaphysical opinions have fallen was originally owing to the obloquy excited by the misanthropy and despotical tendency of his political writings. But it seems to me that he has been almost as hardly dealt with in the one case as in the other.

As to his principles of government, this may at least be said for them, that they are in form and appearance very much the same with those detailed long after in Rousseau’s ‘Social Contract,’ and evidently suggested the plan of that work, which has never been considered as a defence of tyranny. The author indeed requires an absolute submission in the subject to the laws, but then it is to be in consequence of his own consent to obey them. Every man is at least supposed to be his own lawgiver.

Secondly, as to the misanthropy with which he is charged, for having made fear the actual foundation and cement of civil society, he has I think made his own apology very satisfactorily in these words:

48‘It may seem strange to some man that hath not well weighed these things, that nature should thus dissociate and render men apt to invade and destroy one another; and he may therefore, not trusting to the inference made from the passions, desire perhaps to have the same confirmed by experience. Let him therefore consider with himself—when taking a journey he arms himself, and seeks to go well accompanied; when going to sleep he locks his doors; when even in his house, he locks his chests, and this when he knows there be laws and public officers, armed to revenge all injuries that shall be done him;—what opinion I say, he has of his fellow subjects when he rides armed, of his fellow citizens when he locks his doors, and of his children and servants, when he locks his chests. Does he not then accuse mankind as much by his actions as I do by my words? Yet neither of us accuse man’s nature in it.’—Leviathan, p. 62.

It is true the bond of civil government according to his account, is very different from Burke’s ‘soft collar of social esteem,’ and takes away the sentimental part of politics. But I confess I see nothing liberal in this ‘order of thoughts,’ as Hobbes elsewhere expresses it, ‘the crime, the officer, the prison, the judge and the gallows,’ which is nevertheless a good description of the nature and end of political institutions.

The true reason of the fate which this author’s writings met with was that his views of things were too original and comprehensive to be immediately understood, without passing through the hands of several successive generations of commentators and interpreters. Ignorance of another’s meaning is a sufficient cause of fear, and fear produces hatred: hence arose the rancour and suspicion of his adversaries, who, to quote some fine lines of Spenser,

In this Essay I shall give the best account I can of the question concerning liberty and necessity from the writings of others, and afterwards add a few remarks of my own on the explanation of the terms employed in this controversy. Of Mr. Hobbes’s discourse on this subject, I should be nearly disposed to say with Gassendi, when another work of his, ‘De Cive,’ was presented to him, 49‘This treatise, though small in bulk, is in my judgment the very marrow of philosophy.’ In order to give a clear and satisfactory view of the question, I shall be obliged to repeat some things I have before stated, for which the importance of the subject as well as other circumstances will, I hope, be a sufficient excuse.

The doctrine of necessity is stated by this author with great force and precision as a general question of cause and effect, and with scarcely any particular reference to his mechanical theory of the mind. From this naked simple view of the matter, I cannot consistently with truth withhold my full and entire assent. The ground-work, the pure basis of the doctrine is in my opinion incontestable; it cannot be denied without overturning all the rules of science, as well as the plainest dictates of the understanding: whoever attacks it there in its stronghold, will only injure the cause he espouses. It is that rock upon which whoever falls will be dashed to pieces. But though I cannot pretend to undermine the foundation, yet I may attempt to shake some parts of the superstructure, and to clear away the crust of materialism which has grown over it. In my opinion, the representations which have commonly been given of the subject by the writers on both sides of the argument are almost equally erroneous, and their opposite conclusions built on an equal misconception of the true principle of necessity. By the principle of moral or philosophical necessity is meant then that the mind is invariably governed by certain laws which determine all its operations; or in other words, that the regular succession of cause and effect is not confined to mere matter, while the impulses of the will are left quite unaccounted for, self-caused, perfectly contingent and fantastical. We in general attribute those things to chance the causes of which we do not understand, both in mind and matter. But as there is a greater latitude and inconstancy in the one than in the other, insomuch that we can hardly ever predict with certainty the effect of particular motives on the mind, the opinion of chance, arbitrary inclination, or self-determination had gained much deeper root with respect to the operations of mind than to those of matter. The fallacy of this opinion Hobbes has exposed in a masterly, and I think unanswerable manner, and without running into those paradoxical conclusions from the first position which later necessarians have deduced from it. He affirms that necessity is perfectly consistent with human liberty; that is, that the most strict and inviolable connexion of cause and effect does not prevent the full, free, and unrestrained development of certain powers in the agent, or take away the distinction between the nature of virtue and vice, praise and blame, reward and punishment, but is the foundation of all moral reasoning. 50Except Dr. Jonathan Edwards, he is the only professed necessarian that I know of who has not been led, by the customary use of language, to quit the original definition of the term, and to slide from a philosophical into a vulgar and practical necessity. But I will state his reasoning in his own words, which are the best. They are as follows:

‘My opinion about Liberty and Necessity.

‘First, I conceive that when it cometh into a man’s mind to do or not to do some certain action, if he have no time to deliberate, the doing it or abstaining necessarily follows the present thought he hath of the good or evil consequences thereof to himself; as, for example, in sudden anger the action shall follow the thought of revenge; in sudden fear, the thought of escape; also when a man hath time to deliberate, but deliberateth not, because never any thing appeared that could him make doubt of the consequence, the action follows his opinion of the goodness or harm of it. These actions I call voluntary, because these actions that follow immediately the last appetite are voluntary, are here: where is only one appetite that one is the last.

‘Secondly, I conceive when a man deliberates whether he shall do a thing or not do it, that he does nothing else but consider whether it be better for himself to do it or not to do it; and to consider an action, is to imagine the consequences of it both good and evil; from whence is to be inferred, that deliberation is nothing else but alternate imagination of the good and evil sequels of an action, or (which is the same thing) alternate hope and fear, or alternate appetite to do or quit the action of which he deliberateth.

‘Thirdly, I conceive that in all deliberations, that is to say, in all alternate succession of contrary appetites, the last is that which we call the will, and is immediately next before the doing of the action, or next before the doing of it become impossible. All other appetites to do, and to quit, that come upon a man during his deliberations, are called intentions, and inclinations, but not wills, there being but one will, which also in this case may be called the last will, though the intentions change often.

‘Fourthly, I conceive that those actions which a man is said to do upon deliberation, are said to be voluntary, and done upon choice and election, so that voluntary action, and action proceeding from election is the same thing; and that of a voluntary agent, it is all one to say, he is free, and to say, he hath not made an end of deliberating.

‘Fifthly, I conceive liberty to be rightly defined in this manner: liberty is the absence of all the impediments to action that are not contained in the nature and intrinsical quality of the agent, as for 51example, the water is said to descend freely, or to have liberty to descend by the channel of the river, because there is no impediment that way, but not across, because the banks are impediments, and though the water cannot ascend, yet men never say it wants the liberty to ascend, but the faculty or power, because the impediment is in the nature of the water, and intrinsical. So also we say, he that is tied wants the liberty to go, because the impediment is not in him, but in his bands; whereas we say not so of him that is sick or lame, because the impediment is in himself.

‘Sixthly, I conceive that nothing taketh beginning from itself, but from the action of some other immediate agent without itself. And that, therefore, when first a man hath an appetite or will to something, to which immediately before he had no appetite nor will, the cause of his will, is not the will itself, but something else not in his own disposing; so that whereas it is out of controversy, that of voluntary actions the will is the necessary cause, and by this which is said, the will is also caused by other things whereof it disposeth not, it followeth, that voluntary actions have all of them necessary causes, and therefore are necessitated.

‘Seventhly, I hold that to be a sufficient cause, to which nothing is wanting that is needful to the producing of the effect. The same also is a necessary cause. For if it be possible that a sufficient cause shall not bring forth the effect, then there wanteth somewhat which was needful to the producing of it, and so the cause was not sufficient; but if it be impossible that a sufficient cause should not produce the effect, then is a sufficient cause a necessary cause (for that is said to produce an effect necessarily that cannot but produce it;) hence it is manifest, that whatsoever is produced, is produced necessarily: for whatsoever is produced hath had a sufficient cause to produce it, or else it had not been; and therefore also voluntary actions are necessitated.

‘Lastly, I hold that the ordinary definition of a free agent, namely, that a free agent, is that, which, when all things are present which are needful to produce the effect, can nevertheless not produce it, implies a contradiction, and is nonsense; being as much as to say, the cause may be sufficient, that is to say necessary, and yet the effect shall not follow.

‘My Reasons.—For the first five points, wherein it is explicated—1. what spontaneity is; 2. what deliberation is; 3. what will, propension and appetite are; 4. what a free agent is; 5. what liberty is; there can no other proof be offered but every man’s own experience, by reflection on himself, and remembering what he himself meaneth when he saith an action is spontaneous: a man 52deliberates: such is his will: that agent or that action is free. Now he that reflecteth so on himself, cannot but be satisfied, that deliberation is the consideration of the good or evil sequels of an action to come; that by spontaneity is meant inconsiderate action (or else nothing is meant by it); that will is the last act of our deliberation; that a free agent is he that can do if he will, and forbear if he will; and that liberty is the absence of external impediments. But, to those that out of custom speak not what they conceive, but what they hear, and are not able, or will not take the pains to consider what they think when they hear such words, no argument can be sufficient; because experience and matter of fact is not verified by other men’s arguments, but by every man’s own sense and memory. For example, how can it be proved that to love a thing and to think it good is all one, to a man that hath not marked his own meaning by those words? or how can it be proved that eternity is not nunc stans to a man that says those words by custom, and never considers how he can conceive the thing in his mind? Also the sixth point, that a man cannot imagine any thing to begin without a cause, can no other way be made known, but by trying how he can imagine it; but if he try, he shall find as much reason (if there be no cause of the thing) to conceive it should begin at one time as another, that he hath equal reason to think it should begin at all times, which is impossible, and therefore he must think there was some special cause why it began then, rather than sooner or later, or else that it began never, but was eternal.

‘For the seventh point, which is, that all events have necessary causes, it is there proved in that they have sufficient causes. Further, let us in this place also suppose any event never so casual, as the throwing (for example) “ames ace” upon a pair of dice, and see if it must not have been necessary before it was thrown. For seeing it was thrown, it had a beginning, and consequently a sufficient cause to produce it, consisting partly in the dice, partly in outward things, as the posture of the parts of the hand, the measure of force applied by the caster, the posture of the parts of the table, and the like. In sum, there was nothing wanting which was necessarily requisite to the producing of that particular cast, and consequently the cast was necessarily thrown; for if it had not been thrown, there had wanted somewhat requisite to the throwing of it, and so the cause had not been sufficient. In the like manner it may be proved that every other accident, how contingent soever it seem, or how voluntary soever it be, is produced necessarily. The same may be proved also in this manner. Let the case be put, for example, of the weather: ’tis necessary that to-morrow it shall rain or not rain. If, therefore, it be not necessary it shall rain, it is necessary it shall not rain, otherwise 53there is no necessity that the proposition, it shall rain or not rain, should be true. I know there be some that say, it may necessarily be true that one of the two shall come to pass, but not, singly that it shall rain, or that it shall not rain, which is as much as to say, one of them is necessary, yet neither of them is necessary; and therefore to seem to avoid that absurdity, they make a distinction, that neither of them is true determinate, but indeterminate, which distinction either signifies no more but this, one of them is true, but we know not which, and so the necessity remains, though we know it not; or if the meaning of the distinction be not that, it hath no meaning, and they might as well have said, one of them is true titirice, but neither of them, tu patulice.

‘The last thing in which also consisteth the whole controversy, namely, that there is no such thing as an agent, which when all things requisite to action are present, can nevertheless forbear to produce it; or (which is all one) that there is no such thing as freedom from necessity, is easily inferred from that which hath been before alleged. For if it be an agent it can work, and if it work there is nothing wanting of what is requisite to produce the action, and consequently the cause of the action is sufficient, and if sufficient, then also necessary, as hath been proved before. And thus you see how the inconveniences, which it is objected must follow upon the holding of necessity, are avoided, and the necessity itself demonstratively proved. To which I could add, if I thought it good logic, the inconvenience of denying necessity, as that it destroyeth both the decrees and the prescience of God Almighty; for whatsoever God hath purposed to bring to pass by man, as an instrument, or foreseeth shall come to pass; a man, if he have liberty as hath been affirmed from necessitation, might frustrate, and make not to come to pass, and God should either not foreknow it, and not decree it, or he should foreknow such things shall be, as shall never be, and decree that which shall never come to pass. This is all that hath come into my mind touching this question since I last considered it.’

The letter from which the foregoing extract is taken is addressed to the Marquis of Newcastle, and dated at Rouen in 1651, twenty years before the publication of Spinoza’s most exact and beautiful demonstration of the same principle. Some of Hobbes’s antagonists had charged him with having borrowed his arguments from Marsennus, a French author; to which in one of his controversial tracts Hobbes replies with some contempt, that this Marsennus had heard him talk on the subject when he was in Paris, and had borrowed them from him. Dr. Priestley has done justice to Hobbes on this question of necessity, and I suspect more than justice in denying that 54the Stoics were acquainted with the same principle. At any rate, the modern commentators on the subject (and Dr. Priestley among them) have added nothing to it but absurdities, from which our author’s logic protected him; for he seldom reasoned wrong but when he reasoned from wrong premises. As this question is one of the most interesting in the history of philosophy, I shall perhaps be excused for adding one more extract (of considerable length) to prove that Hobbes is not, in this instance, chargeable with the practical inferences which have been made from his doctrine. In answer to the objections of Bishop Bramhall, with whom he had a controversy on the subject, he says:

‘Of the arguments from reason, the first is that which his Lordship saith is drawn from Zeno’s beating of his man, which is therefore called Argumentum Baculinum, that is to say, a wooden argument. The story is this: Zeno held that all actions were necessary: his man therefore being for some fault beaten, excused himself upon the necessity of it: to avoid this excuse, his master pleaded likewise the necessity of beating him. So that not he that maintained, but he that derided the necessity was beaten, contrary to that his Lordship would infer.

‘The second argument is taken from certain inconveniences which his Lordship thinks would follow such an opinion.

‘The first inconvenience, he says, is this, that the laws which prohibit any action will be unjust.

‘2. That all consultations are vain.

‘3. That admonitions to men of understanding are of no more use than to children, fools, and madmen.

‘4. That praise, dispraise, reward and punishment are in vain.

‘5 and 6. That counsels, arts, arms, books, instruments, study, tutors, medicines are in vain.’

Hobbes’s answer to these conclusions is I think quite satisfactory. He says—

‘To which arguments his Lordship, expecting I should answer by saying, “the ignorance of the event were enough to make us use the means,” adds (as it were a reply to my answer foreseen) these words, “Alas! how should our not knowing the event be a sufficient motive to make us use the means?” Wherein his Lordship says right: but my answer is not that which he expecteth. I answer:

‘First, that the necessity of an action doth not make the laws that prohibit it unjust. To let pass that not the necessity, but the will to break the law maketh the action unjust, because the law regardeth the will and no other antecedent cause of action, and to let pass that no law can possibly be unjust, inasmuch as every man maketh (by his 55consent) the law he is bound to keep, and which consequently must be just, unless a man can be unjust to himself;—I say, what necessary cause soever precede an action, yet if the action be forbidden, he that doth it willingly may be justly punished. For instance, suppose the law on pain of death prohibit stealing, and that there be a man who by the strength of temptation is necessitated to steal, and is thereupon put to death, does not this punishment deter others from stealing? Is it not a cause that others steal not? Doth it not frame and make their wills to justice? To make the law is therefore to make a cause of justice, and to necessitate justice, and consequently ’tis no injustice to make such a law. The intention of the law is not to grieve the delinquent for what is past and not to be undone; but to make him and others just that else would not be so; and respecteth not the evil act past, but the good to come. Insomuch as without the good intention for the future, no past act of a delinquent would justify his killing in the sight of God.

‘Secondly, I deny that it maketh consultations to be vain. ’Tis the consultation that causeth a man and necessitateth him to choose to do one thing rather than another: so that unless a man say that that cause is in vain which necessitateth the effect, he cannot infer the superfluousness of consultation out of the necessity of the election proceeding from it. But it seemeth his Lordship reasons thus: “If I must do this rather than that, I shall do it though I consult not at all;” which is a false proposition and a false consequence, and no better than this: “If I shall live till to-morrow, I shall live till to-morrow, though I run myself through with a sword to-day.” If there be a necessity that an action shall be done, or that any effect shall be brought to pass, it does not therefore follow that there is nothing necessarily requisite as a means to bring it to pass; and therefore when it is determined that one thing shall be chosen before another, ’tis determined also for what cause it shall be chosen, which cause for the most part is deliberation or consultation; and therefore consultation is not in vain, and indeed the less in vain by how much the election is more necessitated, if more and less had any place in necessity.

‘The same answer is to be given to the third supposed inconvenience, namely, that admonitions are in vain: for admonitions are parts of consultation, the admonitor being a counsellor for the time to him that is admonished.

‘The fourth pretended inconvenience is, that praise, dispraise, reward and punishment will be in vain. To which I answer, that for praise and dispraise, they depend not at all on the necessity of the action praised or dispraised. For what is it else to praise, but to say a thing is good; good, I say, for me or for some body else, or for 56the state and commonwealth? And what is it to say an action is good, but to say it is as I would wish, or as another would have it, or according to the will of the state, that is to say, according to the law. Does my Lord think that no action can please me or him or the commonwealth, that should proceed from necessity? Things may therefore be necessary, and yet praiseworthy, as also necessary, and yet dispraised, and neither of them both in vain, because praise and dispraise, and likewise reward and punishment, do by example make and conform the will to good and evil. It was a very great praise in my opinion that Velleius Paterculus gives Cato, when he says that he was good by nature, et quia aliter esse non potuit.

‘To the last objection, that counsels, arts, arms, instruments, books, study, medicines, and the like would be superfluous, the same answer serves as to the former, that is to say, that this consequence, if the effect shall come to pass, then it shall come to pass without its causes, is a false one, and those things named counsels, arts, arms, &c. are the causes of those effects.’—Page 291.

‘His Lordship’s third argument consisteth in other inconveniences, which he saith will follow, namely, impiety, and negligence of religious duties, as repentance and zeal to God’s service, &c. To which I answer as to the rest, that they follow not. I must confess, if we consider the greatest part of mankind, not as they should be, but as they are, that is, as men whom either the study of acquiring wealth or preferment, or whom the appetite of sensual delights or the impatience of meditation, or the rash embracing of wrong principles have made unapt to discuss the truth of things; I must, I say, confess that the dispute of this question will rather hurt than help their piety, and therefore if his Lordship had not desired this answer, I should not have written it, nor do I write it but in hopes your Lordship and his will keep it private. Nevertheless in very truth, the necessity of events does not of itself draw with it any impiety at all. For piety consisteth only in two things: one that we honour God in our hearts, which is, that we think as highly of his power as we can, (for to honour any thing is nothing else but to think it to be of great power). The other is that we signify that honour and esteem by our words and actions, which is called cultus, or worship of God. He therefore that thinketh that all things proceed from God’s eternal will, and consequently are necessary, does he not think God omnipotent? Does he not esteem of his power as highly as is possible, which is to honour God as much as may be in his heart? Again, he that thinketh so, is he not more apt by external acts and words to acknowledge it, than he that thinketh otherwise? Yet is this external acknowledgment the same thing which we call worship; 57so that this opinion fortifies piety in both kinds, external and internal, and therefore is far from destroying it. And for repentance, which is nothing else but a glad returning into the right way, after the grief of being out of the way, though the cause that made him go astray were necessary, yet there is no reason why he should not grieve; and, again, though the cause why he returned into the way were necessary, there remaineth still the cause of joy. So that the necessity of the acting taketh away neither of those parts of repentance—grief for the error, and joy for returning.’—Tripos, p. 292.

The author afterwards properly defines a moral agent to be one that acts from deliberation, choice, or will, not from indifference; and, speaking of the supposed inconsistency between choice and necessity, adds:

‘Commonly when we see and know the strength that moves us, we acknowledge necessity; but when we see not or mark not the force that moves us, we then think there is none, and that it is not causes but liberty that produceth the action. Hence it is that they think he doth not choose this that of necessity chooses it, but they might as well say, fire doth not burn, because it burns of necessity.’

The general question is thus stated by Mr. Hobbes in the beginning of his treatise: the point is not, he says, ‘whether a man can be a free agent; that is to say, whether he can write or forbear, speak or be silent, according to his will, but whether the will to write, and the will to forbear, come upon him according to his will, or according to any thing else in his own power. I acknowledge this liberty, that I can do if I will; but to say—I can will if I will, I take to be an absurd speech. In fine, that freedom which men commonly find in books, that which the poets chaunt in the theatres, and the shepherds on the mountains, that which the pastors teach in the pulpits, and the doctors in the universities, and that which the common people in the markets, and all mankind in the whole world do assent unto, is the same that I assent unto, namely, that a man hath freedom to do if he will, but whether he hath freedom to will is a question neither the bishop nor they ever thought on.’

All in which I differ from Hobbes is, that I think there is a real freedom of choice and will, as well as of action, in the sense of the author, that is, not a freedom from necessity or causes in either case, but a liberty in any given agent to exert certain powers without being controlled or impeded in their exercise by another agent.

Helvetius says, ‘It is true we can form a tolerably distinct idea of the word liberty, understood in a common sense. A man is free who is neither loaded with irons, nor confined in prison, nor intimidated like the slave by the dread of chastisement: in this sense, the liberty 58of a man consists in the free exercise of his power: I say of his power, because it would be ridiculous to mistake for a want of liberty the incapacity we are under to pierce the clouds like the eagle, to live under the water like the whale, or to become king, emperor, or pope. We have so far a sufficiently clear idea of the word. But this is no longer the case when we come to apply liberty to the will. What must this liberty then mean? We can only understand by it a free power of willing or not willing a thing: but this power would imply that there may be a will without motives, and consequently an effect without a cause. A philosophical treatise on the liberty of the will would be a treatise of effects without a cause.’—Helvetius on the Mind, p. 44.

Now I cannot perceive why there is any more difficulty in annexing a meaning to the word liberty, as it relates to the faculties of the mind than as it relates to those of the body, or why a treatise of the one should be a treatise of effects without a cause any more than of the other. If the distinction between liberty and necessity is lost in this case, it is not because liberty but because necessity can have no place in the will, or because we cannot easily put a padlock on the mind. If the prisoner who has his chains struck off, walks or runs, dances or leaps, is this an instance of an effect without a cause, because it is an effect of liberty, or of what Helvetius calls the free exercise of his power? Not that he can exert this power without means or motives, that is, without ground to move on, or limbs to move with, or breath to draw, or will to impel him, but ‘with all these means and appliances to boot’ he has a power to do certain things which his chains deprived him of the liberty of doing, but which the striking them off restores to him again. Why then, if liberty does not in its common sense signify an effect without a cause, but the free exercise of a power, did it not signify the same thing or something similar as applied to the mind? Has the mind no powers, or are they necessarily impeded and hindered from operating? My notion of a free agent, I confess, is not that represented by Mr. Hobbes, namely, one that when all things necessary to produce the effect are present can nevertheless not produce it; but I believe a free agent of whatever kind, is one which where all things necessary to produce the effect are present, can produce it; its own operation not being hindered by any thing else. The body is said to be free when it has the power to obey the direction of the will: so the will may be said to be free when it has the power to obey the dictates of the understanding. The absurdity of the libertarians is in supposing that liberty of action, and liberty of will have the same identical source, viz. the will; or that as it is the will that moves the body, so it is the will that moves itself in order to be free.

Mr. Locke’s chapter ‘On Power,’ in the first volume of the 59Essay, contains his account of liberty and necessity, and has been more found fault with than any other part of his work; I think without reason. He seems evidently to have admitted the definition of necessity, though he has avoided the name, which is not much to be wondered at, considering the misconception to which it is liable, and which can scarcely be separated from it in the closest reasoning, much less as a term of general signification. In other words, he denies the power of the mind to act without a cause or motive, or, in any manner in any circumstances, from mere indifferency and absolute self motion; but he at the same time rejects the inference which has been drawn from this principle, that the mind is not an agent at all, but entirely subject to external force or blind impulse. What he has said is little more than an expansion of Hobbes’s general description of practical liberty, ‘that it is a power to do, if we will.’ Thus, according to Mr. Locke, it would not be so absurd to give a restive horse the spur or the whip to make him go straight forward on a plain road, as it would be in order to make him leap up a precipice a hundred feet high. The one the horse has a power or liberty to do if he will, the other he has no power to do at any rate. That is, here are two sorts of impediments, one that may be overcome, and which it is right to take means to overcome, and another which cannot be overcome, and which it is therefore absurd to meddle with. To say that these two necessities are in effect the same, is an abuse of language; yet for not lumping them together in the dashing style of our modern wholesale dealers in paradox, Mr. Locke has been made the subject of endless abuse and contumely. The difference between them, as stated by this author with great force and earnestness of feeling, in truth constitutes all that men in general mean when they talk of freedom of will, and make it, as in this sense it is, the ground-work of morality. There are certain powers which the mind has of governing not only the actions of the body, but of regulating its own thoughts and desires, and it is to make us exert these powers that all the distinctions, rules and sanctions of morality have been established. It must be ridiculous to attempt to make us do, what upon the face of the thing it was known we could not do; yet it is on this literal and unqualified interpretation of the term, as implying a flat impossibility of the contrary, an utter incapacity and helplessness in the mind, a concurrence of causes foreign to the will itself, and irresistible in their effect, and with which it must therefore be in vain to contend, that most of the consequences from the doctrine of necessity have been built; such as that reward and punishment are absurd and improper, that virtue and vice are words without a meaning, that the assassin is no more a 60moral or accountable agent than the dagger which he uses, and many others of the same stamp. The sword and the assassin would be equally moral and accountable agents, if they were both equally accessible to moral motives, that is, to reward and punishment, praise and blame, &c.; but they are not. This seems to be a distinction of great pith and moment. It is said to be a mere difference of words; at least it makes all the difference whether such motives as reward and punishment, praise and blame, should be applied or not, and this one should think was a difference of practice. It is objected, indeed, that still both are equally necessary agents. But this appears to me to be a confusion of words. It is in vain to exhort flame not to burn, or to be angry with poison for working: and it would be equally in vain to exhort men to certain actions or to resent others, if exhortation and resentment had no more effect upon them, that is, if they were really governed by the same sort of blind, physical, unreasoning, unresisting necessity. In fact, the latest necessarians have abandoned the true, original, philosophical meaning of the term, in which it implies no more than the connection between cause and effect, and have substituted for it the prejudiced notion of their adversaries, who confound it with mechanical necessity, ‘fixed fate, foreknowledge absolute,’ or the unconditional fiat of omnipotence.

The following extracts which I shall condense as much as I can consistently with the nature of the argument, will shew the view which Mr. Locke has taken of this subject. I would only observe, by the by, that I so far agree with Hobbes and differ from Mr. Locke, in thinking that liberty in the most extended and abstract sense is applicable to material as well as voluntary agents; moral liberty, i.e. freedom of will evidently is not, because such agents have no such faculty.

‘All the actions that we have any idea of,’ says my author, ‘reducing themselves to these two, viz. thinking and moving, so far as a man has a power to think or not to think, to move or not to move, according to the preference or direction of his own mind, so far is a man free. Wherever any performance or forbearance are not equally in a man’s power, wherever doing or not doing will not equally follow upon the preference of his mind, directing it, there he is not free, though perhaps the action may be voluntary. Where any particular action is not in the power of the agent, to be produced by him according to his volition, there he is not at liberty; that agent is under necessity. So that liberty cannot be where there is no thought, no volition, no will; but there may be thought, there may be volition, there may be will, where there is no liberty. A little consideration of an obvious instance or two may make this clear.

‘A tennis-ball, whether in motion by the stroke of a racket, or 61lying still at rest, is not by any one taken to be a free agent. If we inquire into the reason, we shall find it is because we conceive not a tennis-ball to think; and consequently not to have any volition, or preference of motion to rest or vice versâ; and therefore has not liberty, is not a free agent, but both its motion and rest come under our idea of necessity, and are so called. Likewise a man falling into the water (a bridge breaking under him) has not herein liberty, is not a free agent. For though he has volition, though he prefers his not falling to falling, yet the forbearance of that motion not being in his power, the stop or cessation of that motion follows not upon his volition; and therefore therein he is not free. So a man striking himself or his friend by a convulsive motion of his arm, no body thinks he has in this liberty, every one pities him as acting by necessity and constraint.’

Here I will just stop to observe that the stanch sticklers for necessity, who make up by an excess of zeal for their want of knowledge, would read this passage with a smile of self-complacent contempt, and remark profoundly that whether the man struck his friend on purpose, or from a convulsive motion, he was equally under necessity, and the object of pity. Now whether he is an object of pity, I shall not dispute; but I conceive he is also an object of anger in the one case which he is not in the other, because anger will prevent a man’s striking you again, but will not cure him of St. Vitus’s dance. It is to this sort of indiscriminate, blind, senseless necessity which neutralizes all things and actions, and under the pretence of establishing the operation of causes, destroys the distinction between the different degrees and kinds of necessity, to which I do not profess myself a convert.

To return.—‘As it is in the motions of the body,’ proceeds Mr. Locke, ‘so it is in the thoughts of our minds: where any one is such, that we have power to take it up or lay it by, according to the preference of the mind, there we are at liberty. Yet some ideas to the mind, like some motions to the body, are such as in certain circumstances it cannot avoid, nor obtain their absence by the utmost effort it can use. A man on the rack is not at liberty to lay by the idea of pain, and divert himself with other contemplations. And sometimes a boisterous passion hurries our thoughts, as a hurricane does our bodies, without leaving us the liberty of thinking on other things which we would rather choose. But as soon as the mind regains the power to stop or continue, begin or forbear any of these motions of the body without, or of the mind within, according as it thinks fit to prefer either to the other, we then consider the man as free again.’

‘But freedom,’ says my author, ‘unless it reaches farther than this, will not serve the turn; and it passes for a good plea that a man is 62not free at all, if he is not as free to will, as he is to act what he wills. Concerning a man’s liberty, there yet therefore is raised this farther question, whether a man be free to will? And as to that I imagine that a man in respect of willing, when any action in his power is once proposed to his thoughts as presently [that is, immediately] to be done, cannot be free. The reason whereof is very manifest; for it being unavoidable that the action depending on his will should exist or not exist, and its existence or non-existence following perfectly the determination of his will, he cannot avoid willing the existence or non-existence of that action; it is absolutely necessary that he will the one, or the other, i.e. prefer the one to the other, since one of them must necessarily follow.’—Page 246.

This seems to be the weak part of Mr. Locke’s reasoning, and is the only place, as I remember, where he has considered the certainty of the event as inconsistent with the practical liberty for which he contends. At this rate, it must be given up altogether: there can be no such thing as liberty. For in all cases whatever, one determination must happen rather than another. In all cases whatever, we must choose either one way or another, or suspend our choice. Suspense and deliberation, as Helvetius and others have justly remarked, are in this sense equally necessary with precipitation of judgment. The actual or final event is in both cases the necessary consequence of preceding causes, but that does not destroy freedom of choice in either case, if the event depends upon the exercise of choice, whether the time allowed for the mind to choose in, be longer or shorter. If by liberty be meant the uncertainty of the event, then liberty is a nonentity: but if it be supposed to relate to the concurrence of certain powers of an agent in the production of that event, then it is as true and as real a thing as the necessity to which it is thus opposed, and which consists in the exclusion of certain powers possessed by an agent from operating in the producing of any event. At the same time it must be granted, that the power of deliberation is the most valuable privilege of our rational nature, and the great enlargement of the discursive faculty of the will. Mr. Locke seems only to have erred in mistaking a difference of degree or extent for one of kind. The practical truth of the distinction is undeniable. His words are:—

‘The mind having in most cases, as is evident from experience, a power to suspend the execution and satisfaction of any of its desires, and so all, one after another, is at liberty to consider the objects of them, examine them on all sides, and weigh them with others. In this lies the liberty man has; and from the not using of it right comes all that variety of mistakes, errors, and faults, which we run into in the conduct of our lives, and our endeavours after happiness: whilst 63we precipitate the determination of our wills, and engage too soon before due examination. For during the suspension of any desire, before the will be determined to action, we have an opportunity to examine, view, and judge of the good or evil of what we are going to do; and when upon due examination we have judged, we have done our duty, all that we can or ought to do, in pursuit of our happiness; and it is not a fault, but a perfection of our nature, to desire, will, and act, according to the last result of a fair examination. This seems to me the source of all liberty; in this seems to consist that which is (I think improperly) called free-will.’—Essay, vol. i. p. 264.

Moral liberty, it should seem then, all the liberty which a man has or which he wants, does not after all consist in a power of indifferency, or in a power of choosing, without regard to motives, but in a power of exciting his reason and of obeying it. There are two general positions advanced by the author in the course of this inquiry, to neither of which I can agree; namely, that action always proceeds from uneasiness, and that we are perfect judges of present good and evil. With respect to the first, it is true indeed that nothing can be an object of desire till we suffer uneasiness from the want of it, but it is just as true, that the want of any thing does not cause uneasiness in the mind, unless it is first an object of desire, or unless the prospect of it gives us pleasure. As to the second position, that we cannot be deceived in judging of our actual sensations, it would be true, if the sensation and the judgment formed upon it were the same, but they neither are nor can be. Let any person smell to a rose, and look at a beautiful prospect or hear a fine piece of music at the same instant, and try to determine which of them gives him most pleasure. If he has the least doubt or hesitation, the principle laid down by Mr. Locke cannot pass for an axiom. From not accurately distinguishing between sensation and judgment, some writers have been led to confound good and evil with pleasure and pain. Good or evil is properly that which gives the mind pleasure or pain on reflection, that is, which excites rational approbation or disapprobation. To consider these two things as either the same or in any regular proportion to each other, is I think to betray a very superficial acquaintance with human nature. Yet in defiance of the necessary distinction between the faculties by which we feel and by which we judge, these moralists have laid it down as a fundamental rule that all pleasures which are so in themselves are equally good and commendable; yet as these ideas relate solely to the reflex impression made by certain things on the understanding, to insist that we shall judge of them by an appeal to the senses, is unwisely to overturn the principle of the division of labour among our faculties, and to force one to do the office 64of another. For this there seems no more reason than for attempting to hear with our fingers, to see a sound, or feel a colour.

Yet the absurdity of the attempt arises only from the inaptitude of the organ to the object.

Among simple ideas Mr. Locke reckons that of power. It were to be wished that he had given it as simple a source as possible, viz. the feeling we have of it in our own minds, which he sometimes seems half inclined to do, instead of referring it to our observation of the successive changes which take place in matter. It is by this means alone, that is, by making it an original idea derived from within, like the sense of pleasure or pain, and quite distinct from the visible composition and decomposition of other objects, that we can avoid being driven into an absolute scepticism with regard to cause and effect. For Hume has, I think, demonstrated that in the mere mechanical series of sensible appearances, there is nothing to suggest this idea, or point out the indissoluble connection of one event with another, any more than in the flies of a summer. We get this idea solely from the exertion of muscular or voluntary power in ourselves: whoever has stretched forth his hand to an object, must have the idea of power. Under the idea of power I include all that relates to what we call force, energy, weakness, effort, ease, difficulty, impossibility, &c. Accordingly, I should conceive that no man of strong passions, or great muscular activity would ever give up the idea of power. Hume, who seems to have discarded it with the least compunction, was an easy, indolent, good-tempered man, who did not care to stir out of his arm-chair; a languid, Epicurean philosopher, of a reasonable corpulency, who was hurried away by no violent passions, or intense desires, but looked on most things with the same eye of listlessness and indifference. He was one of the subtlest and most metaphysical of all metaphysicians. And perhaps he was so for the reason here stated. The Scotch in general are not metaphysicians: they have in fact always a purpose, they aim at a particular point, they are determined upon something beforehand. This gives a hardness and rigidity to their understandings, and takes away that tremulous sensibility to every slight and wandering impression which is necessary to complete the fine balance of the mind, and enable us to follow all the infinite fluctuations of thought through their nicest distinctions.

To return to the doctrine of necessity. I shall refer to the authority of but one more writer, who has indeed exhausted the subject, and anticipated what few remarks I had to offer upon it: I 65mean Jonathan Edwards, in his treatise on the Will. This work, setting aside its Calvinistic tendency with which I have nothing to do, is one of the most closely reasoned, elaborate, acute, serious, and sensible among modern productions. No metaphysician can read it without feeling a wish to have been the author of it. The gravity of the matter and the earnestness of the manner are alike admirable. His reasoning is not of that kind, which consists in having a smart answer for every trite objection, but in attaining true and satisfactory solutions of things perceived in all their difficulty and in all their force, and in every variety of connexion. He evidently writes to satisfy his own mind and the minds of those, who like himself are intent upon the pursuit of truth for its own sake. There is not an evasion or ambiguity in his whole book, nor a wish to produce any but thorough conviction. He does not therefore lead his readers into a labyrinth of words, or entangle them among the forms of logic, or mount the airy heights of abstraction, but descends into the plain, and mingles with the business and feelings of mankind, and grapples with common sense, and subdues it to the force of true reason. All philosophy depends no less on deep and real feeling than on power of thought. I happen to have Edwards’s ‘Inquiry concerning Freewill,’ and Dr. Priestley’s ‘Illustrations of Philosophical Necessity,’ bound up in the same volume: and I confess that the difference in the manner of these two writers is rather striking. The plodding, persevering, scrupulous accuracy of the one, and the easy, cavalier, verbal fluency of the other, form a complete contrast. Dr. Priestley’s whole aim seems to be to evade the difficulties of his subject, Edwards’s to answer them. The one is employed according to Berkeley’s allegory, in flinging dust in the eyes of his adversaries, while the other is taking true pains in digging into the mine of knowledge. All Dr. Priestley’s arguments on this subject are mere hackneyed common-places. He had in reality no opinion of his own, and truth, I conceive, never takes very deep root in those minds on which it is merely engrafted. He uniformly adopted the vantage ground of every question, and borrowed those arguments which he found most easy to be wielded, and of most service in that kind of busy intellectual warfare to which he was habituated. He was an able controversialist, not a philosophical reasoner.

Dr. Priestley states in his ‘Illustrations’ and in his letter to Dr. Horsley, that the difference between physical and moral necessity is merely verbal. He says, speaking of the connexion between cause and effect in the mind, ‘Give me the thing and I will readily give up the name.’ It appears to me that Dr. Priestley was quite as much attached to the name as to the thing, and that the philosophical 66principle of necessity, without its unpopular title, would have afforded him but little satisfaction. Now the obnoxiousness of the name, and in my opinion, almost all the difficulty and repugnance which the generality of men find in admitting the doctrine arises from the ambiguity lurking under the term necessity, which includes both kinds of necessity, moral and physical, and with which Dr. Priestley delights to probe the prejudices of his adversaries, thinking the differences of moral and physical necessity a mere question of words, and that provided there are any laws or any causes operating upon the mind, it is of no sort of consequence what those laws or causes are. It is the same inability to distinguish between one cause and another which creates the vulgar prejudice against necessity, and which is exposed in a very satisfactory manner by the author of the ‘Inquiry into the Will.’ He says, in a letter written expressly to vindicate himself from having confounded moral with physical necessity, ‘On the contrary, I have largely declared that the connexion between antecedent things and consequent ones which takes place with regard to the acts of men’s wills, which is called moral necessity, is called by the name of necessity improperly; and that all such terms as must, cannot, impossible, unable, irresistible, unavoidable, invincible, &c. when applied here, are not applied in their proper signification, and are either used nonsensically, and with perfect insignificance, or in a sense quite diverse from their original and proper meaning, and their use in common speech; and that such a necessity as attends the acts of men’s wills, is more properly called certainty than necessity. I think it is evidently owing to a strong prejudice in persons’ minds, arising from an insensible habitual perversion and misapplication of such-like terms, that they are ready to think that to suppose a certain connexion of men’s volitions without any foregoing motives or inclinations, is truly and properly to suppose such a strong irrefragable chain of causes and effects as stands in the way of, and makes utterly vain, opposite desires and endeavours, like immovable and impenetrable mountains of brass; and impedes our liberty like walls of adamant, gates of brass, and bars of iron: whereas all such representations suggest ideas as far from the truth, as the East is from the West. I know it is in vain to endeavour to make some persons believe this, or at least fully and steadily to believe it: for if it be demonstrated to them, still the old prejudice remains, which has been long fixed by the use of the terms necessary, must, &c. the association with these terms of certain ideas, inconsistent with liberty, is not broken, and the judgment is powerfully warped by it; as a thing that has been long bent and grown stiff, if it be straightened, will return to its former curvity again and again.’

67The reasoning in the ‘Inquiry’ to which the author here refers, in justification of himself, is as follows:

‘Men in their first use of such phrases as these, must, cannot, unavoidable, irresistible, &c. use them to signify a necessity of constraint or restraining a natural necessity or impossibility, or some necessity that the will has nothing to do in. A thing is said to be necessary, when we cannot help it, let us do what we will. So any thing is said to be impossible to us, when we would do it, or would have it brought to pass and endeavour it, but all our desires and endeavours are in vain. And that is said to be irresistible, which overcomes all our opposition, resistance and endeavour to the contrary. And we are said to be unable to do a thing, when our utmost supposable desires and endeavours to do it are insufficient. All men find, and begin to find in early childhood, that there are innumerable things which cannot be done which they desire to do; and innumerable things, which they are averse to, that must be; they cannot avoid them, whether they choose them or no. It is to express this necessity which men so soon and so often find, and which so greatly affects them in innumerable cases, that such terms and phrases are first formed; and it is to signify such a necessity that they are first used, and that they are most constantly used in the common affairs of life; and not to signify any such metaphysical, speculative and abstract notion as that connexion [between cause and effect] in the nature and course of things, to signify which they who employ themselves in philosophical inquiries into the first origin and metaphysical relations and dependencies of things, have borrowed those terms, for want of others. But we grow up from our cradles in a use of such phrases entirely different from this, or from the one in which they are used in the controversy about liberty and necessity. And it being a dictate of the universal sense of mankind, evident to us as soon as we begin to think, that the necessity signified by these terms in the sense in which we first learn them, does excuse persons, and free them from all fault or blame, hence our idea of excusableness or faultlessness is tied to these phrases by a strong habit, which grows up with us;—or if we use the words as terms of art in another sense, yet unless we are exceeding circumspect and wary, we shall insensibly slide into the vulgar use of them, and so apply the words in a very inconsistent manner: this habitual connexion of ideas will deceive and confound us in our reasonings and discourses whenever we pretend to use the terms in that manner.’—Pages 20, 21, 290, &c.

‘It follows that when the aforesaid terms are used in cases wherein no opposition, or insufficient will or endeavour is or can be supposed, but the very nature of the supposed case (as that of willing or choosing) 68excludes any such opposition, will, or endeavour, these terms are then not used in their proper signification, but quite beside their use in common speech.’—Pages 21, 22.

The author has, I think, in these passages, laid open the source of most of the confusion on the subject in question. For this double meaning lurking under the word necessity has been the chief reason why persons, who were guided more by their own feelings and the customary associations of language than by formal definitions, have altogether rejected the doctrine; while persons of a more logical turn, who could not deny the truth of the abstract principle, have yet in their explanations of it, and inferences from it, fallen into the same vulgar error as their opponents. The partisans for necessity have given up their common sense, as they supposed, to their reason, while the advocates for liberty rejected a demonstrable truth from a dread of its consequences; and both have been the dupes of a word. I have been the more ready to appeal to this writer’s authority, because he is allowed on all hands to be one of the most strict, severe, and logical of all necessarians. What he has said on the subject of free-will, as consisting in perfect contingence, independent of all motive, or as implying an absolute beginning of action without any precedent determining cause might, one would imagine, have been sufficient, even if Hobbes’s reasonings had not, to banish that opinion out of the world. He has followed it through all its windings, and detected it in all its varying shades, with equal patience and sagacity. He sums up the absurdities of this notion of liberty, or of mere absolute self-will, in these words:

‘The following things are all essential to it, viz. that an action should be necessary, and not necessary; that it should be from a cause and no cause; that it should be the fruit of choice and design, and not the fruit of choice and design; that it should be the beginning of motion and exertion, and yet be consequent on previous exertion; that it should be before it is; that it should spring immediately out of indifference and equilibrium, and yet be the effect of preponderation; that it should be self-originated, also have its original from something else; that it is what the mind causes itself, of its own will, and can produce or prevent, according to its choice, or pleasure, and yet what the mind has no power to prevent, precluding all previous choice in the affair. So that an act of the will [determining itself by its own free-will], according to their metaphysical account of it, is something of which there is no idea, it is nothing but a confusion of the mind, excited by words without any distinct meaning. If some learned philosopher, who had been abroad, in giving an account of the curious observations he had made in his travels, should 69say, “He had been in Tierra del Fuego, and there had seen an animal, which he calls by a certain name, that begat and brought forth itself, and yet had a sire and a dam distinct from itself; that it had an appetite and was hungry before it had a being; that his master, who led him, and governed him at his pleasure, was always governed by him, and driven by him where he pleased: that when he moved, he always took a step before the first step; that he went with his head first, and yet always went tail foremost; and this though he had neither head nor tail;” it would be no impudence at all to tell such a traveller, though a learned man, that he himself had no notion or idea of such an animal as he gave an account of, and never had, nor ever would have.’—Page 281, of the Inquiry.

The author seems to have hit upon the source of this erroneous account of free-will, with his usual truth of feeling. He says, almost immediately after:—‘The thing which has led men into this inconsistent notion of action, when applied to volition, as though it were essential to this internal action that the agent should be self-determined in it, and that the will should be the cause of it, was probably this: that according to the sense of mankind, and the common use of language, it is so with respect to men’s external actions; which are what originally, and according to the vulgar use and most proper sense of the word, are called actions. Men in these are self-directed, self-determined, and their wills are the cause of the motions of their bodies, and the external things that are done; so that unless men do them voluntarily, and of choice, and the action be determined by their antecedent volition, it is no action or doing of theirs. Hence some metaphysicians have been led unwarily, but exceeding absurdly, to suppose the same concerning volition itself, that that also must be determined by the will; which is to be determined by antecedent volition, as the motion of the body is; not considering the contradiction it implies.’—Ibid., page 286.

I shall proceed to state as briefly as I can my own notions of liberty and necessity, as far as they any way differ from the foregoing account.

First, then, I conceive that if by necessity be understood and only understood the connexion of cause and effect, or the constant dependence of one thing on another, in the human mind as well as in matter, that according to this interpretation all things are equally certain and necessary. On the other hand, if by liberty be meant any thing opposite to this connexion of cause and effect: that is, a positive beginning of any action or motion out of nothing, or out of a state of indifference, or from itself, I believe that there is no such thing as liberty in the mind any more than in matter. All things have their preceding determining causes, and nothing is, but what 70must be in the precise given circumstances. This has been demonstrated over and over again, and the contrary supposition reduced to a manifest absurdity in every possible way by Hobbes, Hume, Hartley, Edwards, Priestley, and others.

But, secondly, I conceive that the question does not stop here, because certain ideas have been annexed to these terms of liberty and necessity, both by the learned and by common men, which have nothing at all to do with the affirmation or denial of the simple connexion between cause and effect. What I shall therefore attempt will be to point out a few instances of the misapplication of the term to prove a necessity not included in the certainty of the event, and to disprove liberty in a sense in which it does not interfere with that certainty, or with philosophical necessity: that is, I shall attempt to show in what sense, in conformity with the general law to which all things are by their nature subject, man is an agent, a free agent, a moral and accountable agent; that is, deserving of reward and punishment, praise and blame, &c. Now by an agent I mean any thing that acts or has a power to operate, that is, to produce effects; by a free agent I mean one that is not hindered from acting; by a moral and accountable agent I mean one that acts from will, and is influenced by motives; by reward and punishment I mean what every one does; by praise and blame I mean our approbation or disapprobation of any agent that is conscious of our sentiments towards him, or that is capable of reflecting on his own conduct, and of being affected by what others think of it. If by an agent be meant the beginner of action, or one that produces an effect of itself, there can be no such thing; but if by an agent be meant one that contributes to an effect, there is such a thing as an agent; and the more any thing contributes to an effect and determines it to be this or that, the more it is an agent. If by freedom be meant a freedom from causes, or necessity in the abstract, there can be no freedom in this sense, but there may be and is a freedom from certain causes and from certain kinds and degrees of necessity; that is, from physical causes, or compulsion, and from absolute, unconditional necessity. If all things are equally necessary, that do not spring out of nothing, then indeed the distinction between liberty and necessity must be in all cases absurd. Again, by free-will I do not mean the power or liberty to act without motives, but with motives. The mind cannot act without an occasion or ground for acting, but this does not shew that it is no agent at all, or that it is not a free agent; that is, that its action is restrained or hindered by the action of anything else. The intellectual and voluntary powers are free, just as the corporeal are, namely, when they are free to produce certain effects, which, if excited, they can produce, as 71the body is free when it can move in consequence of the mind’s direction; it is no longer free when though the same reason exists for its moving, it is hindered by something else from obeying the impulse. In short, liberty is this: the power in any agent in given circumstances to operate in a certain manner, if left to itself; or perhaps more unequivocally, opportunity given to any agent to exert certain powers to produce an effect, when nothing but those powers and the absence of impediments is wanting to produce it. To be free is to possess all the requisites for acting in one’s-self, and in the circumstances, and not to be counteracted. Again if moral good and evil are supposed to be something self-created, then they are merely fictions of the mind; but if we suppose an agent to be entitled to praise or blame, reward or punishment, not because he is a self-willed, but a voluntary agent, that is to say, a being possessing certain powers and habitually and with determination exerting them to certain purposes, then there will be a foundation for this distinction in nature. To the idea of moral responsibility, it is not necessary that the agent should be the sole or absolutely first cause of the evil, for example, but that he should be one real, determining cause of it, and while he remains what he is, the same effects will follow. An agent is the author of any evil, when without him, that is, without something peculiar and essential to his disposition and character, it would not exist.

1. Every thing is an agent that is any way necessary or conducing to an effect. The doctrine of second causes does not destroy agency. It no more proves that those causes do not act because something has acted before them, than that they do not exist, because something has existed before them. The theological writers on this side of the question affirm, I think improperly, that God or the first cause is the sole agent in the universe, to which all second causes are to be referred as instruments, having no real efficacy of their own. If so, all events are produced immediately by the divine agency, that is, all second causes are parts of the divine essence, and in all that we see or hear or feel, we must conceive of something far more deeply interfused, a spirit and a motion that impels all thinking things, all objects of all thought, and breathes through all things. This doctrine is that of Spinoza: but upon this supposition second causes, as the immediate operation of the Deity are and must be real and efficient. On the other hand, if to exclude this system of pantheism, we consider the things and appearances about us as merely natural, still what are called second causes must be real and efficient causes, or they could not produce their effects. If nothing can operate but the first cause, then whatever produces effects is the Deity: but if this conclusion be thought objectionable, then we must allow other causes of events to be 72really and truly such in themselves: for from that which is no cause, which has no power, any more than nothing, nothing can follow. All second causes, that is, all things that exist are, therefore, either parts of the Deity or parts of nature, and in neither case can they be absolutely insignificant, worthless, null, and of no account. Dr. Priestley is for having men refer all the good in the universe to God as the author of it, and all the evil that takes place to man or to second causes. I cannot think that this is sound philosophy nor practical wisdom. The necessarians have evidently borrowed their notions of agency and second causes from the advocates for liberty: for taking up the same unfounded assumption of the libertarians, that action is the absolute beginning of motion, and that any thing short of this is no action at all, and finding that the will was not a cause in the absurd sense supposed by their adversaries, they have concluded that it was no cause at all; not considering whether a cause might not be more properly defined that which produces an effect in consistency with other things than that which produces it independently of them. Action then in any sense of the word is the same as co-operation. It may be asked, whether this account does not destroy the distinction between active and passive. I answer that it does, if by active be meant unconnected action, and by passive connected action; but not else. That is, if by action be understood the positive determinate tendency or the additional impulse to the production of any effect, and by passiveness an indifference in any agent to this or that motion, except as it is acted upon by, and transmits the efficacy of other causes, this distinction will remain as broad and palpable as ever. Any thing is so far active as it modifies and re-acts upon the original impulse; it is passive in as far as it neither adds to, nor takes from that original impulse, but merely has a power of receiving and continuing it. This I take to be the practical and philosophical meaning of the terms. This distinction therefore, applies equally to matter and mind. The explosion of gunpowder cannot be attributed entirely or principally to the spark which ignites it, because the effect is increased a thousand-fold by the inherent qualities of the gunpowder. The motion communicated by one body to another in void space is considered as the mere passive result of the former, because the effect in the second agent is simply the continuation of what it was in the first. So it is in the mind. Motives do not act upon it simply or absolutely; but according to the dictates of the understanding or the bias of the will. At one time we yield to any idle inclination that happens to prevail, and at others resist to the utmost the strongest motives. That is, the mind is itself an agent, one chief determining cause of our volitions. It is on the view taken by the mind of motives, on our 73disposition to attend to or neglect them, to compare and weigh them, that their effect depends. But the necessarians have always delighted to illustrate the operations of the mind in volition by referring to the impulse communicated by one billiard-ball to another, or to different weights in a pair of scales. Both which illustrations are as little applicable as possible, because in neither of them is there supposed to be the least activity of action; that is, the least capacity to resist or increase or alter the impressed force in the thing acted upon. That is, the mind in these similes is requisite as a merely passive agent, by which I mean a thing perfectly indifferent and nugatory, a mere cypher without any character of its own, that is neither good nor bad, neither deserving of praise nor blame; a cameleon, colourless kind of thing, the sport of external impulses and accidental circumstances, or of a necessity in which it has itself no share. Thus the responsibility of the mind has been taken from it, and transferred to outward circumstances, and all characters in themselves rendered alike indifferent. This is the necessary consequence of abstracting the influence of motives from the mind on which and by which they act. I prefer exceedingly to the modern instances of a couple of billiard-balls, or a pair of scales, the illustration of Chrysophus, the stoic in Cicero, who says, ‘Ille igitur qui protrusit cylindrum dedit ei principium motionis, volubilitatem autem non dedit: sic visum objectum imprimet quidem et quasi signabit in animo suam speciem, sed assensio erit in potestate nostrâ.’ That is, suppose I push against a heavy body; if it be square it will not move: if it be cylindrical it will. What the difference of form is to the stone, the difference of disposition is to the mind. In fact, the necessarians, to maintain this doctrine of the nullity of second causes, have been forced to consider every thing as a succession of simple impulses passing from hand to hand: so that there being no fixed point, no resting-place for the imagination, we are perpetually obliged to shift the cause from one object to another: every thing has to be accounted for, and referred back to something else, and in this ceaseless whirl of fleeting causes all ideas of power or agency seem to slide from under us. Lest the mind should prove refractory, to the laws ascribed to it, they thought it most prudent to deprive it of all activity and power of resistance. They were very absurdly afraid that without this their whole scheme might be overturned, as if though the mind were freed from being the servile drudge of external impulses, it would not still follow the bent of its own nature. The above distinction will, I conceive, set the mind free from one of the shackles imposed on it by the necessarians, namely, that imbecility, helplessness, and indifference, which they have superadded to the regular connexion of cause and effect, though it makes 74no essential part of it. The mind, according to the advocates for free-will, is a perfectly detached, unconnected, independent cause: according to the necessarians, it is no cause at all: neither branch of the antithesis is true.

2. According to the definition of liberty above given, freedom, that is free agency, is applicable to mind as well as to matter. Free-will does not, because will does not, belong to it. By a free agent, I understand, with Hobbes, one that is not hindered from acting according to his natural or determinate bias. The body is free when it can obey the impulse of the mind; so also a billiard-ball might be said to be free while it is not fixed to the table, or hindered from being impelled by the stroke of the mace. In the same sense, the water, as Mr. Hobbes observes, is said to descend freely along the channel of the river, while no obstacle intercepts its progress. But though necessarians allow liberty to the body, and to inanimate things, they deny that it is in any sense applicable to the mind or will.

This work owes its present rank among philosophical productions, to its embodiment of the great principle first brought forward by Hobbes. All its author’s attempts to modify this principle or reconcile it to common notions have been gradually exploded, and have given place to the more severe and logical deductions of Hobbes from the same general principle. Mr. Locke took the faculties of the mind as he found them in himself and others, and endeavoured to account for them on a new principle. By this compromise with candour and common sense, he prepared the way for the introduction of the principle, which being once established, very soon overturned all the trite opinions and vulgar prejudices which were improperly associated with it. There was in fact no place for them in the new system.

The great defect with which the ‘Essay on the Human Understanding’ is chargeable is, that there is not really a word about the nature of the understanding in it, nor any attempt to show what it is or whether it is or is not any thing, distinct from the faculty of simple perception. The operations of thinking, comparing, discerning, reasoning, willing, and the like, which Mr. Locke ascribes to it, are the operations of nothing, or of I know not what. All the force of his mind seems to have been so bent on exploding innate ideas, and tracing our thoughts to their external source, that he either forgot or 75had not leisure to examine what the internal principle of all thought is. He took for his basis a bad simile—that the mind is like a blank sheet of paper, originally void of all characters whatever; for this, though true as far as relates to innate ideas, that is, to any impressions actually existing in it, is not true of the mind itself, which is not like a sheet of paper, the passive receiver and retainer of the impressions made upon it. The inference from this simile has however been that the understanding is nothing in itself, nor the cause of any thing; never acting, but always acted upon; that it is but a convenient repository for the straggling images of things, a sort of empty room into which ideas are conveyed from without through the doors of the senses, as you would carry goods into an unfurnished lodging; and hence it has been found necessary by succeeding writers to get rid of those different faculties and operations which Mr. Locke elsewhere allows to belong to the mind, but which are in truth only compatible with the active powers and independent nature of the understanding. I will first state Mr. Locke’s account of the origin of our ideas in his own words, and will then endeavour to show in what that account is defective; that is, what other act or faculty of the mind I conceive to be necessary to the formation of our ideas, besides sensation or simple perception. After employing eighty pages in a very laborious, and for the most part sensible refutation of the doctrine of innate ideas, which was popular at the time, but which Hobbes has not deigned to notice, their impossibility being implied in the general principle that all our ideas are derived from the senses, Mr. Locke proceeds in the second book to treat of Ideas, and their origin. He then says:

‘Every man being conscious to himself that he thinks, and that which his mind is applied about whilst thinking being the ideas that are there, it is past doubt that men have in their minds several ideas, such are those expressed by the words, whiteness, hardness, sweetness, thinking, motion, man, elephant, army, drunkenness, and others: it is in the first place then to be inquired how he comes by them. I know it is a received doctrine that men have native ideas and original characters stamped upon their minds in their very first being. This opinion I have at large examined already: but I suppose what I have said will be much more easily admitted when I have shewn whence the understanding may get all the ideas it has, and by what ways and degrees they may come into the mind, for which I shall appeal to every one’s own observation and experience. Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas: how comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store, which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it, in an almost endless variety? 76Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE: in that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself....

‘First, our senses, conversant about particular sensible objects, do convey into the mind several distinct perceptions of things, according to those various ways, wherein those objects do affect them; and thus we come by those ideas we have of yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, bitter, sweet, and all those which we call sensible qualities, which when I say the senses convey into the mind, I mean, they from external objects convey into the mind what produces there those perceptions. This great source of most of the ideas we have, depending wholly upon our senses, and derived by them to the understanding, I call SENSATION.

‘Secondly, the other fountain from whence experience furnisheth the understanding with ideas, is the perception of the operations of our own mind within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got: which operations when the soul comes to reflect on and consider, do furnish the understanding with another set of ideas, which could not be had from things without: and such are perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the different actings of our own minds; which we being conscious of, and observing in ourselves, do from these receive into our understandings as distinct ideas as we do from bodies affecting our senses. This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself; and though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal sense. But as I call the other sensation, so I call this REFLECTION; the ideas it affords being such only as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operations within itself.... These two I say, viz. external, material things, as the objects of sensation, and the operations of our own minds within as the objects of REFLECTION, are to me the only originals from whence all our ideas take their beginnings. The term operations here I use in a large sense, as comprehending not barely the actions of the mind about its ideas, but some sort of passions arising sometimes from them, such as is the satisfaction or uneasiness arising from any thought.’

‘The understanding,’ proceeds Mr. Locke, ‘seems to me not to have the least glimmering of any ideas, which it doth not receive from one of these two. External objects furnish the mind with the ideas of sensible qualities, which are all those different perceptions they produce in us; and the mind furnishes the understanding with ideas of its own operations. These, when we have taken a full survey of them, and their several modes, combinations, and relations, we shall find to contain all our whole stock of ideas: and that we have nothing in our minds, which did not come in one of these two ways.’—Essay, vol. I. p. 84.

77Again, page 150, he says:

‘I pretend not to teach but to inquire, and therefore cannot but confess here again, that external and internal sensation are the only passages that I can find of knowledge to the understanding. These alone, as far as I can discover, are the windows by which light is let into this dark room. For methinks the understanding is not much unlike a closet, wholly shut from light, with only some little opening left, to let in external visible resemblances, or ideas of things without: would the pictures coming into such a dark room but stay there, and lie so orderly as to be found upon occasion, it would very much resemble the understanding of a man in reference to all objects of sight, and the ideas of them.’

This account of the origin of every thing that exists in the mind differs from the simplicity of Hobbes’s system, and of the modern philosophy, in supposing that there is another distinct source of ideas, besides sensation, namely, reflection on the operations of our own minds. I confess this addition appears to me to be very awkwardly and inartificially made. For, in the first place, it is obvious to remark that in most at least, if not all the instances enumerated by the author, the operations themselves are the proper and immediate sources of our ideas, not this kind of reflection on them, which seems to be nothing but the repetition or recollection of the first conscious impression, the perception of a perception. For example, Mr. Locke includes among operations of our own minds ‘some sort of passions arising from our ideas,’ i.e. as he explains it, the sense of pleasure and pain. Now it is surely a little preposterous to make, not the original feeling itself, but the after consideration or reflection on that feeling, the source of our idea of pleasure or pain. In this sense, reflection must be the source of all our ideas, whether of external objects, or the operations of our own minds, for in the same sense it may be argued, that the first impression of a sensible object is not the source of the idea we have of it, till the soul comes to reflect on and consider that original impression. But it might be said with equal propriety, that we have one source of ideas, viz., sensation, and another source of ideas, viz. ideas. From the view which Mr. Locke has here taken of the subject, though the passions, or the satisfaction and uneasiness attending certain things are ranked among the operations of the mind, yet it is not quite clear whether we are supposed to have any consciousness of them or not; whether they are not as remote from any thing like perception, as the lifeless objects without us, till coming to be afterwards reflected on and taken notice of by the mind, they furnish the understanding with a new set of ideas. The same reasoning may be applied to the other operations of 78perception, thinking, &c. for it seems to me that the original act of perceiving or thinking is the source of my idea of those mental operations, just as the first impression of any sensible object is the source of my idea of that object. Not sensation and reflection, therefore, but sensation and the operations of our own minds are more properly the sources of our ideas, that is, these two furnish materials for our reflection. I should not have dwelt so long upon this distinction, which may be thought of little importance in itself, but that I believe it has led to most of the errors of the ‘Essay.’ For in consequence of separating the operations of the mind in a manner from the mind itself, and making them exist only as objects for its contemplation, Mr. Locke has been satisfied with considering those operations as acting upon the mind like external things, not as emanating from it. Thus, by a general formula, all our ideas of every kind are represented as communicated to the mind by something foreign to it, instead of growing out of, and being a part of its own nature and essence.

Secondly, another objection to this division of our ideas into those of sensation and reflection is, that it does not differ in any decisive manner from the more simple statement of Hobbes and others, who derive all our ideas from sensation. For by sensation these writers do not understand merely the external image, but the perception or feeling which accompanies it, and they contend that all our other ideas are continuations, modifications, or different arrangements of the original impressions, produced by objects on the senses. Now there is nothing in the extract above given to disprove this statement: and if so, the original hypothesis will remain in its full force. Indeed Mr. Locke himself does not seem to have made up his mind, whether it were so or not. For though he speaks of the mind as furnishing the understanding with ideas, and with the materials of reason and knowledge, and enumerates and explains the several operations of the mind in comparing, distinguishing, &c. yet he elsewhere speaks of ideas as existing in the understanding like pictures in a gallery, or as if the whole process of the intellect were resolvable into the power of receiving, retaining, carrying, and transposing the gross materials furnished by the senses. In this case, I think the simplest way at once is to make sensation the foundation of all our other ideas and faculties. For my own part, the reason why I cannot assent to this doctrine is, that I believe there is another act or faculty of the mind implied in all our ideas, for which neither sensation nor any of its modes can ever account, and which I shall here proceed to explain.

The principle which I shall attempt to prove is, that ideas are the offspring of the understanding, not of the senses. By a sensation is 79meant the perception produced by the impression of the several parts of an outward object, each by itself, on the correspondent parts of an organised sentient being: by an idea I mean the conception produced by a number of these together on the same conscious principle. Besides the succession or juxtaposition of different sensible impressions, I suppose that there is a common principle of thought, a superintending faculty, which alone perceives the relations of things, and enables us to comprehend their connexions, forms, and masses. This faculty is properly the understanding, and it is by means of this faculty that man indeed becomes a reasonable soul. What has led more than any thing else to the exclusion of the understanding as a distinct faculty of the mind, and to the principle of resolving the acts of judging, reasoning, &c., into mere association, or succession of ideas, has been the considering ideas themselves, or those particular objects which are marked by one name, or strike at once upon the senses, as simple things. Mr. Locke, it is true, has avoided this error as far as relates to our ideas of substances, but he reckons among simple ideas of the qualities of things several ideas, which are evidently complex, such as extension, figure, motion, and number. Hence, having laid in a certain stock of ideas without the necessity of the understanding, it was thought an easy matter to build up the whole structure of the human mind without it, as we build a house with stones. The method, therefore, which I shall take to establish the point I have in view, will be by showing that there is no one of these simple ideas, or ideas of particular things, which are made the foundation of all the rest, that is not itself an aggregate of many things, or that can subsist a moment but in the understanding. I can conceive of a being endued with the power of sensation, or simple perception, so as to receive the direct impressions of things, and also with memory, so as to retain them for any length of time, as they were severally and unconnectedly presented, yet without the smallest degree of understanding, or without ever having so much as a single thought. The state of such a being would be that of animal life, and something more with the addition of memory, but it would not amount to intellect; which implies, besides actual, living impressions, the power of perceiving their relations to one another, of comparing and contrasting them, and of regarding the different parts of any object as making one whole. Without this ‘discourse of reason,’ this surrounding and forming power, we could never have the idea of a single object, as of a table or a chair, a blade of grass, or a grain of sand. Every one of these includes a certain configuration, hardness, colour, &c., i.e. ideas of different things, received by different senses, which must be put together by the understanding before they can be referred 80to any particular thing, or considered as one idea. Without this faculty, all our ideas would be necessarily decomposed, and crumbled down into their original elements and fluxional parts. We could assuredly never carry on a chain of reasoning on any subject, for the very links of which this chain must consist would be ground to powder. There would be an infinite divisibility in the impressions of the mind, as well as in the objects of matter. There would be a total want of union, fellowship, and mutual intelligence between them, for each impression must remain absolutely simple and distinct, unknown to, and unconscious of the rest, shut up in the narrow cell of its own individuality. No two of these atomic impressions could ever club together to form even a sensible point, much less should we be able to arrive at any of the larger masses, or nominal descriptions of things. The most that sensation could possibly do for us, would be to furnish us with the ideas of what Mr. Locke calls the simple qualities of objects, as of colour or pressure, though not as a general notion or diffused feeling; for it is certain that no one idea could ever contain more than the tinge of a single ray of light, or the puncture of a single particle of matter. Let us, however, for a moment suppose that the several parts of objects are to be considered as individual things, or ideal units; and then see whether, without the cementing power of the understanding, we shall be able to conceive of them as forming a complete whole, or any one entire object. Thus we may have a notion of the legs and arms of a chair as so many distinct, positive things; but without the power of perceiving them together in their several proportions and situations, we could not have the idea of a chair as one thing, or as a piece of furniture, intended for a particular use. It is the mind (if I may be allowed such an expression) that makes up the idea of the chair, and fits it together: that is in this case the cabinet-maker, who unites the loose, disjointed parts, and makes them one firm and well-compacted object. I might instance to the same purpose a statue. Will any one say, that if the head and limbs and different parts of a fine statue were to be taken asunder, broken in pieces, and strewed about the floor, and first shown to him in that state, he would have the same idea of the beauty, proportions, posture, and effect of the whole, as if he had seen it in its original state? But the idea which such a person might have of the statue in this way would be completeness and harmony itself, compared with any idea which could result from the sensible impression of the several parts. For he might still in fancy piece together the broken, mutilated fragments, prop up the limbs, set the head upon the shoulders, and make out a crazy image of the whole; but without the understanding reacting on the senses, and informing the eye with judgment and 81knowledge, there would be no possibility whatever of comparing the different impressions received: no one part could have the slightest reference to any other part or to the whole; there would be no principle of cohesion left: we might have an infinite number of microscopic impressions and fractions of ideas, but there being nothing to unite them together, the most perfect grace and symmetry would be only one mass of unmeaning, unconscious confusion. All nature, all objects, all parts of all objects would be equally ‘without form and void.’ The mind alone is formative, to use the expression of a great German writer; or it is that alone which by its pervading and elastic energy unfolds and expands our ideas, that gives order and consistency to them, that assigns to every part its proper place, and fixes it there, and that frames the idea of the whole. Or, in other words, it is the understanding alone that perceives relation, but every object is made up of relation. In short, there is no object or idea which does not consist of a number of parts arranged in a certain manner, but of this arrangement the parts themselves cannot be sensible. To make each part conscious of its relation to the rest is to suppose an infinite number of intellects instead of one; and to say that a knowledge or perception of each part separately, without a reference to the rest, can produce a conception of the whole; that is, that a knowledge where no two impressions are or ever can be compared, can include a comparison between them and many others, is a contradiction and an absurdity.

It may be said perhaps, that not the sensation excited by any of the parts of an object separately, but the sum of our sensations, excited by all the parts, produces our idea of the whole. But it is not possible that in a given number of impressions, where the mind never has perception of more than a single part, there should be contained notwithstanding a view of the whole at once. For as a single part cannot of itself represent the whole object, so neither can this part by being actually joined to others, which by the supposition are never perceived to be joined with it, produce that idea, any more than if those other parts had no existence. If the impression of the parts of an object, absolutely and individually considered, were the same thing as the idea of the object, any number of actual impressions, arranged in any manner whatever, would necessarily be the same object. But this is contrary to all fact. For then a curve line, consisting of the same number of points, would not be distinguishable from a straight one, nor a square from a triangle of the same dimensions, and so on. In a being endued only with a power of sensation, and supposed to be simple and undivided, there could be no room for more than an individual impression at once. Our sensations 82must always succeed each other. One thought must have completely passed away, before another could supply its place. Our ideas would leave no traces of themselves, like the bubbles that rise and disappear on the water, or the snow that melts as it falls. There would be nothing in their fugitive, momentary existence to bind them together. Ere we could stop to compare any one impression with any other, it would be lost for ever in the dark abyss of time. Nothing could be connected with any thing else, either coexisting with it, or going before or after it. If on the other hand, we suppose any merely sentient being to be extended and compounded, or to be capable of receiving more than one impression at once, we shall yet gain little by it. Such a sentient being will be nothing but a number of distinct sentient beings. For as in the former instance, no two impressions could co-exist together, so in the latter, though they existed together, there could be no sort of communication between them. They would be absolutely cut off from and exclusive of each other. The mind in attending to any one must be wholly absorbed by it, and insensible of the rest. Our sensations would to every rational purpose be placed as completely out of the sphere of each other’s consciousness, as if they were parcel of another intellect, or floated in the region of the moon. That any number of detached, unconnected, actual sensations, impressed on different sentient beings, would not of themselves imply a conception of any one entire object is what every one is ready to grant:—it would be equally clear, that this idea could not arise from the impression of the different parts of an object on the different parts of the same organized, extended, sentient substance, but that in this case we involuntarily transfer our own consciousness to a being incapable of it, and identify these distinct sensible impressions in the same common intellect.

It is strange that Mr. Locke should rank among simple ideas that of number, which he defines to be the idea of unity repeated. But how this idea of successive or distinct units can ever give the idea of repetition unless the former instances are borne in mind, I cannot conceive. There might be a transition from one unit to another, but no addition or aggregate formed. As well might we suppose that a body of an inch diameter by shifting from place to place might enlarge its dimensions to a foot or a mile, as that a succession of units, perceived separately, should produce the complex idea of number. The natural fool that Mr. Hobbes speaks of, may be supposed to observe every stroke of the clock, and nod to it, or say one, one, one: but he could never know what hour it strikes, according to Mr. Hobbes, without the use of those names of order, one, two, three, &c. nor according to my notion, without the help of that orderly understanding 83which first invented those names, and comprehends their meaning. On the material hypothesis, the mind can have but one idea at a time, and the idea of number could never enter into it.

Though Mr. Locke constantly supposes the mind to perceive relations, and explains its operations in reasoning, comparing, &c. on this principle, there is but one place in his work, in which he seems to have been upon the point of discovering that this principle is at the bottom of all our ideas whatever. He says, in the beginning of his chapter on Power, which he classes among simple ideas, and which in my opinion has a much more simple source than that which he assigns to it,—‘I confess power includes in it some kind of relation (a relation to action or change), as indeed which of our ideas, of what kind soever, when attentively considered, does not? For our ideas of extension, duration, and number, do they not all contain in them a secret relation of the parts? Figure and motion have something relative in them much more visibly: and sensible qualities, as colours and smells, what are they but the powers of different bodies in relation to our perception? and if considered in the things themselves, do they not depend on the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of the parts? All which include some kind of relation in them. Our idea therefore of power I think may well have a place amongst other simple ideas, and be considered as one of them, being one of those that make a principal ingredient in our complex ideas of substances.’—Essay, vol. i. p. 234. That is to say, in other words, the idea of power, which is confessedly complex according to Mr. Locke, as depending on the changes we observe produced in one thing by another, is to pass for a simple idea, because it has as good a right to this denomination as other complex ideas, which are usually classed as simple ones. It is thus that the inquiring mind seems to be always hovering on the brink of truth, but that timidity or indolence, or prejudice, which is both combined, makes us shrink back, unwilling to trust ourselves to the fathomless abyss.

I have thus endeavoured to give some account of what I mean by the understanding, as the principle which is the foundation not only of judgment, reason, choice, and deliberate action, but is included in every idea of the mind, or conception even of sensible objects. I am aware that what I have said may be looked upon as rhapsody and extravagance by the strictest sect of those who are called philosophers. The understanding has been set aside as an awkward incumbrance, since it was conceived practicable to carry on the whole business of thought and reason by a succession of external images and sensible points. The fine network of the mind itself, the cords that bind and hold our scattered perceptions together, and form the means of communication 84between them, are dissolved and vanish before the clear light of modern metaphysics, as the gossamer is dissipated by the sun. The adepts in this system smile at the contradictions involved in the supposition of perceiving the relations between different things, and say that this implies the absurdity that the mind may have two ideas at once, which is with them impossible. Now I shall only contend that if the mind cannot have two ideas at the same time, it can never have any, since all the ideas we know of consist of more than one: and though the consciousness we have of attending to different objects at once, when we compare, judge, reason, will, &c., has been resolved into a deception of the mind in mistaking a rapid succession of objects for one general impression, yet it will hardly be pretended that we deceive ourselves in thinking we have any ideas at all. Mr. Horne Tooke, who is certainly one of the ablest commentators on the doctrines of that school, says that it is as absurd to talk of a complex idea as of a complex star, meaning that our ideas are as perfectly distinct from, and have as little to do with one another, as the stars that compose a constellation. Other writers, to avoid the seeming contradiction of supposing the mind to divide its attention between different objects, have suggested the instant of its passing from one to the other as the true point of comparison between them; or that the time when it had an idea of both together, was the time when it had an idea of neither. As it was evident that while the mind was entirely taken up with one idea, it could not have any knowledge of another which did not yet exist, or had passed away, and as both impressions cannot be supposed to co-exist in the same conscious understanding (for on this system there is no such faculty), this short, precious interval, this moment of leisure from both, this lucky vacancy of thought, is pitched upon as that in which the mind performs all its functions, and contemplates its various ideas in their absence, as from some vantage ground the traveller stops to survey the country on both sides of him. To such absurdities are ingenious men driven by setting up argument against fact, and denying the most obvious truths for which they cannot account, like the sophist who denied the existence of motion, because he could not understand its nature. It might be deemed a sufficient answer to those who build systems and lay down formal propositions on the principle that the mind can comprehend but one idea at a time, to say that they consequently can have no meaning in what they write, since when they begin a sentence they cannot have the least idea of what will be the end of it, and by the time they get to the end of it must totally forget the beginning. ‘Peace to all such!’

To show, however, that I am not quite singular in my notions on 85this subject of consciousness, and to remove, as I think, every shadow of doubt upon it, I beg leave to refer my readers to two passages, the one in Rousseau, and the other in Abraham Tucker, in support of the almost obsolete prejudice which I have here endeavoured to defend. The one is an argument to prove that judgment and sensation are not the same, in the Vicar’s profession of faith in ‘Emilius,’ and the other is the chapter on the independent existence of mind in the ‘Light of Nature Pursued.’

The passage in Rousseau seems evidently to have been intended as an answer to the maxim of Helvetius that to feel is to judge, and to his reasoning on this maxim, which is as follows:—

‘The question being reduced within these limits, I shall examine at present whether the act of the mind in judging is any thing more than a sensation. When I judge of the size or colour of the objects around me, it is evident that the judgment formed of the different impressions, which these objects make upon my senses, is properly only a sensation: that I may say indiscriminately, either I judge, or I feel, that of two objects, the one which I call a yard makes upon me a different impression from another which I call a foot: that the colour called red, produces a different effect upon the sight from that which I call yellow; and I conclude that in this case to judge is only to feel or perceive by the senses. But it may be said, let us suppose that any one desires to know whether strength of body is preferable to mere bulk; are we certain that we can decide this point by means of the senses alone? Most undoubtedly, I reply: for in order to my coming to a decision on the subject, my memory must first retrace to me successively the different situations in which I may happen most frequently to find myself in the course of my life. In this case, then, to judge is to see that in these different situations strength will be oftener an advantage to me than size. But it may be retorted, when the question is to decide whether in a king justice is preferable to mercy, is it conceivable that the conclusion here formed depends entirely on sensation? The affirmative has undoubtedly at first sight the air of a paradox: nevertheless, in order to establish its truth, we will presuppose in any one a knowledge of what is meant by good and evil, and also of the principle that one action is worse than another, according as it is more injurious to the well-being of society. On this supposition, what method ought the orator or poet to take, in order to show most clearly that justice, preferable in a king to mercy, preserves the greatest number of citizens to the state?

‘The orator will present three several pictures to the imagination of his supposed hearer: in the first he will represent a just king, who condemns and gives orders for the execution of a criminal; in the 86second, will be seen the good king, who opens the doors of his dungeon, and strikes off the chains of the same criminal; in the third picture, the criminal himself will be the principal figure, who, armed with a poniard, on his escape from his cell hastens to assassinate fifty of his fellow-citizens. But who is there that at the sight of these three pictures will not instantly perceive that justice which, by the death of a single individual, saves the lives of fifty persons, is preferable to mercy? Nevertheless, this judgment is really nothing but a sensation. In fact, if from the habit of connecting certain ideas with certain words, the sound of these words may, as experience demonstrates, excite in us almost the same sensations which we should feel from the actual presence of the objects, it is evident that from the contemplation of these three pictures, to judge that in a king justice is preferable to mercy, is to feel and see that in the first picture a single citizen is sacrificed, while in the third fifty are massacred; whence I conclude that every act of the judgment is only a sensation.’—Helvetius on the Mind, p. 12.

On this statement I may be permitted to remark that as the author affirms that sensation is the same thing as judgment, so he seems to conceive that the assertion of any proposition is the same thing as the proof of it. He supposes three several pictures to be presented to a man of understanding, and that from an attentive contemplation and comparison of the different objects and events contained in them, he comes to a judgment or conclusion, viz. That justice is preferable to mercy. ‘Nevertheless,’ he says, ‘this judgment is really nothing but a sensation.’ This is all the proof he brings; and perhaps, considering the language and country in which this celebrated author wrote, it is reasoning good enough. Do I say this with any view to throw contempt on that lively, ingenious, gay, social, and polished people? No; but philosophy is not their forte: they are not in earnest in these remote speculations. In order duly to appreciate their writings, we must consider them not as the dictates of the understanding, but as the effects of constitution. Otherwise we shall do them great injustice. They pursue truth, like all other things, as far as it is agreeable; they reason for their amusement; they engage in abstruse questions to vary the topics of conversation. Whatever does not answer this purpose is banished out of books and society as a morose and cynical philosophy. To obtrude the dark and difficult parts of a question, or to enter into an elaborate investigation of them, is considered as a piece of ill-manners. Those writers, therefore, have been the most popular among the French who have supplied their readers with the greatest number of dazzling conclusions founded on the most slight and superficial evidence, whose reasonings could be 87applied to every thing, because they explained nothing, and who most effectually kept out of sight every thing true or profound or interesting in a question. Who would ever think of plunging into abstruse, metaphysical inquiries concerning the nature of the understanding, when he may with entire ease to himself and satisfaction to others solve all the phenomena of the mind by repeating in three words, Juger est sentir. As it was the object of the school-philosophy, by a jargon of technical distinctions, to sharpen the eagerness of debate and give birth to endless verbal controversies, so the modern system, transferring philosophy from the cloistered hall to the toilette and the drawing-room, is calculated, by a set of portable phrases, as familiar and as current as the forms of salutation, to silence every difference of opinion, and to produce an euthanasia of all thought. I have made these remarks not to prejudice the question, but to prevent the prejudice arising on the other side, from seeing the writers of a whole nation, not deficient in natural talents or in acquired advantages, agree in delivering the most puerile absurdities as profound and oracular truths.

The train of thought into which the author has fallen in the passage above cited is pretty obvious. Having undertaken to prove that the ideas of justice and mercy are mere sensations, and that the conclusion that justice is preferable to mercy is also a mere sensation, in order to shew the possibility of this he conjures up the ideas of a good and a bad king, of a criminal, a prison, chains, a dagger, and fifty citizens massacred before the eyes of the spectator, which form the subject of three imaginary pictures, and which are in general considered as so many sensible objects. All these sensible objects he supposes to be implied in, and to be the materials out of which we frame the judgment or conclusion, that justice is better than mercy; and therefore he infers that there is nothing else implied in or necessary to that judgment, and that consequently it is nothing but a sensation. Having succeeded in resolving the compound and general ideas of justice and mercy, good and evil, into a number of sensible appearances, his imagination is entirely occupied with the novelty of the objects before him, and he drops altogether the consideration, whether the combination and comparison of these several objects or sensations which is absolutely necessary to their forming the moral ideas or inference spoken of, is not the act of some other faculty. In short, the principle that a judgment is nothing but a sensation, is not only a perfectly gratuitous assertion, but an assertion either without meaning, or a palpable contradiction. For the single objects presented in the foregoing metaphysical pictures, and which are supposed to constitute the judgment, are not one sensation, but many. Now if it be meant that these single objects, as they are perceived separately, 88or successively, one by one, without the intervention of any reflex act of the mind combining and comparing them together, constitute of themselves the judgment, ‘that justice is preferable to mercy,’ this is to say, in so many words, that the mind forms a comparison between things without comparing them, and judges of their relations without perceiving them. On the other hand, if it be meant to include the acts of the mind in comparing, judging, inferring, &c. in the term sensation, then the proposition that judgment or sensation are the same, will be nothing but an idle and insignificant abuse of words, and will only prove that if to the sensation, or perception of particular objects we add the faculty of comparing and judging, nothing farther will be necessary for it to compare and judge. I shall therefore dismiss this well known maxim as no better than a misnomer, as an attempt to shorten the labour of thought by the interposition of an unmeaning phrase, and to confound all the distinctions of the understanding by an equivoque.

It will not be amiss in this place to transcribe a passage from the Logic of the Abbé Condillac (a work which may be regarded as the quintessence of slender thought, and of the art of substituting words for things) to show how far the doctrine of the origin of all our ideas from sensation may be carried, and what an imbecility it produces in the mind, and deadness to any but external objects. The design of the passage is to prove that morality is a visible thing. This however is a work of supererogation, even on the principle supposed: for it is not necessary to refer morality to any thing visible or audible, or to any other of the senses, but the sense of pleasure and pain; our feelings of this kind being allowed to come from, and make a part of our original sensations. But this system is not an improvement on reason, but a progression in superficiality and absurdity, a vast vacuity, where ‘fluttering its pennons vain, the mind drops down ten thousand fathoms deep.’

‘Moral ideas,’ says my author, ‘seem to elude the senses: they at least elude the senses of those philosophers who deny that our knowledge proceeds from sensation. They would gladly know of what colour virtue is, or of what colour vice is. I answer that virtue consists in the habitual performance of good actions, as vice consists in the habitual performance of bad ones. Now these habits and these actions are visible.

‘What, then, is the morality of actions a thing which falls under the cognizance of the senses! Wherefore should it not? Morality depends solely on the conformity between our actions and the laws; but these actions are visible, and the laws are so equally, since they are certain conventions made by men.

‘But it will be said, if the laws are only things of convention, they 89must be altogether arbitrary. They may indeed be sometimes arbitrary; there are but too many such laws; but those which determine whether our actions are good or bad, are not so, nor can they be so. They are the work of man, it is true, because they are conventions which we have made; nevertheless, we alone have not made them: nature made them as well as we, she dictated them to us, and it was not in our power to make others. The wants and the faculties of man being given, the laws which are to regulate his conduct must necessarily follow: and though we enacted them, God who has created us with such wants and such faculties, is in truth our sole legislator. In obeying the laws which are conformable to our nature, we render obedience to him who is the author of our nature; and this is that which perfects the morality of actions.’—Page 56.

For a work entitled Logic, there are a pleasant number of contradictions in this passage. To pass over many of them, if the laws here spoken of are such merely in consequence of their being visible, then all visible objects are laws, and all laws are equally moral. But no! there are some arbitrary laws. Now if the goodness of the law depends on their conformity to our wants and faculties, neither of these are visible, any more than God who is said to be our only lawgiver. So that ‘the latter end of this system of law and divinity forgets the beginning.’ That those actions are moral which are conformable to a moral law, and that those laws are moral, which are agreeable to our nature and wants, may be readily admitted: but I cannot myself think that this conformity is an object of the senses, or that the true features of morality can ever be discerned but by the eye of the understanding. The friends of morality, it seems, according to our author, are not to despair, or to suppose that the distinctions of right and wrong are banished entirely out of the material system. They only become more clear and legible than ever; we are still right in asserting virtue to have a real existence, namely, on paper, and in supposing that we have some idea of it, as consisting of the letters of the alphabet. Almost in the same manner, Mr. Horne Tooke very gravely defines the essence of law and just, from the etymology of these words, to consist in their being something laid down, and something ordered (jussum); and when pressed by the difficulty that there are many things laid down and ordered which are neither laws nor just, he makes answer that their obligation depends on a higher species of law and justice, to wit, a law which is no where laid down, and a justice which is no where ordered, except indeed by the nature of things, on which the etymology of these two words does not seem to throw any light.

On all the other points of the modern metaphysical system, such 90as the nature of abstraction, judgment and reasoning, the materiality of the soul, free-will, the association of ideas, &c. Mr. Locke either halts between two opinions, or else takes the common-place side of the question. The motion of the system, which bears his name and which by this very delay gained all that it wanted to become popular, was retrograde in him, not progressive. The extracts I am about to give from his work will I think establish this point. They will at the same time show him to be a man of strong practical sense, of much serious thought and inquiry, and considerable freedom of opinion, and a real lover of truth, though not so bold and systematic a reasoner, or so great a dealer in paradoxes as some others. Moderation, caution, a wish to examine every side of a question, and an unwillingness to decide till after the most mature and circumspect investigation, and then only according to the clearness of the evidence, seem to have been the characteristics of his mind, none of which denote the daring innovator, or maker of a system. What there is of system in his work is Hobbes’s, as I have already shown: the deviations from its common sense and general observation are his own. There is throughout his reasoning the same contempt for the schoolmen, and the same preference of native, rustic reason to learned authority: the same notion of the necessity for reforming the system of philosophy, and of the possibility of doing this by a more exact use of words: there is the same dissatisfaction with the prevailing system, but he at the same time entertained doubts of his own. What he wanted was confidence and decision. The prolixity and ambiguity of his style seem to have arisen from this source: for he is never weary of examining and re-examining the same objection, and he states his arguments with so many limitations and with such a variety of expression to prevent misapprehension, that it is often difficult to guess at his real meaning. There is it must be confessed a sort of heaviness about him, a want of clearness and connection, which in spite of all his pains, and the real plodding strength of his mind he was never able to overcome. To return to his account of complex ideas: the beginning of his observations on this subject is as follows:

‘We have hitherto considered those ideas, in the reception whereof the mind is only passive, which are those simple ones received from sensation and reflection before mentioned, whereof the mind cannot make one to itself, nor have any idea which does not consist wholly of them. But as the mind is wholly passive in the reception of all its simple ideas, so it exerts several acts of its own, whereby out of its simple ideas, as the materials and foundations of the rest, the other are framed. The acts of the mind wherein it exerts its power over its simple ideas, are chiefly these three.

91‘1. Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and setting them by one another, so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one; in which way it gets all its ideas of relations. 3. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence; this is called abstraction: and thus all its general ideas are made. This shows man’s power to be much about the same in the material and intellectual world: for the materials in both being such as he has no power over, either to make or destroy, all that man can do is either to unite them together, or to set them by one another, or wholly to separate them.’—Vol. i. p. 151.

The first great point which Mr. Locke labours to prove in his Essay, is that there are no innate ideas, which he seems to have established very fully and clearly, if indeed so obvious a truth required any formal demonstration. His chief proofs are from the case of a man born blind, who has no idea of colours, and from the ignorance which children and idiots have of those first principles and universal maxims, which some philosophers and theologians, confounding the faculties of the mind with actual impressions, had supposed to be legibly engraven on the mind by the hand of its author. For the supposing the understanding to be a distinct faculty of the mind no more proves our ideas to be innate, than the allowing perception to be a distinct original faculty of the mind, which everybody does, proves that there must be innate sensations. These two positions have, however, been sometimes considered as convertible by the partisans on both sides of the question; the one arguing from the existence of the soul and the power of thought to the positive perception of certain truths, and the others concluding that by denying any original inherent impressions, they had overturned the supposition of the different faculties and powers which must be in the mind, to account for the first production or subsequent modification of sensation or of thought. For instance, it has been made a consequence of the doctrine that there were no innate ideas, that there could be no such thing as genius, or an original difference of capacity; as if the capacity were not perfectly distinct from the actual impressions by the very theory itself, and as if there might not be a difference in the capacity of acquiring ideas as all experience shows, though none in the knowledge acquired, because this capacity had never yet been exerted. As well might we argue that of two houses that are just built one is as commodious and capacious as the other, as well fitted for the reception of guests and the disposal of furniture, because at present neither of them is furnished or inhabited.

92The following passages will show the manner in which our author treats this part of his subject:

‘The child certainly knows that the nurse that feeds it is neither the cat it plays with, nor the blackamoor it is afraid of: that the wormseed or mustard it refuses is not the apple or sugar it cries for; this it is certainly and undoubtedly assured of: but will any one say it is by virtue of this principle, That it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be, that it so firmly assents to these and other parts of its knowledge? Or that the child has any notion or apprehension of that proposition at an age, wherein yet, it is plain, it knows a great many other truths? He that will say, children join these several abstract speculations with their sucking bottles and their rattles, may perhaps with justice be thought to have more passion and zeal for his opinion, but less sincerity and truth than one of that age. Though therefore there be several general propositions that meet with constant and ready assent as soon as proposed to men grown up, who have attained the use of more general and abstract ideas, and names standing for them, yet they not being to be found in those of tender years, who nevertheless know other things, they cannot pretend to universal assent of intelligent persons, and so by no means can be supposed innate: it being impossible, that any truth which is innate (if there were any such) should be unknown, at least to any one who knows any thing else. Since if they are innate truths, they must be innate thoughts; there being nothing a truth in the mind which it has never thought on.

‘That the general maxims we are discoursing of, are not known to children, idiots, and a great part of mankind, we have already sufficiently proved. But there is this farther argument against their being innate, that these characters, if they were native and original impressions, should appear fairest and clearest in those persons in whom yet we find no footsteps of them. And it is in my opinion a strong presumption that they are not innate, since they are least known to those in whom if they were innate, they must need exert themselves with most force and vigour. For children, idiots, savages, and illiterate people being of all others the least corrupted by custom or borrowed opinion, learning or education having not cast their native thoughts into new moulds, nor by superinducing foreign and studied doctrines, confounded those fair characters nature had written there; one might reasonably imagine that in their minds these innate notions should lie open fairly to every one’s view, as it is certain the thoughts of children do. One would think according to these men’s principles that all these native beams of light (were there any such) should in those who have no reserves, no acts of concealment, 93shine out in their full lustre, and leave us in no more doubt of their being there than we are of their love of pleasure and abhorrence of pain. But alas, amongst children, idiots, savages, and the grossly illiterate, what general maxims are to be found? What universal principle of knowledge? Their notions are few and narrow, borrowed only from those objects they have had most to do with, and which have made upon their senses the frequentest and strongest impressions. A child knows his nurse and his cradle, and by degrees the playthings of a little more advanced age; and a young savage has perhaps his head filled with love and hunting, according to the fashion of his tribe. But he that from a child untaught, or a wild inhabitant of the woods will expect these abstract maxims and reputed principles of science, will I fear find himself mistaken. Such kind of general propositions [as that which is, is; and that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be] are seldom mentioned in the huts of Indians, much less are they to be found in the thoughts of children, or any impressions of them on the minds of naturals. They are the language and business of the schools and academies of learned nations, accustomed to that sort of conversation or learning, where disputes are frequent: these maxims being suited to artificial argumentation, and useful for conviction, but not much conducing to the discovery of truth, or advancement of knowledge.’

I do not know that Mr. Locke has sufficiently distinguished between two things which I cannot very well express otherwise than by a turn of words, namely, an innate knowledge of principles, and innate principles of knowledge. His arguments seem to me conclusive against the one, but not against the other, for I think that there are certain general principles or forms of thinking, something like the moulds in which any thing is cast, according to which our ideas follow one another in a certain order, though the knowledge, i.e., perception of what these principles are, and the forming them into distinct propositions is the result of experience. It is true, the child distinguishes between its nurse and the blackamoor, between bitter and sweet: what hinders it from confounding them? The ideas of same and different are not included in these ideas themselves, nor are they peculiar to any of them, but general terms. What then determines the child to annex them uniformly to certain things and not to others? It is plain then, that our ideas are not at liberty to run into clusters as they please or as it happens, but are regulated by certain laws, to which they must conform; or that the manner in which we conceive of things does not depend simply on the particular nature of the things, but on the general nature of the understanding. Mr. Locke is clear for certain innate practical principles or general tendencies 94regulating all our actions, namely, the love of pleasure, and aversion to pain. He does not however admit, as I can find, of any thing similar to the operations of the understanding. The analogy, notwithstanding, holds exactly the same in both cases. For the child is no more conscious of any such general practical principle regulating all his desires, than of any speculative principle regulating his notion of things: he gets the idea of both from experience of their effects; but I think that if there were no such principles in the mind itself, previous to the actual impression of objects, and merely developed or called into action by them, we must be perfectly indifferent both to the reception of pleasure and pain, as we should feel no more repugnance to admit one conclusion than another, however absurd or contradictory. The necessity we are under of perceiving certain agreements or disagreements between our ideas is as much, and in the same sense, the foundation of judgment and reasoning, as the general desire of happiness and aversion to misery is the foundation of morality.

This property of the understanding, by which certain judgments, naturally follow certain perceptions, and are followed by other judgments, is the faculty of reason, of order and proportion in the mind, and is indeed nothing but the understanding acting by rule or necessity. The long controversy between Locke and Leibnitz with respect to innate ideas turned upon the distinction here stated, innate ideas being thus referred not to the actual impressions of objects, but to the forms or moulds existing in the mind, and in which those impressions are cast. Leibnitz contended that there was a germ or principle of truth, a pre-established harmony between its innate faculties and its acquired ideas, implied in the essence of the mind itself. According to the one it was like a piece of free stone, which the mason hews with equal ease in all directions, and into any shape, as circumstances require: according to the other, it resembles a piece of marble strongly ingrained, with the figure of a man, or other animal, inclosed in it, and which the sculptor has only to separate from the surrounding mass.

I will add one more passage to draw the attention of my readers to this intricate subject, and to show that the difficulties surrounding it were not completely cleared up or even apprehended by the author of the ‘Essay.’

‘Hath a child,’ he says, ‘an idea of impossibility and identity, before it has of white or black, sweet or sour? Or is it from the knowledge of this principle that it concludes that wormwood rubbed on the nipple hath not the same taste that it used to receive from thence? Is it the actual knowledge of Impossibile est idem esse et non esse that makes a child distinguish between its mother and a stranger, 95or that makes it fond of the one, and fly the other? Or does the mind regulate itself and its assent by ideas that it never had? Or the understanding draw conclusions from principles which it never yet knew or understood? The names impossibility and identity stand for two ideas, so far from being innate, or born with us, that I think it requires great care and attention to form them right in our understandings. They are so far from being brought into the world with us, so remote from the thoughts of infancy and childhood, that I believe upon examination it will be found that many grown men want them.

‘If identity (to instance in that alone) be a native impression, and consequently so clear and obvious to us that we must needs know it even from our cradles; I would gladly be resolved by one of seven or seventy years old, Whether a man, being a creature consisting of soul and body, be the same man when his body is changed? Whether Euphorbus and Pythagoras, having had the same soul, were the same man, though they lived several ages asunder? Nay, whether the cock too, which had the same soul, were not the same with both of them? Whereby perhaps it will appear that our idea of sameness is not so settled and clear as to deserve to be thought innate in us. For if those innate ideas are not so clear and distinct as to be universally known and naturally agreed on, they cannot be subjects of universal and undoubted truths, but will be the unavoidable occasion of perpetual uncertainty. For I suppose every one’s idea of identity will not be the same that Pythagoras and thousand others of his followers have: and which then shall be true, which innate? Or are these two different ideas of identity both innate?’—Page 60.

Two things are obvious to remark on this passage. First, it seems clear that the child, before it can pronounce that one thing is or is not the same as another, must have the idea of what same is, i.e. of identity: or it would be impossible for it to know what is or is not the same. This idea, then, is necessarily included in or the result of the first comparison it is able to make between any two of its impressions as alike or unlike. Secondly, the difficulty of determining the question proposed by Mr. Locke does not arise from the meaning of the word identity, but of the word man. For if this is once clear and settled, there will be no great effort of the understanding required to determine whether a man is the same or not. They define him to be a creature consisting of body and soul, and it is plain that if one of these, the body, is altered, the man is not the same. The whole question, therefore, here seems to turn on deciding what qualities are essential to the idea of man, so that by keeping or leaving out some, he will or will not retain his identity, in the practical and moral sense of the term. It is the complex and general idea of man that the child 96wants, not that of identity or sameness which is reflected to it from every object it meets, and which it perceives to agree or disagree with some other.

In a note to one of the chapters on Innate Ideas, there is some account of the controversy between our author and the Bishop of Worcester (Stillingfleet) on the question whether the idea of a God be innate and universal. The Bishop is anxious to have the universal belief in a Deity understood in a strict sense, while Mr. Locke thinks it must be reduced to a very great and decided majority, there being instances of whole nations without this idea. ‘This,’ he says ‘is all the universal consent which truth of matter-of-fact will allow; and therefore all that can be made use of to prove a God. I would crave leave to ask your lordship, were there ever in the world any atheists or no? For if any one deny a God, such a perfect universality of consent is destroyed, and if nobody does deny a God, what need of arguments to convince atheists?’—Page 63. This is the acutest turn he has any where given to an argument.

The concluding passage of his account of innate ideas is worth quoting. It is a good description of the true spirit of philosophy, inclining a little too much to self-opinion, from which, perhaps, it is not easily separable:

‘What censure doubting thus of innate principles may deserve from men who will be apt to call it pulling up the old foundations of knowledge and certainty, I cannot tell; I persuade myself at least that the way I have pursued, being conformable to truth, lays those foundations surer. This I am certain, I have not made it my business to quit or follow any authority in the ensuing discourse; truth has been my only aim; and wherever that has appeared to lead, my thoughts have impartially followed without minding whether the footsteps of any other lay that way or no. Not that I want a due respect to other men’s opinions; but after all the greatest reverence is due to truth; and I hope it will not be thought arrogance to say, that perhaps we should make greater progress in the discovery of rational and contemplative knowledge, if we sought it in the fountain, in the consideration of things themselves, and made use rather of our own thoughts than other men’s to find it. For I think we may as rationally hope to see with other men’s eyes, as to know by other men’s understandings. So much as we ourselves consider and comprehend of truth and reason, so much we possess of real and true knowledge. The floating of other men’s opinions in our brains makes us not one jot the more knowing, though they happen to be true. What in them was science, is in us but opiniatrety, whilst we give up our assent only to reverend names, and do not, as they did, employ our own reason to understand those truths 97which gave them reputation. Aristotle was certainly a knowing man; but nobody ever thought him so, because he blindly embraced and confidently vented the opinions of another. And if the taking up of another’s principles, without examining them, made not him a philosopher, I suppose it will hardly make any body else so. In the sciences, every one has so much as he really knows and comprehends: what he believes only and takes upon trust, are but shreds, which however well in the whole piece, make no considerable addition to his stock who gathers them. Such borrowed wealth, like fairy money, though it were gold in the hand from which he received it, will be but leaves and dust when it comes to use.’—Page 80.

In treating of the origin of our ideas, Mr. Locke labours to prove that men think not always:—thinking, according to him, being to the soul what motion is to the body; not its essence, but one of its operations. In this opinion he may, as far as I know, be right: but I think his proof of it drawn from the effects of sleep fails. The reason why I think so is that I was never awakened suddenly but I found myself dreaming, though in the interval required to awake gradually from sleep we frequently forget our dreams before we are quite awake, the impressions which objects have time to make upon our bodies taking place of and obliterating the faint traces of our sleeping thoughts. The common notion that the mind is then most awake when the body is asleep, deserves the contempt with which Mr. Locke treats it. It is one of the absurdities of common sense, which is not entirely free from them any more than philosophy. Those who can find any argument in favour of the immaterial nature and independent powers of the soul in the sublime flights which it takes when emancipated from the intrusion of sensible objects must have finer dreams than I have. It would be well for this opinion if we could regularly forget the next morning the smart repartees, magnificent sentiments and profound remarks we so often dream we make. The singular significance which in sleep we attach to absolute nonsense seems to arise from the very impotence of our efforts, as we fancy that we can fly because we cannot move at all. In sleep, indeed, the forms of imagination assume the appearance of reality, but this advantage they seem to owe chiefly to what Hobbes calls the silence of sense. That sleep, however, consists wholly in this silence of sense (not affecting the mind itself) is so far from being true, that it is not even necessary to it. Persons who walk in their sleep, as I know from experience, get out of bed with their eyes open, see and feel the objects about them, open the window, and leisurely survey the opposite trees and houses, long before they recollect where they are, or before the fresh air and the regular succession of known objects dispel the drowsy phantoms of the night. The only essential 98difference between our sleeping and waking thoughts I believe is, that in sleep the comprehensive faculty flags and droops; so that being unable to consider many things at once or to retain a succession of ideas in mind, we confound things together, and pass from one object to another without order or connexion, any single circumstance in which they agree being sufficient to make us associate them together or substitute one for the other. Our thoughts are, as it were, disentangled from the circumstances and consequences which at other times clog their motions: they are let loose, and left at liberty to wander in any direction that chance presents. The greatest singularity observable in dreams is the faculty of holding a dialogue with ourselves, as if we were really and effectually two persons. We make a remark, and then expect the answer, which we are to give ourselves, with the same gravity of attention, and hear it with the same surprise as if it were really spoken by another person. We are played upon by puppets of our own moving. We are staggered in an argument by an unforeseen objection, or alarmed at a sudden piece of information of which we have no apprehension till it seems to proceed from the mouth of some one with whom we fancy ourselves conversing. We have in fact no idea of what the question will be that we put to ourselves, till the moment of its birth.

Mr. Locke in treating of our sensations as effects of the impressions of the qualities of things, distinguishes these qualities according to the usual opinion into primary and secondary. The former he considers as really and in themselves the same as they appear to our senses: the other as merely the effects produced by certain objects on the mind and not existing out of it. As this question forms one of the common-places of metaphysical inquiry, I shall give some account of it in his own words.

‘The qualities that are in bodies, rightly considered, are of three sorts.

‘First, The bulk, figure, number, situation, and motion or rest of their solid parts; these are in them whether we perceive them or no; and we have by these an idea of the thing as it is in itself: these I call primary qualities.

‘Secondly, The power that is in any body by reason of its insensible primary qualities to operate after a peculiar manner on any of our senses, and thereby produce in us the different ideas of several colours, sounds, smells, tastes, &c. These are usually called sensible qualities.

‘Thirdly, The power that is in any body, by reason of the particular constitution of its primary qualities, to make such a change in the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of another body, as to make it 99operate on our senses differently from what it did before. Thus the sun has a power to make wax white, and fire to make lead fluid. These are usually called powers.

‘The first of these, as has been said, I think, may be properly called, real, original, or primary qualities, because they are in the things themselves, whether they are perceived or no: and upon their different modifications it is that the secondary qualities depend. The other two are only powers to act differently upon other things, which powers result from the different modifications of those primary qualities.

‘But though these two latter sorts of qualities are powers barely, and nothing but powers, relating to several other bodies, and resulting from the different modifications of the original qualities, yet they are generally thought otherwise of. For the second sort, viz., the powers to produce several ideas in us by our senses, are looked upon as real qualities in the things thus affecting us: but the third sort are called and esteemed barely powers. For example, the ideas of heat or light, which we receive by our eye or touch from the sun are commonly thought real qualities, existing in the sun, and something more than mere powers in it. But when we consider the sun in reference to wax which it melts or blanches, we look on the whiteness and softness produced in the wax, not as qualities in the sun, but effects produced by powers in it: whereas, if rightly considered, these qualities of light and warmth, which are perceptions in me when I am warmed or enlightened by the sun, are no otherwise in the sun than the changes made in the wax, when it is blanched or melted, are in the sun. They are all of them equally powers in the sun, depending on its primary qualities: whereby it is enabled in the one case so to alter the bulk, figure, texture, or motion of some of the insensible parts of my eyes or hands, as thereby to produce in me the idea of light or heat; and in the other, it is able so to alter the bulk, figure, texture, or motion of the insensible parts of the wax, as to make them fit to produce in me the distinct ideas of white and fluid. The reason why the one are ordinarily taken for real qualities, and the other only for bare powers, seems to be, because the ideas we have of distinct colours, sounds, &c., containing nothing at all in them of bulk, figure, or motion, we are not apt to think them the effects of those primary qualities which appear not to our senses to operate in their production, and with which they have not any apparent congruity or conceivable connexion. Hence it is that we are so forward to imagine that those ideas are the resemblances of something really existing in the objects themselves. But in the other case, in the operation of bodies, changing the qualities, one of another, we plainly discover that the quality produced hath commonly no resemblance 100with any thing in the thing producing it; wherefore we look on it as a bare effect of power. For though receiving the idea of heat or light from the sun, we are apt to think it is a perception and resemblance of such a quality in the sun, yet when we see wax or a fair face receive change of colour from the sun, we cannot imagine that to be the perception or resemblance of any thing in the sun, because we find not those different colours in the sun itself. For our senses being able to observe a likeness or unlikeness of sensible qualities in two different external objects, we forwardly enough conclude the production of any sensible quality in any subject to be an effect of bare power, and not the communication of any quality, which was really in the efficient, when we find no such sensible quality in the thing that produced it. But ourselves not being able to discover any unlikeness between the idea produced in us and the quality of the object producing it, we are apt to imagine that our ideas are resemblances of some thing in the objects, and not the effects of certain powers placed in the modification of their primary qualities, with which primary qualities the ideas produced in us have no resemblance.’ Vol. i. page 127.

From the secondary qualities later writers, as Hume and Berkeley, have proceeded to the primary ones, and have endeavoured to shew that they have not a real existence out of the mind, any more than the others. Hume says, ‘The fundamental principle of the modern philosophy is the opinion concerning colours, sounds, tastes, smells, heat and cold,’ &c.; and Bishop Berkeley has made use of the same principle to banish the least particle of matter out of the universe. What Hume has said is merely taken from Berkeley, from whom his opinions are generally borrowed. As I do not know that I shall have a better opportunity, I will here state Berkeley’s arguments against the existence of these primary qualities, or his ideal system, in his own words. I will only first observe, on the argument against the existence of the secondary qualities of things, from their different effects in different circumstances and on different persons, which Hume considers as the only solid one, but which Berkeley thinks more doubtful, seems to me no argument at all; for that an object changes its colour, or food its taste, is in consequence of distance or of the interposition of another object, or of the indisposition of the organ, and does not prove that the object has not a particular colour, or the food a particular taste, but that colour is combined with and altered by the colour of the air, and that taste is combined with and altered by another taste in the mouth or stomach. The logical inference is merely that one object has not the same sensible qualities as another, or, as Berkeley has remarked, that we do not know what the true or natural qualities of any object are.

101‘It is evident,’ says Bishop Berkeley, ‘to any one who takes a survey of the objects of Human Knowledge, that they are either ideas actually imprinted on the senses, or else such as are perceived by attending to the passions and operations of the mind, or, lastly, ideas formed by help of memory and imagination; either compounding, dividing, or barely representing those originally perceived in the aforesaid ways. By sight I have the ideas of light and colours, with their several degrees and variations. By touch I perceive hard and soft, heat and cold, motion and resistance, &c. and of all these more and less, either as to quantity or degree. Smelling furnishes me with odours: the palate with tastes; and hearing conveys sounds to the mind in all their variety of tone and composition. And as several of these are observed to accompany each other, they come to be marked by one name, and so to be reputed as one thing. Thus, for example, a certain colour, taste, smell, figure, and consistence, having been observed to go together, are accounted one distinct thing, signified by the name apple. Other collections of ideas constitute a stone, a tree, a book, and the like sensible things; which, as they are pleasing or disagreeable, excite the passions of love, hatred, joy, grief, &c.

‘2. But besides all that endless variety of ideas or objects of knowledge, there is likewise something which knows and perceives them, and exercises divers operations, as willing, imagining, remembering, &c. about them. This perceiving, active being is what I call mind, spirit, soul, or myself. By which words I do not denote any one of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, wherein they exist, or, which is the same thing, whereby they are perceived, for the existence of an idea consists in being perceived.

‘3. That neither our thoughts, nor passions, nor ideas formed by the imagination, exist without the mind, is what every body will allow; and to me it is no less evident that the various sensations or ideas imprinted on the sense, however blended or combined together, (that is, whatever objects they compose,) cannot exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving them. I think an intuitive knowledge may be obtained of this, by any one that shall attend to what is meant by the term exist, when applied to sensible things. The table I write on, I say, exists; i.e. I see and feel it, and if I were out of my study, I should say it existed, meaning thereby, that if I was in my study I might perceive it, or that some other spirit actually does perceive it. There was an odour, i.e. it was smelt; there was a sound, i.e. it was heard; a colour or figure, and it was perceived by sight or touch. This is all that I can understand by these and the like expressions. For as to what is said of the absolute existence of unthinking things without any relation to their being perceived, that is to me perfectly 102unintelligible. Their esse is percipi, nor is it possible they should have any existence, out of the minds or thinking things which perceive them.

‘4. It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing among men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects, have an existence natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding. But with how great an assurance and acquiescence soever this principle may be entertained in the world, yet whoever shall find in his heart to call it in question, may, if I mistake not, perceive it to involve a manifest contradiction. For what are the forementioned objects but the things we perceive by sense, and what, I pray you, do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations? And is it not plainly repugnant that any one of these, or any combination of them, should exist unperceived?

‘5. If we thoroughly examine this tenet, it will, perhaps, be found at bottom to depend on the doctrine of abstract ideas. For can there be a nicer strain of abstraction than to distinguish the existence of sensible objects from their being perceived, so as to conceive them existing unperceived? Light and colours, heat and cold, extension and figures, in a word, the things we see and feel, what are they but so many sensations, notions, ideas, or impressions on the sense; and is it possible to separate, even in thought, any of these from perception? For my part, I might as easily divide a thing from itself. I may, indeed, divide in my thoughts, or conceive apart from each other, those things which, perhaps, I never perceived by sense so divided. Thus I imagine the trunk of a human body without the limbs, or conceive the smell of a rose without thinking on the rose itself. So far I will not deny I can abstract, if that may be properly called abstraction which extends only to the conceiving separately such objects as it is possible may really exist or be actually perceived asunder. But my conceiving or imagining power does not extend beyond the possibility of real existence or perception. Hence, as it is impossible for me to see or feel any thing without an actual sensation of that thing, so it is impossible for me to conceive in my thoughts any sensible thing or object distinct from the sensation or perception of it. In truth, the object and the sensation are the same thing, and cannot therefore be extracted from each other.

‘6. Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind that a man need only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be, viz. that all the choir of heaven, and furniture of the earth, in a word, all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind, that their esse is to be perceived or known; that consequently, so long as they are not 103actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some eternal spirit: it being perfectly unintelligible, and involving all the absurdity of abstraction, to attribute to any single part of them an existence independent of a spirit. To make this appear with all the light and evidence of an axiom, it seems sufficient if I can but awaken the reflection of the reader, that he may take an impartial view of his own meaning, and turn his thoughts upon the subject itself, free and disengaged from all embarrass of words and prepossession in favour of received mistakes.

‘7. From what has been said, it is evident there is not any other substance than spirit, or that which perceives. But for the fuller demonstration of this point, let it be considered, the sensible qualities are colour, figure, motion, smell, taste, &c.; i.e. the ideas perceived by sense. Now, for an idea to exist in an unperceiving thing is a manifest contradiction; for to have an idea is all one as to perceive; that, therefore, wherein colour, figure, &c. exist must perceive them. Hence it is clear there can be no unthinking substance or substratum of those ideas.

‘8. But, say you, though the ideas themselves do not exist without the mind, yet there may be things like them whereof they are copies or resemblances, which things exist without the mind, in an unthinking substance. I answer, an idea can be like nothing but an idea, a colour or figure, can be like nothing but another colour or figure. If we look but never so little into our thoughts, we shall find it impossible for us to conceive a likeness except only between our ideas. Again, I ask whether those supposed originals, or external things, of which our ideas are the pictures or representations, be themselves perceivable or no? If they are, then they are ideas, and we have gained our point; but if you say they are not, I appeal to any one whether it be sense to assert a colour is like something which is invisible: hard or soft, like something which is intangible, and so of the rest.

‘9. Some there are who make a distinction between primary and secondary qualities; by the former, they mean extension, figure, motion, rest, solidity or impenetrability, and number; by the latter, they denote all other sensible qualities, as colours, sounds, tastes, &c. The ideas we have of these they acknowledge not to be the resemblances of any thing existing without the mind, or unperceived, but they will have our ideas of the primary qualities to be patterns or images of things which exist without the mind, in an unthinking substance, which they call matter. By matter, therefore, we are to understand an inert, useless substance, in which extension, figure, motion, &c. do actually subsist. But it is evident from what we have 104already shewn, that extension, figure, and motion are only ideas existing in the mind, and that consequently neither they nor their archetypes can exist in an unperceiving substance. Hence it is plain that the very notion of what is called matter or corporeal substance involves a contradiction in it, insomuch that I should not think it necessary to spend more time in exposing its absurdity; but because the tenet of the existence of matter seems to have taken so deep a root in the minds of philosophers, and draws after it so many ill consequences, I choose rather to be thought prolix and tedious, than omit any thing that might conduce to the full discovery and extirpation of that prejudice.

‘10. They who assert that figure, motion, and the rest of the primary or original qualities do exist without the mind, in unthinking substances, do at the same time acknowledge that colours, sounds, heat, cold, &c. do not, which they tell us are sensations existing in the mind alone, that depend on, and are occasioned by the different size, texture, motion, &c. of the minute particles of matter. This they take for an undoubted truth, which they can demonstrate beyond all exception. Now if it be certain that those original qualities are inseparably united with the other sensible qualities, and not, even in thought, capable of being abstracted from them, it plainly follows that they exist only in the mind. But I desire any one to reflect and try whether he can, by any abstraction of thought, conceive the extension and motion of a body, without all other sensible qualities. For my own part, I see evidently that it is not in my power to form an idea of a body extended and moving, but I must withal give it some colour or other sensible quality, which is acknowledged to exist only in the mind. In short, extension, figure, and motion, abstracted from all other qualities, are inconceivable. Where, therefore, the other sensible qualities are, there must these be also, i.e. in the mind, and no where else.

‘11. Again, great and small, swift and slow, are allowed to exist nowhere without the mind, being entirely relative, and changing as the frame or position of the organs of sense varies. The extension, therefore, which exists without the mind, is neither great nor small, the motion neither swift nor slow; that is, they are nothing at all. But, say you, they are extension in general and motion in general. Thus we see how much the tenet of extended, moveable substances, existing without the mind, depends on that strange doctrine of abstract ideas. And here I cannot but remark, how nearly the vague and indeterminate description of matter, or corporeal substance, which the modern philosophers are run into by their own principles, resembles that antiquated and so much ridiculed notion of materia prima, to be met with in Aristotle 105and his followers. Without extension, solidity cannot be conceived; since, therefore, it has been shown that extension exists not in an unthinking substance, the same must also be true of solidity.

‘12. That number is entirely the creature of the mind, even though the other qualities be allowed to exist without it, will be evident to whoever considers that the same thing bears a different denomination of number, as the mind views it with different aspects. Thus the same extension is one, or three, or thirty-six, according as the mind considers it with reference to a yard, a foot, or an inch. Number is so visibly relative, and dependent on men’s understandings, that it is strange to think how any one should give it an absolute existence without the mind. We say one book, one page, one line, &c., all these are equally units, though some contain several of the others; and in each instance it is plain the unit relates to some particular combination of ideas arbitrarily put together by the mind.

‘13. Unity, I know, some will have to be a simple or uncompounded idea, accompanying all other ideas into the mind. That I have any such idea answering the word unity I do not find, and if I had, methinks I could not miss finding it; on the contrary, it should be the most familiar to my understanding, since it is said to accompany all other ideas, and to be perceived by all the ways of sensation and reflection.^[6] To say no more, it is an abstract idea.

‘14. I shall farther add, that after the same manner as modern philosophers prove colours, tastes, &c., to have no existence in matter, or without the mind, the same thing may be likewise proved of all other sensible qualities whatever. Thus for instance, it is said, that heat and cold are affections only of the mind, and not at all patterns of real beings existing in the corporeal substances which excite them, for that the same body which appears cold to one hand, seems warm to another. Now, why may we not as well argue, that figure and extension are not patterns or resemblances of qualities existing in matter, because to the same eye at different stations, or eyes of a different texture at the same station, they appear various, and cannot therefore be the images of any thing settled and determinate without the mind? Again, ’tis proved that 106sweetness is not really in the sapid thing, because the thing remaining unaltered, the sweetness is changed into bitter, as in case of a fever, or otherwise vitiated palate. Is it not as reasonable to say, that motion is not without the mind, since if the succession of ideas in the mind become swifter, the motion, it is acknowledged, shall appear slower without any external alteration.

‘15. In short, let any one consider those arguments which are thought manifestly to prove that colours, tastes, &c. exist only in the mind, and he will find they may with equal force be brought to prove the same thing of extension, figure, and motion. Though it must be confessed this method of arguing does not so much prove that there is no extension, colour, &c. in an outward object, as that we do not know by sense which is the true extension or colour of the object. But the foregoing arguments plainly show it to be impossible that any colour or extension at all, or other sensible quality whatsoever, should exist in an unthinking subject without the mind, or in truth, that there should be any such thing as an outward object.’—Principles of Human Knowledge, pp. 54, &c.

Again, he says, page 58:—

‘But though it were possible that solid, figured movable substances may exist without the mind, corresponding to the ideas we have of bodies, yet how is it possible for us to know this? Either we must know it by sense or by reason. As for our senses, by them we have the knowledge only of our sensations, ideas, or those things that are immediately perceived by sense, call them what you will; but they do not inform us that things exist without the mind, or unperceived, like to those which are perceived. This the materialists themselves acknowledge. It remains, therefore, that if we have any knowledge at all of external things, it must be by reason, inferring their existence from what is immediately perceived by sense. But I do not see what reason can induce us to believe the existence of bodies without the mind, from what we perceive, since the very patrons of matter themselves do not pretend there is any necessary connexion betwixt them and our ideas. I say it is granted on all hands (and what happens in dreams, frenzies, and the like, puts it beyond dispute) that it is possible we might be affected with all the ideas we have now, though there were no bodies existing without resembling them. Hence it is evident the supposition of external bodies is not necessary for the producing our ideas, since it is granted they are produced sometimes, and might possibly be produced always, in the same order we see them in at present, without their concurrence. But though we might possibly have all our sensations without them, yet perhaps it may be thought easier to conceive and explain the manner 107of their production, by supposing external bodies in their likeness rather than otherwise, and so it might be at least probable there are such things as bodies that excite their ideas in our minds. But neither can this be said, for though we give the materialists their external bodies, they, by their own confession, are never the nearer knowing how our ideas are produced, since they own themselves unable to comprehend in what manner body can act upon spirit, or how it is possible it should imprint any idea in the mind. Hence it is evident the production of ideas or sensations in our minds, can be no reason why we should suppose matter or corporeal substances, since that is acknowledged to remain equally inexplicable with, or without this supposition. If therefore it were possible for bodies to exist without the mind, yet to hold they do so, must needs be a very precarious opinion; since it is to suppose, without any reason at all, that God has created innumerable beings that are entirely useless, and serve to no manner of purpose.

‘But say what we can, some one perhaps might be apt to reply, he will still believe his senses, and never suffer any arguments, how plausible soever, to prevail over the certainty of them. Be it so, assert the evidence of sense as high as you please, we are willing to do the same. That what I see and hear, and feel, doth exist, i.e. is perceived by me, I no more doubt than I do of my own being: but I do not see how the testimony of sense can be alleged as a proof for the existence of any thing which is not perceived by sense. We are not for having any man turn sceptic, and disbelieve his senses; on the contrary, we give them all the stress and assurance imaginable, nor are there any principles more opposite to scepticism than those we have laid down, as shall be hereafter clearly shown. Secondly, it will be objected that there is a great difference between real fire, for instance, and the idea of fire, betwixt dreaming or imagining oneself burnt and actually being so: if you suspect it to be only the idea of fire which you see, do but put your hand into it, and you’ll be convinced with a witness. This and the like may be urged in opposition to our tenets. To all which the answer is evident from what hath been already said, and I shall only add in this place, that if real fire be very different from the idea of fire, so also is the real pain that it occasions very different from the idea of the same pain, and yet nobody will pretend that real pain either is, or can possibly be, in an unperceiving thing or without the mind, any more than its idea.’

Now with regard to this system, whatever we may think of the solidity of the foundation, the superstructure is as light and elegant as possible. There is a peculiar character in the metaphysical writings 108of Berkeley which is to be found no where else. With all the closeness and subtilty of the deepest reflection, they combine the ease and vivacity of a common essay: so that the most violent paradoxes and elaborate distinctions are rendered familiar by the simplicity of the style. His writings show that he had thought with the utmost intensity on almost every subject, yet he has the same careless freedom of manner as if he had never thought at all. He is never entangled in the labyrinth of his own thoughts, and the buoyancy of his spirit surmounts every objection with a singular felicity, as if his mind had wings. It is perhaps worth remarking that the ‘Principles of Human Knowledge’ were published in 1710, at a time when the author was only five-and-twenty, as was the ‘Essay on Vision,’ the greatest by far of all his works, and the most complete example of elaborate analytical reasoning and particular induction joined together that perhaps ever existed. It is also generally free from that air of paradox and fanciful hypothesis which runs through his other writings.^[7] I mention this the more because I believe that the greatest efforts of intellect have almost always been made while the passions are in their greatest vigour, and before hope loses its hold on the heart, and is the elastic spring which animates all our thoughts.

On the reasoning I have just quoted I will make one or two remarks without pretending to enter into the real difficulties of the question. First, it seems to me that the argument against the existence of the secondary qualities, drawn from the various effects produced by them on different minds or in different circumstances, which Hume mentions as the only solid one, and which Berkeley thinks more doubtful, is no argument at all. That an object at a distance, for example, does not look like the same object near is in consequence of the interposition of the air, which gives it a different hue; the logical inference merely is that one object has not the same sensible qualities as another, or as Berkeley has remarked, since the effect depends upon the combination and reaction of a number of things that we do not know what the true or natural qualities of each object are.

2. The proof of the non-existence of the primary qualities or of matter altogether, as inconceivable by the mind, goes upon the supposition that what is different cannot be the same. ‘An idea,’ says 109Berkeley, ‘can be like nothing but an idea, a perception like nothing but a perception.’ But it might be proved in this manner that a print cannot resemble a picture, because that which has colour cannot be represented by any thing without colour. That as far as our ideas are perceptions they do not resemble any thing in matter is true, but no one ever supposed that in this respect there was any resemblance between them, or that matter thought. That they cannot be alike in any thing does not seem to me proved by this mode of reasoning: for that our ideas of things are not mere perceptions is evident from this, that they are different among themselves, that is, have other distinguishing qualities besides being perceived.

3. Berkeley’s argument against the existence of matter not merely as the object or archetype, but as the cause of our sensations, is founded on the notion that we have a right to reject every general conclusion in which there is the least flaw or difficulty. Common sense is brought to the bar, like an old offender, and condemned upon the slightest shadow of evidence. If the vulgar system is vulnerable in any part, it is taken for granted that it ought to be discarded, to make room for a perfectly rational and philosophical account, the sufficiency of the understanding being never once doubted. But all this severe logic and scrutiny into the perfect connexion of our ideas vanishes, when the author comes to explain the cause of our external impressions, or to find a substitute for matter. This, he says, is God or an all-powerful spirit, and yet he affirms that we have no more idea of spirit than of matter, and consequently the one ought upon this theory to pass for a nonentity as much as the other.

‘We perceive a continual succession of ideas, some are anew excited, others are changed or totally disappear. There is therefore some cause of those ideas, whereon they depend, and which produces and changes them. That this cause cannot be any quality or idea or combination of ideas, is clear from what has been said. It must therefore be a substance, but it has been shewn that there is no corporeal or material substance. It remains therefore that the cause of ideas is an incorporeal active substance or spirit.

‘A spirit is one simple, undivided, active being: as it perceives ideas, it is called the understanding, and as it produces or otherwise operates about them, it is called the will. Hence there can be no idea formed of a soul or spirit. For all ideas whatever being passive and inert, they cannot represent unto us by way of image or likeness that which acts. Such is the nature of spirit or that which acts, that it cannot be itself perceived, but only by the effects which it produceth. If any man shall doubt of the truth of what is here delivered, let him but reflect and try if he can frame the idea of any power or 110active being. A little attention will make it plain to any one, that to have an idea which shall be like that active principle of motion and change of ideas, is absolutely impossible.’ That is to say, matter is here excluded from being the cause or in any way the occasion of our ideas, because we know not what it is, and the inference is, that the cause of our ideas must be spirit, of which we are equally ignorant. The reasoning might have been reversed. But it is thus that philosophy seems to be in general nothing else but ‘reason pandering will.’ The literal conclusion from the foregoing argument is, that there is nothing in the universe but oneself, nor even that, but only the present idea: all other words must signify nothing.

To return to Mr. Locke. He has treated on the same question in the second volume, but without advancing any thing remarkable on it, and it is the only place in which he loses his temper, and substitutes ridicule for argument.

In the chapter on Perception, there are some observations on the manner in which our judgments alter the impressions of sensible objects, which are well worth notice, and show that the author was well acquainted with what may be called the practical processes of the human mind.

He says, p. 130, ‘We are farther to consider concerning perception, that the ideas we receive by sensation are often in grown people altered by the judgment without our taking notice of it. When we set before our eyes a round globe of any uniform colour, e.g. gold, alabaster, or jet, it is certain that the idea thereby imprinted in our mind is of a flat circle, variously shadowed with several degrees of light and brightness coming to our eyes. But we having by use been accustomed to perceive what kind of appearance convex bodies are wont to make in us, what alterations are made in the reflections of light by the difference of the sensible figures of bodies, the judgment presently, by an habitual custom, alters the appearances into their causes; so that from that which truly is variety of shadow or colour, collecting the figure, it makes it pass for a mark of figure, and frames to itself the perception of a convex figure and an uniform colour, when the idea we receive from thence is only a plane variously coloured; as is evident in painting. To which purpose I shall here insert a problem of that very ingenious and studious promoter of real knowledge, the learned and worthy Mr. Molineux, which he was pleased to send me in a letter some months since: and it is this: “Suppose a man born blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch to distinguish between a cube and a sphere of the same metal and nigh of the same bigness, so as to tell, when he felt the one and the other, which is the cube, which the sphere. Suppose then the cube 111and sphere placed on a table, and the blind man made to see: Quere, whether by his sight, before he touched them, he could now distinguish and tell which is the globe, which the cube?” To which the acute and judicious proposer answers, “No. For though he has obtained the experience of how a globe, how a cube affects his touch, yet he has not yet attained the experience that what affects his touch so or so, must affect his sight so or so; or that a protuberant angle in the cube that pressed his hand unequally, shall appear to his eye as it does in the cube.” I agree’ (says Mr. Locke) ‘with this thinking gentleman, whom I am proud to call my friend, in his answer to this his problem; and am of opinion that the blind man at first sight, would not be able with certainty to say, which was the globe, which the cube, whilst he only saw them; though he could unerringly name them by his touch, and certainly distinguish them by the difference of their figures felt. This I have set down, and leave with my reader as an occasion for him to consider how much he may be beholden to experience, improvement, and acquired notions, where he thinks he has not the least use of, or help from them, and the rather, because this observing gentleman farther adds, that having upon the occasion of my book, proposed this to divers very ingenious men, he hardly ever met with one that at first gave the answer to it which he thinks true, till by hearing his reasons they were convinced.’ Mr. Locke then adds other instances to the same effect, as ‘That a man who reads or hears with attention and understanding takes little notice of the characters or sounds, but of the ideas that are excited in him by them. How frequently do we in a day cover our eyes with our eyelids, without at all perceiving that we are in the dark! Men that by custom have got the use of a by-word do almost in every sentence pronounce sounds, which though taken notice of by others, they themselves neither hear nor observe: and therefore it is not so strange that our mind should often change the idea of its sensation into that of its judgment, and make one serve only to excite the other without our taking notice of it.’

On the problem above stated, which has been often made a subject of dispute, I shall only remark that the answer given to it, with which Mr. Locke agrees, is directly repugnant to his doctrine of the real existence of the primary qualities of matter, namely figure and extension. For it is plain, that if there is any thing in external objects answering to their ideas in our minds, the ideas we have of those qualities and which are conveyed by different senses, must be like one another. If the ideas of figure as a visible and tangible thing have no resemblance to themselves, it is ridiculous to suppose that they can coincide with any thing out of them in nature. Secondly, 112it appears to me that the mind must recognise a certain similarity between the impressions of different senses in this case. For instance, the sudden change or discontinuity of the sensation, produced by the sharp angles of the cube, is something common to both ideas, and if so, must afford a means of comparing them together. Berkeley, in his ‘Essay on Vision,’ goes so far as to deny that there is any intuitive analogy between the ideas of number as conveyed by different senses, and asserts that the distinction between the two legs of a statue, for instance, as perceived by the touch or by the sight would not imply any idea of like or same. I grant this consequence to be true, on the principle maintained by him that there are no abstract ideas in the mind, for on this principle there can be no idea answering to the words same or different, but then this argument would destroy all kind of coincidence not only between ideas of different senses, but between repeated impressions of the same sense. The ‘Essay on Vision,’ of which I have already spoken, apparently originated in the problem here inserted, and is a more complete exemplification of the effects of association with respect to objects of sight than is to be found even in Hartley’s account of this subject.

Mr. Locke’s account of the distinction between wit and understanding I have already noticed; his explanation of the difference between idiots and madmen has been often referred to, and is as follows:

‘The defect in naturals seems to proceed from want of quickness, activity, and motion in the intellectual faculties, whereby they are deprived of reason: whereas madmen, on the other side, seem to suffer by the other extreme. For they do not appear to me to have lost the faculty of reasoning; but having joined together some ideas very wrongly, they mistake them for truths; and they err as men do that argue right from wrong principles: for, by the violence of their imaginations, having taken their fancies for realities, they make right deductions from them. Thus you shall find a distracted man, fancying himself a king, with a right inference require suitable attendance, respect, and obedience: others, who have thought themselves made of glass, have used the caution necessary to preserve such brittle bodies. Hence it comes to pass, that a man who is very sober, and of a right understanding in all other things, may in one particular be as frantic as any in Bedlam, if either by any sudden very strong impression, or long fixing his fancy upon one sort of thoughts, incoherent ideas have been cemented together so powerfully as to remain united. But there are degrees of madness, as of folly; the disorderly jumbling together of ideas is in some more, and some less. In short, herein seems to lie the difference between idiots and madmen: 113that madmen put wrong ideas together, and so make wrong propositions, but argue and reason right from them: but idiots make very few or no propositions, and reason scarce at all.’

Mr. Locke’s account of Liberty and Necessity, contained in his chapter ‘On Power,’ has been commented upon in the previous Essay. As is there remarked, it is one which has been more found fault with than any other part of his work, I think without reason. He seems evidently to have admitted the definition of necessity, but not the name, which is not much to be wondered at, considering the improper use to which it is liable, and which can scarce be separated from it in the closest reasoning, much less as a term of general signification: in other words, he denies the power of the mind to act without a cause or motive, or, in any manner, in any circumstances, from mere indifference and absolute self motion; but he at the same time denies the inference which has been drawn from this principle, that the mind is not an agent at all, but altogether subject to external force, or blind impulse.

Mr. Locke, in treating of complex ideas, divides them into three sorts, those of modes, substances, and relations.

First, ‘Modes,’ he says, ‘I call such complex ideas, which, however compounded, contain not in them the supposition of subsisting by themselves, but are considered as dependences on, or affections of substances: such are the ideas signified by the words triangle, gratitude, murder, &c. Of these modes there are two sorts. 1. There are some which are only variations or different combinations of the same simple idea, without the mixture of any other, as a dozen or score, which are nothing but the ideas of so many distinct units added together, and these I call simple modes. 2. There are others, compounded of simple ideas of several kinds put together, to make one complex one; e.g. beauty, consisting of a certain composition of colour and figure, causing delight in the beholder; theft, which being the concealed change of the possession of any thing, without the consent of the proprietor, contains, as is visible, a combination of several ideas of several kinds, and these I call mixed modes.’

With respect to modes, the author endeavours to shew, I think improperly, that as they are put together arbitrarily by the mind, according to circumstances, that they have no real existence in nature, and that the ideas we form of them are always correct. Neither of these consequences will be found to follow: i.e. the circumstances and actions which constitute theft do actually exist without the mind and are necessary to that idea, though it is arbitrary in me according to the occasion or the purpose in view, to think of that collection of ideas or another, which shall constitute robbery; that is, I may add or leave 114out the circumstance of violence, as it happens; secondly, I may, without being aware of it, add or leave out some circumstance necessary to the combination of ideas spoken of, and thus confuse one idea with another, and not merely miscal, as Mr. Locke supposes, but misconceive the mode in question. We then merely miscal when though we give a wrong name to a thing, the idea is kept perfectly distinct and clear from other ideas, otherwise we confound both names and things. But it will not be contended, that the ideas of theft, robbery, and fraud, for instance, are always kept clear in every one’s mind, so that he is at no loss ever to define them, or can immediately in all cases refer any action to the class to which it belongs. Every collection of ideas which the mind puts together is undoubtedly that collection and no other; but in forming the ideas of mixed modes, the mind does something more than this, or it supposes one collection of ideas to be the same as another which it has had at a former time, and gives a certain name to, and in this supposition it often errs.

On this subject, the author is a good deal puzzled with the question, how it is possible for the mind ever to confound one idea with another? It is indeed a puzzling question, but the answer which he gives to it in resolving it into a mistake of words, is very unsatisfactory. For there is no more reason why we should mistake one name or sign of an idea for another, than why we should mistake the ideas themselves. If every circumstance belonging to our ideas was necessarily clear and self-evident to the mind, the sign affixed to it, which is one of those circumstances, would be so too, and we find that in those things with which we have a thorough acquaintance, we never confound one name with another, or if we should, it does not disturb the idea, and is of no consequence.

Among the second sort of complex ideas Mr. Locke classes those of substances. These, he says, are such combinations of simple ideas as are taken to represent distinct, particular things, subsisting by themselves, in which the supposed or confused idea of substance, such as it is, is always the first or chief. Thus, if to substance be joined the simple idea of a certain dull whitish colour, with certain degrees of weight, hardness, ductility and fusibility, we have the idea of lead; and a combination of the ideas of a certain sort of figure, with the power of motion, thought, and reasoning, joined to substance, make the ordinary idea of a man. Now of substances also there are two sorts of ideas; one of single substances, as they exist separately, as of a man or a sheep; the other of several of those put together, as an army of men or a flock of sheep: which collective ideas of several substances are as much each of them one 115single idea as that of a man or an unit.’ He then adds, ‘and the third sort of complex ideas is that which we call relative, which consists in the consideration and comparing one idea with another.’ This last sort of ideas seems to me the only ones that are perfectly simple and indivisible: things themselves are always complex. Mr. Locke considers rightly that we know nothing of the nature of substance, and that we can only define it as an abstract idea of some thing, that supports accidents or connects different sensible qualities together. For this modest confession of his own ignorance he was however called to a very severe account by the learned of the time, Bishop Stillingfleet and others, who thought they knew more of the matter, and could penetrate the essence of things. The ‘Essay on the Human Understanding’ is swelled out with repeated and long extracts from this controversy, and they are not the least valuable part of the work, as they show to what shifts men can be driven, to defend systematically not truth but their own opinion, who become blind and obstinate by implicit faith, and who by adhering to every established prejudice drive others into all the absurdities of paradox.

Mr. Locke’s own account of our ideas of substance is a good deal spun out, and is enriched with as many illustrations from the qualities of gold, as if he had been candidate for the place of assay-master of the mint. The chapter ‘On Identity’ is perhaps the best reasoned and the most full of thought and observation of any in the Essay: though the author sets out with an observation which seems to augur differently. For after explaining identity as it relates to individuality, or implies that a thing is the same with itself, he says, ‘From what has been said it is easy to discover what is so much inquired after, the principium individuationis: and that, it is plain, is existence itself, which determines a being of any sort to a particular time and place, incommunicable to two beings of the same kind.’ He then, very wisely quitting this principle which would certainly be of no use to him, proceeds directly to account for the identity of different things from a continuance, not of the same substance, but of the same essence, or of the characteristic properties of any thing, carried on in succession; as a river is the same while it flows through the same channel, or an oak while it retains the same organization, and a man while he retains the same life and continued consciousness.

In the chapter entitled ‘Of true and false Ideas,’ the author supposes truth to depend on some mental or verbal proposition, and does not, like Hobbes and the modern metaphysical writers, make it consist entirely in a form of words. In the last chapter of the 116first volume he treats of the association of ideas. This chapter was added after the first edition of the work, and he confesses, that the subject was something new to him. He has treated it in that mixed way of observation and reasoning, in which the peculiar force of his mind lay. The account he has given of it does not form a system, but the fragments of a system, something like the French memoirs that are to serve for the materials of a history. He does not appear to have laid down any general theorem on the subject, or to have been aware of the possibility of applying this principle to account in a plausible manner for the whole chain of our thoughts and feelings, as Hobbes and Hartley have done. Sound, practical, good sense, and a kind of discursive observation, neither grovelling in vulgar common place, nor soaring into the regions of paradox, are in fact the general characteristics of his mind, which has not been understood by his admirers and commentators. A short passage will suffice to show his manner of considering this doctrine of association.

‘Many children,’ he says, ‘imputing the pain they endured at school to their books they were corrected for, so join those ideas together that a book becomes their aversion, and they are never reconciled to the study and use of them all their lives after: and thus reading becomes a torment to them, which otherwise possibly they might have made the great pleasure of their lives. There are rooms convenient enough that some men cannot study in, and fashions of vessels, which though ever so clean and commodious they cannot drink out of, and that by reason of some accidental ideas which are annexed to them, and make them offensive: and who is there that has not observed some man to flag at the appearance, or in the company of some certain person, not otherwise superior to him, but because having once on some occasion got the ascendant, the idea of authority and distance goes along with that of the person? And he that has been thus subjected is not able to separate them. Instances of this kind are so plentiful every where, that if I add one more, it is only for the pleasant oddness of it: it is of a young gentleman, who having learned to dance, and that to great perfection, there happened to stand an old trunk in the room where he learned: the idea of this remarkable piece of household stuff had so mixed itself with all the turns and steps of his dances, that though in that chamber he could dance exceedingly well, yet it was only whilst that trunk was there; nor could he perform well in any other place, unless that, or some such other trunk had its due position in the room.’

The following passage approaches the nearest to the statement of a general principle:

117‘This strong combination of ideas, not allied by nature, the mind makes in itself either voluntarily or by chance: and hence it comes in different men to be very different, according to their different inclinations, educations, interests, &c. Custom settles habits of thinking in the understanding, as well as of determining in the will, and of motions in the body: all which seems to be but trains of motion in the animal spirits, which once set agoing continue in the same steps they have been used to, which by often treading are worn into a smooth path, and the motion in it becomes easy, and as it were natural. As far as we can comprehend thinking, thus ideas seem to be produced in our minds; or if they are not, this may serve to explain their following one another in an habitual train when once they are put into that track, as well as it does to explain such motions of the body. A musician used to any tune will find, that let it but once begin in his head, the ideas of the several notes of it will follow one another orderly in his understanding, without any care or attention, as regularly as his finger moves orderly over the keys of the organ to play out the tune he has begun, though his inattentive thoughts be elsewhere a wandering. Whether the natural cause of these ideas, as well as of that regular dancing of the fingers, be the motion of his animal spirits, I will not determine, how probable soever by this instance it appears to be so; but this may help us a little to conceive of intellectual habits, and of the tying together of ideas. That there are such associations of them made by custom in the minds of most men, I think nobody will question, who has well considered himself or others; and to this perhaps might be justly attributed most of the sympathies and antipathies observable in men, which work as strongly and produce as regular effects as if they were natural, and are therefore called so, though they at first had no other original but the accidental connexion of two ideas, which either the strength of the first impression or future indulgence so united, that they always afterwards kept company together in that man’s mind, as if they were but one idea. I say, most of the antipathies, I do not say all; for some of them are truly natural, depend upon our original constitution, and are born with us; but a great part of those which are counted natural, would have been known to be from unheeded though perhaps early impressions, or wanton fancies at first, which would have been acknowledged the original of them, if they had been warily observed.’

The former part of this passage, relating to the dancing of the animal spirits, the Abbé Condillac in his ‘Logic’ has paraphrased with a self-sufficiency, an assumption of originality, and a smoothness of flippancy, peculiar almost to himself.

118On the subject of materialism, Mr. Locke seems to have had two opinions; the first, that as far as we can discern, the properties of mind and matter are utterly distinct and irreconcileable; the second, that God might for aught we know be able to superadd to matter a faculty of thinking: either the one or the other of these opinions must be without meaning. In speaking of the difficulties attending both sides of this question, he has, however, offered one of the best moral cautions against precipitancy of judgment and impatience of inquiry to be found in any author. He says, (vol. ii. p. 203:) ‘He that considers how hardly sensation is in our thoughts reconcilable to extended matter, or existence to any thing that hath no extension at all, will confess that he is very far from certainly knowing what his soul is. It is a point which seems to me to be put out of the reach of our knowledge: and he who will give himself leave to consider freely, and look into the dark and intricate part of each hypothesis, will scarce find his reason able to determine him fixedly for or against the soul’s materiality. Since on which side soever he views it, either as an unextended substance, or a thinking extended matter, the difficulty to conceive either, will, whilst either alone is in his thoughts, still drive him to the contrary side. An unfair way which some men take with themselves; who because of the unconceivableness of some thing they find in one, throw themselves violently into the contrary hypothesis, though altogether as unintelligible to an unbiassed understanding. This serves not only to show the weakness and scantiness of our knowledge, but the insignificant triumph of such sort of arguments, which drawn from our own views may satisfy us that we can find no certainty on one side of the question; but do not at all thereby help us to truth, by running into the opposite opinion, which on examination will be found clogged with equal difficulties.’

Mr. Locke has not, I think, himself enough attended to this admirable caution in his adoption of the common argument to demonstrate the existence of God à priori, towards which I conceive not the slightest advances can be made in this method. For the axiom that every thing must have a cause can never be made to infer the existence of a first cause, that is, of something without a cause. It is equally impossible for the human mind to conceive of the beginning of existence, or to pass from nothing to something, either by the help of an infinite series of finite existences, or by the infinite duration of one simple, absolute existence. Those who wish to see how far human ingenuity can push a complete confusion of ideas into the verge of the strictest logical demonstration and self-evident truth, may find all that they want in Dr. Clarke’s celebrated work on the 119‘Attributes,’ which contains more logical acuteness and more power of scholastic disputation than any other work that I know of in modern times. Hartley has lost himself in the same endless labyrinth of finite and infinite series. And Locke’s statement of this question is only better, because it is shorter, and goes straight forward, without stopping to answer difficulties.

I would class the merits of Mr. Tooke’s work under three heads: the etymological, the grammatical, and the philosophical. The etymological part is excellent, the grammatical part indifferent, and the philosophical part to the last degree despicable; it is downright, unqualified, unredeemed nonsense. As Mr. Tooke himself says that all metaphysical reasoning is nonsense, it is scarcely rude to say that his metaphysical reasoning is so. It appears to me to be ‘mere midsummer madness.’ He ought not indeed to have meddled with logic or metaphysics after such a declaration; he ought to have supposed that he laboured under some natural defect in this respect, as a man who finds no harmony in any tune that is played to him, may without much modesty conclude that he has no ear for music.

The opinion which I have here advanced of this writer’s merits as a general reasoner may seem a bold one; but the proof of it is not difficult; it is as easy as transcribing. I have only to take a few passages in which he has applied etymology to the illustration of moral and metaphysical truth, to make his undistinguishing admirers blush, not for their idol, but for the weakness and bounded faculties of human nature.

Mr. Tooke lays it down as a maxim, that the mind has neither complex nor abstract ideas. He was in some things a zealot, and his zeal had led him to believe that his system of etymology would in some way or other establish this metaphysical principle, and overturn the established notions of law, morality, philosophy, and divinity. The full development and execution of this project is reserved for a future volume, but there are perpetual hints and intimations of it in the two first, something like the aerial music and flying noises in Prospero’s island. The author seems constantly in his own mind on the point of detecting all imposture and delusion with the Ithuriel spear of etymology, but he as constantly draws back, and postpones his triumph. The second volume of the ‘Diversions’ consists chiefly of about two thousand instances of the etymology of words, to prove 120that there can be no abstract ideas: scarcely one of which two thousand meanings is anything else but a more abstract idea than the word was in general supposed to convey: for example, the word loaf commonly stands for a pretty substantial, solid, tangible kind of an idea, and is not suspected of any latent, very refined, abstracted meaning. The author shows, on the contrary, that the word has no such palpable, positive meaning, as the particular object to which we apply it, but merely signifies something, any thing, raised or lifted up. A singular method, surely, of reducing all general and abstract signs to individual, physical objects! Yet we find this tiresome catalogue of derivations concluded in this manner.

‘And on this subject of subaudition I will at present exercise your patience no farther: for my own begins to flag. You have now instances of my doctrine in, I suppose, about a thousand words. Their number may be easily increased. But I trust these are sufficient to discard that imagined operation of the mind, which has been termed abstraction: and to prove that what we call by that name, is merely one of the contrivances of language, for the purpose of more speedy communication.’—Page 396, vol. ii.

How a thousand instances of words, signifying a common quality or abstract idea, with something understood (subauditum), can be supposed to discard that imagined operation of the mind called abstraction, or in what subaudition differs from abstraction, or whether there is not something subintellectum, as well as subauditum,—that is, certain circumstances left out by the mind for the necessary progress of thought, as well as in language, for its more speedy communication,—it is not easy to guess. This farcical mummery, this inexplicable dumb show, this emphatical insignificance, neither admits nor deserves any answer.

The only places in the work in which this wary reasoner has fairly committed himself, and given an intelligible explanation of his mode of applying his system to general questions, are in his account of the words, right and wrong, just and unjust, in his list of metaphysical nonentities, demonstrated to be such because they are expressed by the past participles of certain verbs, and in his definition of Truth. These, therefore, I shall give as specimens, and I hope they will be quite satisfactory. The ‘Diversions of Purley,’ it should be observed, is supposed to be carried on in a dialogue between the author and Sir Francis Burdett.

‘Enough, enough,’ says Burdett, ‘innumerable instances of the same may, I grant you, be given from all our ancient authors. But does this import us any thing?’

‘Tooke. Surely, much, if it shall lead us to the clear understanding 121of the words we use in discourse. For as far as we “know not our own meaning,” as far as “our purposes are not endowed with words to make them known,” so far we “gabble like things most brutish.” But the importance rises higher, when we reflect upon the application of words to metaphysics. And when I say metaphysics, you will be pleased to remember that all general reasoning, all politics, law, morality, and divinity, are merely metaphysics.’ [What is this general reasoning of Mr. Tooke’s?]

‘Well,’ replies his pupil, ‘you have satisfied me that wrong, however written, whether wrang, wrong or wrung, like the Italian torto and the French tort, is merely the past tense or participle of the verb to wring; and has merely that meaning.

‘Tooke. True; it means wrung or wrested from the right or ordered line of conduct. Right is no other than rectum, the past participle of the Latin verb regere. The Italian dritto, and the French droit, are no other than the past participle directum. In the same manner our English word just is the past participle of the verb jubere (jussum).

‘Burdett. What, then, is law?

‘Tooke. It is merely the past participle lag, of the Gothic and Anglo-Saxon verb legan, ponere; and it means something or anything laid down as a rule of conduct. Thus when a man demands his right, he only asks that which it is ordered he shall have. A right conduct is that which is ordered. A right line is that which is ordered or directed, not a random extension, but the shortest between two points. A right and just action is such a one as is ordered and commanded. The right hand is that which custom, and those who have brought us up, have ordered or directed us to use in preference, when one hand only is employed, and the left hand is that which is lieved or left.

‘Burdett. Surely the word right is sometimes used in some other sense. And see, in this newspaper before us, M. Portalis, contending for the concordat, says:—“The multitude are much more impressed with what they are commanded to obey, than with what is proved to them to be right and just.” This will be complete nonsense, if right and just mean ordered and commanded.

‘Tooke. I will not undertake to make sense of the arguments of M. Portalis. The whole of his speech is a piece of wretched mummery, employed to bring back again to France the more wretched mummery of pope and popery. Writers on such subjects are not very anxious about the meaning of their words. Ambiguity and equivocation are their strongholds. Explanation would undo them.

‘Burdett. Well, but Mr. Locke uses the word in a manner hardly 122to be reconciled with your account of it. He says:—“God has a right to do it, we are his creatures.”

‘Tooke. It appears to me highly improper to say, that God has a right, as it is also to say that God is just. For nothing is ordered, directed, or commanded concerning God. The expressions are inapplicable to the Deity: though they are common, and those who use them have the best intentions. They are applicable only to men, to whom alone language belongs, and of whose sensations only words are the representations; to men, who are by nature the subjects of orders and commands, and whose chief merit is obedience.

‘Burdett. Every thing, then, that is ordered and commanded is right and just.

‘Tooke. Surely; for that is only affirming that what is ordered and commanded is—ordered and commanded.

‘Burdett. These sentiments do not appear to have made you very conspicuous for obedience. There are not a few passages, I believe, in your life, where you have opposed what was ordered and commanded. Upon your own principles, was that right?

‘Tooke. Perfectly.

‘Burdett. How now! was it ordered and commanded that you should oppose what was ordered and commanded? Can the same thing be at the same time both right and wrong?

‘Tooke. Travel back to the island of Melinda, and you will find the difficulty most easily solved. A thing may be at the same time both right and wrong, as well as right and left. It may be commanded to be done, and commanded not to be done. The law, i.e. that which is laid down, may be different by different authorities.

‘I have always been most obedient when most taxed with disobedience. But my right hand is not the right hand of Melinda. The right I revere is not the right adored by sycophants, the jus vagum, the capricious command of princes or ministers. I follow the law of God (which is laid down by him for the rule of my conduct) when I follow the laws of human nature: which, without any testimony, we know must proceed from God, and upon these are founded the rights of man, or what is ordered for man.’

On this passage I will observe that I think it would be difficult for Mr. Tooke himself to find a more precious instance of unmeaning jargon in the writings of any school-divine. Mr. Tooke first pretends gravely to define the essence of law and just from the etymology of those words, by saying that they are something laid down and something ordered; and when pressed by the difficulty that there are many things laid down and many things ordered which are neither ‘law’ nor ‘just,’ makes answer that their obligation depends on a 123higher species of law and justice, to wit, a law which is no where laid down, and a justice which is no where ordered, except indeed by the nature of things, on which the etymology of these two words does not seem to throw much light. At one time, it seems quite demonstrable that the essence of all law, right, and justice consists in its being ordered or communicated by words: the very idea is absurd, unless we conceive of it as some thing either spoken or written in a book; and yet the very next moment this fastidious reasoner sets up the unwritten, uncommunicated law of God, which he says must conform to the laws of human nature, as the rule of his conduct, and as paramount to all other positive orders and commands whatever. What is this original law of God or nature, which Mr. Tooke sets up as the rule of right? Is it the good of the whole, or self-interest? Is it the voice of reason, or conscience, or the moral sense? Here then we have to set out afresh in our pursuit, and to grope our way as well as we can through the old labyrinth of morality, divinity, and metaphysics. This new-invented patent lamp of etymology goes out just as it is beginning to grow dark, and as the path becomes intricate.

Neither can I at all see why our author should quarrel with M. Portalis for using these words in their common sense. He affirms that the whole of this gentleman’s speech is a piece of wretched mummery, that his distinction between what is right and what is commanded is a senseless ambiguity, and that explanation would undo him. Yet he himself, two pages after, discovers that this distinction has a real meaning in it, and that he has acted upon it all his life. ‘The one,’ he says, ‘is the jus vagum, the capricious command of princes; the other is the law of God and nature.’ It is not impossible but M. Portalis might have given quite as profound an explanation of his own meaning. Junius’s sarcasm did not, it seems, entirely cure Mr. Tooke ‘of the little sneering sophistries of a collegian.’

Mr. Tooke next makes strange havoc with a whole host of metaphysical agents; like Sir Richard Blackmore,

are weighed in the balance and found wanting. We cannot say with Marvell, that the argument

124For Mr. Tooke leaves us in no doubt about his intent. All these sacred truths are, according to him, so many falsehoods, which by taking possession of certain adjectives and participles, have palmed themselves upon the world as realities, but which, by spelling their names backwards, he proposes to exorcise and reduce to their original nothingness again. Here follows a list of them which he has strung together, as a warning to all other pseudo-substantives. It is rather strange, by the bye, that the author should have resorted to this mode of argument, since he affirms that adjectives are the names of things, as well as substantives; and laughs at Dr. South for saying that they are the names of nothing.

‘These words, these participles and adjectives,’ says Mr. Tooke, ‘not understood as such, have caused a metaphysical jargon and a false morality, which can only be dissipated by etymology. And when they come to be examined you will find that the ridicule which Dr. Conyers Middleton has so justly bestowed upon the papists for their absurd coinage of saints, is equally applicable to ourselves and to all other metaphysicians; whose moral deities, moral causes, and moral qualities are not less ridiculously coined and imposed upon their followers.

as well as just, right, and wrong, are all merely participles poetically embodied and substantiated by those who use them.

‘So Church, for instance (Dominicum aliquid) is an adjective; and formerly a most wicked one: whose misinterpretation caused more slaughter and pillage of mankind than all the other cheats together.’

Sir Francis says, ‘Something of this sort I can easily perceive, but not to the extent you carry it. I see that those sham deities, Fate and Destiny, aliquid fatum, quelque chose destinée, are merely the past participles of fari and destiner. That Chance (“high arbiter,” as Milton calls him) and his twin-brother Accident are 125merely the participles of escheoir, cheoir, and cadere. And that to say, it befell me by chance or by accident, is absurdly saying it befell me by falling.

‘I agree with you, that Providence, Prudence, Innocence, Substance, and all the rest of that tribe of qualities (in ence and ance) are merely the neuter plurals of the present participles of ordere, nocere, stare, &c. &c. That Angel, Saint, Spirit, are the past participles αγγελλειυ, sanciri, spirare. That the Italian cucolo, a cuckoo, gives us the verb to cucol, and its past participle cuckold.’

And what if it does: will Mr. Tooke therefore pretend to say that there is no such thing? This is indeed turning etymology to a good account. It is clearing off old scores with a vengeance, and establishing morality on an entirely new basis. For my own part, I can only say of the whole of the reasoning of this author, with Voltaire’s Candide, ‘la tête me tourne: on ne sait ou l’on est.’ Whether any or all of those metaphysical beings enumerated by Mr. Tooke do or do not exist, what their nature or qualities are, whether modes, relatives, substances, I shall not here undertake to determine, but I do conceive that none of these questions can be resolved in any way by inquiring whether the names denoting them are not the past participles of certain verbs. A shorter method would I think be to say at once that all metaphysical and moral terms, whether participles or not, are but names, that names are not things, and that therefore the things themselves have no existence. It is upon this philosophical principle that the heroical Jonathan Wild proceeds in his definition of the word Honour, for after losing himself to no purpose in the common metaphysical jargon on the subject, and in moral causes and qualities, he comes at last to this clear and unembarrassed conclusion,—‘That honour consists in the word honour, and nothing else.’

I will only give one instance more of this reformed system of logic and metaphysics.

‘Burdett. I still wish for an explanation of one word more: which on account of its extreme importance ought not to be omitted. What is Truth? You know when Pilate had asked the same question, he went out and would not stay for an answer, and from that time to this no answer has been given. And from that time to this mankind have been wrangling and tearing each other to pieces for the truth, without once considering the meaning of the word.’

‘Tooke. This word will give us no trouble. Like the other words, true is also a past participle of the Saxon verb treowan, confidere, to think, to believe firmly, to be thoroughly persuaded of, to trow. True, as we now write it, or trew, as it was formerly written, means simply and merely that which is trowed, and instead of its 126being a rare commodity upon earth, except only in words, there is nothing but truth in the world.

‘That every man, in his communication with others, should speak that which he troweth, is of so great importance to mankind, that it ought not to surprise us, if we find the most extravagant and exaggerated praises bestowed upon truth. But truth supposes mankind; for whom and by whom alone the word is formed, and to whom only it is applicable. If no man, no truth. There is therefore no such thing as eternal, immutable, everlasting truth; unless mankind, such as they are at present, be also eternal, immutable, and everlasting. Two persons may contradict each other, and yet both speak truth. For the truth of one person may be opposite to the truth of another. To speak truth may be a vice as well as a virtue; for there are many occasions when it ought not to be spoken. If you reject my explanation, find out if you can some other possible meaning of the word, or content yourself with Johnson, by saying that true is not false, and false is—not true. For so he explains the words.’—Vol. ii. p. 407.

In a note the author adds, ‘Mr. Locke, in the second book of his Essay, chapter xxxii., treats of true and false ideas, and is much distressed throughout the whole chapter, because he had not in his mind any determinate meaning of the word true. If that excellent man had himself followed the advice which he gave to his disputing friends concerning the word liquor; if he had followed his own rule, previously to writing about true and false ideas, and had determined what meaning he applied to true, being, thing, real, right, wrong, he could not have written the above chapter, which exceedingly distresses the reader, who searches for a meaning where there is none to be found.’

Whether Mr. Locke would have been satisfied with Mr. Tooke’s account of these words, I cannot say. I know that I am not. I do not think it the true one. It is therefore not the true one. Mr. Tooke thinks it is, and therefore it is the true one. Which of us is right? That what a man thinks, he thinks, and that if he speaks what he thinks, he speaks truth in one principal sense of the word, is what does not require much illustration; but whether what he thinks is true or false, whether his opinion is right or wrong, or whether there is not another possible and actual meaning of the terms besides that given by Mr. Tooke, is the old difficulty, which remains just where it was before, in spite of etymology.

The application of the theory of language to the philosophy of the mind, Mr. Tooke has reserved for a volume by itself: the principle, however, which he means to establish, he has very explicitly laid 127down in the beginning of his first volume. ‘The business of the mind,’ he says, ‘as far as it concerns language, appears to me to be very simple. It extends no farther than to receive impressions, that is, to have sensations or feelings. What are called its operations, are merely the operations of language. The greatest part of Mr. Locke’s Essay, that is, all which relates to what he calls the composition, abstraction, complexity, generalization, relation, &c. of ideas, does indeed merely concern language. If he had been sooner aware of the inseparable connexion between words and knowledge, he would not have talked of the composition of ideas; but would have seen that the only composition was in the terms; and consequently that it was as improper to talk of a complex idea as of a complex star. It is an easy matter, upon Mr. Locke’s own principles and a physical consideration of the senses and the mind, to prove the impossibility of the composition of ideas; and that they are not ideas, but merely terms which are general and abstract.’—Vol. i. pp. 39, 51, &c.

Now I grant that Mr. Locke’s own principles, and a physical consideration of the mind, do lead to the conclusion here stated, that is, to an absurdity; and it is from thence I have endeavoured to show more than once that those principles, and the considering the mind as a physical thing, are themselves absurd. How a term can be complex otherwise than from the complexity of its meaning, that is, of the idea attached to it, is difficult to understand.

As to the other position, that we have no general ideas, but that it is the terms only that are general and abstract, Mr. Tooke has borrowed this piece of philosophy from Mr. Locke, who borrowed it from Hobbes. ‘Universality’ says Mr. Locke, as quoted by our author, ‘belongs not to things, which are all of them particular in their existence. When, therefore, we quit particulars, the generals that rest are only creatures of our own; their general nature being nothing but the capacity they are put into of signifying or representing many particulars.’ I have, however, before shown how very loose, uncertain, and wavering, Mr. Locke’s reasoning on this subject is, though I cannot agree with Mr. Tooke that it is therefore ‘very different from that incomparable author’s usual method of proceeding.’ There is one question which may be asked with respect to this statement, which, if fairly answered, will perhaps, decide the point in dispute: viz. if there is no general nature in things, or if we have no general idea of what they have in common or the same, how is it that we know when to apply the same general terms to different particulars, which on this principle will have nothing left to connect them together in the mind? For example, take the words, a white horse. Now say they, it is the terms which are general or common, but we have no general or abstract idea corresponding 128to them. But if we had no general idea of white, nor any general idea of a horse, we should have nothing more to guide us in applying this phrase to any but the first horse, than in applying the terms of an unknown tongue to their respective objects. For it is the idea of something general or common between the several objects, which can alone determine us in assigning the same name to things which, considered as particulars, or setting aside that general nature, are perfectly distinct and independent. Without this link in the mind, this general perception of the qualities of things, the terms a white horse could no more be applied, and would, in fact, be no more applicable to animals of this description generally, than to any other animal. In short, what is it that ‘puts the same common name into a capacity of signifying many particulars,’ but that those particulars are, and are conceived to be of the same kind? That is, general terms necessarily imply a class of things and ideas. Language without this would be reduced to a heap of proper names: and we should be just as much at a loss to name any object generally, from its agreement with others, as to know whether we should call the first man we met in the street by the name of John or Thomas. The existence and use of general terms is alone a sufficient proof of the power of abstraction in the human mind; nor is it possible to give even a plausible account of language without it. But Mr. Tooke has on all possible occasions sacrificed common sense to a false philosophy and epigrammatic logic. In opposition to this author’s assertion, that we have neither complex nor abstract ideas, I think it may be proved to a demonstration that we have no others. If our ideas were absolutely simple and individual, we could have no idea of any of those objects which in this erring, half-thinking philosophy are called individual, as a table or a chair, a blade of grass, or a grain of sand. For every one of these includes a certain configuration, hardness, colour, &c. i.e. ideas of different things, and received by different senses, which must be put together by the understanding before they can be referred to any particular thing, or form one idea. Without the cementing power of the mind, all our ideas would be necessarily decomposed and crumbled down into their original elements and flexional parts. We could indeed never carry on a chain of reasoning on any subject, for the very links of which this chain must consist, would be ground to powder. No two of these atomic impressions could ever club together to form even a sensible point, much less should we be able ever to arrive at any of the larger masses, or nominal descriptions of things. All nature, all objects, all parts of all objects would be equally ‘without form and void.’ The mind alone is formative, to borrow the expression of a celebrated German writer, or it is that alone which by its pervading and elastic energy unfolds and 129expands our ideas, that gives order and consistency to them, that assigns to every part its proper place, and that constructs the idea of the whole. Ideas are the offspring of the understanding, not of the senses. In other words, it is the understanding alone that perceives relation, but every object is made up of a bundle of relations. In short, there is no object or idea which does not consist of a number of parts arranged in a certain manner, but of this arrangement the parts themselves cannot be conscious. A ‘physical consideration of the senses and the mind’ can never therefore account for our ideas, even of sensible objects. Mr. Locke’s own principles do indeed exclude all power of understanding from the human mind. The manner in which Hobbes and Berkeley have explained the nature of mathematical demonstration upon this system shows its utter inadequacy to any of the purposes of general reasoning, and is a plain confession of the necessity of abstract ideas. Mr. Hume considers the principle that abstraction is not an operation of the mind, but of language, as one of the most capital discoveries of modern philosophy, and attributes it to Bishop Berkeley. Berkeley has however only adopted the arguments and indeed almost the very words of Hobbes. The latter author in the passage which has been already quoted says, ‘By this imposition of names, some of larger, some of stricter signification, we turn the reckoning of the consequences of things imagined in the mind into a reckoning of the consequences of appellations. For example, a man that hath no use of speech at all, such as is born and remains perfectly deaf and dumb, if he set before his eyes a triangle, and by it two right angles, (such as are the corners of a square figure) he may by meditation compare and find that the three angles of that triangle are equal to those two right angles that stand by it. But if another triangle be shewn him different in shape from the former, he cannot know without a new labour, whether the three angles of that also be equal to the same. But he that hath the use of words, when he observes that such equality was consequent not to the length of the sides, nor to any other particular thing in his triangle, but only to this, that the sides were straight and the angles three, and that that was all for which he named it a triangle, will boldly conclude universally, that such equality of angles is in all triangles whatsoever; and register his invention in these general terms: Every triangle hath its three angles equal to two right ones. And thus the consequence found in one particular, comes to be registered and remembered as an universal rule; and discharges our mental reckoning of time and place, and delivers us from all labour of the mind saving the first, and makes that which was found true here and now to be true in all times and places.’—Leviathan, p. 14.

130Bishop Berkeley gives the same view of the nature of abstract reasoning in the introduction to his ‘Principles of Human Knowledge.’ ‘But here,’ he says, ‘it will be demanded how we can know any proposition to be true of all particular triangles, except we have first seen it demonstrated of the abstract idea of a triangle, which agrees equally to all. To which I answer, that though the idea I have in view, whilst I make the demonstration be, for instance, that of an isosceles rectangular triangle, whose sides are of a determinate length, I may nevertheless be certain it extends to all other rectilinear triangles of what sort or bigness soever. And that because neither the right angle nor the equality nor the determinate length of the sides are at all concerned in the demonstration. ’Tis true, the diagram I have in view includes all these particulars, but then there’s not the least mention made of them in the proof of the proposition. It is not said the three angles are equal to two right ones, because one of them is a right angle, or because the sides comprehending it are of the same length; which sufficiently shows that the right angle might have been oblique and the sides unequal, and for all that the demonstration have held good. And for this reason it is that I conclude that to be true of any oblique angular or scalenon, which I had demonstrated of a particular right angled equicrural triangle, and not because I demonstrated the proposition of the abstract idea of a triangle.’—Page 34.

This answer does not appear to me satisfactory. It amounts to this, that though the diagram we have in view includes a number of particular circumstances, not applicable to other cases, yet we know the principle to be true generally, because there is not the least mention made of these particulars in the proof of the proposition.

When it is asserted that we must necessarily have the idea of a particular size whenever we think of a man in general, all that is intended I believe is that we must think of a particular height. This idea it is supposed must be particular and determinate, just as we must draw a line with a piece of chalk, or make a mark with the slider of a measuring instrument in one place and not in another. I think it may be shown that this view of the question is also extremely fallacious and an inversion of the order of our ideas. The height of the individual is thus resolved into the consideration of the lines terminating or defining it, and the intermediate space of which it properly consists is entirely overlooked. For let us take any given height of a man, whether tall, short, or middle-sized, and let that height be as visible as you please, I would ask whether the actual length to which it amounts does not consist of a number of other lengths, as if it be a tall man, the length will be six feet, and each of these feet will consist of as many inches, and those inches will be 131again made up of decimals, and those decimals of other subordinate and infinitesimal parts, which must be all distinctly perceived and added together before the sum total which they compose can be pretended to be a distinct, particular, or individual idea. In any given visible object we have always a gross, general idea of something extended, and never of the precise length; for this precise length as it is thought to be is necessarily composed of a number of lengths too many, and too minute to be separately attended to or jointly conceived by the mind, and at last loses itself in the infinite divisibility of matter. What sort of distinctness or individuality can therefore be found in any visible image or object of sense, I cannot well conceive: it seems to me like seeking for certainty in the dancing of insects in the evening sun, or for fixedness and rest in the motions of the sea. All particulars are nothing but generals, more or less defined according to circumstances, but never perfectly so. The knowledge of any finite being rests in generals, and if we think to exclude all generality from our ideas of things, as implying a want of perfect truth and clearness, we must be constrained to remain in utter ignorance. Let any one try the experiment of counting a flock of sheep driven fast by him, and he will soon find his imagination unable to keep pace with the rapid succession of objects; and his idea of a particular number slide into the general notion of multitude: not that because there are more objects than he can possibly count he will think there are none, or that the word flock will present to his mind a mere name without any idea corresponding to it. Every act of the attention, every object we see or think of, offers a proof of the same kind.

The application of this view of the subject to explain the difference between the synthetical and analytical faculties, between generalization and abstraction in the proper acceptation of this last word, between common sense or feeling and understanding or reason, demands a separate essay.

I do not think it possible ever to arrive at the truth upon these, or to prove the existence of general or abstract ideas, by beginning in Mr. Locke’s method with particular ones. This faculty of abstraction or generalization (to use the words indifferently) is indeed by most considered as a sort of artificial refinement upon our other ideas, as an excrescence, no ways contained in the common impressions of things, nor scarcely necessary to the common purposes of life; and is by Mr. Locke altogether denied to be among the faculties of brutes. It is the ornament and top-addition of the mind of man which proceeding from simple sensation upwards, is gradually sublimed into the abstract notions of things: ‘so from the root springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves more airy, last the bright consummate 132flower.’ On the other hand, I imagine that all our notions from first to last are, strictly speaking, general and abstract, not absolute and particular, and that this faculty mixes itself more or less with every act of the mind, and in every moment of its existence.

Lastly, I conceive that the mind has not been fairly dealt with in this and other questions of the same kind. The difficulty belonging to the notion of abstraction or comprehension it is perhaps impossible ever to clear up: but that is no reason why we should discard those operations from the human mind any more than we should deny the existence of motion, extension, or curved lines in nature, because we cannot explain them. Matter alone seems to have the privilege of presenting difficulties and contradictions at any time, which pass current under the name of facts; but the moment any thing of this kind is observed in the understanding, all the petulance of logicians is up in arms. The mind is made the mark on which they vent all the modes and figures of their impertinence; and metaphysical truth has in this respect fared like the milk-white hind, the emblem of pure faith, in Dryden’s fable, which

The modern system of philosophy has one great advantage, which makes it difficult to attack it with any hopes of success, namely, that it is not founded on any of the prevailing opinions or natural feelings of mankind. It rests upon a single principle—its boasted superiority over all prejudice. Unsupported by facts or reason, it is by this circumstance alone enabled to trample upon every dictate of the understanding or feeling of the heart, as weak and vulgar prejudices. In this alone it is secure and invulnerable. To this it owes its giant power and dreaded name. Let the contradictions and fallacies contained in the system be proved over and over again, still the answer is ready:—all the objections made to it are resolved into prejudice. Destitute of every other support, it staggers our faith in received opinions by the hardihood of its assertions, and derives its claim to implicit credence by the boldness of its defiance of all established authority. Common sense is brought to the bar like an old offender, and condemned without a hearing. Under the shelter of this presumption 133there is no absurdity so great as not to be advanced with impunity. There is no hypothesis, however gratuitous, however inadequate, or however unfounded, that is not held up as the true one, if it is but contrary to all observation and experience. The grossest credulity succeeds to the most extravagant scepticism. From being the slaves of authority we become the dupes of paradox. Every opinion which is so absurd as never to have been affirmed before is converted into an undeniable truth. Whoever dares to question it, unawed by the authority on the one hand, and undazzled by the novelty on the other, is considered as a person of a narrow and bigoted understanding, and as relinquishing all claim to the exercise of his reason. We are effectually deterred from protesting against any of these ‘wise saws and modern instances’ by the dread of being mixed up with the vulgar, and we dare not avoid the common feelings of humanity lest we should be ridiculed as the dupes of self-love, or of the whining cant of moralists. There is however no bigotry so blind as that which is founded on a supposed exemption from all prejudice. The mind in this case identifies every opinion of its own with reason itself: and regarding the objections made to it as proceeding from a jaundiced and distorted view of the case, it converts them into the strongest confirmations of the depth and comprehensiveness of its own views. There are accordingly no people so little capable of reasoning as those who make the loudest pretensions to it: and having assumed the name of Philosophers, are astonished that any one should call their title in question.

I have been led to make these observations from reading Helvetius’s account of self-love, which is nothing but a series of misrepresentations and assumptions of the question, and which can only have imposed upon his readers from that tone of confidence and alertness which men always have in attacking a received and long-established principle, and a tacit and involuntary feeling that boldness of opinion implies strength and independence of mind. A few examples will show that this censure is well-founded. ‘What,’ says this author in the beginning of his view of the question,—‘what is the human understanding? It is the assemblage of his ideas. To what sort of understanding do we give the name of talent? To the understanding concentrated upon a single subject; that is to say to a large assemblage of ideas of the same kind.

‘Now if there are no innate ideas, human understanding and genius are only acquired; and both one and the other have the following faculties for their principles:

‘1. Physical sensibility; without which we could receive no sensations.

134‘2. Memory, that is to say, the faculty of recalling the sensations received.

‘3. The interest which we have in comparing our sensations together, that is to say, in observing with attention the resemblances and differences, the agreements and disagreements of several objects amongst them. It is this interest which fixes the attention, and in minds commonly well-organised, is the efficient cause of understanding.’

It is added in a note, ‘To judge, according to M. Rousseau, is not to feel. The proof of his opinion is that we have a faculty or power which enables us to compare objects. Now this power according to him cannot be the effect of physical sensibility. But,’ continues Helvetius, ‘if Rousseau had more profoundly considered the question, he would have perceived that this power (or faculty of understanding) is no other than the interest itself which we have to compare these objects, and that this interest takes its rise in the feeling of self-love, which is the immediate effect of physical sensibility.’ This is the author’s account of the understanding. It is bold and decided, but it is not on that account either more or less true. It comes to this; that the faculty or power of understanding is owing to the use we have for such a faculty; or that we have a power of comparing our sensations, because we have an interest in comparing them, and that therefore this power is nothing but the effect of physical sensibility. So that a man before he has any understanding, feeling the want of it, supplies himself with this very necessary faculty by an act of the will, and out of pure friendly regard to himself. The interest or desire to fly might at this rate supply us with a pair of wings, or an effort of curiosity might furnish us with a new sense, or an effort of self-interest might enable a man to be in two places at once. All these consequences might very easily follow, if we were only satisfied to believe any extravagance of assertion, and to use words systematically without either connexion or meaning.

The whole of this writer’s argument against the existence of a benevolent principle in the mind is founded either on a play of words, or an arbitrary substitution of one feeling for another. He has confounded, and does not even seem to have been aware of the distinction between, self-love, considered as a rational principle of action, or the voluntary and deliberate pursuit of our own good as such, and that immediate interest or gratification which the mind may have in the pursuit of any object either relating to ourselves or others. He sometimes evidently considers the former of these, that is, a deliberating, calculating, conscious selfishness, as the only rational principle of action, and treats all other feelings as romance and folly, 135or even denies their existence; while at other times he contends that the most disinterested generosity, patriotism, and love of fame, are equally and in the strictest sense self-love, because the pursuit of these objects is connected with and tends immediately and intentionally to the gratification of the individual who has an attachment to them.

After stating the sentiment of Rousseau, that without an innate and abstract sense of right and wrong we should not see the just man and the true citizen consult the public good to his own prejudice, Helvetius goes on thus:—‘No one, I reply, has ever been found to promote the public good when it injured his own interest. The patriot who risks his life to crown himself with glory, to gain the public esteem, and to deliver his country from slavery, yields to the feeling which is most agreeable to him. Why should he not place his happiness in the exercise of virtue, in the acquisition of public respect, and in the pleasure consequent upon this respect? For what reason, in a word, should he not expose his life for his country, when the sailor and soldier, the one at sea, and the other in the trenches, daily expose theirs for a shilling? The virtuous man who seems to sacrifice his own good to that of the public is only governed by a sentiment of noble self-interest. Why should M. Rousseau deny here that interest is the exclusive and universal motive of action, when he himself admits it in a thousand places of his work?’ The author then quotes the following passage from Rousseau’s ‘Emilius’ in support of his doctrine:—‘A man may indeed pretend to prefer my interest to his own: however plausibly he colours over this falsehood, I am quite sure it is one.’ But I would ask why, on the principle just stated by Helvetius, he should not prefer another to himself, ‘if it is agreeable to him?’ Why should he not place his happiness in the exercise of friendship? Why should he not risk his life for his friend, as well as the patriot for his country, or as the soldier or sailor for a shilling a day? What is become, all of a sudden, of that noble self-interest which identifies us with our country and our kind? Is it quite forgot? Has it evaporated with a breath? Is there nothing of it left? When any instances are brought, or supposed, of the sacrifice of private interest to principle, or virtue, or passion, it is immediately pretended that these instances are not at all inconsistent with the grand universal principle of self-interest, which embraces all the sentiments and affections of the human mind, even the most heroical and disinterested. But the moment these instances are out of sight and the evasion is no longer necessary, this expansive principle shrinks into its own natural littleness again; and excludes all regard to the good of others as romantic and idle folly. All those 136instances of virtue which are at one moment perfectly compatible with this ‘universal principle of action’ are the next moment said to be incompatible with it, and the author after his little rhetorical glozings on the extensive views and generous sacrifices of self-interest, immediately descends into the vulgar proverb that ‘the misfortunes of others are but a dream.’ To proceed: Helvetius says, (p. 14):

‘What we understand by goodness or the moral sense in man, is his benevolence towards others: and this benevolence we always find in proportion to the utility they are of to him. I prefer my fellow-citizens to strangers, and my friend to my fellow-citizens. The welfare of my friend is reflected upon me. If he becomes more rich and more powerful, I partake of his riches and his power. Benevolence towards others is nothing, then, but the effect of love to ourselves.’

The inference here stated, that benevolence is merely a reflection from self-love, is founded on the assumption that we always feel for others in proportion to the advantage they are of to us, and this assumption is a false one. That the habitual or known connexion between our own welfare and that of others, is one great source of our attachment to them, one bond of society, is what I do not wish to deny: the question is whether it is the only one in the mind, or whether benevolence has not a natural basis of its own to rest upon, as well as self-love. Grant this, and the actual effects which we observe in human life will follow from both principles combined: but to say that our attachment to others is in the exact ratio of our obligations to them, is contrary to all we know of human nature. I would ask whether the affection of a mother for her child is owing to the good received or bestowed; to the child’s power of conferring benefits, or its standing in need of assistance? Are not the fatigues which the mother undergoes for the child, its helpless condition, its little vexations, its sufferings from ill health or accidents, additional ties upon maternal tenderness, which by increasing the attention to the wants of the child and anxiety to supply them, produce a proportionable interest in an attachment to its welfare? Helvetius justly observes that we prefer a friend to a stranger, but the reason which he assigns for it, that our interests and pleasures are more closely allied, is not the only one. We participate in the successes of our friends, it is true, but we also participate in their distresses and disappointments, and it is not always found that this lessens our regard for them. Benevolence, therefore, is not a mere physical reflection from self-love. His account of friendship agrees exactly with that which the grave historian of Jonathan Wild has given of the friendship between his hero and Count La Ruse: ‘Mutual interest, the greatest 137of all purposes, was the cement of this alliance, which nothing of consequence but superior interest was capable of dissolving.’

The mechanical principle of association, understood in a strict sense, will not account for the multifarious and mixed nature of our affections, and if we do not understand it in a strict sense, it will then only be another name for sympathy, imagination, or any thing else.

‘What then in truth,’ proceeds this author, ‘is the natural goodness, or moral sense, so much extolled by the English? What distinct idea can we form of such a sense, or on what evidence found its existence? If we allow a moral sense, why not allow an algebraical or chemical sense? Nothing is more absurd than this theological philosophy of Shaftesbury, and yet most of the English are as much delighted with it as the French formerly were with their music. It is not the same with other nations. No foreigner can understand the one or hear the other. It is a film on the eye of the English, which it is necessary to remove in order that they may see.

‘According to their philosophy, a man in a state of indifference sitting in his elbow chair, desires the good of others: but in as far as he is indifferent, man desires and can desire nothing. A state of desire and indifference is incompatible. These philosophers repeat in vain that the moral sense is implanted in man, and makes him at a certain time disposed to compassionate the sufferings of his fellows. This system is in fact nothing more than the system of innate ideas overturned by Locke. For my part, I can form an idea of my five senses, and of the organs which constitute them: but I confess that I have no more idea of a moral sense than of a moral elephant and castle. The enthusiasts for “moral beauty” are ignorant of the contempt in which these nations are held by all those who, either in the character of statesmen, officers of police, or men of the world, have an opportunity of knowing what human nature is.’—Page 15.

In reply to the dogmatical question with which this passage begins—‘What distinct idea can be given of the moral sense?’—I answer for myself, the following very explicit one: namely, that it is the natural preference of good to evil, arising from the conception or idea formed of them in the understanding. Those who assert a moral sense, affirm that there is a faculty of some sort or other inseparable from the nature of a rational and intelligent being, that enables us to form a conception of good and evil, or of the feelings of pleasure and pain generally speaking, which ideas so formed have a natural tendency to excite certain affections and actions.

Those, on the other hand, who deny a moral sense, or any thing 138equivalent to it, must affirm either that we can form no idea whatever of the feelings of others, or of good and evil generally speaking, or that these ideas have no possible influence over the mind, except from their connexion with physical impressions, memory, habit, self-interest, or some other motive, quite distinct from the ideas themselves. But I have already shown that without the co-operation of rational motives, there could be neither habit, nor self-interest, nor voluntary action of any kind. The moral is therefore nothing but the application of the understanding to the feelings or ideas of good. The question, consequently, whether there is a moral sense, is reducible to this; whether the mind can understand or conceive, or be affected by any thing beyond its own physical or mechanical feelings. If it can, then there is something in man besides his five senses and the organs which compose them, for these can give him no thought, conception, or sympathy with any thing beyond himself, or even with himself beyond the present moment. The actions, and events, and feelings of human life, the passions and pursuits of men, could no more go on without the interference of the understanding than without an original principle of physical sensibility. Neither the one nor the other explains the whole economy of our moral nature, but that is no reason why both are not essential and integrant parts of it. The five senses and the organs which compose them will not account for the science of morality, let it be as imperfect as it may, any more than for the science of algebra or chemistry in the different degrees in which they are possessed by different men. The point is not whether reason is furnishing us with a perfect and infallible rule of action, absolute over any other motive or passion, but whether it is any rule at all, whether it has any possible influence over our moral feelings. According to Helvetius, the moral sense is either a word without meaning, or it must signify one of our five senses: that is, impressions not actually affecting one or other of these are to him absolutely nothing. It is strange that after this he should propose to take the film from the eyes of those who ridiculously fancy that they have other ideas. It is as if a blind man should undertake to undeceive those who can see, with respect to certain chemical notions, called objects of sight. In confirmation of his theory, he refers the romantic admirers of moral beauty to the opinion of certain classes and professions of men, whose visual ray has been purged, and who, it should seem, possess a sort of second sight into human nature, namely, ministers of state, officers of police, and men of business. Either this argument is a satire on these characters, or on the understanding of his readers. If these respectable, and, I dare say, very well-meaning persons, are by the narrowness of their occupations and views, precluded from any general knowledge 139of human nature, or the virtues of the human heart, it is an uncivil irony to propose them as consummate judges of the abstract nature of man. If, on the other hand, in spite of their employment, they retain the same notions and liberality of feeling as other men, there is no reason to suppose that they would subscribe to the sentiment of our author, that morality ‘is an affair of the five senses:’ a proposition which any minister of state, or police officer, or man of the world, possessed of the least common sense, would treat with as much contempt and incredulity as Shaftesbury or Hutcheson. Our author’s observation, that the notion of a moral sense or natural disposition to sympathise with others, is only the doctrine of innate ideas in disguise, is another misconception of the nature of the question. The actual feeling of compassion is not, as he says, innate; but this no more proves that the disposition to compassion or benevolence is not innate, than the fact that the ideas or feelings of pleasure and pain are not innate and born with us, proves that physical sensibility is not an original faculty of the mind. Moral sensibility, or the capacity of being affected by the ideas of certain objects, is as much a part of our nature as physical sensibility, or the capacity of being affected in a certain manner by the objects themselves. Helvetius says, physical sensibility is the only quality essential to the nature of man: I answer, that physical sensibility is not the only quality essential to the nature of man. To show how senseless and insignificant is this kind of reasoning, I will refer back to Helvetius’s concise profession of his metaphysical faith, which is that he can form an idea of the five senses and of the organs of them, but of nothing else. Now, I may ask, how he comes by this idea? Which of his senses or which of the organs of them is it that gives him an idea of the other four? Has the eye an action of words, or the ear of colours, or either of the impressions of taste, smell, or feeling? Which of them is the common sense? or if none, must we not suppose some superintending faculty to which all the other impressions are subject, and which alone can give him an idea of his own senses or their organs? Another instance of the utter want of logical and consecutive reasoning which characterizes the French philosophers, might be given in their singular proof of the selfishness of the human mind from the incompatibility of a state of desire and a state of indifference. The English philosophers are charged with representing a man in a state of indifference, ‘seated in his arm-chair,’ as desiring the good of others. This arm-chair it should seem, no less than his state of indifference, presents certain insurmountable barriers to his desires, which they cannot pass so as to affect him with the slightest concern for any thing beyond it. So far as a man is indifferent to every thing, he cannot it is true desire any 140thing. All that follows from this is, that so far as he desires the good of others he is not in a state of indifference.

That a man cannot desire an object and not desire it at the same time requires no proof. But what ought to have been proved, and what was meant to be so, is that a man in a state of indifference to the welfare of others on his own account, cannot desire it for their sake, and this is what is not proved by the truism mentioned. The general maxim, that I cannot desire any object as long as I am indifferent to it, cannot be made to show that self-interest is the only motive that can make me pass from the one state into the other. By indifference, as used by the writers here ridiculed, in a popular sense, is evidently meant the want of personal or physical interest in any object, and to say that this necessarily implies the want of every other kind of interest in it, of all rational desire of the good of others, is a meagre assumption of the point in dispute. It is strange that these pretenders to philosophy choose to insult the English writers for daring to wear the plain, homely, useful, national garb of philosophy, while their most glossy and most fashionable suits are made up of the shreds and patches stolen from our countryman Hobbes, disguised with a few spangles, tinselled lace, and tagged points of their own.

Helvetius’s paraphrase of Hobbes’s maxim, that ‘pity is only another name for self-love,’ is as follows:

‘What then do I feel in the presence of an object of compassion? A strong emotion. What causes this emotion? The recollection of the sufferings to which man is subject, and to which I am myself liable. It is this consideration that disturbs, that torments me, and so long as the unfortunate sufferer continues in my presence I am affected with melancholy sensations. Have I relieved him,—do I no longer see him? A calm is insensibly restored to my breast, because in proportion to the distance to which he is removed, the remembrance of the evils which his sight recalled is gradually effaced. When I was concerned for him, then, I was concerned only for myself. What are, in fact, the sufferings which I compassionate the most? They are those not only which I have felt myself, but those which I may still feel. Those evils the more present to my memory impress me more strongly. My sympathy with the sufferings of another is always in exact proportion to my fear of being exposed to the same sufferings myself. I would willingly, if it were possible, destroy the very germ of my own sufferings in him, and thus be released from the apprehension of the like evils to myself in time to come. The love of others is never any thing more in the human mind than the effect of love to ourselves, and consequently of our physical sensibility.’—Vol. ii. page 20.

141To this I answer as follows:—What do I feel in the presence of an object of compassion? A strong emotion. What causes this emotion? Not, certainly, the general recollection of the sufferings to which man in general is subject, or to which I myself may be exposed. It is not this remote and accidental reflection, which has no particular reference to the object before me, but a strong sense of the sufferings of the particular person, excited by his immediate presence, which affects me with compassion, and impels me to his relief. The relief I afford him, or the absence of the object, lessens my uneasiness, either by the contemplation of the diminution of his sufferings, to which I have contributed, or by diverting my mind from the consideration of his sufferings. Neither the relief afforded, nor the absence of the object could produce this effect, if the strong emotion which I experience did not relate to the particular object. It is the fate of the individual, and of him only, which I am contemplating, and my sympathy accordingly rises and falls with it, or as my attention is more or less fixed upon it. A total alteration in the situation of the individual produces a total change in my feelings with respect to him, which could not be the case, if my compassion depended wholly on my sense of my own security, or the general condition of human nature. In feeling compassion for another, therefore, it was not for myself that I was concerned, but for the sufferer: my feelings were, in a manner, bound up with his, and I forgot for the moment both myself and others. But do I not compassionate most those evils which I have felt myself? Yes; because from my own knowledge of them I have a more lively sense of what others must suffer from them: just in the same manner I dread those evils most with respect to myself in time to come. For those evils which I have not experienced, I feel, for that reason, less sympathy in respect to others, and less dread with reference to myself in time to come. Neither do I always feel for others in proportion as I dread the same feelings myself. The memory of my past sufferings cannot excite my disposition to relieve those of others, and the imaginary apprehension of my own future sufferings can only tend to produce voluntary action on the same principle as my imagination of those or others. I do not wish to prevent their sufferings as the germ or cause of mine, but because they are of the same nature as mine. Benevolence, therefore, is not the effect of self love, though it is the effect of our physical sensibility, combined with our other faculties. I will in this place insert the reply of Bishop Butler (a true philosopher) to the same argument in Hobbes, in a note to one of his sermons.

‘If any person can in earnest doubt whether there be such a thing as good-will in one man towards another (for the question is not concerning 142either the degree or extensiveness of it, but concerning the affection itself,) let it be observed, that whether man be thus or otherwise constituted, what is the inward frame in this particular is a mere question of fact or natural history, not proveable immediately by reason. It is therefore to be judged of and determined in the same way other facts or historical matters are; by appealing to the external senses, or inward perceptions, respectively, as the matter under consideration is cognizable by one or the other; by arguing from acknowledged facts and actions, inquiring whether these do not suppose and prove the matter in question so far as it is capable of proof. And, lastly, by the testimony of mankind. Now that there is some degree of benevolence amongst men, may be as strongly and plainly proved in all these ways, as it could possibly be proved, supposing there was this affection in our nature. And should any one think fit to assert, that resentment in the mind of man was absolutely nothing but reasonable concern for our own safety, the falsity of this, and what is the real nature of that passion, could be shown in no other ways than those in which it may be shown, that there is such a thing in some degree as real good-will in man towards man.

‘There being manifestly this appearance of men’s substituting others for themselves, and being carried out and affected towards them as towards themselves; some persons, who have a system which excludes every affection of this sort, have taken a pleasant method to solve it; and tell you it is not another you are at all concerned about, but your self only, when you feel the affection called compassion; i.e. there is a plain matter of fact, which men cannot reconcile with the general account they think fit to give of things; they therefore, instead of that manifest fact, substitute another, which is reconcilable to their own scheme. For does not every body by compassion mean an affection the object of which is another in distress? Instead of this, but designing to have it mistaken for this, they speak of an affection or passion, the object of which is ourselves, or danger to ourselves. Suppose a person to be in real danger, and by some means or other to have forgot it; any trifling accident, any sound might alarm him, recall the danger to his remembrance, and renew his fears: but it is almost too grossly ridiculous (though it is to show an absurdity) to speak of that sound or accident as an object of compassion; and yet, according to Mr. Hobbes, our greatest friend in distress is no more to us, no more the object of compassion or of any affection in our heart. Neither the one nor the other raises any emotion in our mind, but only the thoughts of our liableness to calamity, and the fear of it: and both equally do this.

‘There are often three distinct perceptions or inward feelings upon 143sight of persons in distress: real sorrow and concern for the misery of our fellow-creatures; some degree of satisfaction from a consciousness of our freedom from that misery; and, as the mind passes on from one thing to another, it is not unnatural from such an occasion to reflect upon our own liableness to the same or other calamities. The two last frequently accompany the first, but it is the first only which is properly compassion, of which the distressed are the object, and which directly carries us with calmness and thought to their assistance. Any one of these, from various and complicated reasons, may in particular cases prevail over the other two; and there are, I suppose, instances where the bare sight of distress, without our feeling any compassion for it, may be the occasion of either or both of the two latter.’

I shall proceed to examine the objection to the doctrine of benevolence, on the supposition that our sympathy when it exists is really a part of our interest. This objection was long ago stated by Hobbes, Rochefoucault, and Mandeville, and has been adopted and glossed over by Helvetius. It is pretended, then, that in wishing to relieve the distresses of others we only desire to remove the uneasiness which pity creates in our mind; that all our actions are unavoidably selfish, as they all arise from the feeling of pleasure or pain existing in the mind of the individual, and that whether we intend our own good or that of others, the immediate gratification connected with the idea of any object is the sole motive which determines us to the pursuit of it.

First, this objection does not at all affect the main question in dispute. For if it is allowed that the idea of the pleasures or pains of others excites an immediate interest in the mind, if we feel sorrow and anxiety for their imaginary distresses exactly in the same way that we do for our own, and are impelled to action by the same principle, whether the action has for its object our own good, or that of others; in a word, if we sympathise with others as we do with ourselves, the nature of man as a voluntary agent must be the same, whether we choose to call this principle self-love, or benevolence, or whatever refinements we may introduce into our manner of explaining it. The relation of man to himself and others as a moral agent is plainly determined, whether a rational pursuit of his own future welfare and that of others is the real or only the ostensible motive of his actions. Were it not that our feelings are so strongly attached to names, the rest would be a question more of speculative curiosity than practice. All that, commonly speaking, is meant by the most disinterested benevolence is this immediate sympathy with the feelings of others, as by self-love is meant the same kind of attachment to our own future interests. For if by self-love we understand any thing 144beyond the impulse of the present moment, any thing different from inclination, let the object be what it will, this can no more be a mechanical thing than the most refined and comprehensive benevolence. Self-love, used in the sense which the above objection implies, must therefore mean some thing very different from an exclusive principle of deliberate, calculating selfishness, rendering us indifferent to every thing but our own advantage, or from the love of physical pleasure or aversion to physical pain, which could produce no interest in any but sensible impressions. In a word, it expresses merely any inclination of the mind be it to what it will, and does not at all determine or limit the object of pursuit. Supposing, therefore, that our most generous feelings and actions were so far equivocal, the object only bearing a show of disinterestedness, the secret motive being always selfish, this would be no reason for rejecting the common use of the term disinterested benevolence, which expresses nothing more than an immediate reference of our actions to the good of others, as self-love expresses a conscious reference of them to our own good as means to an end. This is the proper meaning of the terms. If we denominate our actions not from the object in view, but from the inclination of the individual, there will be an end at once, both of ‘selfishness’ and ‘benevolence.’

But farther, I deny that there is any foundation for the objection itself, or any reason for resolving the feelings of compassion or our voluntary motives in general into a principle of mechanical self-love. That the motive to action exists in the mind of the person who acts, is what no one can deny, or I suppose ever meant to deny. The passion excited and the impression producing it must necessarily affect the individual. There must always be some one to feel and act, or there could evidently be no such thing as feeling or action. If therefore it had ever been implied as a condition in the love of others, that this love should not be felt by the person who loves them, this would be to say that he must love them and not love them at the same time, which is too palpable an absurdity to be thought of for a moment. It could never, I say, be imagined that in order to feel for others, we must in reality feel nothing, or that benevolence, to exist at all, must exist no where. This kind of reasoning is therefore the most arrant trifling. To call my motives or feelings selfish, because they are felt by myself, is an abuse of all language: it might just as well be said that my idea of the monument is a selfish idea, or an idea of myself, because it is I who perceive it. By a selfish feeling must be meant, therefore, a feeling, not which belongs to myself (for that all feelings do, as is understood by every one) but which relates to myself, and in this sense benevolence is not a selfish feeling. It is the individual 145who feels both for himself and others; but by self-love is meant that he feels only for himself; for it is presumed that the word self has some meaning in it, and it would have absolutely none at all, if nothing more were intended by it than any object or impression existing in the mind. It therefore becomes necessary to set limits to the meaning of the terms. If we except the burlesque interpretation of the word just noticed, self-love can mean only one of these three things. 1. The conscious pursuit of our own good as such; 2. The love of physical pleasure and aversion to physical pain; 3. The gratification derived from our sympathy with others. If all our actions do not proceed from one of these three principles, they are all resolvable into self-love.

First, then, self-love may properly signify, as already explained, the love or affection excited by the idea of our own interest, and the conscious pursuit of it as a general, remote, ideal object. In this sense, that is, considered with respect to the proposed end of our actions, I have shown sufficiently that there is no exclusive principle of self-love in the human mind which constantly impels us, as a set purpose, to pursue our own advantage and nothing but that.

Secondly, any being would be strictly a selfish agent, all whose impulses were excited by mere physical pleasure or pain, and who had no sense or imagination, or anxiety about any thing but its own bodily feelings. Such a being could have no idea beyond its actual, momentary existence, and would be equally incapable of rational self-love or benevolence. But it is allowed on all hands that the wants and desires of the human mind are not confined within the limits of his bodily sensations.

Thirdly, it is said that though man is not merely a physical agent, but is naturally capable of being influenced by imagination and sympathy, yet that this does not prove him to be possessed of any degree of disinterestedness or real good-will to others; since he pursues the good of others only from its contributing to his own gratification; that is, not for their sakes, but for his own, which is still selfishness. That is, the indulgence of certain affections necessarily tends, without our thinking of it, to our own immediate gratification, and the impulse to prolong a state of pleasurable feeling and put a stop to whatever gives the mind the least uneasiness, is the real spring and over-ruling principle of our actions. If our benevolence and sympathy with others arose out of and was entirely regulated by this principle of self-gratification, then these might indeed be with justice regarded as the ostensible accidental motives of our actions, as the form or vehicle which served only to transmit the efficacy of any other hidden principle, as the mask and cover of selfishness. But the supposition itself 146is the absurdest that can well be conceived. Self-love and sympathy are inconsistent. The instant we no longer suppose man to be a physical agent, and allow him to have ideas of things out of himself and to be influenced by them, that is, to be endued with sympathy at all, he must necessarily cease to be a merely selfish agent. The instant he is supposed to conceive and to be affected by the ideas of other things, he cannot be wholly governed by what relates to himself. The terms ‘selfish’ and ‘natural agent’ are a contradiction. For the one expression implies that the mind is actuated solely by the impulse of self-love, and the other that it is in the power and under the control of other motives. If our sympathy with others does not always originate in the pleasure with which it is accompanied to ourselves, or does not cease the moment it becomes troublesome to us, then man is not entirely and necessarily the creature of self-love. He is under another law and another necessity, and in spite of himself is forced out of the direct line of his own interest, both future and present, by other principles inseparable from his nature as an intelligent being. Our sympathy therefore is not the servile, ready tool of our self-love, but this latter principle is itself subservient to and over-ruled by the former; that is, an attachment to others is a real independent principle of human action. What I wish to state is this: that the mind neither constantly aims at nor tends to its own individual interest. That in benevolence, compassion, friendship, &c. the mind does aim at its good, is what every one must acknowledge. The only sense then in which our sympathy with others can be construed into self-love, must be that the mind is so constituted that without forethought or any reflection in itself, or when seeming most occupied with others, it is still governed by the same universal feeling of which it is wholly unconscious; and that we indulge in compassion, &c. only because and in as far as it coincides with our own immediate gratification. If it could be shown that the current of our desires always runs the same way, either with or without knowledge, I should confess that this would be a strong presumption of what has been called the falsity of human virtue. But it is not true that such is the natural disposition of the mind. It is not so constructed as to receive no impressions but those which gratify its desire of happiness, or to throw off every the least uneasiness relating to others, like oil from water. It is not true that the feelings of others have no natural hold upon the mind but by their connexion with self-interest. Nothing can be more evident than that we do not on any occasion blindly consult the interest of the moment; there is no instinctive unerring bias to our own good, which in the midst of contrary motives and doubtful appearances, puts aside all other impulses and guides them 147but to its own purposes. It is against all experience to say that in giving way to the feelings of sympathy, any more than to those of rational self-interest (for the argument is the same in both cases), I always yield to that impulse which is accompanied with most pleasure at the time. It is true that I yield to the strongest impulse, but not that my strongest impulse is to pleasure. The idea, for instance, of the relief I may afford to a person in extreme distress, is not necessarily accompanied by a correspondent degree of pleasurable sensation to counterbalance the painful sensation his immediate distress occasions in my mind. It is certain that sometimes the one and sometimes the other may prevail without altering my purpose in the least. I am led to persevere in it by the idea of what are the sufferings, and that it is in my power to alleviate them: though that idea is not always the most agreeable contemplation I could have. Those who voluntarily perform the most painful duties of friendship or humanity do not do them from the immediate gratification arising therefrom; it is as easy to turn away from a beggar as to relieve him; and if the mind were not actuated by a sense of truth, and of the real consequences of its actions, we should uniformly listen to the distresses of others with the same sort of feeling as we go to see a tragedy, only because we calculate that the pleasure is greater than the pain. But I appeal to every one whether this is a true account of human nature. There is indeed a false and bastard kind of feeling commonly called sensibility, which is governed altogether by this reaction of pity on our own minds, and which instead of disproving only serves more strongly to distinguish the true. Upon the theory here stated the mind is supposed to be imperceptibly attached to or to fly from every idea or impression simply as it affects it with pleasure or pain: all other impulses are carried into effect or remain powerless according as they touch this great spring of human affection, which determines every other movement and operation of the mind. Why then do we not reject at first every tendency to what may give us pain? Why do we sympathise with the distresses of others at all?

Why does not our self-love in like manner, if it is so perfectly indifferent and unconcerned a principle as it is represented, immediately disentangle itself from every feeling or idea which it finds becoming painful to it? It should seem we are first impelled by self-love to feel uneasiness at another’s sufferings, in order that the same principle of tender concern for ourselves may afterwards impel us to get rid of that uneasiness by endeavouring to remove the suffering which is the 148cause of it. In desiring to relieve the distress of another, it is pretended that our only wish is to remove the uneasiness it occasions us: do we also feel this uneasiness in the first instance for the same reason, or from regard to ourselves! It is absurd to say that in compassionating others I am only occupied with my own pain or uneasiness, since this very uneasiness arises from my compassion. It is to take the effect for the cause. One half of the process, namely, our connecting the sense of pain with the idea of it, has evidently nothing to do with self-love: nor do I see any more reason for ascribing the active impulse which follows to this principle, since it does not tend to remove the idea of the object as it gives me pain, or as it actually affects myself, but as it is supposed to affect another. Self, mere positive self, is entirely forgotten, both practically and consciously. The effort of the mind is not to remove the idea or the immediate feeling of pain as an abstract impression of the individual, but as it represents the pain which another feels, and is connected with the idea of another’s pain. So long then as this imaginary idea of what another feels excites my sympathy with him, as it fixes my attention on his sufferings, however painful, as it impels me to his relief, and to employ the necessary means for that purpose, at the expense of my ease and satisfaction, that is, so long as I am interested for others, it is not true that my only concern is for myself, or that I am governed solely by the principles of self-interest. Abstract our sympathy as it were from itself, and resolve it into another principle, and it will no longer produce the effects which we constantly see it produce wherever it exists. Let us suppose, for a moment, that the sensations of others were embodied by some means or other with our own, that we felt for them exactly as for ourselves, would not this give us a real sympathy in them, and extend our interest and identity beyond ourselves? Would the motives and principles by which we are actuated be the same as before? But the imagination, though not in the same degree, produces the same effects: it modifies and overrules the impulses of self-love, and binds us to the interests of others as to our own. If the imagination gives us an artificial interest in the welfare of others, if it determines my feelings and actions, and if it even for a moment draws them off from the pursuit of an abstract principle of self-interest, then it cannot be maintained that self-love and benevolence are the same. The motives that give birth to our social affections are by means of the understanding as much regulated by the feelings of others as if we had a real communication and sympathy with them, and are swayed by an impulse altogether foreign to self-love. If it should be said, that after all we are as selfish as we can be, and that the modifications and 149restrictions of the principle of self-love are only a necessary consequence of the nature of a thinking being, I answer, that this is the very point I wish to establish; or that it is downright nonsense to talk of a principle of entire selfishness in connexion with a power of reflection, that is, with a mind capable of perceiving the consequences of things beyond itself, and of being affected by them.

Should any desperate metaphysician persist in affirming that my love of others is still the love of myself, because the impression exciting my sympathy must exist in my mind, and so be a part of myself, I would answer that this is using words without affixing any distinct meaning to them. The love or affection excited by any general idea existing in my mind, can no more be said to be the love of myself, than the idea of another person is the idea of myself, because it is I who perceive it. This method of reasoning, however, will not go a great way to prove the doctrine of an abstract principle of self-interest; for, by the same rule, it would follow that in hating another person I hate myself. Indeed, upon this principle, the whole structure of language is a continued absurdity. It is pretended by a violent assumption, that benevolence is only a desire to prolong the idea of another’s pleasure in one’s own mind, because the idea exists there: malevolence must, therefore, be a disposition to prolong the idea of pain in one’s own mind for the same reason, that is, to injure oneself, for by this philosophy no one can have a single idea which does not refer to, nor any impulse which does not originate in, self. But the love of others cannot be built on the love of self, considering this last as the effect of ‘physical sensibility;’ and the moment we resolve self-love into the rational pursuit of a remote object, it has been shown that the same reasoning applies to both, and that the love of others has the same necessary foundation in the human mind as the love of ourselves.

I have endeavoured to prove that there is no real, physical, or essential difference between the motives by which we are naturally impelled to the pursuit of our own welfare and that of others. The truth of this paradox, great as it seems, may be brought to a very fair test: namely, the being able to demonstrate that the doctrine of self-interest, as it is commonly understood, is in the nature of things an absolute impossibility; and, the being able to account for that hypothesis,—that is, for the common feeling and motives of men from habits, and a confused association of ideas aided by the use of language. If others cannot answer my reasons, and if I can account for their prejudices, I should not be justified in hastily relinquishing my opinion, merely on account of its singularity. It may not be improper briefly to recapitulate the former argument as far as it proceeded. I 150am far from denying that there is a difference between real or physical impulses and ideal motives, but I contend that this distinction is quite beside the present purpose. For self-love properly relates to action, and all action relates to the future, and all future objects are ideal, and the interest we take in all such objects, and the motives to the pursuit of them are ideal too. The distinction between self-love and benevolence, therefore, as separate principles of action, cannot be founded on the difference between real and imaginary objects, between physical and rational motives, inasmuch as the motives and objects of the one and the other are equally ideal things. Whether we voluntarily pursue our own good or that of another, we must inevitably pursue that which is at a distance from us, something out of ourselves, abstracted from the being that acts and wills, and that is incompatible always with our present sensation or physical existence. Self-love, therefore, as the actuating principle of the mind, must imply the efficacy and operation of the imagination of the remote ideas of things, as connected with voluntary action, and the most refined benevolence, the greatest sacrifices of natural affection, of sincerity, of friendship, or humanity, can imply nothing more. The notion of the necessity of actual objects or impressions as the motives to action could not so easily have gained ground as an article of philosophical faith, but from a perverse distinction of the use of the idea to abstract definitions or external forms, having no reference to the feelings or passions; and again from associating the word imagination with merely fictitious situations and events such as never have a real existence, and which consequently do not admit of action. If then self-love, even the most gross and palpable, can only subsist in a rational and intellectual nature, not circumscribed within the narrow limits of animal life, or of the ignorant present time, but capable of giving life and interest to the forms of its own creatures, to the unreal mockeries of future things, to that shadow of itself which the imagination sends before; is it not the height of absurdity to stop here, and poorly and pitifully to suppose that this pervading power must bow down and worship this idol of its own making, and become its blind and servile drudge, and that it cannot extend its creatures as widely around it, as it projects them forward, that it cannot breathe into all other forms the breath of life, and endow even sympathy with vital warmth, and diffuse the soul of morality through all the relations and sentiments of human life? Take away the real, physical, mechanical principle of self-interest, and it will have no basis to rest upon, but that which it has in common with every principle of natural justice or humanity. That there is no real, physical, or mechanical principle of selfishness in the mind, has been abundantly proved. All that remains is, to show how the continued 151identity of the individual with himself has given rise to the notion of self-interest, which after what has been premised will not be a very difficult task. What I shall attempt to show will be, that individuality expresses not either absolute unity or real identity, but properly such a particular relation between a number of things as produces an immediate or continued connexion between them, and a correspondent marked separation between them and other things. Now, in coexisting things, one part may by means of this communication mutually act and be acted upon by others, but where the connexion is continued, or in successive identity of the individual, though what follows may depend intimately on what has gone before, that is, be acted upon by it, it cannot react upon it; that is, the identity of the individual with itself can only relate practically to its connexion with its past, and not with its future self.

Every human being is distinguished from every other human being both numerically and characteristically. He must be numerically distinct by the supposition, or he would not be another individual, but the same. There is, however, no contradiction in supposing two individuals to possess the same absolute properties: but then these original properties must be differently modified afterwards from the necessary difference of their situations, unless we conceive them both to occupy the same relative situation in two distinct systems, corresponding exactly with each other. In fact, every one is found to differ essentially from every one else; if not in original qualities, in the circumstances and events of their lives, and consequently in their ideas and characters. In thinking of a number of individuals, I conceive of them all as differing in various ways from one another as well as from myself. They differ in size, in complexion, in features, in the expression of their countenances, in age, in occupation, in manners, in knowledge, in temper, in power. It is this perception or apprehension of their real differences that first enables me to distinguish the several individuals of the species from each other, and that seems to give rise to the most obvious idea of individuality, as representing, first, positive number, and, secondly, the sum of the differences between one being and another, as they really exist, in a greater or less degree in nature, or as they would appear to exist to an impartial spectator, or to a perfectly intelligent mind. But I am not in reality more different from others than any one individual is from any other individual, neither do I in fact suppose myself to differ really from them otherwise than as they differ from each other. What is it then that makes the difference seem greater to me, or that makes me feel a greater change in passing from my own idea to that of another person, than in passing from the idea of another person to that of any one else? Neither my existing as a separate being, nor 152my differing from others, is of itself sufficient to account for the idea of self, since I might equally perceive others to exist and compare their actual differences without ever having this idea.

Farther, individuality is sometimes used to express not so much the absolute difference or distinction between one individual and another, as a relation or comparison of that individual with itself, whereby we tacitly affirm that it is in some way or other the same with itself, or one idea. Now in one sense it is true of all existences whatever that they are literally the same with themselves; that is, they are what they are, and not something else. Each thing is itself, is that individual thing, and no other; and each combination of things is that combination, and no other. So also each individual conscious being is necessarily the same with himself; or in other words, that combination of ideas which represents any individual person is that combination of ideas, and not a different one. This literal and verbal is the only true and absolute identity which can be affirmed of any individual; which, it is plain, does not arise from a comparison of the different parts or successive impressions composing the general idea one with another, but each with itself or all of them taken together with the whole. I cannot help thinking that some idea of this kind is frequently at the bottom of the perplexity which is felt by most people who are not metaphysicians (not to mention those who are), when they are told that man is not always the same with himself, their notion of identity being that he must always be what he is. He is the same with himself, in as far as he is not another. When they say that the man is the same being in general, they do not really mean that he is the same at twenty that he is at sixty, but their general idea of him includes both these extremes, and therefore the same man, that is, the same collective idea, is both the one and the other. This however is but a rude logic. Not well understanding the process of distinguishing the same individual into different metaphysical sections, to compare, collate, and set one against the other (so awkwardly do we at first apply ourselves to the analytical art), to get rid of the difficulty the mind produces a double individual, part real and part imaginary, or repeats the same idea twice over; in which case it is a contradiction to suppose that the one does not correspond exactly with the other in all its parts. There is no other absolute identity in the case. All individuals (or all that we name such) are aggregates, and aggregates of dissimilar things. Here, then, the question is not how we distinguish one individual from another, or a number of things from a number of other things, which distinction is a matter of absolute truth, but how we come to confound a number of things together, and consider many things as the same, which cannot be 153strictly true. This idea must then merely relate to such a connexion between a number of things as determines the mind to consider them as one whole, each part having a much nearer and more lasting connexion with the rest than with any thing else not included in the same collective idea. (It is obvious that the want of this close affinity and intimate connexion between any number of things is what so far produces a correspondent distinction and separation between one individual and another.) The eye is not the same thing as the ear; it is a contradiction to call it so. Yet both are parts of the same body, which contains these and infinite other distinctions. The reason of this is, that all the parts of the eye have evidently a distinct nature, a separate use, a greater mutual dependence on one another than on those of the ear; at the same time that there is a considerable connexion between the eye and the ear, as parts of the same body and organs of the same mind. Similarity is in general but a subordinate circumstance in determining this relation. For the eye is certainly more like the same organ in another individual, than the different organs of sight and hearing are like one another in the same individual. Yet we do not, in making up the imaginary individual, associate our ideas according to this analogy, which would answer no more purpose than the things themselves would, so separated and so united; but we think of them in that order in which they are mechanically connected together in nature, and in which alone they can serve to any practical purpose. However, it seems hardly possible to define the different degrees or kinds of identity in the same thing by any general rule. The nature of the thing will best point out the sense in which it is to be the same. Individuality may relate either to absolute unity, to the identity or similarity of the parts of any thing, or to an extraordinary degree of connexion between things neither the same, nor similar. This last sense principally determines the positive use of the word, at least with respect to man and other organized beings. Indeed, the term is hardly ever applied in common language to other things.

To insist on the first circumstance, namely, absolute unity, as essential to individuality, would be to destroy all individuality; for it would lead to the supposition of as many distinct individuals as there are thoughts, feelings, actions, and properties in the same being. Each thought would be a separate consciousness, each organ a different system. Each thought is a distinct thing in nature; but the individual is composed of numberless thoughts and various faculties, and contradictory passions, and mixed habits, all curiously woven, and blended together in the same conscious being.

But to proceed to a more particular account of the origin of the idea of self, which is the connexion of a being with itself. This can 154only be known in the first instance from reflecting on what passes in our own minds. I should say that individuality in this sense does not arise either from the absolute simplicity of the mind, or from its identity with itself, or from its diversity from other minds, which are not in the least necessary to it, but from the peculiar and intimate connection which subsists between the several faculties and perceptions of the same thinking being constituted as man is; so that, as the subject of his own reflection or consciousness, the same things impressed on any of his faculties produce a quite different effect upon him from what they would do, if they were impressed in the same way on any other being. The sense of personality seems then to depend entirely on the particular consciousness which the mind has of its own operations, sensations, or ideas. Self is nothing but the limits of the mind’s consciousness; as far as that reaches it extends, and where that can go no further, it ceases. The mind is one, from the confined sphere in which it acts; or because it is not all things. It is nearer and more present to itself than to other minds. What passes within it, what acts upon it immediately from without, of this it cannot help being conscious; and this consciousness is continued in it afterwards, more or less perfectly. All that does not come within this sphere of personal consciousness, all that has never come within it, is equally without the verge of self; for that word relates solely to the difference of the manner, or the different degrees of force and certainty with which, from the imperfect and limited nature of our faculties, certain things affect us as they act immediately upon ourselves, and are supposed to act upon others. Hence it is evident that personality itself cannot extend to futurity; for the whole of this idea depends on the peculiar force and directness with which certain impulses act upon the mind. It is by comparing the knowledge I have of my own impressions, ideas, feelings, powers, &c. with my knowledge of the same or similar impressions, ideas, &c. in others, and with this still more imperfect conception that I form of what passes in their minds when this is supposed to be entirely different from what passes in my own, that I acquire the general notion of self. If I could form no idea of any thing passing in the minds of others, or if my ideas of their thoughts and feelings were perfect representations, i.e. mere conscious repetitions of them, all personal distinction would be lost either in pure sensation or in perfect universal sympathy. In the one case it would be impossible for me to prefer myself to others, as I should be the sole object of my own consciousness; and in the other case I must love all others as myself, because I should then be nothing more than a part of a whole, of which all others would be equally members with myself. This distinction, however, subsists as necessarily and 155completely between myself and those who most nearly resemble me, as between myself and those whose characters and properties are the very opposite to mine. Indeed, the distinction itself becomes marked and intelligible in proportion as the objects or impressions themselves are intrinsically the same, as then it is impossible to mistake the true principle on which it is founded, namely, the want of any direct communication between the feelings of one being and those of another. This will shew why the difference between ourselves and others appears greater to us than that between other individuals, though it is not really so.

Considering mankind in this twofold relation, as they are to themselves, or as they appear to one another, as the subjects of their own thoughts, or the thoughts of others, we shall find the origin of that wide and absolute distinction which the mind feels in comparing itself with others, to be confined to two faculties, viz., sensation, or rather consciousness, and memory. To avoid an endless subtilty of distinction, I have not given here any account of consciousness in general; but the same reasoning will apply to both. The operation of both these faculties is of a perfectly exclusive and individual nature, and so far as their operation extends (but no farther) is man a personal, or if you will, a selfish being. The sensation excited in me by a piece of red-hot iron striking against any part of my body is simple, absolute, terminating as it were in itself, not representing any thing beyond itself, nor capable of being represented by any other sensation, or communicated to any other being. The same kind of sensation may be indeed excited in another by the same means, but this sensation will not imply any reference to, or consciousness of mine; there is no communication between my nerves and another’s brain, by which he can be affected with my sensations as I am myself. The only notice or perception which another can have of this sensation in me, or which I can have of a similar sensation in another, is by means of the imagination. I can form an imaginary idea of that pain as existing out of myself; but I can only feel it as a sensation when it is actually impressed on myself. Any impression made on another can neither be the cause nor object of sensation to me. Again, the impression or idea left in my mind by this sensation, and afterwards excited either by seeing iron in the same state, or by any other means, is properly an idea of memory. This recollection necessarily refers to some previous impression in my own mind, and only exists in consequence of that impression, or of the continued connexion of the same mind with itself: it cannot be derived from any impression made on another. My thoughts have a particular mechanical dependence only on my own previous thoughts or sensations. I do not remember the 156feelings of any one but myself. I may, indeed, remember the objects which must have caused such and such feelings in others, or the outward signs of passion which accompanied them. These, however, are but the recollections of my own immediate impressions of what I saw, and I can only form an idea of the feelings themselves by means of the imagination. But, though we take away all power of imagination from the human mind, my own feelings must leave behind them certain traces, or representations of themselves retaining the same general properties, and having the same intimate connexion with the conscious principle. On the other hand, if I wish to anticipate my own future feelings, whatever these may be, I must do so by means of the same faculty by which I conceive of those of others, whether past or future. I have no distinct or separate faculty on which the events and feelings of my future being are impressed before hand, and which shows, as in an enchanted mirror, to me, and me alone, the reversed picture of my future life. It is absurd to suppose that the feelings which I am to have hereafter, should excite certain correspondent impressions of themselves before they have existed, or act mechanically upon my mind by a secret sympathy. The romantic sympathies of lovers, the exploded dreams of judicial astrology, the feats of magic, do not equal the solid, substantial absurdity of this doctrine of self-interest, which attributes to that which is not and has not been, a mechanical operation and a reality in nature. I can only abstract myself from this present being, and take an interest in my future being, in the same sense and manner in which I can go out of myself entirely, and enter into the minds and feelings of others. In short, there neither is nor can be any principle belonging to the individual that antecedently identifies his future events with his present sensation, or that reflects the impression of his future feelings backwards with the same kind of consciousness that his past feelings are transmitted forward through the channels of memory. The size of the river as well as its taste depends on the water that has already fallen into it. I cannot roll back its course, nor is the stream next the source affected by the water which falls into it afterwards, yet we call both the same river. Such is the nature of personal identity. It is founded on the continued connexion of cause and effect, and awaits their gradual progress, and does not consist in a preposterous and wilful unsettling of the natural order of things. There is an illustration of this argument, which, however quaint or singular it may appear, I rather choose to give than omit any thing which may serve to make my meaning clear and intelligible. Suppose then a number of men employed to cast a mound into the sea. As far as it has gone, the workmen pass backwards and forwards on it: it stands firm in its 157place, and though it advances further and further from the shore, it is still joined to it. A man’s personal identity and self-interest have just the same principle and extent, and can reach no farther than his actual existence. But if any man of a metaphysical turn, seeing that the pier was not yet finished, but was to be continued to a certain point, and in a certain direction, should take it into his head to insist that what was already built, and what was to be built were the same pier, that the one must therefore afford as good footing as the other, and should accordingly walk over the pier-head on the solid foundation of his metaphysical hypothesis—he would act a great deal more ridiculously, but would not argue a whit more absurdly than those who found a principle of absolute self-interest on a man’s future identity with his present being. But, say you, the comparison does not hold in this, that a man can extend his thoughts (and that very wisely too), beyond the present moment, whereas in the other case he cannot move a single step forwards. Grant it. This will only show that the mind has wings as well as feet, which is a sufficient answer to the selfish hypothesis.

If the foregoing account be true (and for my part, the only perplexity that crosses my mind in thinking of it arises from the utter impossibility of conceiving of the contrary supposition), it will follow that those faculties which may be said to constitute self, and the operations of which convey that idea to the mind, draw all their materials from the past and present. But all voluntary action, as I have before largely shown, must relate solely and exclusively to the future. That is, all those impressions or ideas with which selfish, or more properly speaking, personal feelings must be naturally connected are just those which have nothing to do at all with the motives to action in the pursuit either of our own interest, or that of others. If indeed it were possible for the human mind to alter the present or the past, so as either to recal what was past, or to give it a still greater reality, to make it exist over again, and in some more emphatical sense, then man might, with some pretence of reason, be supposed naturally incapable of being impelled to the pursuit of any past or present object but from the mechanical excitement of personal motives. It might in this case be pretended that the impulses of imagination and sympathy are of too light, unsubstantial, and remote a creation to influence our real conduct, and that nothing is worthy of the concern of a wise man in which he has not this direct, unavoidable, and homefelt interest. This is, however, too absurd a supposition to be dwelt on for a moment. The only proper objects of voluntary action are (by necessity) future events: these can excite no possible interest in the mind but by the aid of the imagination; and these make the 158same direct appeal to that faculty, whether they relate to ourselves or to others, as the eye receives with equal directness the impression of our own external form or that of others. It will be easy to perceive by this train of reasoning how, notwithstanding the contradiction involved in the supposition of a generally absolute self-interest, the mind comes to feel a deep and habitual conviction of the truth of this principle. Finding in itself a continued consciousness of its past impressions, it is naturally enough disposed to transfer the same sort of identity and consciousness to the whole of its being. The objects of imagination and of the senses are, as it were, perpetually playing into one another’s hands, and shifting characters, so that we lose our reckoning, and do not think it worth while to mark where the one ends and the other begins. As our actual being is constantly passing into our future being, and carries the internal feeling of consciousness along with it, we seem to be already identified with our future being in this permanent part of our nature, and to feel by a mutual impulse the same necessary sympathy with our future selves that we know we shall have with our past selves. We take the tablets of memory, reverse them, and stamp the image of self on that which as yet possesses nothing but the name. It is no wonder then that the imagination, constantly disregarding the progress of time, when its course is marked out along the straight unbroken line of individuality, should confound the necessary differences of things, and convert a distant object into a present reality. The interest which is hereafter to be felt by this continued conscious being, this indefinite unit, called me, seems necessarily to affect me in every state of my existence,—‘thrills in each nerve, and lives along the line.’ In the first place we abstract the successive modifications of our being, and particular temporary interests, into one simple nature and general principle of self-interest, and then make use of this nominal abstraction as an artificial medium to compel those particular actual interests into the closest affinity and union with each other, as different lines meeting in the same centre must have a mutual communication with each other. On the contrary, as I always remain perfectly distinct from others (the interest which I take in their former or present feelings being like that which I take in their future feelings, never any thing more than the effect of imagination and sympathy), the same illusion and transposition of ideas cannot take place with regard to these; namely, the confounding a physical impulse with the rational motives to action. Indeed the uniform nature of my feelings with regard to others (my interest in their welfare having always the same source and sympathy) seems by analogy to confirm the supposition of a similar simplicity in my relation to myself, and of a positive, natural, 159absolute interest in whatever belongs to that self, not confined to my actual existence, but extending over the whole of my being. Every sensation that I feel, or that afterwards recurs vividly to my memory strengthens the sense of self, which increased strength in the mechanical feeling is indirectly transferred to the general idea, and to my remote, future, imaginary interest; whereas our sympathy with the feelings of others being always imaginary, standing only on its own basis, having no sensible interest to support it, no restless mechanical impulse to urge it on, the ties by which we are bound to others hang loose upon us: the interest we take in their welfare seems to be something foreign to our own bosoms, to be transient, arbitrary, and directly opposed to that necessary, unalienable interest we are supposed to have in whatever conduces to our own well-being.

There is another consideration (and that probably the principal one) to be taken into the account in explaining the origin and growth of our selfish habits, which is perfectly consistent with the foregoing theory, and evidently arises out of it. There is naturally, then, no essential difference between the motives by which I am impelled to the pursuit of my own good or that of others: but though there is not a difference in kind, there is one in degree. We know better what our own future feelings will be than what those of others will be in a like case. We can apply the materials afforded us by experience with less difficulty and more in a mass in making out the picture of our future pleasures and pains, without frittering them away or destroying their original sharpnesses: in a word, we can imagine them more plainly, and must therefore be more interested in them. This facility in passing from the recollection of my former impressions to the anticipation of my future ones makes the transition almost imperceptible, and gives to the latter an apparent reality and presentness to the imagination, to a degree in which the feelings of others can scarcely ever be brought home to us. It is chiefly from this greater readiness and certainty with which we can look forward into our own minds than out of us into those of other men, that that strong and uneasy attachment to self, which often comes at last to overpower every generous feeling, takes its rise; not, as I think I have shown, from any natural and impenetrable hardness of the human heart, or necessary absorption of all its thoughts and purposes in a blind exclusive feeling of self-interest. It confirms this account, that we constantly are found to feel for others in proportion as we know from long acquaintance with the turn of their minds, and events of their lives, ‘the hair-breadth scapes’ of their travelling history, or ‘some disastrous stroke which their youth suffered,’ what the real nature of their feelings is; and that we have in general the strongest attachment 160to our immediate relatives and friends, who from this intercommunity of thoughts and feelings may more truly be said to be a part of ourselves than from even the ties of blood. Moreover, a man must be employed more usually in providing for his own wants and his own feelings than those of others. In like manner he is employed in providing for the immediate welfare of his family and connexions much more than in providing for the welfare of those who are not bound by any positive ties. And we accordingly find that the attention, time, and pains bestowed on these several objects give him a proportionable degree of anxiety about, and attachment to his own interest, and that of those connected with him; but it would be absurd to conclude that his affections are therefore circumscribed by a natural necessity within certain impassable limits, either in the one case or the other. It should not be forgotten here that this absurd opinion has been very commonly referred to the effects of natural affection as it has been called, as well as of self-interest; parental and filial affection being supposed to be originally implanted in the mind by the ties of nature, and to move round the centre of self-interest in an orbit of their own, within the circle of our families and friends. This general connexion between the habitual pursuit of any object and our interest in it, will account for the well-known observation, that the affection of parents to children is the strongest of all others, frequently overpowering self-love itself. This fact does not seem easily reconcilable to the doctrine that the social affections are all of them ultimately to be deduced from association, or the reputed connexion of immediate selfish gratification with the idea of some other person. If this were strictly the case we must feel the strongest attachment to those from whom we had received, instead of those to whom we had done, the greatest number of kindnesses, or where the greatest quantity of actual enjoyment had been associated with an indifferent idea. Junius has remarked that friendship is not conciliated by the power of conferring benefits, but by the equality with which they are received and may be returned.

I have hitherto purposely avoided saying any thing on the subject of our physical appetites and the manner in which they may be thought to affect the principle of the foregoing reasonings. They evidently seem at first sight, to contradict the general conclusion which I have endeavoured to establish, as they all of them tend either exclusively or principally to the gratification of the individual, and at the same time refer to some future or imaginary object, as the source of this gratification. The impulse which they give to the will is mechanical, and yet this impulse, blind as it is, constantly tends to and coalesces with the pursuit of some rational end. That is, here 161is an end aimed at, the desire and regular pursuit of a known good, and all this produced by motives evidently mechanical, and which never impel the mind but in a selfish direction: it makes no difference in the question whether the active impulse proceed directly from the desire of positive enjoyment, or a wish to get rid of some positive uneasiness. I should say then that, setting aside what is of a purely physical nature in the case, the influence of appetite over our volitions may be accounted for consistently enough with the foregoing hypothesis, from the natural effects of a particularly irritable state of bodily feeling, rendering the idea of that which will heighten and gratify its susceptibility of pleasurable feeling, or remove some painful feeling, proportionably vivid, and the object of a more vehement desire than can be excited by the same idea, when the body is supposed to be in a state of indifference, or only ordinary sensibility to that particular kind of gratification. Thus the imaginary desire is sharpened by constantly receiving supplies of pungency, from the irritation of bodily feeling, and its direction is at the same time determined according to the bias of this new impulse; first, indirectly by having the attention fixed on our own immediate sensation; secondly, because that particular gratification, the desire of which is increased by the pressure of physical appetite, must be referred primarily and by way of distinction to the same being, by whom the want of it is felt, that is, to myself. As the actual uneasiness which appetite implies can only be excited by the irritable state of my own body, so neither can the desire of the correspondent gratification subsist in that intense degree, which properly constitutes appetite, except when it tends to relieve that very same uneasiness by which it was excited, as in the case of hunger. There is in the first place the strong mechanical action of the nervous and muscular systems co-operating with the rational desire of my own belief, and forcing it its own way. Secondly, this state of uneasiness grows more and more violent, the longer the relief which it requires is withheld from it: hunger takes no denial, it hearkens to no compromise, is soothed by no flattery, tired out by no delay. It grows more importunate every moment, its demands become larger the less they are attended to. The first impulse which the general love of personal ease receives from bodily pain will give it the advantage over my disposition to sympathise with others in the same situation with myself, and this difference will be increasing every moment, till the pain is removed. Thus, if I at first, either through compassion or by an effort of the will, am regardless of my own wants, and wholly bent upon satisfying the more pressing wants of my companions, yet this effort will at length become too great, and I shall be incapable of attending to any thing but the violence of my 162own sensations, or the means of alleviating them. It would be easy to show from many things that mere appetite (generally, at least, in reasonable beings) is but the fragment of a self-moving machine, but a sort of half organ, a subordinate instrument even in the accomplishment of its own purposes; that it does little or nothing without the aid of another faculty to inform and direct it. Before the impulses of appetite can be converted into the regular pursuit of a given object, they must first be communicated to the understanding, and modify the will through that. Consequently, as the desire of the ultimate gratification of the appetite is not the same with the appetite itself, that is mere physical uneasiness, but an indirect result of its communication to the thinking or imaginative principle, the influence of appetite over the will must depend on the extraordinary degree of force and vividness which it gives to the idea of a particular object; and we accordingly find that the same cause which irritates the desire of selfish gratification, increases our sensibility to the same desires and gratification in others, where they are consistent with our own, and where the violence of the physical impulse does not overpower every other consideration.

The most interesting part of Madame De Staël’s very ingenious and elegant work on Germany is undoubtedly (to literary readers) that in which she has sketched with so much intelligence and grace, the present state of opinions with respect to philosophy and taste in that country. I have not yet seen any satisfactory abstract of her reasonings on either of these subjects. The article in The Edinburgh Review touches but lightly and incidentally on them, from the variety and pressure of other topics of a more lively and general interest. I shall attempt to supply this deficiency, and at the same time to offer some farther thoughts on each subject. The two points on which I wish to enlarge are the view which Madame De Staël takes of German poetry, as contrasted with the French, and secondly of the spirit and principles of the German philosophy, that of Professor Kant, as opposed to the French system of philosophy which is not indeed peculiar to them as a nation, but common to the age. I shall begin with the last first, not only because it is perhaps the most important, but because I think that as the English were the first to propagate the latter system (for the French have only adopted it from us, carrying 163its practical and popular application farther), we ought not to be the last to disclaim and explode it. It may not be uninteresting as a branch of national literature, to take a general view of the rise and progress of their philosophy, before we come to examine Madame De Staël’s account of the system which Kant has opposed to it, and to shew in what that system is well-founded, and where it fails.

According to the prevailing system,—I mean the material or modern philosophy, as it has been called, all thought is to be resolved into sensation, all morality into the love of pleasure, and all action into mechanical impulse. These three propositions taken together, embrace almost every question relating to the human mind, and in their different ramifications and intersections form a net, not unlike that used by the enchanters of old, which, whosoever has once thrown over him, will find all farther efforts vain, and his attempts to reason freely on any subject in which his own nature is concerned, baffled and confounded in every direction.

This system, which first rose at the suggestion of Lord Bacon, on the ruins of the school-philosophy, has been gradually growing up to its present height ever since, from a wrong interpretation of the word experience, confining it to a knowledge of things without us; whereas it in fact includes all knowledge, relating to objects either within or out of the mind, of which we have any direct and positive evidence. We only know that we ourselves exist, the most certain of all truths, from the experience of what passes within ourselves. Strictly speaking, all other facts of which we are not immediately conscious, are such in a secondary and subordinate sense only. Physical experience is indeed the foundation and the test of that part of philosophy which relates to physical objects: farther, physical analogy is the only rule by which we can extend and apply our immediate knowledge, or infer the effects to be produced by the different objects around us. But to say that physical experiment is either the test, or source, or guide of that other part of philosophy which relates to our internal perceptions, that we are to look in external nature for the form, the substance, the colour, the very life and being of whatever exists in our minds, or that we can only infer the laws which regulate the phenomena of the mind from those which regulate the phenomena of matter, is to confound two things entirely distinct. Our knowledge of mental phenomena from consciousness, reflection, or observation of their correspondent signs in others is the true basis of metaphysical inquiry, as the knowledge of facts, commonly so called, is the only solid basis of natural philosophy. To assert that the operations of the mind and the operations of matter are in reality the same, so that we should always regard the one as symbols or exponents of the other, is to assume the very point in 164dispute, not only without any evidence, but in defiance of every appearance to the contrary.

Lord Bacon was undoubtedly a great man, indeed one of the greatest that have adorned this or any other country. He was a man of a clear and active spirit, of a most fertile genius, of vast designs, of general knowledge, and of profound wisdom. He united the powers of imagination and understanding in a greater degree than almost any other writer. He was one of the most remarkable instances of those men, who, by the rare privilege of their nature, are at once poets and philosophers, and see equally in both worlds—the individual and sensible, and the abstracted and intelligible forms of things. The Schoolmen and their followers attended to nothing but names, to essences and species, to laboured analyses and artificial deductions. They seem to have alike disregarded all kinds of experience, whether relating to external objects, or to the observation of our own internal feelings. From the imperfect state of knowledge, they had not a sufficient number of facts to guide them in their experimental researches; and intoxicated with the novelty of their vain distinctions, learnt by rote, they were tempted to despise the clearest and most obvious suggestions of their own minds. Subtle, restless, and self-sufficient, they thought that truth was only made to be disputed about, and existed no where but in their demonstrations and syllogisms. Hence arose their ‘logomachies’—their everlasting word-fights, their sharp debates, their captious, bootless controversies. As Lord Bacon expresses it, ‘they were made fierce with dark keeping,’ signifying that their angry and unintelligible contests with one another were owing to their not having any distinct objects to engage their attention. They built altogether on their own whims and fancies; and, buoyed up by their specific levity, they mounted in their airy disputations in endless flights and circles, clamouring like birds of prey, till they equally lost sight of truth and nature. This great man, therefore, intended an essential service to philosophy, in wishing to recall the attention to facts and experience which had been almost entirely neglected; and thus, by incorporating the abstract with the concrete, and general reasoning with individual observation, to give to our conclusions that solidity and firmness which they must otherwise always want. He did nothing but insist on the necessity of experience, more particularly in natural science; and from the wider field that is open to it there, as well as the prodigious success it has met with, this latter application of the word, in which it is tantamount to physical experiment, has so far engrossed the whole of our attention, that mind has, for a good while past, been in some danger of being overlaid by matter. We run from one error into another, and as we were wrong at first, 165so in altering our course, we have passed into the opposite extreme. We despised experience altogether before: now we would have nothing but experience, and that of the grossest kind. We have, it is true, gained much by not consulting the suggestions of our own minds in questions where they inform us of nothing, namely, on the particular laws and phenomena of the material world; and we have hastily concluded (reversing the rule) that the best way to arrive at the knowledge of ourselves also, was to lay aside the dictates of our own consciousness, thoughts, and feelings, as deceitful and insufficient guides, though they are the only means by which we can obtain the least light upon the subject. We seem to have resigned the natural use of our understandings, and to have given up our own existence as a nonentity. We look for our thoughts and the distinguishing properties of our minds in some image of them in matter as we look to see our faces in a glass. We no longer decide physical problems by logical dilemmas, but we decide questions of logic by the evidence of the senses. Instead of putting our reason and invention to the rack indifferently on all questions, whether we have any previous knowledge of them or not, we have adopted the easier method of suspending the use of our faculties altogether, and settling tedious controversies by means of ‘four champions fierce—hot, cold, moist and dry,’ who with a few more of the retainers and hangers on of matter determine all questions relating to the nature of man and the limits of the human understanding very learnedly. But the laws by which we think, feel, and act, we must discover in the mind itself, or not at all.

This original bias in favour of mechanical reasoning and physical analogy was confirmed by the powerful aid of Hobbes, who was, indeed, the father of the modern philosophy. His strong mind and body appear to have resisted all impressions, but those which were derived from the downright blows of matter: all his ideas seemed to lie like substances in his brain: what was not a solid, tangible, distinct, palpable object, was to him nothing. The external image pressed so close upon his mind that it destroyed the power of consciousness, and left no room for attention to any thing but itself. He was by nature a materialist. Locke assisted greatly in giving popularity to the same scheme, as well by espousing the chief of Hobbes’s metaphysical principles as by the doubtful resistance which he made to the rest. And it has been perfected and has received its last polish and roundness in the hands of some French philosophers, as Condillac and others.

The modern metaphysical system assumes as its basis that the operations of the intellect are only a continuation of the impulses existing in matter; or that all the thoughts and conceptions of the 166mind are nothing more than various modifications of the original impressions of things on a being endued with sensation or simple perception. This system considers ideas merely as they are caused by outward impressions acting on the organs of sense, and excludes the understanding as a distinct faculty or power from all share in its own operations.

The following is a summary of the general principles of this philosophy as they are expressly laid down by Hobbes, and by the latest writers of the French school.

1. That our ideas are copies of the impressions made by external objects on the senses.

2. That as nothing exists out of the mind but matter and motion, so it is itself with all its operations nothing but matter and motion.

3. That thoughts are single, or that we can think of only one object at a time.

4. That we have no general nor abstract ideas.

5. That the only principle of connection between one thought and another is association, or their previous connection in sense.

6. That reason and understanding depend entirely on the mechanism of language.

7 and 8. That the sense of pleasure and pain is the sole spring of action, and self-interest the source and centre of all our affections.

9. That the mind acts from a mechanical or physical necessity, over which it has no controul, and consequently is not a moral or accountable agent.—The manner of reasoning upon this last question is the only circumstance of importance in which Hobbes differs decidedly from modern writers.

10. That there is no difference in the natural capacities of men, the mind being originally passive to all impressions alike, and becoming whatever it is from circumstances.

Except the first, all of these positions are either denied or doubtfully admitted by Mr. Locke. It is, however, his admission of the first principle, which has opened a door directly or indirectly to all the rest. The system of Kant is a formal and elaborate antithesis to that which bears the name of Locke, and it is built on ‘the sublime restriction (as Madame de Staël expresses it) added by Leibnitz to the well-known axiom nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu—NISI INTELLECTUS IPSE.’

It is in the manner of proving this restriction, and of explaining this word, the intellect, that the whole question depends, and to this I shall devote another letter.

‘For men to have recourse to subtleties in raising difficulties, and then to complain that they should be taken off by minutely examining these subtleties, is a strange kind of proceeding.’

I cannot better explain the modern theory of the understanding (which it will be the object of this letter to consider) than in the words of one of the best and ablest commentators of that school, Mr. Horne Tooke.

‘The business of the mind,’ he says ‘appears to me to be very simple. It extends no farther than to receive impressions, that is, to have sensations or feelings. What are called its operations are merely the operations of language. The greatest part of Mr. Locke’s Essay, that is, all which relates to what he calls the composition, abstraction, complexity, generalization, relation, etc. of ideas, does indeed merely concern language. If he had been sooner aware of the inseparable connection between words and knowledge, he would not have talked of the composition of ideas, but would have seen that the only composition was in the terms, and consequently, that it was as improper to talk of a complex idea as of a complex star! I will venture to say that it is an easy matter, upon Mr. Locke’s own principles and a physical consideration of the senses and the mind, to 173prove the impossibility of the composition of ideas, and that they are not ideas, but merely terms, which are general and abstract.’—Diversions of Purley, Vol. i. p. 39, 51, &c.^[10]

Now this is very explicit, and, I also conceive, very logical. For I am ready to grant that ‘Mr. Locke’s own principles and a physical consideration of the mind’ do lead to the conclusions here stated; and it is on that account that I shall attempt to shew that those principles and the consideration of the mind, as a physical thing, are in themselves absurd. These writers taking up the principle, that to have sensations or feelings was the only real faculty of the mind, and perceiving that the having sensations merely was a different thing from having an idea or consciousness of their relations (inasmuch as no sensation as such can include a knowledge of or reference to any other) have inferred very rationally that all the operations of the mind founded on a principle of general consciousness or common understanding, viz. compounding, comparing, discerning, judging, reasoning, etc. were excluded from their physical theory of sensation, and must be referred to some trick or deception of the mind, the mechanism of language or habitual association of ideas. According to this theory, besides the sensible impressions of individual objects, and their distinct traces left in the memory—the rest is merely words. In supposing that we combine these different impressions together, that we compare different objects, that we reason upon them, it seems we only deceive ourselves, and mistake a rapid and mechanical transition from one idea to another for the actual perception of the relations between them. Thus have these philosophers sacrificed all the known facts and conscious operations of the mind to a literal deduction from a gross verbal fallacy. For what are these single objects or individual ideas, of which the senses are competent to take cognizance, and beyond which the understanding can never advance a step? Neither more nor less than complex and general ideas, which imply all the same intellectual impossibilities of comparing, judging, distinguishing, &c. i.e. of perceiving a number of diversified relations, of connecting the MANY into the ONE, which are objected to the more deliberate and formal acts of understanding and reason. The mind, say they, can perceive but one idea at a time, that is, it may perceive a square or a triangle, but it cannot compare them together, or perceive their proportions, because to do this, it must attend to different ideas at once. Yet what is this individual idea of a square, for instance, but an idea of given lines, their direction, equality, connection, &c. all 174which must be combined together in the mind, before it can possibly form any idea of the object? Mr. Tooke says, the complexity is in the term. I should say, the individuality is in the term, that is, in the application of one name to a collective idea, which superficial reasoners, at once the slaves of idle paradox and vulgar prejudice, have therefore imagined to be one thing. The whole error of this system has, indeed, arisen from considering ideas themselves, or those particular objects, which are marked by a single name, or strike at once, and in a mass, upon the senses, as simple things. But there is no one of these particular ideas, as they are called, which is not an aggregate of many things, or that can subsist for a moment but in the understanding. By destroying the composition of ideas, all ideas as well as all combinations of ideas, would be completely and for ever banished from the mind; which would be left a mere tabula rasa, a blank, indeed, or would at all times strictly resemble what Mr. Locke describes it to be in its original state, ‘a dark closet with a little glimmering of light let in through the loop-holes of the senses.’

Writers, in general, who have maintained the existence of a distinct faculty besides the senses, have applied themselves to shew that, besides particular ideas or objects, it was necessary to admit the understanding to explain the perception of the relations between them. My purpose is to shew that the same perception of relation, the same understanding is implied in the very ideas or objects themselves. To have sensations is not to compare them, that is, sensation and understanding are not the same thing. To have ideas, it is necessary to compare our sensations, that is, ideas and understanding are the same thing.

I can conceive then of a being endued with the power of sensation, so as to receive the direct impressions of outward objects, and also with memory, so as to retain them for any length of time, as they were severally and unconnectedly presented, yet without any signs of understanding. The state of such a being would be that of animal life, and something more (with the addition of memory), but it would not amount to intellect. As this distinction is rather difficult to be explained, I hope I may be allowed to express it in any way I can, and without sacrificing to the graces. Suppose a number of animalculæ, as a heap of mites in a rotten cheese, lying as close together as they possibly can (though the example should be of something more ‘drossy and divisible’ of something less reasonable, approaching nearer to pure sensation than we can conceive of any creature that exercises the functions of the meanest instinct). No one will contend that in this heap of living matter there is any idea or intimation of the number, position, or intricate involutions of that little, lively, restless 175tribe. This idea is evidently not contained in any of the parts separately, nor is it contained in all of them put together. That is, the aggregate of many actual sensations is, we here plainly see, a totally different thing from the collective idea, comprehension or consciousness of those sensations, as connected together into one whole, or of any of their relations to each other. We may go on multiplying sensations to the end of time, without ever advancing one step in the other process, or producing a single thought. But in what, I would ask, does this supposition differ from that of many distinct particles of matter, full of animation, tumbling about, and pressing against each other, in the same brain, except that we make use of this brain as a common medium to unite their different desultory actions in the same general principle of thought or consciousness—that is, understanding? Or, if this comparison should be thought not courtly enough, let us imagine one of Mrs. Salmon’s full faced, comely wax figures, sitting in its chair of state, to be suddenly endued with life and physical organization but nothing more. Such an unaccountable lusus naturæ would answer exactly to the theory of modern metaphysicians, or would be capable of receiving feelings or impressions by its different organs, but would be totally void of any reflection upon them. It would be only a bloated mass of listless sensation, a sordid compound of proud flesh and irritable humours, a mere animal existence, a living automation, crawling all over with morbid feelings, but without the least ray of understanding, or any knowledge of itself or of the things around, incapable of consistency of character or purpose, of foresight, deliberation, sympathy, and of all that distinguishes human reason or dignifies human nature!

Besides actual, sensible impressions, I suppose that there is a common principle of thought, a superintending faculty, which alone perceives the relations of things and enables us to comprehend their connections, forms, and masses. This faculty is properly the understanding, and it is by means of this faculty that man indeed becomes a reasonable soul. Without this surrounding and forming power, we could never conceive the idea of any one object, as of a table or a chair, a blade of grass or a grain of sand. Every one of these includes a certain configuration, hardness, colour, size, &c. i.e. impressions of different things, received by different senses, which must be put together by the understanding before they can be referred to any particular object, or considered as one idea. Without this faculty, all our ideas would be necessarily decomposed, and crumbled down into their original elements and fluxional parts. We could assuredly in this case never connect the different links in a chain of reasoning together, for the very links of which this chain must consist would be 176ground to powder. We could neither form any comparison between our ideas, nor have any ideas to compare. There would be an infinite divisibility in the impressions of the mind, as well as in the parts of material objects. Each separate impression must remain absolutely simple and distinct, unknown to and unconscious of the rest, shut up in the narrow cell of its own individuality. No two of these atomic impressions could ever club together to form even a sensible point, much less should we be able to arrive at any of the larger masses or nominal descriptions of things. The most that sensation could possibly do for us would be to furnish the mind with ideas of some of those which Mr. Locke calls the simple qualities of objects, as of colour or pressure, though not as a general notion or diffused feeling, for it is certain that no one impression could ever contain more than the tinge of a single ray of light, or the puncture of a single particle of matter. Perhaps we might in this way be supposed to possess an infinite number of microscopic impressions and fractions of ideas, but there being nothing to arrange or bind them together, the whole would present only a disjointed mass of blind, unconscious confusion. All nature, all objects, all parts of all objects, would be equally ‘without form and void.’ The mind alone is formative, to use the expression of Kant; or it is that which by its pervading and elastic energy unfolds and expands our ideas, that gives order and consistency to them, that assigns to every part its proper place, and fixes it there, and that frames the idea of the whole. Or in other words, it is the understanding alone that perceives relation, but every object is made up of a bundle of relations. In short, there is no object or idea which does not consist of a number of parts arranged in a certain manner, but of this arrangement the parts themselves cannot be sensible. To make each part conscious of its relation to all the rest is to suppose an infinite number of intellects instead of one; and to say that a knowledge or perception of each part separately without a reference to the rest can produce a conception of the whole, is a contradiction in terms.

Ideas then are the offspring of the understanding, not of the senses. An idea necessarily implies, not only a number of distinct positive impressions, but some bond of union between them, some internal conscious principle to which they are alike communicated, and which grasps, overlooks, and comprehends the whole. The idea of a square, for example, is not the same thing with the compound impression made by the figure on the senses. For the immediate impression of any one of the sides cannot, as a mere sensation, be accompanied with an additional knowledge or reflex image of the remaining three sides, but is a perfectly distinct, physical thing; neither can the 177actual coexistence of all these impressions be accompanied with a consciousness of their mutual relations to each other, i.e. with an idea of the whole, without supposing some general representative faculty, to which these distinct impressions are referred.

Otherwise, different impressions made on the same organized or sentient being would no more produce the slightest continuity of thought or idea of the same object than different physical impressions conveyed to different organized beings would produce an immediate consciousness of these different objects or of the relations between them. If to have sensations were the same thing as to compare them, then different persons seeing different objects might without any communication make an exact comparison between them. If to have the sensible impression of the different parts of an object were the same thing as to form an idea of it, then different persons looking at the two halves of any object would be able to compound an idea of the whole between them, though each of them was perfectly unconscious of what was passing in the other’s mind. Unless we suppose some faculty of this sort which opens a direct communication between our perceptions, so that the same thinking principle is at the same time cognisant of different impressions, and of their relations to each other, it seems a thing impossible to conceive how any comparison can take place between different impressions existing at the same time, or between our past and present impressions, or ever to explain what is meant by saying, ‘I perceive such and such objects, I remember such and such events,’ since these different impressions are evidently referred to the same conscious being, which very idea of individuality could never have been so much as conceived of, if there were no other connection between our perceptions, than that which arises from the juxtaposition of the particles of matter on which they are actually impressed, or from ‘a physical consideration of the senses and the mind.’ The mind in this case consisting of nothing more than a succession of material points, each part would be sensible of the corresponding part of any object which might be impressed upon it, but could certainly know nothing of the impression which was made on any other part of the same organic substance, except by its communication to the same general principle of understanding. Ideas would exist in the mind, like tapestry figures or pictures in a gallery, without a spectator. On this hypothesis, I perfectly agree with Mr. Horne Tooke, that it would be as absurd to talk of a complex idea as of a complex star; for each impression or sensation must be as perfectly distinct from, and unconnected with the rest, as the stars that compose a constellation. One idea or impression would have no more connection with any other, than if it 178were parcel of another intellect, or floated in the region of the moon.^[11]

It is strange that Mr. Locke should rank among simple ideas that of number, which he defines to be the idea of unity repeated. But how the impression of successive or distinct units should ever give the idea of repetition, unless the former instances are borne in mind, I have not the slightest conception. There might be an endless transition from one unit to another, but no addition made or ideal aggregate formed. As well might we suppose, that a body of an inch diameter, by shifting from place to place, may enlarge its dimensions to a foot or a mile, as that a succession of units, perceived separately, should produce the complex idea of multitude. On the mechanical hypothesis, the mind can receive or attend to but one impression at a time, and the idea of number would be too mighty for it. Though Mr. Locke constantly supposes the mind to perceive relations, and explains its common operations on this principle, there is but one place in his work in which he seems to have been upon the point of discovering that this principle lies at the foundation of, and is absolutely necessary to all our ideas whatever. He says, in the beginning of his chapter on Power, which he classes among simple ideas, ‘I confess power includes in it some kind of relation (a relation to action or change), as, indeed, which of our ideas, of 179what kind soever, when attentively considered, does not? For our ideas of extension, duration, and number, do they not all contain in them a secret relation of the parts? Figure and motion have something relative in them much more visibly; and sensible qualities, as colours and smells, what are they but the powers of different bodies in relation to our perception? And if considered in the things themselves, do they not depend on the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of the parts? All which include some kind of relation in them. Our idea, therefore, of power, I think, may well have a place amongst other simple ideas, and be considered as one of them, being one of those that make a principal ingredient in our complex ideas of substances.’—Essay on Human Understanding, vol. i. p. 234.

That is to say, in other words, the idea of power, though confessedly complex, according to Mr. Locke, as depending on the changes we observe produced by one thing on another, is to pass for a simple idea, because it has as good a right to this denomination as other complex ideas, which are usually classed as simple ones. It is thus that the inquiring mind seems to be always hovering on the brink of truth: but timidity, or indolence, or prejudice, makes us shrink back, unwilling to trust ourselves to the fathomless abyss.

I have thus given the best account which it is in my power to give of the understanding, as that conscious, comprehensive principle, which is the source not only of judgment and reasoning, but which is implied in every possible idea of the mind, or conception even of sensible objects. Every such object, it has been shewn, is made up of a number of individual impressions, yet how these perfectly detached, and desultory impressions should of themselves contain or produce a knowledge of their relations to each other, of their order, number, likeness, distances, limits, &c. by which alone they can be connected into one whole—without being first communicated to the same conscious principle of thought, to one diffusive, and yet self-centered intellect, one undivided active spirit, co-extended with the object, and yet ever present to itself, that

it is difficult to imagine. There is no idea that is not evolved from this coinstantaneous power in the mind. The activity which Shakespeare ascribes to Ariel is not greater than that which is necessary to the production of the meanest thought. ‘Jove’s light’nings more momentary and sight-outrunning are not!’

The manner in which Shakespeare’s plays have been generally altered, or rather mangled, by modern mechanists, is in our opinion a disgrace to the English Stage. The patch-work Richard which is acted under the sanction of his name, is a striking example of this remark. The play itself is undoubtedly one of the finest effusions of Shakespeare’s genius. It is as truly Shakespearian—that is, it has as much of the author’s mind, of passion, character, and interest, with as little alloy of the peculiarities of the age, or extraneous matter, as almost any other of his productions. Wherever Shakespeare relied upon himself, and did not appeal to the taste of his audience, he outstripped all competition, and this he did as often as he had a motive in his subject to do so; he had none in his vanity, or in the affectation of conforming to certain critical rules. The winds blow as they list; and 192the golden tide of passion no sooner rises in his breast, than it swells and bears down every thing in its mighty course.

The ground-work of the character of Richard,—that mixture of intellectual vigour with moral depravity, in which Shakespeare delighted to shew his strength,—gave full scope as well as temptation to the exertion of his genius. The character of his hero is almost everywhere predominant, and marks its lurid track throughout. The original play is, however, too long for representation, and there are some few scenes which might be better spared than preserved and by omitting which, it would remain a complete whole. The only rule, indeed, for altering Shakespeare, is to retrench certain passages which may be considered either as superfluous or obsolete, but not to add or transpose any thing. The arrangement and developement of the story, and the mutual contrast and combination of the dramatis personæ, are in general as finely managed as the developement of the characters or the expression of the passions.

This rule has not been adhered to in the present instance. Some of the most important and striking passages in the principal character have been omitted, to make room for tedious and misplaced extracts from other plays; the only intention of which seems to have been, to make the character of Richard as odious and disgusting as possible. A bugbear seems to have been always necessary to the English nation, and—give them but this to vent their spleen upon—they will, either in matters of taste or opinion, ‘as tenderly be led by the nose as asses are.’ It is apparently for no other purpose than to make Gloucester stab King Henry on the stage, that the fine abrupt introduction of this character in the opening of the play is lost in the tedious whining morality of the uxorious King (taken from another play);—we say tedious, because it interrupts the business of the scene, and loses its beauty and effect by having no intelligible connection with the previous character of the mild and well-meaning monarch. The passages which Mr. Wroughton has to recite are in themselves exquisitely pathetic, but they have nothing to do with the world that Richard has to ‘bustle in.’ In the same spirit of vulgar caricature is the scene between Richard and Lady Anne (when his wife)—interpolated, merely to gratify this favourite propensity to disgust and loathing. With the same perverse consistency, Richard, after his last fatal struggle, is raised up by some Galvanic process, to utter the imprecation, without any motive but pure malignity, which is so finely put into the mouth of Northumberland on hearing of Percy’s death. We hope that Mr. Kean, when he acts Macbeth, will die as Shakespeare makes him, and not with four lines of canting penitence (a common-place against ambition) in his mouth. To make room for these needless 193additions and interpolations, many of the most striking passages in the real play have been omitted by the foppery and ignorance of the prompt-book critics. We do not mean to insist merely on passages which are fine as poetry and to the reader, such as Clarence’s dream, &c. but those which are important to the developement of the character, and peculiarly adapted for stage effect. We give the following as instances among many others.

The first is the scene where Richard enters abruptly to the Queen and her friends, to defend himself:

What can be more characteristic than the turbulent pretensions to meekness and simplicity in this address?

Again, the versatility and adroitness of Richard is admirably described in the following ironical answer to Brakenbury:—

The feigned reconciliation of Gloucester with the Queen’s kinsmen, is also a master-piece. One of the finest features in the play, and which serves to shew, as much as any thing, the deep duplicity of Richard, is the unsuspecting security of Hastings, at the very time when the former is plotting his death.

Perhaps the two most beautiful passages in the original, are the farewell apostrophe of the Queen to the Tower, where her children are shut up from her, and Tyrrel’s description of their death. We will finish our quotations with them:—

The other passage is the account of their death by Tyrrel:—

These are those wonderful bursts of feeling, done to the very height of nature which our Shakespeare alone could give. We do not insist on the repetition of these last passages as proper for the stage; we should indeed be loth to trust them with almost any actor; but we should wish them to be retained, at least in preference to the fantoccini exhibition of the young Princes, bandying childish wit with their uncle.

195We have taken the present opportunity to offer these remarks on the necessity of acting the plays of our great Bard, in spirit and substance, instead of burlesquing them, because we think the stage has acquired in Mr. Kean an actor capable of doing singular justice to many of his finest delineations of character.

‘If Blücher, if the Cossacks, get to Paris,—to Paris, the seat of Bonaparte’s pride and insolence,—what mercy will they shew to it, or why should they shew it any mercy? Will they spare the precious works of art, to decorate the palace of a monster whom they justly detest? Will they treat the Thuileries more tenderly than the French Officers, only eight months ago, openly threatened to treat Berlin? Is Paris, Bonaparte’s Paris, more sacred than Moscow? or are the slaves of the Corsican more inviolable than the brave and virtuous citizens of Hamburgh? No, no; the indignant warriors will cry,—

‘There is no other mode by which the Parisians can disarm the vengeance which now so closely impends over them, than by disclaiming for ever him whose crimes have been the just cause of that vengeance. Paris under the white standard, returning to loyalty and virtue, may be spared by a generous conqueror;—but Paris, identified with Bonaparte, must partake all the vindictive sentiments which are attached to that hateful name.

[Yet some time ago this writer assured us that if the French people identified themselves with Bonaparte, they ought not to be separated from him.]

‘In what momentous times do we live! Perhaps, the famous city of which we speak may even now be laid in ashes! Perhaps and more welcome be the omen, it may have returned to its allegiance, and proclaimed its native Sovereign, and set a price on the head of that wicked rebel who still dares to call himself the Emperor of France.’—Times, March 17.

It is a pity to spoil this morsel of Asiatic eloquence, so worthy of the subject and the sentiments; but the evident meaning of it is, that 196the French must expect to do penance in sack-cloth and ashes, or consent to put on the old livery jackets, made up for them by our army-agents long ago, and which have unfortunately lain on hand ever since. If so, they must needs be ‘pigeon-liver’d, and lack gall.’ Yet we hardly know what to say to the chivalrous and classical politicians of the Stock Exchange. They are not driven to the extremity of Gothic rage by the ranking inveteracy, and old unsatisfied grudge of the Pitt-school. Yet surely no pitiable enthusiast that

can be more incorrigible to reason. They are always setting out on their way to Paris from Moscow, while the Pitt-school studiously return to join Lord Hawkesbury in the year 1793, or they think the whole ceremony incomplete! The treaty of Pilnitz does not stand between our modern popular incendiaries and their just revenge! They live only in ‘this present ignorant time!’ They see the white standard of the Bourbons waving over the walls of Paris, unspotted with the blood of millions of Frenchmen! They do not seem ever to have known, or (with our poet-laureat) they forget, that the same standard to which our milky politicians advise the French people, sick of destruction, and panting for freedom, to fly for deliverance and repose, is that very standard, which, for twenty years, hovering round them, now seen like a cloudy speck in the distance—now spreading out its drooping lilies wide, has been the cause of that destruction—has robbed them at once of liberty and of repose!

Moscow is, however, the watch-word of the renegados of The Times. It seems to them just that Paris should be sacrificed to revenge the setting fire to Moscow by the Russians, and that the monuments of art in the Louvre ought to be destroyed because they are Bonaparte’s. No; they are ours as well as his;—they belong to the human race; he cannot monopolize all genius and all art. But these madmen would, if they could, blot the Sun out of heaven, because it shines upon France. They verify the old proverb, ‘Tell me your company, and I’ll tell you your manners!’ They, no more than their friends the Cossacks, can perceive any difference between the Kremlin and the Louvre. There is at least one difference, that the one may be built up again, and the other cannot. For there, in the Louvre, in Bonaparte’s Louvre, are the precious monuments of art—the sacred pledges which human genius has given to time and nature;—there ‘stands the statue that enchants the world;’ there is the Apollo, the Laocoon, the Dying 197Gladiator, the Head of the Antinous, Diana with her Fawn, and all the glories of the antique world;—

There, too, are the two St. Jeromes, Correggio’s and Dominichino’s; there is Raphael’s Transfiguration, the St. Mark of Tintoret, Paul Veronese’s Marriage of Cana, the Deluge of Nicholas Poussin, and Titian’s St. Peter Martyr;—all these, and more than these, of which the world is scarce worthy. Yet all these amount to nothing in the eyes of those virtuosos the Cossacks, and their fellow-students of The Times! ‘What’s Hecuba to them, or they to Hecuba?’ But we must be allowed to see with our own eyes, and to have certain feelings of our own. We will not be brayed by these quacks like fools in a mortar. We too, as Mr. Burke expresses it, have ‘real feelings of flesh and blood beating in our bosoms.’ ‘We look up with awe to Kings; with affection to parliaments; with duty to magistrates; with reverence to priests; and with respect to nobility.’ But all this is a machine that goes on of itself, and may be repaired if out of order. We bow willingly to Lords and Commoners, though we know that ‘breath can make them as a breath has made.’ Blücher, Wittgenstein, Winzingerode, and Ktzichigoff, are true heroes; their names become the mouth well, and rouse the ear as the sound of a trumpet; but they are the heroes of a day, and all that they have done might be as well done by others to-morrow. But here it is: once destroy the great monuments of art, and they cannot be replaced. Those mighty geniuses, who have left their works behind them an inheritance to mankind, live but once to do honour to themselves and their nature. ‘But once put out their light, and there is no Promethean heat that can their light relumine.’ Nor ought it ever to be re-kindled, to be extinguished a second time by the harpies of the human race. What have ‘the worshippers of cats and onions’ to do with those triumphs of human genius, which give the eternal lie to their creed? We would therefore recommend these accomplished pioneers of civilisation and social order, after they have done their work at the Louvre, to follow the river-side, and they will come to a bare inclosure, surrounded by four low walls. It is the place where the Bastille stood: let them rear that, and all will be well. And then some whiffling poet who celebrated the fall of that monument of mild paternal sway—that sacred ark of the confidence of Kings—that strong bulwark of ‘time-hallowed laws,’ and precious relic of ‘the good old times,’ in an ode, may hail its restoration in a sonnet!

There is an anecdote connected with the reputation of Gainsborough’s Pictures, which rests on pretty good authority. Sir Joshua Reynolds, at one of the Academy dinners, speaking of Gainsborough, said to a friend, ‘He is undoubtedly the best English landscape-painter.’ ‘No,’ said Wilson, who overheard the conversation, ‘he’s not the best English landscape-painter, but he is the best portrait-painter in England.’ They were certainly both wrong; but the story is creditable to the variety of Gainsborough’s talents.

Of his portraits, in the present collection at the British Gallery, the only fine one is A Portrait of a Youth. This picture is from Lord Grosvenor’s collection, where it used to look remarkably well, and has been sometimes mistaken for a Vandyke. There is a spirited glow of youth about the face, and the attitude is striking and elegant. 203The drapery of blue satin is admirably painted. The Portrait of Garrick is interesting as a piece of biography. He looks much more like a gentleman than in Reynolds’s tragi-comic representation of him.—There is a considerable lightness and intelligence in the expression of the face, and a piercing vivacity about the eyes, to which the attention is immediately directed. Gainsborough’s own portrait, which has, however, much truth and character, and makes a fine print, seems to have been painted with the handle of his brush. There is a portrait of The Prince Regent leading a horse, in which it must be confessed the man has the advantage of the animal.

Gainsborough’s landscapes are of two classes, or periods; his early and his later pictures. The former are, we imagine, the best. They are imitations of nature, or of painters who imitated nature;—such as a Woody Scene; another, which is a fine imitation of Ruysdale; and a Road Side, with figures, which has great truth and clearness. His later pictures are flimsy caricatures of Rubens, who himself carried inattention to accuracy of detail to the utmost limit that it would bear. Lord Bacon says, that ‘distilled books are, like distilled waters, flashy things.’ The same may be said of pictures.—Gainsborough’s latter landscapes are bad water-colour drawings, washed in by mechanical movements of the hand, without any communication with the eye. The truth seems to be, that Gainsborough found there was something wanting in his ‘early manner,’—that is, something beyond mere literal imitation of natural objects, and he seems to have concluded, rather hastily, that the way to arrive at that something more, was to discard truth and nature altogether. He accordingly ran from one extreme into the other. We cannot conceive anything carried to a greater excess of slender execution and paltry glazing, than A Fox hunted with grey-hounds, A romantic Landscape with Sheep at a Fountain, and many others. We were, however, much pleased with an upright landscape, with figures, which has a fine, fresh appearance of the open sky, with a dash of the wildness of Salvator Rosa; and also with A Bank of a River, which is remarkable for the elegance of the forms and the real delicacy of the execution. A Group of Cattle in a warm Landscape is an evident imitation of Rubens, but no more like to Rubens than ‘I to Hercules.’ Landscape with a Waterfall should be noticed for the sparkling clearness of the distance. Sportsmen in a Landscape is copied from Teniers with much taste and feeling, though very inferior to the original picture in Lord Radnor’s collection.

Of the fancy pictures, on which Gainsborough’s fame chiefly rests, we are disposed to give the preference to his Cottage Children. There is, we apprehend, greater truth, variety, force, and character, 204in this groupe, than in any other. The colouring of the light-haired child is particularly true to nature, and forms a sort of natural and innocent contrast to the dark complexion of the elder sister, who is carrying it. The Girl going to the Well is, however, the general favourite. The little dog is certainly admirable. His hair looks as if it had been just washed and combed. The attitude of the Girl is also perfectly easy and natural. But there is a consciousness in the turn of the head, and a sentimental pensiveness in the expression, which is not taken from nature, but intended as an improvement on it. There is a regular insipidity, a systematic vacancy, a round, unvaried smoothness, to which real nature is a stranger, and which is only an idea existing in the painter’s mind. We think the gloss of art is never so ill bestowed as on subjects of this kind, which ought to be studies of natural history. It is perhaps the general fault of Gainsborough, that he presents us with an ideal common life, whereas it is only the reality that is here good for any thing. His subjects are softened and sentimentalised too much, it is not simple, unaffected nature that we see, but nature sitting for her picture. Gainsborough, we suspect, from some of the pictures in this collection, led the way to that masquerade style, which piques itself on giving the air of an Adonis to the driver of a hay-cart, and models the features of a milk-maid on the principles of the antique. The Girl and Pigs is hardly liable to this objection. There is a healthy glow in the girl’s face, which seems the immediate effect of the air blowing upon it. The expression is not quite so good. The Fox-dogs are admirable. The young one is even better than the old one, and has undeniable hereditary pretensions. The Shepherd Boys are fine. We do not like the Boys with Dogs fighting. We see no reason why the one should be so handsome and the other so ugly, why the one should be so brown and the other so yellow, or why their dogs should be of the same colour as themselves: nor why the worst-looking of the two should be most anxious to part the fray. The sketch of the Woodman, the original of which was unfortunately burned, fully justifies all the reputation it has acquired. It is a really fine study from nature. There is a picture of Gainsborough’s somewhere of A Shepherd Boy in a Storm, of which we many years ago saw an indifferent copy in a broker’s shop, but in which the unconscious simplicity of the boy’s expression, looking up with his hands folded, and with timid wonder, the noisy chattering of a magpye perched above him, and the rustling of the coming storm in the branches of the trees, produced a romantic pastoral impression, which we have often recalled with no little pleasure since that time. We have always, indeed, felt a strong prepossession in favor of Gainsborough, 205and were disappointed at not finding his pictures in the present collection, all that we had wished to find them.

He was to be considered, perhaps, rather as a man of taste, and of an elegant and feeling mind, than as a man of genius; as a lover of the art, rather than an artist. He pursued it, with a view to amuse and sooth his mind, with the ease of a gentleman, not with the severity of a professional student. He wished to make his pictures, like himself, amiable; but a too constant desire to please almost necessarily leads to affectation and effeminacy. He wanted that vigour of intellect, which perceives the beauty of truth; and thought that painting was to be gained, like other mistresses, by flattery and smiles. It is an error which we are disposed to forgive in one, around whose memory, both as a man and an artist, many fond recollections, many vain regrets must always linger. Peace to his shade!^[15]

Mr. Kemble lately appeared at this theatre in the character of Penruddock, and was received (not indeed with waving handkerchiefs, and laurel garlands thrown on the stage, but what is much better) with heart-felt approbation and silent tears. His delineation of the part is one of his most correct and interesting performances, and one of the most perfect on the modern stage. The deeply rooted, mild, pensive melancholy of the character, its embittered recollections and dignified benevolence, were given by Mr. Kemble with equal truth, elegance, and feeling. This admirable actor appeared to be the unfortunate, but amiable individual whom he represented; and the expression of the sentiments, the look, the tone of voice, exactly true to nature, struck a correspondent chord in every bosom.—The range of characters, in which Mr. Kemble shines, and is 206superior to every other actor, are those which consist in the developement of some one sentiment or exclusive passion. From a want of rapidity, of scope, and variety, he is often deficient in expressing the bustle and complication of different interests, nor does he possess the faculty of overpowering the mind by sudden and irresistible bursts of passion. But in giving the habitual workings of a predominant feeling, as in Penruddock, Coriolanus, and some others, where all the passions move round a central point, and have one master key, he stands unrivalled. In Penruddock, he broods over the recollection of disappointed hope, till it becomes a part of himself, it sinks deeper into his mind the longer he dwells upon it, and his whole person is moulded to the character. The weight of sentiment which oppresses him never seems suspended, the spring at his heart is never lightened, his regrets only become more profound as they become more durable. So in Coriolanus, he exhibits the ruling passion with the same continued firmness, he preserves the same haughty dignity of demeanour, the same energy of will, and unbending sternness of temper throughout. He is swayed by a single impulse. His tenaciousness of purpose is only irritated by opposition: he turns neither to the right nor to the left: but the vehemence with which he moves forward increases every instant, till it hurries him to the catastrophe. In Leontes, in the Winter’s Tale, the growing jealousy of the king, and the exclusive possession which it at length obtains of his mind, are marked in the finest manner, particularly where he exclaims—

In the course of this enumeration every proof tells harder, his conviction becomes more rivetted at every step of his progress, and at the end his mind is wound up to a frenzy of despair. In such characters, Mr. Kemble has no occasion to call in the resources of invention, or the tricks of the art; his excellence consists entirely in the increasing intensity with which he dwells on a given feeling or 207enforces a predominant passion. In Hamlet, on the contrary, Mr. Kemble unavoidably fails from a want of flexibility, or of that quick sensibility, which yields to every motive, and is borne away with every breath of fancy, which is distracted by the multiplicity of its reflections, and lost in its own purposes. There is a perpetual undulation of feeling in the character of Hamlet (though it must be confessed, much of this, which is the essence of the play, is left out on the stage), but in Mr. Kemble’s acting ‘there is no variableness nor shadow of turning.’ He plays it like a man in armour, with a determined inveteracy of purpose, in one undeviating strait line, which is as remote from the natural grace and easy susceptibility of the character, as the sharp angles and abrupt starts to produce an effect, which Mr. Kean introduces into it. Mr. Kean’s Hamlet is, in our opinion, as much too ‘splenetic and rash,’ as Mr. Kemble’s is too deliberate and formal. In Richard, Mr. Kemble has not that tempest and whirlwind of the passions, that life and spirit, and dazzling rapidity of motion, which, as it were, fills the stage, and burns in every part, which Mr. Kean displayed in it till he was worn out by the managers. Mr. Kean’s acting, in general, strongly reminds us of the lines of the poet, when he describes

Mr. Kemble’s manner on the contrary has always something dry, hard and pedantic in it. ‘You shall relish him more in the scholar than the soldier.’ But his monotony does not fatigue, his formality does not displease, because there is always sense and feeling in what he does. The fineness of Mr. Kemble’s figure has perhaps led to that statue-like appearance which his acting is sometimes too apt to assume; as the diminutiveness of Mr. Kean’s person has probably forced him to bustle about too much, and to attempt to make up for the want of dignity of form by the violence and contrast of his attitudes. If Mr. Kemble were to remain in the same posture for half an hour, his figure would only produce admiration—if Mr. Kean were to stand still only for a moment, the contrary effect would be produced.

To return to Penruddock and the Wheel of Fortune. The only novelties were Miss Foote in Emily Tempest, and her lover, Mr. Farley, as Sir David Daw. The latter, who is a Welch Adonis of five-and-twenty, from the natural advantages of his person, and the artificial improvements which were added to it, was a very admirable likeness, on a reduced scale, of the Prince Regent. We do not know 208whether the burlesque was intended, but it had a laughable effect. We acknowledge that Mr. Farley is one of those persons whom we always welcome heartily when we see him. What with laughing at him and laughing with him, we hardly know a more comic personage. Miss Foote played and looked the part of Emily Tempest very naturally and very prettily, but without giving to the character either much interest or much elegance. Her voice is in itself as sweet as her person, and when she exerts it, she articulates with ease and clearness: but we should add, that she has a habit of tripping in her common speaking, that is, of dropping her voice so low, except where a particular emphasis is to be laid, as to make it difficult for the ear to follow the sense.

The general merit of these Discourses is so well established that it would be needless to enlarge on it here. The graces of the composition are such, that scholars have been led to suspect that it was the style of Burke (the first prose-writer of our time) carefully subdued, and softened down to perfection: and the taste and knowledge of the subject displayed in them are so great, that this work has been, by common consent, considered as a text-book on the subject of art, in our English school of painting, ever since its publication. Highly elegant and valuable as Sir Joshua’s opinions are, yet they are liable (so it appears to us) to various objections; and it becomes more important to state these objections, because, as it generally happens, the most questionable of his precepts are those which have been the most eagerly adopted, and carried into practice with the greatest success. The errors, if they are such, which we shall attempt to point out, are not casual, but systematic. There is a finespun metaphysical theory, either not very clearly understood, or not very correctly expressed, pervading Sir Joshua’s reasoning; and which appears to have led him in several of the most important points to conclusions, either false or only true in part.^[16] The rules thus laid down, as general and comprehensive maxims, are in fact founded on a set of half principles, which are true only as far as they imply a negation of the opposite errors, but contain in themselves the germ of other errors just as fatal: which, if strictly and literally understood, 209cannot be defended, and which by being taken in an equivocal sense, of course leave the student as much to seek as ever. The English school of painting is universally reproached by foreigners with the slovenly and unfinished state in which they send their productions into the world, with their ignorance of academic rules and neglect of the subordinate details; in other words, with aiming at effect only in all their works of art: and though it is by no means necessary that we should adopt the defects of the French and German painters, yet we might learn from them to correct our own. There was no occasion to encourage our constitutional indolence and impatience by positive rules, or to incorporate our vicious habits into a system. Or if our defects were to be retained, at least they ought to have been tolerated only for the sake of certain collateral and characteristic excellencies out of which they might be thought to spring. Thus a certain degree of precision or regularity might be sacrificed rather than impair that boldness, vigour, and originality of conception, in which the strength of the national genius might be supposed to lie. But the method of instruction pursued in the Discourses seems calculated for neither of these objects. Without endeavouring to overcome our habitual defects, which might be corrected by proper care and study, it damps our zeal, ardour, and enthusiasm. It places a full reliance neither on art nor nature, but consists in a kind of fastidious tampering with both. Both genius and industry are put out of countenance in turn. The height of invention is made to consist in compiling from others, and the perfection of imitation in not copying from nature. We lose the substance of the art in catching at a shadow, and are thought to embrace a cloud for a Goddess!

That we may not seem to prejudge the question, we shall state at once, and without further preface, the principal points in the Discourses which we deem either wrong in themselves, or liable to misconception and abuse. They are the following:—

1. That genius or invention consists chiefly in borrowing the ideas of others, or in using other men’s minds.

2. That the great style in painting depends on leaving out the details of particular objects.

3. That the essence of portrait consists in giving the general character, rather than the individual likeness.

4. That the essence of history consists in abstracting from individuality of character and expression as much as possible.

5. That beauty or ideal perfection consists in a central form.

6. That to imitate nature is a very inferior object in art.

All of these positions appear to require a separate consideration, which we shall give them in the following articles on this subject.

The imitation of nature is the great object of art. Of course, the principles by which this imitation should be regulated, form the leading topic of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s lectures. It is certain that the mechanical imitation of individual objects, or the parts of individual objects, does not always produce beauty or grandeur; or, generally speaking that the whole of art does not consist in copying nature. Reynolds seems hence disposed to infer, that the whole of art consists in not imitating individual nature. This is also an error, and an error on the worst side.

Sir Joshua’s general system may be summed up in two words,—‘That the great style in painting consists in avoiding the details, and peculiarities of particular objects.’ This sweeping principle he applies almost indiscriminately to portrait, history, and landscape;—and he appears to have been led to the conclusion itself, from supposing the imitation of particulars to be inconsistent with general truth and effect.

It will not be unimportant to inquire how far this opinion is well-founded: for it appears to us, that the highest perfection of the art depends, not on the separation, but on the union (as far as possible) of general truth and effect with individual distinctness and accuracy.

First, it is said that the great style in painting, as it relates to the immediate imitation of external nature, consists in avoiding the details of particular objects.

It consists neither in giving nor avoiding them, but in something quite different from both. Any one may avoid the details. So far, there is no difference between the Cartoons, and a common sign-painting. 217Greatness consists in giving the larger masses and proportions with truth;—this does not prevent giving the smaller ones too. The utmost grandeur of outline, and the broadest masses of light and shade, are perfectly compatible with the greatest minuteness and delicacy of detail, as may be seen in nature. It is not, indeed, common to see both qualities combined in the imitations of nature, any more than the combination of other excellences; nor are we here saying to which the principal attention of the artist should be directed; but we deny, that, considered in themselves, the absence of the one quality is necessary or sufficient to the production of the other.

If, for example, the form of the eyebrow is correctly given, it will be perfectly indifferent to the truth or grandeur of the design, whether it consist of one broad mark, or is composed of a number of hair-lines, arranged in the same order. So, if the lights and shades are disposed in fine and large masses, the breadth of the picture, as it is called, cannot possibly be affected by the filling up of those masses with the details;—that is, with the subordinate distinctions which appear in nature. The anatomical details in Michael Angelo, the ever-varying outline of Raphael, the perfect execution of the Greek statues, do not assuredly destroy their symmetry or dignity of form;—and in the finest specimens of the composition of colour, we may observe the largest masses combined with the greatest variety in the parts, of which those masses are composed.

The gross style consists in giving no details,—the finical in giving nothing else. Nature contains both large and small parts,—both masses and details; and the same may be said of the most perfect works of art. The union of both kinds of excellence, of strength with delicacy, as far as the limits of human capacity and the shortness of human life would permit, is that which has established the reputation of the greatest masters. Farther,—their most finished works are their best. The predominance, however, of either excellence in these masters, has, of course, varied according to their opinion of the relative value of these different qualities,—the labour they had the time or patience to bestow on their works,—the skill of the artist, or the nature and extent of his subject. But, if the rule here objected to,—that the careful imitation of the parts injures the effect of the whole,—be at once admitted, slovenliness would become another name for genius, and the most unfinished performance would necessarily be the best. That such has been the confused impression left on the mind by the perusal of Sir Joshua’s discourses, is evident from the practice as well as the 218conversation of many (even eminent) artists. The late Mr. Opie proceeded entirely on this principle. He left many admirable studies of portraits, particularly in what relates to the disposition and effect of light and shade. But he never finished any of the parts, thinking them beneath the attention of a great man. He went over the whole head the second day as he had done the day before, and therefore made no progress. The picture at last, having neither the lightness of a sketch, nor the accuracy of a finished work, looked coarse, laboured, and heavy.

‘Would you then have an artist finish like Denner?’ is the triumphant appeal which is made as decisive against all objections. To which, as it is an appeal to authority, the proper answer seems to be,—‘No; but we would have him finish like Titian or Correggio.’ Denner is an example of finishing not to be followed, but shunned, because he did nothing but finish; because he finished ill, and because he finished to excess;—for in all things there is a certain proportion of means to ends. He pored into the littlenesses of objects, till he lost sight of nature, instead of imitating it. He represents the human face, perhaps, as it might appear through a magnifying glass, but certainly not as it ever appears to us. It is the business of painting to express objects as they appear naturally, not as they may be made to appear artificially. His flesh is as blooming and glossy as a flower or a shell. Titian’s finishing, on the contrary, is equally admirable, because it is engrafted on the most profound knowledge of effect, and attention to the character of what he represents. His pictures have the exact look of nature, the very tone and texture of flesh. The endless variety of his tints is blended into the greatest simplicity. There is a proper degree both of solidity and transparency. All the parts hang together: every stroke tells, and adds to the effect of the rest.

To understand the value of any excellence, we must refer to the use which has been made of it, not to instances of its abuse. If there is a certain degree of ineffectual microscopic finishing, which we never find united with an attention to other higher and more indispensable parts of the art, we may suspect that there is something incompatible between them, and that the pursuit of the one diverts the mind from the attainment of the other. But this is the real point to stop at—where alone we should limit our theory or our efforts. Wherever different excellences have been actually united to a certain point of perfection, to that point (abstractedly speaking) we are sure that they may, and ought to be united again. There is no occasion to add the incitements of indolence, affectation, and false theory, to the other causes which contribute to the decline of art!

219Sir Joshua seems, indeed, to deny that Titian finished much, and says that he produced, by two or three strokes of his pencil, effects which the most laborious copyists would in vain attempt to equal. It is true that he availed himself, in a considerable degree, of what is called execution, to facilitate his imitation of nature, but it was to facilitate, not to supersede it. By the methods of scumbling or glazing, he often broke the masses of his flesh,—or by laying on lumps of colour produced particular effects, to a degree that he could not otherwise have reached without considerable loss of time. We do not object to execution: it saves labour, and shews a mastery both of hand and eye. But then there is nothing more distinct than execution and daubing. Indeed, it is evident, that the only use of execution is to give the details more compendiously, and sometimes, even more happily. Leave out all regard to the details, reduce the whole into crude unvarying masses, and it becomes totally useless; for these can be given just as well without execution as with it. Titian, however, made a very moderate, though a very admirable use of this power; and those who copy his pictures will find, that the simplicity is in the results, not in the details.

The other Venetian painters made too violent a use of execution, unless their subjects formed an excuse for them. Vandyke successfully employed it in giving the last finishing to the details. Rembrandt employed it still more, and with more perfect truth of effect.—Rubens employed it equally, but not so as to produce an equal resemblance of nature. His pencil ran away with his eye.—To conclude our observations on this head, we will only add, that while the artist thinks that there is any thing to be done, either to the whole or to the parts of his picture, which can give it still more the look of nature, if he is willing to proceed, we would not advise him to desist.—This rule is still more necessary to the young student, for he will relax in his attention as he grows older. And again, with respect to the subordinate parts of a picture, there is no danger that he will bestow a disproportionate degree of labour upon them, because he will not feel the same interest in copying them, and because a much less degree of accuracy will serve every purpose of deception;—the nicety of our habitual observations being always in proportion to our interest in the objects.—Sir Joshua somewhere objects to the attempt to deceive by painting; and his reason is, that wax-work, which deceives most effectually, is a very disagreeable as well as contemptible art. It might be answered, first, that nothing is much more unlike nature than such figures generally are, and farther, that they only produce the appearance of prominence and relief, by having it in reality,—in which they are just the reverse of painting.

220Secondly, with regard to EXPRESSION, we can hardly agree with Sir Joshua that ‘the perfection of imitation consists in giving the general idea or character, not the peculiarities of individuals.’—We do not think this rule at all well-founded with respect to portrait-painting, nor applicable to history to the extent to which Sir Joshua carries it. For the present, we shall confine ourselves to the former of these.

No doubt, if we were to chuse between the general character and the peculiarities of feature, we ought to prefer the former. But they are so far from being incompatible with, that they are not without some difficulty distinguishable from, each other. There is indeed a general look of the face, a predominant expression arising from the correspondence and connection of the different parts, which it is always of the first and last importance to give; and without which no elaboration of detached parts, or marking of the peculiarity of single features, is worth any thing; but which at the same time, is certainly not destroyed, but assisted, by the careful finishing, and still more by giving the exact outline of each part.

It is on this point that the French and English schools differ, and (in my opinion) are both wrong. The English seem generally to suppose, that, if they only leave out the subordinate parts, they are sure of the general result. The French, on the contrary, as idly imagine, that by attending to each separate part, they must infallibly arrive at a correct whole,—not considering that, besides the parts, there is their relation to each other, and the general character stamped upon them by the mind itself, which to be seen must be felt,—for it is demonstrable that all expression and character are perceived by the mind, and not by the eye only. The French painters see only lines, and precise differences;—the English only general masses, and strong effects. Hence the two nations constantly reproach one another with the difference of their styles of art; the one as dry, hard and minute, the other as gross, gothic, and unfinished; and they will probably remain for ever satisfied with each other’s defects, which afford a very tolerable fund of consolation on either side.

There is something in the two styles, which arises, perhaps, from national countenance as well as character:—the French physiognomy is frittered away into a parcel of little moveable compartments and distinct signs of intelligence,—like a telegraphic machinery. The English countenance, on the other hand, is too apt to sink into a lumpish mass, with very few ideas, and those set in a sort of stupid stereotype.

To return to the proper business of portrait-painting. We mean to speak of it, not as a lucrative profession, nor as an indolent amusement, (for we interfere with no man’s profits or pleasures), but as a bona fide 221art, the object of which is to exercise the talents of the artist, and to add to the stock of ideas in the public. And in this point of view, we should imagine that that is the best portrait which contains the fullest representation of individual nature.

Portrait-painting is the biography of the pencil, and he who gives most of the peculiarities and details, with most of the general character,—that is of keeping,—is the best biographer, and the best portrait-painter. What if Boswell (the prince of biographers) had not given us the scene between Wilkes and Johnson at Dilly’s table, or had not introduced the little episode of Goldsmith strutting about in his peach-coloured coat after the success of his play,—should we have had a more perfect idea of the general character of those celebrated persons from the omission of these particulars? Or if Reynolds had not painted the former as ‘blinking Sam,’ or had given us such a representation of the latter as we see of some modern poets in some modern magazines, the fame of that painter would have been confined to the circles of fashion,—where they naturally look for the same selection of beauties in a portrait, as of topics in a dedication, or a copy of complimentary verses!

It has not been uncommon that portraits of this kind, which professed to admit all the peculiarities, and to heighten all the excellences of a face, have been elevated by ignorance and affectation, to the dignified rank of historical portrait. But in fact they are merely caricature transposed: that is, as the caricaturist makes a mouth wider than it really is, so the painter of flattering likenesses (as they are termed) makes it not so wide, by a process just as mechanical, and more insipid. Instead, however, of objecting captiously to common theory or practice, it will perhaps be better to state at once our own conceptions of historical portrait. It consists, then, in seizing the predominant form or expression, and preserving it with truth throughout every part. It is representing the individual under one consistent, probable, and striking view; or shewing the different features, muscles, etc. in one action, and modified by one principle. A face thus painted, is historical;—that is, it carries its own internal evidence of truth and nature with it; and the number of individual peculiarities, as long as they are true to nature, cannot lessen, but must add to the general strength of the impression.

To give an example or two of what we mean. We conceive that the common portrait of Oliver Cromwell would be less valuable and striking if the wart on the face were taken away. It corresponds with the general roughness and knottiness of the rest of the face;—or if considered merely as an accident, it operates as a kind of circumstantial evidence of the genuineness of the representation. Sir 222Joshua Reynolds’s portrait of Dr. Johnson has altogether that sluggishness of outward appearance,—that want of quickness and versatility,—that absorption of faculty, and look of purblind reflection, which were characteristic of his mind. The accidental discomposure of his wig indicates his habits. If, with the same felicity and truth of conception, this portrait (we mean the common one reading) had been more made out, it would not have been less historical, though it would have been more like and natural.

Titian’s portraits are the most historical that ever were painted; and they are so for this reason, that they have most consistency of form and expression. His portraits of Hippolito de Medici, and of a young Neapolitan nobleman in the Louvre, are a striking contrast in this respect. All the lines of the face in the one;—the eyebrows, the nose, the corners of the mouth, the contour of the face,—present the same sharp angles, the same acute, edgy, contracted expression. The other face has the finest expansion of feature and outline, and conveys the most exquisite idea possible of mild, thoughtful sentiment. The harmony of the expression constitutes as great a charm in Titian’s portraits, as that of colour. The similarity sometimes objected to them, is partly national, and partly arises from the class of persons whom he painted. He painted only Italians; and in his time none but persons of the highest rank, senators or cardinals, sat for their pictures.

Sir Joshua appears to have been led into several errors by a false use of the terms general and particular. Nothing can be more different than the various application of both these terms to different things, and yet Sir Joshua constantly uses and reasons upon them as invariable. There are three senses of the expression general character, as applied to ideas or objects. In the first, it signifies the general appearance or aggregate impression of the whole object, as opposed to the mere detail of detached parts. In the second, it signifies the class, or what a number of such objects have in common with one another, to the exclusion of their characteristic differences. In this sense it is tantamount to abstract. In the third it signifies what is usual or common, in opposition to mere singularity, or accidental exceptions to the ordinary course of nature. The general idea or character of a particular face, i.e. the aggregate impression resulting from all the parts combined, is surely very different from the abstract idea, or what it has in common with several others. If on giving the former all character depends; to give nothing but the latter is to take away all character. The more a painter comprehends of what he sees, the more valuable his work will be: but it is not true that his excellence will be the greater, the more he abstracts from what he sees.—There 223is an essential distinction which Sir Joshua has not observed. The details and peculiarities of nature are only inconsistent with abstract ideas, and not with general or aggregate effects. By confounding the two things, Sir Joshua excludes the peculiarities and details not only from his historical composition, but from an enlarged view and comprehensive imitation of individual nature.

We have here attempted to give some account of what should be meant by the ideal in portrait-painting: in our next and concluding article on this subject, we shall attempt an explanation of this term, as it applies to historical painting.

‘For I would by no means be thought to comprehend those writers of surprising genius, the authors of immense romances, or the modern novel and Atalantis writers, who, without any assistance from nature or history, record persons who never were, or will be, and facts which never did, nor possibly can happen: whose heroes are of their own creation, and their brains the chaos whence all their materials are collected. Not that such writers deserve no honour; so far from it, that perhaps they merit the highest. One may apply to them what Balzac says of Aristotle, that they are a second nature; for they have no communication with the first, by which authors of an inferior class, who cannot stand alone, are obliged to support themselves, as with crutches.’—Fielding’s Joseph Andrews, vol. ii.

What is here said of certain writers of romance, would apply equally to a great number of painters of history. These persons, not without the sanction of high authority, have come to the conclusion that they had only to quit the vulgar path of truth and reality, in order that they ‘might ascend the brightest heaven of invention,’—and that to get rid of nature was all that was necessary to the loftiest flights of art, as the soul disentangled from the load of matter soars to its native skies. But this is by no means the truth. All art is built upon nature; and the tree of knowledge lifts its branches to the clouds, only as it has struck its roots deep into the earth. He is the greatest artist, not who leaves the materials of nature behind him, but who carries them with him into the world of invention;—and the larger and more entire the masses in which he is able to apply them to his purpose, the stronger and more durable will his productions be. Sir Joshua Reynolds admits that the knowledge of the individual forms and various combinations of nature, is necessary to the student, 224but it is only in order that he may avoid them, and steering clear of all representation of things as they actually exist, wander up and down in the empty void of his own imagination, having nothing better to cling to, than certain shadowy middle forms, made up of an abstraction of all others, and containing nothing in themselves. Stripping nature of substance and accident, he is to exhibit a decompounded, disembodied, vague, ideal nature in her stead, seen through the misty veil of metaphysics, and covered with the same fog and haze of confusion, while

The concrete, and not the abstract, is the object of painting, and of all the works of imagination. History-painting is imaginary portrait-painting. The portrait-painter gives you an individual, such as he is in himself, and vouches for the truth of the likeness as a matter of fact: the historical painter gives you the individual such as he is likely to be,—that is, approaches as near to the reality as his imagination will enable him to do, leaving out such particulars as are inconsistent with the preconceived idea,—as are merely trifling and accidental,—and retaining all such as are striking, probable, and consistent. Because the historical painter has not the same immediate data to go upon, but must connect individual nature with an imaginary subject, is that any reason why he should discard individual nature altogether, and thus leave nothing for his imagination, or the imagination of the spectator to work upon? Portrait and history differ as a narration of facts or a probable fiction differ; but abstraction is the essence of neither. That is not the finest historical head which has least the look of nature, but which has most the look of nature, if it has the look of history also. But it has the look of nature, i.e. of striking and probable nature,—as it has a marked and decided character, and not a character of indifference: and as the features and expression are consistent with themselves, not as they are common to others. The ideal is that which answers to the idea of something, and not to the idea of any thing, or of nothing. Any countenance strikes most upon the imagination, either in a picture or in reality, which has most distinctness from others, and most identity with itself. The keeping in the character, not the want of character, is the essence of history. Without some such limitation as we have here given, on the general statement of Sir Joshua, we see no resting-place where the painter or the poet is to make his stand, so as not to be pushed to the utmost verge of naked common-place inanity,—nor do we understand how there should be any such thing as poetry or painting 225tolerated. A tabula rasa, a verbal definition, the bare name, must be better than the most striking description or representation;—the argument of a poem better than the poem itself,—or the catalogue of a picture than the original work. Where shall we stop in the easy down-hill pass of effeminate, unmeaning insipidity? There is one circumstance, to be sure, to recommend the system here objected to, which is, that he who proposes this ideal perfection to himself, can hardly fail to succeed in it. An artist who paints on the infallible principle of not imitating nature, in representing the meeting of Telemachus and Calypso, will not find it difficult to confound all difference of sex or passion, and in pourtraying the form of Mentor, will leave out every distinctive mark of age or wisdom. In representing a Grecian marriage he will refine on his favourite principles till it will be possible to transpose the features of the bridegroom and the bride without the least violation of propriety; all the women will be like the men; and all like one another, all equally young, blooming, smiling, elegant, and insipid. On Sir Joshua’s theory of the beau ideal, Mr. Westall’s pictures are perhaps the best that ever were painted, and on any other theory, the worst; for they exhibit an absolute negation of all expression, character, and discrimination of form and colour.

We shall endeavour to explain our doctrine by some examples which appear to us either directly subversive of, or not very obviously included in, Sir J. Reynolds’s theory of history painting, or of the principles of art in general. Is there any one who can possibly doubt that Hogarth’s pictures are perfectly and essentially historical?—or that they convey a story perfectly intelligibly, with faces and expressions which every one must recognise? They have evidently a common or general character, but that general character is defined and modified by individual peculiarities, which certainly do not take away from the illusion or the effect any more than they would in nature. There is, in the polling for votes, a fat and a lean lawyer, yet both of them are lawyers, and lawyers busy at an election squabble. It is the same with the voters, who are of all descriptions, the lame, the blind, and the halt, yet who all convey the very feeling which the scene inspires, with the greatest variety and the greatest consistency of expression. The character of Mr. Abraham Adams by Fielding, is somewhat particular, and even singular: yet it is not less intelligible or striking on that account; and his lawyer and his landlady, though copied from individuals in real life, had yet, as he himself observes, existed four thousand years, and would continue to make a figure in the world as long as certain passions were found united with certain situations, and operating on certain dispositions.

It will, we suppose, be objected that this, though history and 226invention, is not high history, or poetical invention. We would answer then at once by appealing to Shakespeare. It will be allowed that his characters are poetical as well as natural; yet the individual portrait is almost as striking as the general expression of nature and passion. It is this and this only which distinguishes him from the French school. Dr. Johnson, proceeding on the same theoretical principles as his friend Sir Joshua, affirms, that the excellence of Shakespeare’s characters consists in their generality. We grant in one sense it does; but we will add that it consists in their particularity also. Are the admirable descriptions of the kings of Thrace and Inde in Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, less poetical or historical, or ideal, because they are distinguished by traits as characteristic as they are striking;—in their lineaments, their persons, their armour, their other attributes, the one black and broad, the other tall, and fair, and freckled, with yellow crisped locks that glittered as the sun. The four white bulls, and the lions which accompany them are equally fine, but they are not fine because they present no distinct image to the mind. The effect of this is somehow lost in Dryden’s Palamon and Arcite, and the poetry is lost with it.

Much more is it necessary to combine individuality with the highest works of art in painting, ‘whose end and use both at the first, now is, and was, to hold as ’twere the mirror up to nature.’ The painter gives the degree and peculiarity of expression where words in a manner leave off, and if he does not go beyond mere abstraction, he does nothing. The cartoons of Raphael, and his pictures in the Vatican, are sufficiently historical, yet there is hardly a face or figure in any of them which is anything more than fine and individual nature finely disposed. The late Mr. Barry, who could not be suspected of a prejudice on this side of the question, speaks thus of them,—‘In Raphael’s pictures (at the Vatican) of the Dispute of the Sacrament and the School of Athens, one sees all the heads to be entirely copied from particular characters in nature, nearly proper for the persons and situation which he adapts them to; and he seems to me only to add and take away what may answer his purpose in little parts, features, &c.: conceiving, while he had the head before him, ideal characters and expressions, which he adapts these features and peculiarities of face to. This attention to the particulars which distinguish all the different faces, persons and characters, the one from the other, gives his pictures quite the verity and unaffected dignity of nature, which stamp the distinguishing differences betwixt one man’s face and body and another’s.’

If any thing is wanting to the conclusiveness of this testimony, it is only to look at the pictures themselves, particularly the Miracle of 227the Conversion, and the Assembly of Saints, which are little else than a collection of divine portraits, in natural and expressive attitudes,—full of the loftiest thought and feeling, and as varied as they are fine. It is this reliance on the power of nature, which has produced those master-pieces by the prince of painters, in which expression is all in all;—where one spirit—that of truth—pervades every part, brings down heaven to earth, mingles cardinals and popes with angels and apostles, and yet blends and harmonises the whole by the true touches and intense feeling of what is beautiful and grand in nature. It is no wonder that Sir Joshua, when he first saw Raphael’s pictures in the Vatican, was at a loss to discover any great excellence in them, if he was looking out for his theory of the ideal, of neutral character and middle forms.

Another authority, which has been in some measure discovered since the publication of Sir Joshua’s Discourses, is to be found in the Elgin Marbles, taken from the Acropolis, and supposed to be the works of the celebrated Phidias. The process of fastidious refinement, and flimsy abstraction, is certainly not visible there. The figures have all the ease, the simplicity, and variety of nature, and look more like living men turned to stone than any thing else. Even the details of the subordinate parts, the loose folds in the skin, the veins under the belly or on the sides of the horses, more or less swelled as the animal is more or less in action, are given with scrupulous exactness. This is true nature, and true history. In a word, we can illustrate our position here better than we could with respect to painting, by saying that these invaluable remains of antiquity are precisely like casts taken from nature.—Michael Angelo and the antique may still be cited against us, and we wish to speak on this subject with great diffidence. We confess, they appear to us much more artificial than the others, but we do not think that this is their excellence. For instance, it strikes us that there is something theatrical in the air of the Apollo, and in the Hercules an ostentatious and over-laboured display of the knowledge of the muscles. Perhaps the fragment of the Theseus at Lord Elgin’s has more grandeur as well as more nature than either of them. The form of the limbs, as affected by pressure or action, and the general sway of the body, are better preserved in it. The several parts in the later Greek statues are more balanced, made more to tally like modern periods; each muscle is more equally brought out, and highly finished, and is so far better in itself, but worse as a part of a whole. If these wonderful productions have a fault, it is the want of simplicity, of a due subordination of parts, which sometimes gives them more a look of perfect lay-figures put into attitudes, than of real imitations of nature. 228The same objection may be urged against the works of Michael Angelo, and is indeed the necessary consequence either of selecting from a number of different models, or of proceeding on a scientific knowledge of the structure of the different parts; for the physical form is something given and defined, but motion is various and infinite. The superior symmetry of form, common to the ancient statues, we have no hesitation in attributing to the superior symmetry of the models in nature, and to the superior opportunity for studying them.

In general, we would be understood to mean, that the ideal is not a voluntary fiction of the brain, a fanciful piece of patch-work, a compromise between the defects of nature, or an artificial balance struck between innumerable deformities, (as if we could form a perfect idea of beauty though we never had seen any such thing,) but a preference of what is fine in nature to what is less so. There is nothing fine in art but what is taken almost immediately and entirely from what is finer in nature. Where there have been the finest models in nature, there have also been the finest works of art. The Greek statues were copied from Greek forms. Their portraits of individuals were often superior to their personifications of their gods; the head of the Antinous, for example, to that of the Apollo. Raphael’s expressions were taken from Italian faces; and we have heard it observed, that the women in the streets of Rome seem to have walked out of his pictures in the Vatican.

If we are asked, then, what it is that constitutes historic expression or ideal beauty, we should answer, not (with Sir Joshua) abstract expression or middle forms, but consistency of expression in the one, and symmetry of form in the other.

A face is historical, which is made up of consistent parts, let those parts be ever so peculiar or uncommon. Those details or peculiarities only are inadmissible in history, which do not arise out of any principle, or tend to any conclusion,—which are merely casual, insignificant, and unconnected,—which do not tell; that is, which either do not add to, or which contradict the general result,—which are not integrant parts of one whole, however strange or irregular that whole may be. That history does not require or consist in the middle form or central features is proved by this, that the antique heads of fauns and satyrs, of Pan or Silenus, are perfectly grotesque and singular; yet are as undoubtedly historical, as the Apollo or the Venus, because they have the same predominant, intelligible, characteristic expression throughout. Socrates is a person whom we recognise quite as familiarly, from our general acquaintance with human nature, as Alcibiades.^[19] 229The simplicity or the fewness of the parts of a head facilitates this effect, but is not necessary to it. The head of a negro, a mulatto, &c. introduced into a picture is always historical, because it is always distinct from the rest, and uniform with itself. The face covered with a beard is historical for the same reason, because it presents distinct and uniform masses. Again, a face, not so in itself, becomes historical by the mere force of passion. The same strong passion moulds the features into the same emphatic expression, by giving to the mouth, the eyes, the forehead, etc., the same expansion or contraction, the same voluptuous movement or painful constraint. All intellectual and impassioned faces are historical;—the heads of philosophers, poets, lovers, and madmen. Passion sometimes produces beauty by this means, and there is a beauty of form, the effect entirely of expression; as a smiling mouth, not beautiful in common, becomes so by being put into that action.

Sir Joshua was probably led to his opinions on art in general by his theory of beauty, which he makes to consist in a certain central form, the medium of all others. In the first place, this theory is questionable in itself: or if it were not so, it does not include many other things of much more importance in historical painting (though perhaps not so in sculpture^[20]) namely, character, which necessarily implies individuality; expression, which is the excess of thought or feeling, strength or grandeur of form, which is excess also.—There seems, however, to be a certain symmetry of form, as there is a certain harmony of sounds or colours, which gives pleasure, and produces beauty, independently of custom. Custom is undoubtedly one source or condition of beauty, but it appears to be rather its limit than its essence; that is, there are certain given forms and proportions established by nature in the structure of each thing, and sanctioned by custom, without which there can only be distortion and incongruity, but which alone do not produce beauty. One kind is more beautiful than another; and the objects of the same kind are not beautiful merely as we are used to them. The rose or lily is more beautiful than the daisy, the swan than the crow, the greyhound than the beagle, the deer than the wild goat; and we invariably prefer the Greek to the African face, though our own inclines more to the latter. We admire the broad forehead, the straight nose, the small mouth, the oval chin. Regular features are those which record and assimilate most to one another. The Greek face is made up of smooth flowing lines, and correspondent features; the African face of sharp angles and projections. A row of pillars is beautiful for the same reason. 230We confess, on this subject of beauty, we are half-disposed to fall into the mysticism of Raphael Mengs, who had some notion about a principle of universal harmony, if we did not dread the censure of an eminent critic.

It seldom happens that the same family produces an emperour and an epic poet. So it is, however, in the present instance. The brother of Buonaparte may be allowed to take his rank among poets, as Buonaparte himself has done among kings. But the historian of Charlemagne does not appear to us to present quite the same formidable front to the established possessors of the seats of the muses, as the imitator of Charlemagne did to the hereditary occupiers of thrones. A self-will without controul, an ambition without bounds, a gigantic daring which built its confidence of success on the contempt of danger, were the means by which Buonaparte obtained and lost his portentous power; and by which he would probably have lost it on the borders of the Ganges, or among the sands of the Red Sea, if he had not been prevented by the snows of Russia.

Our poet is not the same monster of genius that his brother was of power. In the career of fame, he does not risk the success of his reputation by the unlimited extravagance of his pretensions. His muse does not disdain to borrow the conceptions of others, or to submit to the rules of art; and the boldest flights of his imagination seldom pass the bounds of a well-regulated enthusiasm. Charlemagne is the work of a very clever man, rather than a great poet; it displays more talent than genius, more ingenuity than invention. It is more artificial than original. In saying this, we would not be understood to mean, that it is without considerable novelty, either of description or sentiment. Far, very far from it: almost every page presents examples of both, equally striking and elegant, which it would be difficult to refer immediately to any similar passages in other authors. But the whole wants character: it does not bear the stamp of the same presiding mind: no new world of imagination is opened to the view: we do not feel the presence of a power which we have never felt before, and which we can never forget.

The stanzas are all equally or proportionably good: but they are as good separately, as taken together: they do not run into one another; they do not make a poem. There is no strong impulse given, no 231overpowering grandeur of effect. In scarcely any part of the story does the mind look back with terror and delight at what is past, or hurry on with eager curiosity to what is to come. The art is too apparent. The author is too busy in managing his materials, in selecting, adorning, varying, and amplifying them to the best advantage: but they seem something external to him. His subject has not taken entire possession of his mind, and therefore he does not take full possession of his readers. Yet it is certain that all the materials of poetry are here;—imagery, incident, character, passion, thought, and observation—all but the divine enthusiasm of the poet, which can alone communicate true warmth and enthusiasm to others.

There is one praise which we most willingly bestow on this poem, which is, that it is not French. It is not another Henriade:—that is, it is not poetry devoid of all imagination, and of every thing like imagination. On the contrary, it abounds with variety and distinctness of conception, and is evidently written on the model of Italian poetry. We were a little surprised to find that the author had not adopted the common heroic French verse, but has borrowed the Italian Stanza with varying rhymes, and a little half verse in the middle, which has an agreeable effect enough in the lighter parts of the poem, but does not accord so well with the more serious and impressive. The following stanzas will give our readers an idea of the metre, and of the general style of description.—They represent Charlemagne traversing the Alps the night before a battle.

We might refer to many other passages equally picturesque, though perhaps to none so poetical. Such as the comparison of Roland taken from the scene of combat by Oliver, to a lion led off by an African, that still roars as he follows his well-known guide;—the first appearance of Armelie, the death of Wilfred at the altar, the vanishing of Adelard from the sight of Charlemagne, the forest of Eresbourg, the Druidical sacrifice, and the funeral rites of Orlando in the valley of Ronscevalles.

The language of the poem often bears a striking resemblance to the language of painting, or seems like a detailed description of some chef d’œuvre of the art, rather than the creation of the poet’s fancy. We should have little doubt that the solitary church in the valley of Ronscevalles is copied from that in the back-ground of Titian’s St. Peter Martyr, and the massacre at the altar in the first canto is certainly taken from some picture of Raphael!

In the sentiments of this poem there is more feebleness, a greater number of Gallicisms, than in the imagery. We meet with such courtly expressions as these:

233The devil addresses the deity with the following piece of high-flown sentimentality:

We know, indeed, from whence the allusion is taken, and we wonder the more at the affectation implied in the alteration. It is like some of Pope’s refinements on Isaiah. In giving an account of the sorrow which prevails in heaven at the disasters of the church of Christ, the author has expressed a trite theological sentiment with more felicity than we recollect to have seen it expressed before:

The conception of his Heaven is much more just than that of Hell, though the execution is (almost as a matter of course) less powerful. The two figures of Adam and Moses, in the former, are particularly fine:

Our poet has, very good-naturedly, (and we hope with the approbation of his holiness the Pope, to whom this work is dedicated,) set aside two stanzas for the secret conveyance of the souls of virtuous heathens and of little children, into the abodes of the blest.

The author of Charlemagne has constructed his hell upon an entirely new and fanciful theory. We see no sort of reason why Satan should not, in strict propriety, sit upon a throne; nor why his followers should be degraded from the rank of fallen angels into modern French revolutionists. We like Milton’s account much better in all respects; and our author himself, as is the natural consequence of all affectation, flounders into contradiction in the very next verse, where he gives a most superb account of Lucifer. In the same spirit, he has made a more enlightened distribution of 234crimes and punishments; and established an entire new set of regulations and bye-laws in the regions of the damned. Alexander and the two Brutuses figure there with Cain and other murderers, while ‘the noble Cæsar’ is exempted. Now we have no notion of such a philosophical hell as our poetical casuist would carve out. This celebrated place is, we think, of all others the least liable to plans of reform. It is almost the oldest establishment upon record, and placed quite out of the reach of the progress of reason and metaphysics. We hate disputes in poetry, still more than in religion. At least, whatever appeals to the imagination, ought to rest on undivided sentiment, on one undisputed tradition, one catholic faith.^[22] Besides, the whole account of the infernal regions is an excrescence, equally misplaced and improbable. None of the heroes of the poem descend there, but as Satan is brought thence to appear to Charlemagne in the shape of a lying priest, this opportunity is taken to describe the geography of the place according to the latest discoveries. There is one point in which we agree with the poet, viz. in his indignation against tyrants and their flatterers, though he does not go so far as honest Quevedo, who, when his hero wonders to see so few kings in hell, makes his guide reply sullenly, ‘Here are all that ever reigned.’

We shall conclude our remarks on this part of the poem with the author’s description of the punishment of Cain, which we think the most striking.

The story of a poem is seldom worth a long description. It may be sufficient to say in the present case, that the danger to which the 235church was exposed, and from which it was afterwards delivered, arose from the second marriage of Charlemagne with Armelie, the daughter of Didier, the King of the Lombards, who was exerting himself to depose Pope Adrian. Charlemagne had divorced his first wife, Adelinde, but he is warned in a vision to take her again to his bosom. He does so, and Didier and his daughter consequently become the enemies of this Christian Emperor, who takes arms to defend the Holy See. After the usual casualties and fluctuations of fortune, the son of Pepin finally triumphs.

On a more careful examination, we see no reason to alter our first opinion of this poem. It has given us no strong impulse, nor left any permanent trace on our minds. It opens no new and rich vein of poetry, though certainly great talents are shewn in the use which is made of existing materials. Perhaps it may be said that this is all that can be done in a modern poem: if so, that all is hardly worth the doing. There is no one who has borrowed his materials more than Milton, or who has made them more completely his own: there is hardly a line which does not breathe the same lofty spirit, hardly a thought or image which he has not clothed with the majesty of his genius. It is the same in reading other great poets. The informing mind is every where present to us. Who is there that does not know and feel sensibly the majestic copiousness of Homer, the polished elegance of Virgil, enamoured of its own workmanship,—the severe grandeur of Dante, the tender pathos of Tasso, the endless voluptuousness of Spenser, and the unnumbered graces of Ariosto? Even the mysterious solemnity of Ossian, and the wild romantic interest of Walter Scott, are something gained to the imagination. But in the present instance, we do not feel the same participation with the author’s mind, nor accession of strength to our own. So little is it in the power even of the most accomplished art to counterfeit nature. The true Florimel did not differ more from the Florimel which was made for the witches’ son, than true genius from the most successful and elaborate imitation of it.

We shall close these remarks with extracting two passages which in the opinion of our readers will perhaps be thought to amount to a complete refutation of our objections. The first is the description of the funeral rites of Orlando, in the thirteenth canto.

In the nineteenth canto, Lawrence and her children, after their escape from Bourdeaux, arrive at the castle of Melaric, an old christian knight, when the following example of perfect description occurs:—

The author in his notes gives us to understand that he is about another epic poem, the hero of which is Isolier, a native of Corsica, and which is to bear the same relation to Charlemagne, that the Odyssey does to the Iliad.

The Exhibition of this year, which opens to the public on Monday, is said to be inferior to the last:—that was said to be inferior to the one before it,—that to the preceding one, and so on. This is the common cant respecting all Exhibitions; and the reason is obvious enough. We are naturally less struck by pictures of the same degree and class of excellence, by the same artists, on repetition than at first sight; and the art appears to be retrograde, only because it is not progressive. Perhaps, however, there is some foundation for the objection in the present instance. At least, we think there is a falling off in the historical department: though that is the department of the art which would least bear any kind of retrenchment. We do not know whether to lay the blame of the deficiency on those artists, who have been away this summer on their visit to the French 243capital, or on those who have remained behind. The picture in this branch of the art which pleased us the most on looking into it, and which we conceive has decidedly the greatest number of excellent parts, though the general effect is very far from striking, is ‘Brutus exhorting the Romans to revenge the Death of Lucretia,’ by C. L. Eastlake. The artist will excuse us, if we say that we think the principal figure, that of Brutus, by much the worst part of the picture. A more theatrical, and less impressive figure we have seldom seen. He is quite an orator of the modern stamp, and has nothing of the ‘antique Roman’ about him. He is not a bit better than any of the blustering, canting, vapid, Canning school, and is evidently an orator to be disposed of. We would advise Mr. Eastlake to take a hint from a high quarter, and get rid of him, at any rate. The effect of the attitude of this figure, which is represented pointing with a sword to the body of Lucretia, behind him, is almost entirely lost by the want of distinct foreshortening and prominent relief.^[25] The figure of Brutus seems in a line with that of Lucretia. Indeed, the same defect pervades the whole picture, which is laid-in like mosaic, and the general pale, stone-colour appearance of the drapery, and of the flesh, adds to this effect. No one figure comes out before the rest to the eye, till by tracing it down to the feet, you find where it stands. The dead figure of Lucretia herself is a complete piece of marble. We wish to notice more particularly, because it is an excellence very rare in an English artist, that the attention to costume in the decorations of the bier on which the dead body lies, and in the other ornaments in the back-ground of the picture, gives an additional air of truth and consequently of interest to the scene. The peculiar merit of this composition is the great variety of distinct faces and characteristic expressions to be found in it. These, if not of a very high order, are at least much better than the pompous nonentities to which we are accustomed. There is very little of passion or emotion given or attempted, but we think the expression of attention in the surrounding audience is varied very happily, and with great truth of nature. The most picturesque and interesting part of the picture is the groupe in which a girl with a back-figure is supporting (we suppose) the mother of Lucretia. The expression of the countenance in the latter reminded us of Annibal Caracci, and we are always glad to be reminded of him. Certainly the same effect was not produced upon our minds by the boy in the foreground, with sandy hair and weak eyes, who is crying so piteously: still less did we like the figure of a man in the right hand corner, who is explaining the story to another with his fists 244clenched, and in a boxing attitude. The model for a Roman warrior is as little to be sought in a Fives Court, as of a Roman patriot in a debating society, or even (with leave be it spoken) in an English House of Commons. We have dwelt the longer on this picture, because its immediate effect on the eye is by no means in proportion to its real merit. The drab-coloured quakerism of the tone conceals it from observation almost as much as if it had a veil over it. We do not really understand the object of these sickly half-tints, which all French artists, and some of our own, affect. Nicolas Poussin, who had no relief of light and shade, had strong contrasts of colour: or even if he had had neither, the great distinctness of his outline, and his striking manner of telling the story, might still have formed a sufficient excuse for him. In short, the style of colouring adopted in this picture may, for aught we know, accord very well with some more artificial and recondite style of historical composition; but we are sure, it has nothing to do with natural expression, or immediate effect.

It has been said, that ‘a great book is a great evil.’ We think the same thing might be applied to pictures: or at least we should not instance the large picture in this collection of The Burial of our Lord, by C. Coventry, as an exception to the rule. We admit, however, that the face, dress, and figure of the old man holding the drapery over Christ, are picturesque, and in the fine manner of Rembrandt. The attitude and action of this figure are exactly the same as those of a similar figure in Mr. Bird’s picture of the same subject. This is rather a singular coincidence in two pictures exhibited at the same time, and which it is therefore improbable to suppose could have been copied one from the other. The other figures about Christ we cannot bring ourselves to admire: they resemble painted wood. The colour of the Christ is a livid purple, the worst of all possible colours. The women are better; though the fine turn in the waist of one of them is not in the best style of history, which does not profess to exhibit women of fashion.

Mr. Bird’s picture of The Entombment of Christ, is, we conceive, very inferior to his picture last year of Job and his Friends. The colouring is equally bad, and the composition is not equally good. There is one pretty figure of a girl, but her prettiness is not an advantage to the subject. In all things, ‘It is place which lessens and sets off.’ Mr. Bird constantly introduces the extremities of the hands and feet into his pictures, only to show how ill he can paint them. The picture of The Surrender of Calais has been already before the public.

Among the historical pictures, we suppose from its name, we must 245rank that of the Prophet Ezra, by G. Hayter, though it does not appear to us to belong to the class. It is a fine, rich, and strongly painted picture of a man reading a book. The being able to copy nature with truth and effect is not history, though we think it is the first step to it. In this picture, which we believe is a first essay, Mr. Hayter has not redeemed the pledge he gave in his miniatures. If we could paint such miniatures as he does, we would do nothing but paint miniatures always; and laugh at the advertisements of great historical pictures in the newspapers. The St. Bernard, by the same artist, is very indifferent.

Mr. Harlowe’s Hubert and Arthur is the greatest piece of coxcombry and absurdity we remember to have seen. We do not think that any one who pleases has a right to paint a libel on Shakspeare.

The generality of the historical pictures in the gallery are such as have been always painted, and as will always be painted, in spite of all that can be said to the contrary, and therefore it is as well to say nothing about them.

Miss Jackson’s Mars subdued by Peace is a very pleasing composition. Both the face and expression of the figure of Peace are those of a very beautiful and interesting girl, though from the tender pensiveness of the features she seems rather as if sending Mars out to battle than disarming him; and as to the God of War himself, he does not look like one whom ‘deep scars of thunder have intrenched,’ but as if he had been kept a long time at home in a lady’s chamber. The Cupids (when Ladies imagine Cupids, what can they be less?) are very nice, little, chubby fellows.

There are two pictures of The Sick Pigeon and The Favourite Kitten by Miss Geddes, both of which we like, gallantry out of the question. The kitten in the last is exquisitely painted. You may almost hear it purring.

Among the foreign contributors to this department we ought to mention Music, by M. Messora, in the manner of the early Italian masters, and Devotion, a small picture by J. Laschallas, which is hung almost out of sight, and which, if it were hung a little lower, we suspect, would be found to be ‘a good picture and a true.’

To the scene from the Marriage of Figaro, by Chalon, no praise of ours could add the slightest grace or lustre. We wonder where he got the figure of his Susan, or how he dared to paint her!

In the domestic scenes, and views of interiors, &c. this exhibition is much like the former ones, except that we miss Collins, and find no one to replace him.

Of the landscapes, Burnett’s, Fielding’s, Nasmyth’s, Hofland’s, and Glover’s are the best. In Mr. Glover’s large picture of Jacob 246and Laban (which we believe was exhibited and much admired in Paris), there is a want of harmony and lightness in the whole: but there is a groupe of trees in the foreground, which Claude himself would not have disdained to borrow. Mr. Hofland’s landscapes, without being much finished, have the look, the tone, and freshness of nature. The View of Edinburgh is, we think, the best. Some of the others are too much abstractions of aerial perspective: they are naked and cold, and represent not the objects of nature so much as the medium through which they are seen. We will only add, in our professional capacity, that this gentleman’s pictures shew themselves, and that he need not be at the trouble of shewing them. Nasmyth’s pictures are not too much finished, but they want a certain breadth, which nature always adds to perfect finishing. Fielding is a new and most promising artist, of whom we mean to say more. Of the two Burnetts, we shall only remark at present, that they have made no addition to their live-stock since last year, which consisted then, as it does now, of one black, one yellow, and one spotted cow.

Cottage Child at Breakfast, W. Collins, A.R.A. This is a pleasing little picture, but inferior to Mr. Collins’s general performances. The shadow cast on the wall is like plaster of a darker colour, nor should we have suspected it to be meant for shadow, had it not been pointed out to us. Reapers, by the same artist, is a still greater falling off. The mixture of minute finishing and slovenliness in the execution, and of blues and yellows in the colouring of this picture is to us very unaccountable.

Devotion, J. Laschallas. We wish that we could conjure this little picture out of its frame to have a nearer view. The drawing, expression, tone, and composition appear to us admirable.

A Scolding Wife; her Husband having spent all his Money at the Fair, L. Cossé. This is not a very pleasant subject, nor very pleasantly treated. The little child blowing the trumpet is the pretty part of the picture. There is one figure of a woman in a blue stuff gown, sitting by the fire-side, in an attitude of yawning, which both for the truth of the colouring and the action, is inimitable.

A Country Scene, by the same, has the hard brickdusty tone which there is in the faces of the other picture; but the expression is natural and good.

247A Colour-Grinder, R. T. Bone, is a spirited and faithful imitation of nature.

A Study from Nature, J. Harrison, is a well-painted head. At the same time, there is something about it very unpleasant to us.

Hebe and Sunrise, by H. Howard, R.A., were, we believe, in last year’s Exhibition at Somerset-house. There is a certain grace and elegance in both of them. The fantastic, playful lightness of the figures in the last is perhaps carried to a degree of affectation. The faces of the Pleiades are very pretty and very insipid.

Conrade and Gulnare, H. Singleton. We could neither understand this picture nor the lines from Lord Byron’s Corsair, which are intended to explain the subject of it.

Brutus exhorting the Romans to revenge the Death of Lucretia. Of this composition we find we have already said quite enough.

View of Arthur’s Seat near Edinburgh, P. Nasmyth, is a very nicely painted landscape. We like all this gentleman’s landscapes, except A View of Edinburgh, which is just like a painting on a tea-board.

Breaking the Ice, by James Burnett, is a very delightful picture. It has the effect of walking out in a fine winter’s morning. Many incidental associations are very happily introduced; the pigeons collected on the thatch of a shed, and the robin-redbreast perched in a window of an out house. The pigeons are, however, too small, and the colour on the breast of the robin is on fire. Perhaps these objections are too minute. The pigeon-house looks suspended in the air, and the sky and branches of the trees seen against it are painted with admirable brilliancy. Peasants going to Market, by the same artist, is of equal merit. The skirt of the drapery of the peasant girl looks as if the sun shone directly upon it. The docks in the foreground of the picture are very highly finished, and touched with great spirit, but we never saw this kind of plant of the lightish green colour, which is here given to it.

Milking, by John Burnett, is a very brilliant little picture. The red dress of the girl at the milk-pail is as rich as possible. The trees at a little distance are too much in sharp points and touches. The cattle in the landscapes of both the painters of this name are too much in heavy masses, and form too violent a contrast to the lightness of the landscape about them.

The Watering Place, P. H. Rogers, deserves considerable praise, both for the colouring and composition.

Banks of the Thames, J. Wilson, is a very clever picture. The foreground and the distance are equally well painted; but they do not appear in keeping. The one is quite clear, and the other covered with haze.

248Morning, and View from Rydal Woods, by C. V. Fielding, are both masterly performances. The last, in particular, is a rich, mellow landscape, and presents a fine, woody, and romantic scene, which in some degree calls off our admiration from the merit of the artist to the beauties of nature. This is a sacrifice of self-love which many of our artists do not seem willing to make. They too often chuse their subjects, not to exhibit the charms of nature, but to display their own skill in making something of the most barren subjects.

We think this objection applies to Mr. Hofland’s landscapes in general. The scene he selects is represented with great truth and felicity of pencil, but it is, generally speaking, one we should neither wish to look at, nor to be in. In his Loch-Lomond and Stirling Castle, the effect of the atmosphere is finely given; but this is all. We wish to enter our protest against this principle of separating the imitation from the thing imitated, particularly as it is countenanced by the authority of the ablest landscape painter of the present day, of whose landscapes some one said, that ‘they were pictures of nothing, and very like!’

Battle-piece, B. Barker, is a spirited sketch, harmoniously coloured. In force of drawing and expression, it is inferior to The Standard, by Ab. Cooper. There is too violent an opposition of white and black in the horses in this picture; and the eye does not immediately connect the heads of the animals with the rest of their bodies. This picture, however, displays great knowledge of the subject, and considerable strength of composition. A Study from Nature, by the same artist, Ab. Cooper, is a masterly little picture. Birds, from nature, and Plovers, from nature, by M. Chantry, are both excellent in their kind.

View of Richmond, Yorkshire, by W. Westall, A.R.A. is deficient in perspective and in other respects. The river below seems to be on a level with the high foreground from which it is seen. The representing declivities by means of aerial perspective is, we believe, one of the difficulties of the art, and we do not remember any successful instances of it, except in some of Wilson’s landscapes.

A Boy lamenting the Death of his Favourite Rabbit, W. Davison, is a very pleasing composition in the style of Gainsborough. The landscape has too much the blue greenish hue and slender execution of Gainsborough’s back-grounds. The boy is well painted. There 249is a picture of this kind by Murillo in the collection at Dulwich, which we would earnestly recommend to every painter of such subjects. Or we might as well, in other words, recommend them to look at nature.

Forest Scene, by J. Stark, is painted with great truth of colour and effect.

Stacking Hay, P. Dewint, has great merit.

Jacob taking charge of the Flocks and Herds of Laban, J. Glover. We have already spoken of this picture. The group of tall green trees in the foreground is excellent, but there is a leaden tone spread over the rest of the picture, which is neither gratifying to the eye, nor true to nature.

The Emperor Alexander, in his Droschi, by A. Sauerweide, is like all the other pictures, busts, &c. we have seen of him, and not at all like the descriptions we have heard of his fine person and countenance.

The Duke of Wellington attacking the Rear of Marshal Soult’s Army on the Pont de Miserali over the Great fall of Salamondi, and pursuing them through the Passes of the Sierra Morone in Portugal, 1809, from a sketch by Major-general Hawker, by Perry Nursey. This is not a good picture; but it gives one a good idea of the sport which is to be found in this sort of royal game. In looking at it we have something like ocular demonstration of the truth of what Cowper, the poet, says—

In one of Archbishop Herring’s letters, written during a tour in Wales, is the following very picturesque description of a scene at an inn. ‘I set out upon this adventurous journey on a Monday morning, accompanied (as bishops usually are) by my chancellor, my chaplain, secretary, two or three friends, and our servants. The first part of our road lay across the foot of a long ridge of rocks, and was over a dreary morass, with here and there a small dark cottage, a few sheep and more goats in view, but not a bird to be seen, save, now and then, a solitary hern, watching for frogs. At the end of four of their miles, we got to a small village, where the view of things mended a little, and the road and the time were beguiled by travelling for three miles along the side of a fine lake, full of fish, and transparent 250as glass. That pleasure over, our work became very arduous, for we were to mount a rock, and in many places of the road, over natural stairs of stone. I submitted to this, which, they told me, was but a taste of the country, and to prepare me for worse things to come. However, worse things did not come that morning, for we dined soon after out of our own wallets; and though our inn stood in a place of the most frightful solitude, and the best formed for the habitation of monks (who once possessed it) in the world, yet we made a cheerful meal. The novelty of the thing gave me spirits, and the air gave me appetite, much keener than the knife I ate with. We had our music too; for there came in a harper, who soon drew about us a group of figures, that Hogarth would give any price for. The harper was in his true place and attitude; a man and a woman stood before him, singing to his instrument wildly, but not disagreeably; a little dirty child was playing with the bottom of the harp; a woman, in a sick night-cap, hanging over the stairs; a boy with crutches, fixed in a staring attention, and a girl carding wool in the chimney, and rocking a cradle with her naked feet, interrupted in her business by the charms of the music; all ragged and dirty, and all silently attentive. These figures gave us a most entertaining picture, and would please you, or any man of observation; and one reflection gave me particular comfort, that the assembly before us demonstrated, that, even here, the influential sun warmed poor mortals, and inspired them with love and music.’

The figures in this description form a very striking group, and we should like much to see them transferred to the canvass. Those of the girl with naked feet rocking the cradle, the little child playing with the bottom of the harp, and the man and woman singing wildly before it are the most beautiful. There is one observation made by the writer to which we do not assent, that the figures are such as Hogarth would have given any price for. We doubt whether he would have meddled with them at all, for there was no one who understood his own powers better, or more seldom went out of his way. His forte was satire, he painted the follies or vices of men, and we do not know that there is a single picture of his, containing a representation of merely natural or domestic scenery. The subject described in the passage we have given above would have exactly suited an excellent painter of the present day, we mean Mr. Wilkie; and would indeed form a very delightful companion to his Blind Fiddler. With all our admiration of this last-mentioned composition, we think the story described by the bishop clearly has the poetry on its side.

The highest authority on art in this country, we understand, 251has pronounced that Mr. Wilkie united the excellences of Hogarth to those of Teniers. We demur to this decision, in both its branches; but in demurring to authority, it is necessary to give our reasons. We conceive that this excellent and deservedly admired artist has certain essential, real, and indisputable excellences of his own; and we think it, therefore, the less important to clothe him with any vicarious merits, which do not belong to him.

Mr. Wilkie’s pictures, generally speaking, derive almost their whole merit from their reality, or the truth of the representation. They are works of pure imitative art, and the test of this style of composition is to represent nature, faithfully and happily, in its simplest combinations. It may be said of an artist, like Mr. Wilkie, that nothing human is indifferent to him. His mind takes an interest in, and it gives an interest to, the most familiar scenes and transactions of life. He professedly gives character, thought, and passion in their lowest degrees, and every-day forms. He selects the commonest events and appearances of nature for his subjects; and trusts to their very commonness for the interest and amusement he is to excite. Mr. Wilkie is a serious, prosaic, literal narrator of facts, and his pictures may be considered as diaries, or minutes of what is passing constantly about us. Hogarth, on the contrary, is essentially a comic painter; his pictures are not indifferent, unimpassioned descriptions of human nature, but rich, exuberant satires upon it. He is carried away by a passion for the ridiculous. His object is ‘to shew vice her own feature, scorn her own image.’ He is so far from contenting himself with still life, that he is always on the verge of caricature, though without ever falling into it. He does not represent folly or vice in its incipient, or dormant, or grub state, but full grown, with wings, pampered into all sorts of affectation, airy, ostentatious, and extravagant. Folly is there seen at the height—the moon is at the full—it is ‘the very error of the time.’ There is a perpetual collision of eccentricities—a tilt and tournament of absurdities—the prejudices and caprices of mankind are let loose, and set together by the ears, as in a bear-garden. Hogarth paints nothing but comedy, or tragicomedy. Wilkie paints neither one nor the other. Hogarth never looks at any object but to find out a moral or a ludicrous effect. Wilkie never looks at any object but to see that it is there. Hogarth’s pictures are a perfect jest-book from one end to the other. We do not remember a single joke in Wilkie’s, except one very bad one of the boy in The Blind Fiddler, scraping the gridiron, or fire-shovel, we forget which.^[26] In looking at Hogarth, you are ready to 252burst your sides with laughing at the unaccountable jumble of odd things, which are brought together: you look at Wilkie’s pictures with a mingled feeling of curiosity and admiration at the accuracy of the representation. For instance, there is a most admirable head of a man coughing in The Rent-Day: the action, the keeping, the choaked sensation are inimitable: but there is nothing to laugh at in a man coughing. What strikes the mind is the difficulty of a man’s being painted coughing, which here certainly is a master-piece of art. But turn to the blackguard cobler in the Election Dinner, who has been smutting his neighbour’s face over, and who is lolling his tongue out at the joke with a most surprising obliquity of vision, and immediately ‘your lungs begin to crow like chanticleer.’ Again, there is the little boy crying in The Cut Finger, who only gives you the idea of a cross, disagreeable, obstinate child in pain: whereas the same face in Hogarth’s Noon, from the ridiculous perplexity it is in, and its extravagant, noisy, unfelt distress at the accident of having let fall the pye-dish, is quite irresistible. Mr. Wilkie in his picture of the Ale-house door, we believe, painted Mr. Liston as one of the figures, without any great effect. Hogarth would have given any price for such a subject, and would have made it worth any money. We have never seen any thing, in the expression of comic humour, equal to Hogarth’s pictures, but Liston’s face!

We have already remarked that we did not think Hogarth a fit person to paint a romantic scene in Wales. In fact, we know no one who had a less pastoral imagination. Mr. Wilkie paints interiors: but still you always connect them with the country. Hogarth, even when he paints people in the open air, represents them either as coming from London, as in the polling for votes at Brentford, or as returning to it, as the dyer and his wife at Bagnigge Wells. In this last picture he has contrived to convert a common rural image into a type and emblem of city cuckoldom. He delights in the thick of St. Giles’s or St. James’s. His pictures breathe a certain close greasy tavern air. The fare he serves up to us consists of high-seasoned dishes, ragouts and olla podridas, like the supper in Gil Blas, which it requires a strong stomach to digest. Mr. Wilkie presents us with a sort of lenten fare, very good and wholesome, but rather insipid than overpowering.^[27]

As an artist, Mr. Wilkie is not at all equal to Teniers. Neither in truth and brilliant clearness of colouring, nor in facility of execution, is there any comparison. Teniers was a perfect master in both 253these respects, and our own countryman is positively defective, notwithstanding the very laudable care with which he finishes every part of his pictures. There is an evident smear and dragging of the paint, which is also of a bad purple, or puttyish tone, and which never appear in the pictures of the Flemish artist, any more than in a looking-glass. Teniers, probably from his facility of execution, succeeded in giving a more local and momentary expression to his figures. They seem each going on with his particular amusement or occupation; while Wilkie’s have in general more a look of sitting for their pictures. Their compositions are very different also: and in this respect, perhaps, Mr. Wilkie has the advantage. Teniers’s boors are usually amusing themselves at skittles, or dancing, or drinking, or smoking, or doing what they like in a careless desultory way; and so the composition is loose and irregular. Wilkie’s figures are all drawn up in a regular order, and engaged in one principal action, with occasional episodes. The story of the Blind Fiddler is the most interesting, and the best told. The two children before the musician are delightful. The Card-players is the best coloured of his pictures, if we are not mistaken. The Politicians, though excellent as to character and composition, is inferior as a picture to those which Mr. Wilkie has since painted. His latest pictures, however, do not appear to us to be his best. There is something of manner and affectation in the grouping of the figures, and a pink and rosy colour spread over them, which is out of place. The hues of Rubens and Sir Joshua do not agree with Mr. Wilkie’s subjects. The picture which he has just finished of Distraining for Rent is very highly spoken of by those who have seen it. We must here conclude this very general account; for to point out the particular beauties of any one of our artist’s pictures, would require a long article by itself.

The celebrated maxims of Rochefoucault contain a good deal of truth mixed up with more falsehood. They might in general be easily reversed. The whole artifice of the author consists in availing himself of the mixed nature of motives, so as to detect some indirect or sinister bias even in the best, and he then proceeds to argue as if they were simple, that is, had but one principle, and that principle the worst. By the same extreme mode of reasoning which he adopts, that is, by taking the exception for the rule, it might be shewn that 254there is no such thing as selfishness, pride, vanity, revenge, envy, &c. in our nature, with quite as much plausibility as he has attempted to shew that there is no such thing as love, friendship, gratitude, generosity, or true benevolence. If the slightest associated circumstance, or latent impulse connected with our actions, is to be magnified into the whole motive, merely by the microscopic acuteness which discovered it, why not complete the paradox, by resolving our vices into some pretence to virtue, which almost always accompanies and qualifies them? Or is it to be taken for granted that our vices are sincere, and our virtues only hypocrisy and affectation? Shakespeare has given a much simpler and better account of the matter, when he says, ‘The web of our life is of a mingled yarn: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not; and our vices would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues.’ The most favourable representations of human nature are not certainly the most popular. The character of Sir Charles Grandison is insipid compared with that of Lovelace, as Satan is the hero of Paradise Lost; and Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees is read with more interest and avidity than the Practice of Piety or Grove’s Ethics. Whatever deviates from the plain path of duty, or contradicts received opinions, seems to imply a strength of will, or a strength of understanding, which seizes forcibly on the attention. Whether it is fortitude or cowardice, or both, there is a strong propensity in the human mind, if its suspicions are once raised, to know the worst. It is the same in speculation as in practice. When once the fairy dream in which we have lulled our senses or imagination is disturbed, we only feel ourselves secure from the delusions of self-love by distrusting appearances altogether, and revenge ourselves for the cheat which we think has been put upon us, by laughing at the credulity of those who are still its dupes.^[28] Even the very love of virtue makes the mind proportionably impatient of every thing like doubt respecting it, and prompts us to escape from tormenting suspense in total indifference, as jealousy cures itself by destroying its object. The Fable of the Bees, the Maxims of Rochefoucault, the Treatise on the Falsity of Human Virtues, and the book De l’Esprit have owed much of their popularity to the consolation they afforded to disappointed hope. However this may be, a collection of amiable paradoxes on the other side of the question, would have but few readers. There would be less point and satire, though 255there would not be less truth nor, as far as the analytical process is concerned, less ingenuity, in exalting our bad qualities into virtues, than in debasing our good ones into vices. I will give an example or two of what I mean.

Thus, it might be argued that there is no such thing as envy: or that what is called by that name, does not (if strictly examined) arise from a hatred of real excellence, but from a suspicion that the excellence is not real, or not so great as it is supposed to be, and consequently that the preference given to others is an act of injustice done to ourselves. For whenever all doubt is removed of the reality of the excellence, either from our own convictions, or from the concurrent opinion of mankind in general, envy ceases. This is the reason why the reputation of the dead never excites this passion, because it has been fully established by the most unequivocal testimony, it has received a sanction which fills the imagination and gains the assent at once, and the fame of the great men of past times is placed beyond the reach of envy, because it is placed beyond the reach of doubt. We feel no misgivings as to the solidity of their pretensions, nor any apprehension that our admiration or praise will be thrown away on what does not deserve it. No one envies Shakespeare or Rubens, because no one entertains the least doubt of their genius. We are as prodigal of our admiration of universally acknowledged excellence, making a sort of religious idolatry of it, as we are niggardly and cautious in fixing the stamp of our approbation on that which may turn out to be only counterfeit. It is not because we are competitors with the living and not with the dead: but because the claims of the one are fully established, and of the other not. Why else indeed are we competitors with the one and not with the other? Accordingly, where living merit is so clear as to bring immediate and entire conviction to the mind, we are no longer disposed to stint or withhold our applause, any more than to dispute the light of the sun. For instance, who ever felt the least difficulty in acknowledging the merits of Wilkie or Turner, merely because these artists are now living? If immediate celebrity has not always been the reward of extraordinary genius, this has been owing to the incapacity of the public to judge of the highest works of art. There is no want of instances where the popular opinion has outstripped the claims of justice, whenever the merits of the artist were on a level with the common understanding, and of an obvious character. Sir Joshua Reynolds had his full share of popularity in his lifetime. Raphael Mengs was cried up by his countrymen and contemporaries as equal to Raphael; and Mr. West at present stands as high in the estimation of the public as he does in his own. On the other hand, and in 256opposition to what was said above (though the exception still confirms the rule), the French hate Shakespeare and Rubens, for no other reason than because there is nothing in their minds which really enables them to understand or relish either. The admiration which they hear others express of this great painter and greater poet, appears to them a delusion, an instance of false taste, and a bigoted preference of that which is full of faults to that—which is without beauties. The disputes and jealousies of different nations respecting each other’s productions, arise chiefly from this source. We despise French painting, French poetry, and French philosophy, not because they are French, but because they appear to us to want the essential requisites of genius, feeling, and common sense. We do not feel any reluctance to admire Titian or Rembrandt, or Phidias or Homer, or Boccace or Cervantes, merely because they were not English. They speak the universal language of truth and nature. Our national and local prejudices for the most part operate only as a barrier against national and local absurdities. To the same purpose, I might mention some modern poets and critics who are actuated by nearly as intolerant feelings towards Pope and Dryden, as if they had been their contemporaries.^[29] They are not their cotemporaries, but the explanation is obvious. From the want of congeniality of mind, and a taste for their peculiar excellencies, the space which those writers occupy in the eyes of the world seems comparatively disproportionate to their merits; and hence the irritation and gall which follows. The highest reputation and the highest excellence almost always destroy envy; whereas, on the common supposition, we ought to feel the greatest envy, where there is the greatest superiority, and the greatest admiration of it in others. If we never become entirely free from it in modern works, it is because with respect to them we can never ‘make assurance double sure,’ by having our own feelings confirmed by the united voices of ages and nations. True genius and true fame seize our admiration, and our admiration, when once excited, becomes a passion, and we take a delight in exaggerating the excellences of our idol as if they were our own. On the contrary, we all envy that reputation which is acquired by trick or cunning, or by mere shewy accomplishments, as when with moderate talents, 257dexterously applied, or an appeal to ignorant credulity, a man ‘gets the start of the majestic world,’ and obtains the highest character for qualities which he does not possess. It becomes an imposture and an insult, which we resent as such.

The jealousy and uneasiness produced in the mind by a pedantic or dazzling display of useless accomplishments may be traced to a similar source. Hence the old objection, materiam superabat opus. True warmth and vigour communicate warmth and vigour: and we are no longer inclined to dispute the inspiration of the oracle, when we feel the ‘presens Divus’ in our own bosoms. But when without gaining any new light or heat, we only find our ideas thrown into confusion and perplexity by an art that we cannot comprehend, this is a kind of superiority which must always be painful, and can never be cordially admitted. It is for this reason that the extraordinary talents of the late Mr. Pitt were always viewed, except by those of his own party, with a sort of jealousy, and grudgingly acknowledged: while those of his more popular rivals were admitted by all parties in the most unreserved manner, and carried by acclamation. Mr. Burke was scouted only by the common herd of politicians, who did not understand him. So on the stage, we imagine Mrs. Siddons could hardly have excited envy or jealousy in the breast of any person, not totally devoid of common sensibility: because her talents bore down all opposition, and filled the mind at once with delight and awe. Mr. Kean has a strong and most absurd party against him: but we will venture to say that if his figure, or his voice, or his judgment, were better, that is, if he had fewer defects, he would have fewer detractors from his excellencies. Any peculiar defects excite ridicule and enmity by bringing the whole claim to our applause into question. A perfect actor would not be an object of envy even to some newspaper critics. Perfect beauty excites this feeling less among women than half pretensions to it. In the same manner, upstart wealth or newly acquired honours produce contempt rather than respect, from not being accompanied with any strong or permanent associations of pleasure or power. There is nothing more apt to occasion the feeling of envy than the sudden and unexpected rise of persons we have long known under different circumstances, not from the immediate comparison with ourselves (the extravagant admiration of each other’s talents among friends is an answer to this supposition) so much as from the disbelief of the reality of their pretensions, and our inability to overcome our previous prejudice against them. It is the same where striking mental inequalities exist, or where the moral properties render us averse to acknowledge merit of a different kind, or where the countenance or manner does not denote genius. Every 258such incongruity increases the difficulty of connecting hearty admiration with ideas so opposite to it. I have known artists whose physiognomy was so much against them, that no one would ever think highly of them, though they were to paint like Raphael; and I once heard a very sensible man say, that if Sir Isaac Newton had lisped, he could not have fancied him to be a great man. I myself have felt a jealousy of pretensions which I thought inferior to my own, but I never knew what envy of great talents was. I do not indeed like to be put down by persons I despise, or to seem to myself less than nothing. In a word, we feel the same jealousy and irritation at seeing others surpassed, whom we have been accustomed to admire; and what is more, grow jealous of our own approximation to an equality with them. Every ingenuous mind shrinks from a comparison of itself, with what it looks up to, and is ashamed of any advantage it may gain over those whom it regards as having higher powers and pretensions. The idea of fame is too pure and sacred to be mingled with our own. Our admiration of others is stronger than our vanity. Poor indeed is that mind which has no other idol but self. It is the want of all real imagination and enthusiasm, or that little glittering halo of personal conceit which surrounds every Frenchman, and does not suffer him to see or feel any thing beyond it, that makes the French perhaps the most contemptible people in the world.

‘Anthony Codrus Urceus, a most learned and unfortunate Italian, born 1446, was a striking instance’ (says his biographer) ‘of the miseries men bring upon themselves by setting their affections unreasonably on trifles. This learned man lived at Forli, and had an apartment in the palace. His room was so very dark, that he was forced to use a candle in the day time; and one day, going abroad without putting it out, his library was set on fire, and some papers which he had prepared for the press were burned. The instant he was informed of this ill news, he was affected even to madness. He ran furiously to the palace, and, stopping at the door of his apartment, he cried aloud, “Christ Jesus! what mighty crime have I committed? whom of your followers have I ever injured, that you thus rage with inexpiable hatred against me?” Then turning himself to an image of the Virgin Mary near at hand, “Virgin” (says he) “hear what 259I have to say, for I speak in earnest, and with a composed spirit. If I shall happen to address you in my dying moments, I humbly entreat you not to hear me, nor receive me into heaven, for I am determined to spend all eternity in hell.” Those who heard these blasphemous expressions endeavoured to comfort him, but all to no purpose; for, the society of mankind being no longer supportable to him, he left the city, and retired, like a savage, to the deep solitude of a wood. Some say he was murdered there by ruffians; others that he died at Bologna, in 1500, after much contrition and penitence.’

Almost every one may here read the history of his own life. There is scarcely a moment in which we are not in some degree guilty of the same kind of absurdity, which was here carried to such a singular excess. We waste our regrets on what cannot be recalled, or fix our desires on what we know cannot be attained. Every hour is the slave of the last; and we are seldom masters either of our thoughts or of our actions. We are the creatures of imagination, passion, and self-will, more than of reason or even of self-interest. Rousseau, in his Emilius, proposed to educate a perfectly reasonable man, who was to have passions and affections like other men, but with an absolute control over them. He was to love and to be wise. This is a contradiction in terms. Even in the common transactions and daily intercourse of life, we are governed by whim, caprice, prejudice, or accident. The falling of a tea-cup puts us out of temper for the day; and a quarrel that commenced about the pattern of a gown may end only with our lives.

We are little better than humoured children to the last, and play a mischievous game at cross-purposes with our own happiness and that of others.

We have given the above story as a striking contradiction to the prevailing doctrine of modern systems of morals and metaphysics, that man is purely a sensual and selfish animal, governed solely by a regard either to his immediate gratification or future interest. This doctrine we mean to oppose with all our might, whenever we meet with it. We are, however, less disposed to quarrel with it, as it is opposed to reason and philosophy, than as it interferes with common 260sense and observation. If the absurdity in question had been confined to the schools, we should not have gone out of our way to meddle with it: but it has got abroad in the world, has crept into ladies’ toilettes, is entered in the common-place of beaux, is in the mouth of the learned and ignorant, and forms a part of popular opinion. It is perpetually applied as a false measure to the characters and conduct of men in the common affairs of the world, and it is therefore our business to rectify it if we can. In fact, whoever sets out on the idea of reducing all our motives and actions to a simple principle, must either take a very narrow and superficial view of human nature, or make a very perverse use of his understanding in reasoning on what he sees. The frame of our minds, like that of our bodies, is exceedingly complicated. Besides mere sensibility to pleasure and pain, there are other original independent principles, necessarily interwoven with the nature of man as an active and intelligent being, and which, blended together in different proportions, give their form and colour to our lives. Without some other essential faculties, such as will, imagination, &c., to give effect and direction to our physical sensibility, this faculty could be of no possible use or influence; and with those other faculties joined to it, this pretended instinct of self-love will be subject to be everlastingly modified and controlled by those faculties, both in what regards our own good and that of others; that is, must itself become in a great measure dependent on the very instruments it uses. The two most predominant principles in the mind, besides sensibility and self-interest, are imagination and self-will, or (in general) the love of strong excitement, both in thought and action. To these sources may be traced the various passions, pursuits, habits, affections, follies and caprices, virtues and vices of mankind. We shall confine ourselves in the present article, to give some account of the influence exercised by the imagination over the feelings. To an intellectual being, it cannot be altogether arbitrary what ideas it shall have, whether pleasurable or painful. Our ideas do not originate in our love of pleasure, and they cannot therefore depend absolutely upon it. They have another principle. If the imagination were ‘the servile slave’ of our self-love, if our ideas were emanations of our sensitive nature, encouraged if agreeable, and excluded the instant they became otherwise, or encroached on the former principle, then there might be a tolerable pretence for the Epicurean philosophy which is here spoken of. But for any such entire and mechanical subserviency of the operations of the one principle to the dictates of the other, there is not the slightest foundation in reality. The attention which the mind gives to its ideas is not always owing to the gratification derived from them, but to the 261strength and truth of the impressions themselves, i.e. to their involuntary power over the mind. This observation will account for a very general principle in the mind, which cannot, we conceive, be satisfactorily explained in any other way, we mean the power of fascination. Every one has heard the story of the girl who being left alone by her companions, in order to frighten her, in a room with a dead body, at first attempted to get out, and shrieked violently for assistance, but finding herself shut in, ran and embraced the corpse, and was found senseless in its arms.

It is said that in such cases there is a desperate effort made to get rid of the dread by converting it into the reality. There may be some truth in this account, but we do not think it contains the whole truth. The event produced in the present instance does not bear out the conclusion. The progress of the passion does not seem to have been that of diminishing or removing the terror by coming in contact with the object, but of carrying this terror to its height from an intense and irresistible impulse, overcoming every other feeling.

It is a well-known fact that few persons can stand safely on the edge of a precipice, or walk along the parapet wall of a house, without being in danger of throwing themselves down; not we presume from a principle of self-preservation; but in consequence of a strong idea having taken possession of the mind, from which it cannot well escape, which absorbs every other consideration, and confounds and overrules all self-regards. The impulse cannot in this case be resolved into a desire to remove the uneasiness of fear, for the only danger arises from the fear. We have been told by a person, not at all given to exaggeration, that he once felt a strong propensity to throw himself into a cauldron of boiling lead, into which he was looking. These are what Shakespear calls ‘the toys of desperation.’ People sometimes marry, and even fall in love on this principle—that is, through mere apprehension, or what is called a fatality. In like manner, we find instances of persons who are as it were naturally delighted with whatever is disagreeable,—who catch all sorts of unbecoming tones and gestures,—who always say what they should not, and what they do not mean to say,—in whom intemperance of imagination and incontinence of tongue are a disease, and who are governed by an almost infallible instinct of absurdity.

The love of imitation has the same general source. We dispute for ever about Hogarth, and the question can never be decided according to the common ideas on the subject of taste. His pictures appeal to the love of truth, not to the sense of beauty; but the one is as much an essential principle of our nature as the other. They fill up the void of the mind; they present an everlasting succession and 262variety of ideas. There is a fine observation somewhere made by Aristotle, that the mind has a natural appetite of curiosity or desire to know; and ‘most of that knowledge which comes in by the eye, for this presents us with the greatest variety of differences.’ Hogarth is relished only by persons of a certain strength of mind and penetration into character; for the subjects in themselves are not pleasing, and this objection is only redeemed by the exercise and activity which they give to the understanding. The great difference between what is meant by a severe and an effeminate taste or style, depends on the distinction here made.

Our teasing ourselves to recollect the names of places or persons we have forgotten, the love of riddles and of abstruse philosophy, are all illustrations of the same general principle of curiosity, or the love of intellectual excitement. Again, our impatience to be delivered of a secret that we know; the necessity which lovers have for confidants, auricular confession, and the declarations so commonly made by criminals of their guilt, are effects of the involuntary power exerted by the imagination over the feelings. Nothing can be more untrue, than that the whole course of our ideas, passions, and pursuits, is regulated by a regard to self-interest. Our attachment to certain objects is much oftener in proportion to the strength of the impression they make on us, to their power of rivetting and fixing the attention, than to the gratification we derive from them. We are perhaps more apt to dwell upon circumstances that excite disgust and shock our feelings, than on those of an agreeable nature. This, at least, is the case where this disposition is particularly strong, as in people of nervous feelings and morbid habits of thinking. Thus the mind is often haunted with painful images and recollections, from the hold they have taken of the imagination. We cannot shake them off, though we strive to do it: nay, we even court their company; we will not part with them out of our presence; we strain our aching sight after them; we anxiously recal every feature, and contemplate them in all their aggravated colours. There are a thousand passions and fancies that thwart our purposes and disturb our repose. Grief and fear are almost as welcome inmates of the breast as hope or joy, and more obstinately cherished. We return to the objects which have excited them, we brood over them, they become almost inseparable from the mind, necessary to it; they assimilate all objects to the gloom of our own thoughts, and make the will a party against itself. This is one chief source of most of the passions that prey like vultures on the heart, and embitter human life. We hear moralists and divines perpetually exclaiming, with mingled indignation and surprise, at the folly of mankind in obstinately persisting in these 263tormenting and violent passions, such as envy, revenge, sullenness, despair, &c. This is to them a mystery; and it will always remain an inexplicable one, while the love of happiness is considered as the only spring of human conduct and desires.

We shall resume this subject in a future paper.^[30]

The love of power or action is another independent principle of the human mind, in the different degrees in which it exists, and which are not by any means in exact proportion to its physical sensibility. It seems evidently absurd to suppose that sensibility to pleasure or pain is the only principle of action. It is almost too obvious to remark, that sensibility alone, without an active principle in the mind, could never produce action. The soul might lie dissolved in pleasure, or be agonised with woe; but the impulses of feeling, in order to excite passion, desire, or will, must be first communicated to some other faculty. There must be a principle, a fund of activity somewhere, by and through which our sensibility operates; and that this active principle owes all its force, its precise degree and direction, to the sensitive faculty, is neither self-evident nor true. Strength of will is not always nor generally in proportion to strength of feeling. There are different degrees of activity as of sensibility in the mind; and our passions, characters, and pursuits, often depend no less upon the one than on the other. We continually make a distinction in common discourse between sensibility and irritability, between passion and feeling, between the nerves and muscles; and we find that the most voluptuous people are in general the most indolent. Every one who has looked closely into human nature must have observed persons who are naturally and habitually restless in the extreme, but without any extraordinary susceptibility to pleasure or pain, always making or finding excuses to do something,—whose actions constantly outrun 264the occasion, and who are eager in the pursuit of the greatest trifles,—whose impatience of the smallest repose keeps them always employed about nothing,—and whose whole lives are a continued work of supererogation. There are others again who seem born to act from a spirit of contradiction only, that is, who are ready to act not only without a reason, but against it,—who are ever at cross-purposes with themselves and others,—who are not satisfied unless they are doing two opposite things at a time,—who contradict what you say, and if you assent to them, contradict what they have said,—who regularly leave the pursuit in which they are successful to engage in some other in which they have no chance of success,—who make a point of encountering difficulties and aiming at impossibilities, that there may be no end of their exhaustless task: while there is a third class whose vis inertiæ scarcely any motives can overcome,—who are devoured by their feelings, and the slaves of their passions, but who can take no pains and use no means to gratify them,—who, if roused to action by any unforeseen accident, require a continued stimulus to urge them on,—who fluctuate between desire and want of resolution,—whose brightest projects burst like a bubble as soon as formed,—who yield to every obstacle,—who almost sink under the weight of the atmosphere,—who cannot brush aside a cobweb in their path, and are stopped by an insect’s wing. Indolence is want of will—the absence or defect of the active principle—a repugnance to motion; and whoever has been much tormented with this passion, must, we are sure, have felt that the inclination to indulge it is something very distinct from the love of pleasure or actual enjoyment. Ambition is the reverse of indolence, and is the love of power or action in great things. Avarice, also, as it relates to the acquisition of riches, is, in a great measure, an active and enterprising feeling; nor does the hoarding of wealth, after it is acquired, seem to have much connection with the love of pleasure. What is called niggardliness, very often, we are convinced from particular instances that we have known, arises less from a selfish principle than from a love of contrivance, from the study of economy as an art, for want of a better, from a pride in making the most of a little, and in not exceeding a certain expense previously determined upon; all which is wilfulness, and is perfectly consistent, as it is frequently found united, with the most lavish expenditure and the utmost disregard for money on other occasions. A miser may in general be looked upon as a particular species of virtuoso. The constant desire in the rich to leave wealth in large masses, by aggrandising some branch of their families, or sometimes in such a manner as to accumulate for centuries, shews that the imagination has a considerable share in this passion. 265Intemperance, debauchery, gluttony, and other vices of that kind, may be attributed to an excess of sensuality or gross sensibility; though even here, we think it evident that habits of intoxication are produced quite as much by the strength as by the agreeableness of the excitement; and with respect to some other vicious habits, curiosity makes many more votaries than inclination. The love of truth, when it predominates, produces inquisitive characters, the whole tribe of gossips, tale-bearers, harmless busy bodies, your blunt honest creatures, who never conceal what they think, and who are the more sure to tell it you the less you want to hear it,—and now and then a philosopher.

Our passions in general are to be traced more immediately to the active part of our nature, to the love of power, or to strength of will. Such are all those which arise out of the difficulty of accomplishment, which become more intense from the efforts made to attain the object, and which derive their strength from opposition. Mr. Hobbes says well on this subject:

‘But for an utmost end, in which the ancient philosophers placed felicity, and disputed much concerning the way thereto, there is no such thing in this world nor way to it, than to Utopia; for while we live, we have desires, and desire presupposeth a further end. Seeing all delight is appetite, and desire of something further, there can be no contentment but in proceeding, and therefore we are not to marvel, when we see that as men attain to more riches, honour, or other power, so their appetite continually groweth more and more; and when they are come to the utmost degree of some kind of power, they pursue some other, as long as in any kind they think themselves behind any other. Of those therefore that have attained the highest degree of honour and riches, some have affected mastery in some art, as Nero in music and poetry, Commodus in the art of a gladiator; and such as affect not some such thing, must find diversion and recreation of their thoughts in the contention either of play or business, and men justly complain as of a great grief that they know not what to do. Felicity, therefore, by which we mean continual delight, consists not in having prospered, but in prospering.’

This account of human nature, true as it is, would be a mere romance, if physical sensibility were the only faculty essential to man, that is, if we were the slaves of voluptuous indolence. But our desires are kindled by their own heat, the will is urged on by a restless impulse, and, without action, enjoyment becomes insipid. The passions of men are not in proportion only to their sensibility, or to the desirableness of the object, but to the violence and irritability of their tempers, and the obstacles to their success. Thus an 266object, to which we were almost indifferent while we thought it in our power, often excites the most ardent pursuit or the most painful regret, as soon as it is placed out of our reach. How eloquently is the contradiction between our desires and our success described in Don Quixote where it is said of the lover, that ‘he courted a statue, hunted the wind, cried aloud to the desert!’

The necessity of action to the mind, and the keen edge it gives to our desires, is shewn in the different value we set on past and future objects. It is commonly and we might almost say universally supposed, that there is an essential difference in the two cases. In this instance, however, the strength of our passions has converted an evident absurdity into one of the most inveterate prejudices of the human mind. That the future is really or in itself of more consequence than the past, is what we can neither assent to nor even conceive. It is true, the past has ceased to be and is no longer any thing, except to the mind; but the future is still to come, and has an existence in the mind only. The one is at an end, the other has not even had a beginning; both are purely ideal: so that this argument would prove that the present only is of any real value, and that both past and future objects are equally indifferent, alike nothing. Indeed, the future is, if possible, more imaginary than the past; for the past may in some sense be said to exist in its consequences; it acts still; it is present to us in its effects; the mouldering ruins and broken fragments still remain; but of the future there is no trace. What a blank does the history of the world for the next six thousand years, present to the mind, compared with that of the last! All that strikes the imagination, or excites any interest in the mighty scene, is what has been. Neither in reality, then, nor as a subject of general contemplation, has the future any advantage over the past; but with respect to our own passions and pursuits it has. We regret the pleasures we have enjoyed, and eagerly anticipate those which are to come; we dwell with satisfaction on the evils from which we have escaped, and dread future pain. The good that is past is like money that is spent, which is of no use, and about which we give ourselves no farther concern. The good we expect is like a store yet untouched, in the enjoyment of which we promise ourselves infinite gratification. What has happened to us we think of no consequence,—what is to happen to us, of the greatest. Why so? Because the one is in our power, and the other not; because the efforts of the will to bring an object to pass or to avert it strengthen our attachment to or our aversion from that object; because the habitual pursuit of any purpose redoubles the ardour of our pursuit, and converts the speculative and indolent interest we 267should otherwise take in it into real passion. Our regrets, anxiety, and wishes, are thrown away upon the past, but we encourage our disposition to exaggerate the importance of the future, as of the utmost use in aiding our resolutions and stimulating our exertions.

It in some measure confirms this theory, that men attach more or less importance to past and future events, according as they are more or less engaged in action and the busy scenes of life. Those who have a fortune to make, or are in pursuit of rank and power, are regardless of the past, for it does not contribute to their views: those who have nothing to do but to think, take nearly the same interest in the past as in the future. The contemplation of the one is as delightful and real as of the other. The season of hope comes to an end, but the remembrance of it is left. The past still lives in the memory of those who have leisure to look back upon the way that they have trod, and can from it ‘catch glimpses that may make them less forlorn.’ The turbulence of action and uneasiness of desire must dwell upon the future; it is only amidst the innocence of shepherds, in the simplicity of the pastoral ages, that a tomb was found with this inscription—‘I also was an Arcadian!’

We feel that some apology is necessary for having thus plunged our readers all at once into the middle of metaphysics. If it should be asked what use such studies are of, we might answer with Hume, perhaps of none, except that there are certain persons who find more entertainment in them than in any other. An account of this matter, with which we were amused ourselves, and which may therefore amuse others, we met with some time ago in a metaphysical allegory, which begins in this manner:—

‘In the depth of a forest, in the kingdom of Indostan, lived a monkey, who, before his last step of transmigration, had occupied a human tenement. He had been a Bramin, skilful in theology, and in all abstruse learning. He was wont to hold in admiration the ways of Nature, and delighted to penetrate the mysteries in which she was enrobed; but in pursuing the footsteps of philosophy, he wandered too far from the abode of the social Virtues. In order to pursue his studies, he had retired to a cave on the banks of the Jumna. There he forgot society, and neglected ablution; and therefore his soul was degraded to a condition below humanity. So inveterate were the habits which he had contracted in his human state, that his spirit was still influenced by his passion for abstruse study. He sojourned in this wood from youth to age, regardless of everything, save cocoa-nuts and metaphysics.’ For our own part, we should be content to pass our time much in the same way as this learned savage, if we could only find a substitute for his cocoa-nuts! 268We do not however wish to recommend the same pursuit to others, nor to dissuade them from it. It has its pleasures and its pains—its successes and its disappointments. It is neither quite so sublime nor quite so uninteresting as it is sometimes represented. The worst is, that much thought on difficult subjects tends, after a certain time, to destroy the natural gaiety and dancing of the spirits; it deadens the elastic force of the mind, weighs upon the heart, and makes us insensible to the common enjoyments and pursuits of life.

Metaphysical reasoning is also one branch of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The study of man, however, does, perhaps, less harm than a knowledge of the world, though it must be owned that the practical knowledge of vice and misery makes a stronger impression on the mind, when it has imbibed a habit of abstract reasoning. Evil thus becomes embodied in a general principle, and shews its harpy form in all things. It is a fatal, inevitable necessity hanging over us. It follows us wherever we go: if we fly into the uttermost parts of the earth, it is there: whether we turn to the right or the left, we cannot escape from it. This, it is true, is the disease of philosophy; but it is one to which it is liable in minds of a certain cast, after the first order of expectation has been disabused by experience, and the finer feelings have received an irrecoverable shock from the jarring of the world.

Happy are they who live in the dream of their own existence, and see all things in the light of their own minds; who walk by faith and hope; to whom the guiding star of their youth still shines from afar, and into whom the spirit of the world has not entered! They have not been ‘hurt by the archers,’ nor has the iron entered their souls. They live in the midst of arrows and of death, unconscious of harm. The evil things come not nigh them. The shafts of ridicule pass unheeded by, and malice loses its sting. The example of vice does not rankle in their breasts, like the poisoned shirt of Nessus. Evil impressions fall off from them like drops of water. The yoke of life is to them light and supportable. The world has no hold on them. They are in it, not of it; and a dream and a glory is ever around them!

The lovers of the drama have had a very rich theatrical treat this week, Mr. Kean’s first appearance in Bajazet, two new Miss Peggys in the Country Girl, and last, though not least, Miss Stephens’s reappearance in Polly. Of Mr. Kean’s Bajazet we have not much to say, without repeating what we have said before. The character itself is merely calculated for the display of physical passion and external energy. It is violent, fierce, turbulent, noisy, and blasphemous, 275‘full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ Mr. Kean did justice to his author, or went the whole length of the text. A viper does not dart with more fierceness and rapidity on the person who has just trod upon it than he turns upon Tamerlane in the height of his fury. An unslaked thirst of vengeance and blood has taken possession of every faculty, like the savage rage of a hyaena, assailed by the hunters. His eyeballs glare, his teeth gnash together, his hands are clenched. In describing his defeat, his voice is choked with passion; he curses, and the blood curdles in his veins. Never was the fiery soul of barbarous revenge, stung to madness by repeated shame and disappointment, so completely displayed. This truth of nature and passion in Mr. Kean’s acting carries every thing before it. He was the only person on the stage who seemed alive. The mighty Tamerlane appeared no better than a stuffed figure dressed in ermine, Arpasia moaned in vain, and Moneses roared out his wrongs unregarded, like the hoarse sounds of distant thunder. Nothing can withstand the real tide of passion once let loose; and yet it is pretended, that the great art of the tragic actor is in damming it up, or cutting out smooth canals and circular basons for it to flow into, so that it may do no harm in its course. It is the giving way to natural and strong impulses of the imagination that floats Mr. Kean down the stream of public favour with all his faults—‘a load to sink a navy.’ The only wonder was to see this furious character suffered to go about and take the whole range of the palace of Tamerlane, without the least let or impediment. It shewed a degree of magnanimity in Mr. Pope, which is without any parallel, even in modern times. It is understood that the play was originally written by the whig poet Rowe, and regularly acted on the anniversary of our whig revolution, as a compliment to King William, and a satire on Louis XIV. For any thing we know, the resemblance of Tamerlane to King William may be sufficiently strong, there the historian and the poet may agree tolerably well; but what traits the Tartar Chieftain and the French Monarch had in common, it would be difficult to find out. If any more recent allusion was intended in its revival, it fell still wider of the mark. The play of Tamerlane may be divided into two heads—cant and rant. Tamerlane takes the first part, and Bajazet the second. This last hurls defiance at both gods and men. He is utterly regardless of consequences, and rushes upon his destruction like a wild beast into the toils. He utters but one striking sentiment, when he defends ambition as the hunger of noble minds. Bajazet’s character is energy without greatness. He is blind to every thing but the present moment, and insensible to every thing but the present impulse. True greatness is the reverse of this. It shews all the energy of courage, 276but none of the impatience of despair. It struggles with difficulty, but yields to necessity. It does every thing, and suffers nothing. It sees events with the eye of history, and makes Time the Judge of Fortune. Courage with calmness constitutes the perfection of the heroic character, as the effeminate and sentimental unite the extremes of activity and irritability. We never saw Mr. Kean look better. His costume and his colour had a very picturesque effect. The yellow brown tinge of the Tartar becomes him much better than the tawny brick-dust complexion of the Moor in Othello.

Now for our two Country Girls. We have seen both without any great effort of our patience: to confess a truth, we had rather see the Country Girl two nights running than Tamerlane; as we would rather have been Wycherley than Rowe. The comedy of the Country Girl is taken from Moliere’s School for Wives. It is however a perfectly free imitation, or rather an original work, founded on the same general plot, with additional characters, and in a style wholly different. Scarcely a line is the same. The long, speechifying dialogues in the French comedy are cut down into a succession of smart conversations and lively scenes: there is indeed a certain pastoral sweetness or sentimental naivete in the character of Agnes, which is lost in Miss Peggy, who is however the more natural and mischievous little rustic of the two. The incident of her running up against her guardian as she is running off with her gallant in the park, and the contrivance of the second letter which she imposes on her jealous fool as Alithea’s, are Wycherley’s. The characters of Alithea, Harcourt, and of the fop Sparkish, who appears to us so exquisite, and to others so insipid, are additional portraits from the reign and court of Charles II. Those who object to the scenes between this gentleman and his mistress as unnatural, can never have read the Memoirs of the Count de Grammont,—an authentic piece of English history, in which we trace the origin of so many noble families. What an age of wit and folly, of coxcombs and coquets, when the world of fashion led purely ornamental lives, and their only object was to make themselves or others ridiculous. Happy age, when the utmost stretch of a morning’s study went no further than the choice of a sword knot, or the adjustment of a side curl; when the soul spoke out in all the persuasive eloquence of dress; when beaux and belles, enamoured of themselves in one another’s follies, fluttered like gilded butterflies in giddy mazes through the walks of St. James’s Park! The perfection of this gala out-of-door comedy is in Etherege, the gay Sir George! Then comes Wycherley, and then Congreve, who hands them into the drawing-room. Congreve is supposed to have been the inventor of the epigrammatic, clenched style of comic dialogue; but there is a 277great deal of this both in Wycherley and Etherege, with more of a janty tone of flippant gaiety in the latter, and more incident, character, and situation in the former. The Country Girl holds unimpaired possession of the stage to this day, by its wit, vivacity, nature, and ingenuity. Nothing can be worse acted, and yet it goes down, for it supplies the imagination with all that the actors want. Mr. Bartley had some merit as Moody, Mr. Fawcet none. Barrymore, at Covent Garden played Harcourt well. We have seen him in better company, and he reminded us of it. He was much of the gentleman, and as much at home on the stage (from long practice) as if he had been in his own apartments. As to the two Miss Peggys, we hardly know how to settle their pretensions. If Mrs. Mardyn overacts her part to that degree that she seems only to want a skipping-rope to make it complete, Mrs. Alsop is so stiff and queer that she seems to have only just escaped from a back-board and steel monitor. If Mrs. Alsop has the clearest voice, Mrs. Mardyn has the brightest eyes. Mrs. Alsop has most art, Mrs. Mardyn has most nature. If Mrs. Mardyn is too profuse of natural graces, too young and buoyant and exuberant in all her movements, the same fault cannot be found with Mrs. Alsop, whose smiles give no pleasure, and whose frowns give unmingled pain. Mrs. Alsop’s Peggy is a clever recitation of the character, without being the thing; and Mrs. Mardyn’s is a very full development of her own person, which is the thing itself. Mrs. Alsop is the best actress, though not worth a pin, and Mrs. Mardyn is the most desirable woman, which is always worth something. We may apply to these two ladies what Suckling said of one of his mistresses—

Perhaps, the doctrine of what has been called philosophical necessity was never more finely expressed than in these lines of a poet, who, if 278he had written only half of what he has done, would have deserved to be immortal. There can be no doubt that all that exists, exists by necessity; that the vast fabric of the universe is held together in one mighty chain, reaching to the ‘threshold of Jove’s throne’; that whatever has a beginning, must have a cause; that there is no object, no feeling, no action, which, other things being the same, could have been otherwise; that thought follows thought, like wave following wave; that chance or accident has no share in any thing that comes to pass in the moral or the physical world; that whatever is, must be; that whatever has been, must have been; that whatever is to be will be necessarily.

I never could doubt for a moment of the truth of this general principle, and I never could comprehend the inferences which have commonly been drawn from it, both by friends and foes. All the moral consequences which have been attributed to it appear to me mere idle prejudices against it on one side, and equally gratuitous concessions on the other. The doctrine of necessity leaves morality just where it found it. It does not destroy goodness of disposition or energy of character, any more than it destroys beauty or strength of person. It does not take away the powers of the mind any more than the use of the limbs. That every thing is by necessity, no more proves that there is no such thing as good and evil, virtue and vice, right and wrong, in the moral world, than it proves that there is no such thing as day or night, heat or cold, sweet or sour, food or poison, in the physical. Merit and demerit, that is to say, praise and blame, reward and punishment, have no place in the physical world, but that is because they have no effect there; and for the same reason they have a place in the moral, because they have an effect there. All the practical conclusions which have been ascribed to the difference between liberty and necessity, may be equally accounted for (as they really had their rise) from the difference between moral and physical necessity.

Man acts from a cause; and so far he resembles a stone; but he does not act from the same cause, and herein he differs from it. There is a print which I have seen from a picture by Ludovico Caracci, in which a female figure, with a lion by her side, is represented striking a flame of fire at her feet with a drawn sword. I do not very well understand the allegory, but it appears to me to furnish a very tolerable illustration of the difference between moral and physical necessity: for whether this figure strikes the flame with the flat or the sharp side of the sword, it divides and rises again equally; it is incapable of punishment for it has no sense of pain, nor does it apprehend a repetition of the blow. Is it the same with the human 279mind? No; for it has both the sense of pain and the sense of consequences, which render it liable to punishment, by making that punishment one effectual and necessary means of influencing its conduct. A man differs from a stone in that he has feeling and understanding; and it is this difference that makes him a moral and responsible agent in the true meaning of the terms, by connecting his present impulses with their future consequences. It may be said that animals have feeling, and a certain degree of understanding: and so far they are liable to correction and punishment. A dog or a horse is terrified at the whip or the spur as well as encouraged by kindness. We very properly, therefore, threaten them with the one and allure them with the other, though we neither preach to them of heaven nor hell, because they have no notion about either. As far as they have understanding, they have free-will, for these two words mean one and the same thing. Man is the only religious animal, because he alone (from a greater power of imagination) extends his views of consequences into another state of being.—The application of praise or blame, as well as of reward and punishment, is proper, wherever it is likely to have an effect. We do not talk to the deaf: we do not shew pictures to the blind; we do not reason with a wild beast; we do not quarrel with a stone. Because it would be useless. But we do talk to those who can hear; we shew pictures to those who can see; we reason with prejudice; we quarrel with ill-nature. The human mind differs from an inanimate substance or an automaton, inasmuch as it is actuated by sympathy as well as by necessity. We indeed praise a flower, a statue, or a beautiful face, because they give us pleasure: we praise a virtuous action, as an additional incentive to virtue. ‘Praise and blame, reward and punishment’ (says Mr. Hobbes) ‘are just and proper, because they fashion the will to justice.’

Merit, in the scholastic sense, means something self-caused, and independent of motives. This sense of the term is flat nonsense, for there is nothing without a cause—nothing which is not owing to some other thing. The whole theory of merit may be said to turn upon the capacity of any person or thing to mould itself according to the opinion entertained of it. A stone has not this capacity; and therefore there is no merit in a stone. If you tell a country girl that she is handsome or well made, her answer generally will be, that ‘She is as God made her.’ This however does not prove that she is not well made. It is only meant to shew, that as she has had no hand in her own shape, and can do nothing to mend it, the merit is so far none of hers. But if you praise the neatness of her dress, she has not the same evasion left, but thinks the flattery well bestowed, for she 280is conscious that this depends upon herself; that she can stay a longer or a shorter time at her glass as she pleases; and that the pains she has taken have been with a view to the good opinion you express of her. The difference between natural and acquired graces is an obvious dictate of common sense; unless we adopt the opinion of the Clown, that ‘a good favour is the effect of study, but reading and writing come by nature.’ It is a piece of brutality and ill-nature to point at a hump-backed man, and call him My Lord: but there is no great harm in laughing at a person with an aukward slovenly gait, for the ridicule may remedy the defect. A person has it in his power to turn his toes out instead of in, whenever he chuses: he cannot get rid of a natural deformity by any effort of will. Beauty and power of every kind excite our love and admiration, whether in nature, in morals, or in art; but still with a difference. St. Paul’s is a much nobler as well as larger building than St. Dunstan’s. We accordingly admire the one much more than the other; but we allow no more merit to the one than the other. All the difference of merit we ascribe to the architect, and not to the building. Why so? Because all the vanity belongs to the architect, and not to the building.—St. Paul’s stands where it does; it lifts its majestic dome to the skies, whether it is seen or not, whether it is admired or not. It has (familiarly speaking) done nothing to deserve our good opinion, for it has done nothing with a view to it. Now for the same reason that the building has not, the builder has merited our good opinion, for he did what he has done with that very view; was sensible to that good opinion, and stimulated to exertion by it. It is evident that the admiration we bestow on any work of art, as an actual object, is involuntary; it makes no difference in the object whether we bestow it or not; we therefore do not make a point of bestowing it: the praise we give to the artist is voluntary, and merited in this farther sense, that we are bound to bestow it as a means to an end: we indulge it not merely as a sentiment naturally excited by the contemplation of excellence, but the expression of which is a reward due to the pains taken by the artist, and to the encouragement of genius. Disapprobation and punishment on the other hand necessarily give pain to the person who is the object of them, but it is to produce a remote good. However, it equally follows in either case, that our love and hatred of what is amiable or odious in conscious agents must be different from our feeling towards unconscious ones, from the sense of the difference of the consequences. The lever, the screw, and the wedge, are the great instruments of the mechanical world: opinion, sympathy, praise and blame, reward and punishment, are the lever, the screw, and the wedge, of the moral world. A house is 281built of stones; human character depends on motives. Is there therefore no difference between one character and another? As well might it be said that there is no difference between one building and another. If merit means something in character, independent of motives and of all other things, then there can be no such thing as merit: but if by merit we mean something which excites our approbation of one character more than another, and which something is still farther entitled to our approbation, because it depends upon it for its motive and encouragement, then undoubtedly this word has a rational meaning in it. To deny praise or blame, reward or punishment, to actions, because they are produced by motives, is to take away the prop from a house, because it supports it.—Necessity only supersedes merit by superseding the operation of motives. It is pretended, that if any action is not perfectly gratuitous, if it can be traced to any other cause, the merit must be transferred to that other cause, and so on without end. This infinite series may be cut short by observing, that any action is entitled to our good opinion which is affected by it. If our opinion had no influence on the actions of others, there would so far be no merit. If any one going up Holborn-hill is pushed by a stronger man against a window and breaks it, who is the responsible person? The one who pushed the other, and not the one who broke the glass. Because punishment or correcting the moral sense will not prevent a weak man from being pushed against a window by a strong one, but it will prevent the strong man from pushing him against it. It makes no difference that this person did not act at first without a motive; the point is, that here is another motive which will counteract the former one. The true cause of any thing in the practical and moral sense, is that, by removing which the effect ceases. A man is a moral agent only in so far as he can do what he will: for motives can only operate on the will. A man in chains or held by force is not accountable for what he does, for blame or praise him ever so much, and he will do, not what you wish him, but what others force him to do. You may reasonably exhort a man not to throw himself over Westminster Bridge, but it is in vain, after he has thrown himself over, to call out to him to stop. Morality means that we have the power to do certain things, if we will, or help them, if we please.

Merit is moral energy. It is the sense of merit which is the great stimulus of exertion. One thing is more difficult, requires a greater effort than another. The sense of merit is in proportion to the sense of difficulty. The highest praise is given to the highest exertions, the greatest rewards are due where the greatest sacrifices have been made. The degree of merit depends then on the degree of voluntary 282power exerted: for exertion deserves every kind of encouragement and assistance as it becomes difficult. We give a boy sixpence for going a mile; a shilling for going two. We need not offer rewards and largesses to vice and indolence; for all the sanctions of religion and morality are not sufficient to correct them. The admiration with which the story of Marvell and his leg of mutton is read has not prevented the facility of some modern patriots in commencing courtiers; but if it should only save us from a single birthday ode, it will be something. The phlegmatic Dutchman, in playing at skittles, follows his bowl with his eye, writhes his body to make it turn right, and cheers it with his voice. If the bowl had sympathy so as to bend with his body, and to be encouraged to go a little farther by his praising it, there would be some sense in his doing so. Amphion is said to have raised the walls of Thebes with the sound of his lyre: in one sense the fable might be true, for he might have drawn together and civilized his followers by the power of song. The words which Madame de Staël some time ago addressed to the Germans, Allemagne, tu es une nation, et tu pleurs, were not without their effect. Neither perhaps would the same words be so now, addressed to her own country—France, tu es une nation, et tu pleurs!

We have been led to these remarks by receiving an epistle from an elderly maiden lady, who complains that she has spent her whole life in censuring and back-biting her neighbours, and that by what we let fall some time ago, about there being no such thing as merit and demerit, we had debarred her of the only use of her tongue and pleasure of her life. We are sorry to have interrupted her, and hope she will now proceed. We have a good deal left to say on the subject:—

Being very busy or very indolent this week (it is no matter which), we have had recourse to our common-place book (the first or last resource of authors), and there find the following instances of parallel passages, which are at the service of the critics. The conclusion of Voltaire’s tragedy of Zaire is the speech of Orosman, who has killed his mistress, to her brother, Nerestan:—

283This will probably remind our readers, as it did us, of Othello’s farewell speech:—

After transcribing the above passage, we were looking about for the traces of the former one, which had ‘vanished into thin air,’ and were beginning to suspect that our parallel had totally failed, till in looking into the lucubrations of Mr. William Wade, who has tried to pick a hole in Shakespear, we learnt that the French translator of our poet had bona fide translated the passage into legitimate French verse, and that Voltaire had in consequence, with singular modesty, complained that Ducis had improved upon the original and stolen the whole turn of the passage from him. To be sure, there is a wide difference in the two passages. There is nothing in the French poet of the ‘No more of that,’ that fine natural interruption to the gasconade which his distress had just extorted from him; there is nothing of ‘One that loved not wisely, but too well,’ there is nothing of Indian pearls or Arabian gums, nor is there any allusion to Aleppo, nor description of ‘a malignant and a turbaned Turk’; nor any thing like that fine return upon himself, and transition from the depth of a dejected spirit to the recollection of former acts of daring defiance, while in his despair he inflicts on himself the blow with which he formerly chastised an insolent foe. These circumstances are given ‘as over-measure’ in Shakespear, and would be considered as superfluous and extravagant by the French critics; yet they are exactly the circumstances which the Moor Othello must have been best acquainted with, and which, as some of the most striking circumstances of his past life, would be forcibly recalled to his memory in parting with it. Voltaire has not invented any thing of the same sort for his dying hero; his speech (though a very good one of its kind) is, as Susannah says to Trim, ‘as flat as the palm of one’s hand;’ it has nothing objectionable in it; it is just such a speech as any crowned head might make in any of the four quarters of the globe.—May we be allowed to add (in passing), that Mr. Kean does not act this scene well? He gnashes his teeth, and strikes the dagger into his bosom, as if he had taken some particular enmity against his own flesh. But this is not so in Shakespear. The feeling of Othello is a lofty absence of mind, in which he throws himself back from the present into the past; the image he recalls furnishes not only the precedent but the consolation of his present act; and the pang which he inflicts on himself is relieved, and unconsciously confounded with the recollection of former acts of grandeur, and elevation of soul. But to proceed.—

284In the Agamemnon of Æschylus, is a very beautiful description of the signal fires that were to announce the destruction of Troy, thus translated by Potter:—

In Drayton’s Polyolbion (Song 30) this idea is finely varied:—

Again, in a poem of Mr. Wordsworth we find the following lines:—

We have been urged several times to take up the subject of Mr. Wordsworth’s Poems, in order to do them justice. In doing this, we should satisfy neither his admirers nor his censurers. We have once already attempted the thankless office, and it did not succeed. Indeed we think all comment on them superseded by those lines of Withers, which are a complete anticipation of Mr. Wordsworth’s style, where, speaking of poetry, he says,—

Mr. Locke has at this day all over Europe the character of one of the most profound and original thinkers that ever lived, and he is perhaps, without any exception, the most barefaced, deliberate, and bungling plagiarist, that ever appeared in philosophy. The reputation which he has acquired, as the founder of the new system in philosophy, or of any part of that system, is a pure imposition. Hobbes was the undoubted founder of the system; and he not only laid the foundation, 285but he completed the building. Every one of the principles of the modern, material philosophy of the mind, is to be found in his works, perfect and entire, as it is in the latest commentators of the French school. He not only took for his basis the principle that there is no other original faculty in the mind but sensation: he also pushed this principle into all its consequences, with a severe, masterly, and honest logic, of which there is scarcely any other example. By thus shewing the full extent of his system, ‘the very head and front of his offending,’ without any disguise, he only got himself an ill name, and his system was consigned to infamy or oblivion. Mr. Locke adopted the first principle, with a clumsy addition to it, but so as to secure himself the reputation of an original thinker; and at the same time, by not following it in a bold and decided manner into any one of its necessary consequences, he avoided giving the alarm to popular apprehension, and made a temporary compromise with the common sense and prejudices of his readers. The door being however opened to the introduction of this philosophy, by the admission of the general principle, all the rest by degrees followed as a matter of course; and it has been the business of the ablest metaphysicians ever since to clear what has been considered as the philosophy of Locke, from the inconsistences and imperfections which he had suffered to creep into it: all which improvements on Locke’s Essay are only a recurrence to the principles laid down by Hobbes, in the most explicit and unequivocal manner. To shew how little this last writer has been read, even by professed metaphysicians, Hume attributes the doctrine, that there are no abstract ideas, to Berkeley as an original discovery, though the arguments used by Berkeley are almost word for word taken from those used by Hobbes on the same subject. Yet Locke, in order we suppose to prevent inquiry into the originality of his own claims, calls Hobbes ‘a justly exploded author.’ This question is curious (philosophy apart) as a branch of literary history. It is, we know, dangerous to tamper with established reputation; nor should we perhaps have ventured to hazard the accusation we have here made, if we had not been supported by the authority of so well informed, candid, and respectable a writer as Dugald Stewart, whose testimony is of the more value, as he does not seem to be aware of the general propensity of Mr. Locke to appropriate the ideas of others to his own use, without disguise or acknowledgement. To any one who takes the trouble to peruse Professor Stewart’s very elegant Dissertation just published, on the rise and progress of modern Metaphysics, it will be evident that every one of those original discoveries, to which the author of the Essay on Human 286Understanding owes his celebrity, and on which he particularly plumed himself, is taken in substance and almost in words from writers of whom he does not once make mention; for example, his proposed division of the sciences, brought forward with great parade and formality, into Physics, Ethics, and Logic, which is the old division of the Greek philosophy; his definition of words which are definable or not definable, which is taken expressly from Descartes; his account of the origin of our ideas, that of association, of the social compact, etc. which are borrowed from Hobbes; his distinction of the properties of matter into primary and secondary, and his theory of consciousness or reflection as a distinct source of ideas, which belong to Descartes; his hypothesis about animal spirits, as the medium of association of ideas, adopted from Malbranche; his account of judgment and wit, which is to be found in Hobbes, &c. &c. If it be asked, whether Mr. Locke has not had the merit of combining the materials thus derived from other sources into a complete and masterly system, the answer would be, that his work is one of the most confused, undigested, and contradictory, that has been published on the subject. There is no one to whom those lines of the poet were ever more applicable.

We should hope that Mr. Stewart will examine into and state his conviction on this question fully and clearly in the account of Mr. Locke’s Essay, which he has promised in the continuation of his work. If he would lend the sanction of his name to shew the real foundation on which Mr. Locke’s reputation rests, it would not be the least service he has rendered to philosophy. ‘To trace an error to its source is often the only way to refute it.’ The task is no doubt an invidious, but it is a necessary one. The name of Locke is in a manner dear to every lover of truth; but truth itself should be still dearer.

It will perhaps be amusing to the reader (though not initiated in such studies) to see the manner in which an idea is bandied about, in these speculations, from author to author, to no sort of purpose. ‘In one of Mr. Locke’s most noted remarks,’ (says the learned Professor) ‘he has been anticipated by Malbranche, on whose clear yet concise statement he does not seem to have thrown much new light by his very diffuse and wordy commentary.’—‘If in having our 287ideas in the memory ready at hand, consists quickness of parts; in this of having them unconfused, and being able nicely to distinguish one thing from another, where there is but the least difference, consists, in a great measure, the exactness of judgment and clearness of reason; which is to be observed in one man above another. And hence perhaps may be given some reason of that common observation, that men who have a great deal of wit and prompt memories, have not always the clearest judgment or deepest reason. For Wit, lying most in the assemblage of ideas, and putting those together with quickness and variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy: Judgment on the contrary, lies quite on the other side, in separating carefully one from another, ideas wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to avoid being misled by similitude and by affinity to take one thing for another.’—Essay, etc. B. ii. c. xi. § 2.

‘Il y a donc des esprits de deux sortes. Les uns remarquent aisément les différences des choses, et ce sont les bons esprits. Les autres imaginent et supposent de la ressemblance entr’elles, et ce sont les esprits superficielles.’—Recherche de la Vérité.

‘At an earlier period, Bacon had pointed out the same cardinal distinction in the intellectual characters of individuals.

“The greatest and as it were radical distinction of geniuses, in respect of philosophy and science, is this; that some are more able and apt at noting the differences of things; others at noting their similitudes. For steady and acute minds can fix their contemplations, and remain and dwell on every subtlety of distinction; whereas more lofty and discursive imaginations recognize and compound even the slightest and commonest resemblances of things.”

‘That strain I heard was of a higher mood!—It is evident that Bacon has here seized, in its most general form, the very important truth perceived by his two ingenious successors in particular cases. Wit, which Locke contrasts with Judgment, is only one of the various talents connected with what Bacon calls the discursive genius; and indeed a talent very subordinate in dignity to most of the others.’—Note to the Dissertation, p. 116.

Mr. Locke, by Wit, in the passage here referred to, evidently means ingenuity or fancy generally speaking; for in the last hundred years, the use of this term has undergone a great alteration. He however borrowed his definition immediately from ‘that exploded author,’ Hobbes, who says in the Leviathan, p. 32,—‘Whereas, in the succession of thoughts, there is nothing to observe in the things we think on, but either in what they be like one another, or in what 288they be unlike;—those that observe their similitudes, in case they be such as are but rarely observed by others, are said to have a good wit, by which is meant on this occasion a good fancy. But they that observe their differences and dissimilitudes, which is called distinguishing and discerning and judging between thing and thing, in case such discerning be not easy, are said to have a good judgment; and particularly in matters of conversation and business, wherein times, places, and persons, are to be discerned, this virtue is called Discretion.’

What is most remarkable in this traditional definition of wit and judgment, is, that it is altogether unfounded; for as Harris, the author of Hermes, has very well observed, the finding out the equality of the three angles of a triangle to two right ones, would, upon the principles here stated, be a sally of wit, instead of an act of the understanding, and Euclid’s Elements a collection of bon mots.

It may be said in explanation, that wit discovers false resemblances only. But neither is this true. Wit consists in an illustration of an idea by some lucky coincidence or contrast, which idea may be either false or true, as it happens. But the best wit is always the truest. When the French punsters the other day changed the title of some loyal order from Compagnons du Lys into Compagnons d’Ulysse, the wit lost none of its efficacy, because there was a lurking suspicion in the mind that the insinuation was true. When Mr. Grattan, some years ago, said, that the only resources of Ministers were ‘the guinea or the gallows,’ the alliteration proved nothing, but neither did it disprove any thing. When the late ingenious Professor Porson, in reply to some enthusiast of the modern school of poetry, who was exclaiming ‘that some contemporary bards would be admired when Homer and Virgil were forgotten,’ made answer,—‘And not till then,’—he shewed more wit, and perhaps not less judgment, than his antagonist. Besides, the wit here consisted in the distinction.

We shall shortly go more into this subject in three papers, which we propose to write, on Imagination, Wit, and Judgment, when we shall endeavour to shew that these faculties, though not the same, nor always found together, are not so incompatible as dullness on the one hand, and folly on the other, would lead the world to suppose. The most sensible man of our acquaintance is also the wittiest; and the most extravagant blockhead the dullest matter-of-fact man. The greatest poet that ever lived, had the most understanding of human nature and affairs. Martinus Scriblerus contains the best commentary on the Categories; and we shrewdly suspect that Voltaire and Moliere were two as wise men, that is, knew as many things that were true and useful, as Malbranche and Descartes. It would have been hard 289to persuade either of those laughing philosophers that they saw all things in God, or that animals were machines. These are ‘the laborious fooleries’ of the understanding.

Mr. Stewart has interspersed his history of the progress of opinions with some interesting biographical sketches. Of Anthony Arnaud, the author of the Port Royal Logic, we learn, that ‘he lived to the age of eighty-three, continuing to write against Malbranche’s opinions concerning Nature and Grace, to his last hour.’ He died, says his biographer, in an obscure retreat at Brussels, in 1692, without fortune, and even without the comfort of a servant; he, whose nephew had been a minister of state, and who might himself have been a cardinal. The pleasure of being able to publish his sentiments was to him a sufficient recompense. Nicole, his friend and companion in arms, worn out at length with these incessant disputes, expressed a wish to retire from the field, and to enjoy repose. ‘Repose!’ replied Arnaud; ‘won’t you have the whole of eternity to repose in?’—An anecdote which is told of his infancy, when considered in connection with his subsequent life, affords a good illustration of the force of impressions received in the first dawn of reason. He was amusing himself one day with some childish sport, in the library of the Cardinal du Perron, when he requested of the Cardinal to give him a pen:—And for what purpose? said the Cardinal.—To write books, like you, against the Huguenots. The Cardinal, it is added, who was old and infirm, could not conceal his joy at the prospect of so hopeful a successor: and, as he was putting the pen into his hand, said, ‘I give it to you as the dying shepherd Damaetas bequeathed his pipe to the little Corydon.’ Of the celebrated metaphysician Descartes, it appears that he was ‘a bold campaigner’ in his youth; that he served in Holland under Prince Maurice of Nassau; in Germany, under Maximilian of Bavaria, in the thirty years’ war; in Hungary, and at the siege of Rochelle, as a volunteer against the English. He passed his life in camps till the age of five-and-twenty, when he retired to spend the remainder of it—in proving his own existence! What then, it may be asked after all, is the use of such studies and pursuits? Of the same use as pursuing gilded butterflies, or any other toy that amuses the mind. Mr. Hume fixed his residence, while composing his Treatise of Human Nature, at the village of La Flèche, where Descartes was brought up. This is an interesting trait in the life of a philosopher, who was by no means of the romantic cast. We do not very well understand the lenity or rather the respect with which the memory of Mr. Hume is always treated by our author, who is so hard upon Hobbes and others. There is also too much notice taken of Adam Smith, who, whatever 290might be his merits as a political economist, was of a very subordinate class as a philosopher—

May we add, that the distinctions of Metaphysics and Geography have nothing in common, nor is truth of any particular country.

The learned Professor makes too little account of the German philosopher Kant, whose maxim that ‘the mind alone is formative,’ is the only lever by which the modern philosophy can be overturned. He has indeed overlaid this simple principle by his logical technicalities, his categories and stuff, as Locke has confounded all common sense with his ideas of sensation and ideas of reflection. Nothing can be done towards a true theory of the mind, till philosophers are convinced that all ideas are ideas of the understanding; and that it requires all the same faculties to have the idea of the stud of a brass nail in an old arm-chair, that is, the perception of connection, limits, form, difference, aye, and of abstraction, in this simple object, as in the highest speculations of theological or metaphysical science. The modern philosophers contend that the mind has no idea of any thing but sensible images: the way to turn the tables upon them is then to prove, that in the idea of every one of these sensible objects, there is necessarily involved the exercise of all those faculties, of which they deny the existence, and which are exerted, only in a different degree, in the most simple or the most refined operations of the understanding.

Shakespear’s women (we mean those who were his favourites, and whom he intended to be the favourites of the reader) exist almost entirely in the relations and charities of domestic life. They are nothing in themselves, but every thing in their attachment to others. We think as little of their persons as they do themselves, because we are let into the secrets of their hearts, which are more important. We are too much interested in their affairs to stop to look at their faces, except by stealth and at intervals. We catch their beauties only sideways as in a glass, but we everywhere meet their hearts coming at us,—full butt, as Miss Peggy meets her husband in the Park. No one ever hit the true perfection of the female character, the sense of weakness leaning on the strength of its affections for 291support, so well as Shakespear—no one ever so well painted natural tenderness free from all affectation and disguise, that

no one else ever so well shewed how delicacy and timidity, urged to an extremity, grow romantic and extravagant, for the romance of his heroines (in which they abound) is only an excess of the common prejudices of their sex, scrupulous of being false to their vows, truant to their affections, and taught by the force of their feelings when to forego the forms of propriety for the essence of it. His women are in this respect exquisite logicians, for they argue from what they feel, and that is a sure game, when the stake is deep. They know their own minds exactly. High imagination springs from deep habit; and Shakespear’s women only followed up the idea of what they liked, of what they had sworn to with their tongues, and what was engraven on their hearts, into its untoward consequences. They were the prettiest little set of martyrs and confessors on record.

We have almost as great an affection for Imogen as she had for Posthumus; and she deserves it rather better. Of all Shakespear’s women she is perhaps the most touching, the most tender, and the most true. As to Desdemona, who was alone a match for her in good faith and heroic self-devotion, she had her faults, and she suffered for them. Imogen’s incredulity as to her husband’s infidelity is much the same as Desdemona’s backwardness to believe Othello’s jealousy. Her answer to the most distressing part of the picture is only, ‘my Lord, I fear, has forgot Britain.’ Her readiness to pardon Iachimo’s falsehoods, and his designs upon her virtue, is a good lesson to prudes; and shews (as perhaps Shakespear intended it, or nature for him) that where there is a strong attachment to virtue, it has no need to bolster itself up with an outrageous or affected antipathy to vice. The morality of Shakespear in this way is great; but it is not to be found in the four last lines of his plays, in the form of extreme unction. The scene in which Pisanio gives Imogen her husband’s letter accusing her of incontinency, is as fine as anything could be:—

When Pisanio, who had been charged to kill his mistress, puts her in a way to live, she says—

Yet when he advises her to disguise herself in boy’s clothes, and suggests ‘a course pretty and full in view,’ by which she may ‘happily be near the residence of Posthumus,’ she exclaims—

And when Pisanio, enlarging on the consequences, tells her she must change—

She interrupts him hastily:—

In her journey thus disguised to Milford-Haven, she loses her guide and her way; and unbosoming her complaints, says beautifully,—

She afterwards finds, as she thinks, the dead body of Posthumus, and engages herself as a foot-boy to serve a Roman Officer, when she has done all due obsequies to him whom she calls her former master:

Now this is the very religion of love. Is it not? All this, which is the essence of the character, is free from every thing like personal flattery or laboured description. She relies little on her personal charms, which she fears may have been eclipsed by some painted jay of Italy; she relies only on her merit, and her merit is in the depth of her love, her truth and constancy. Our admiration of her beauty is excited as it were with as little consciousness as possible on her part. There are two delicious descriptions given of her, one when she is asleep, and one when she is supposed dead. Arviragus thus addresses her:

The yellow Iachimo gives another thus, when he steals into her bed-chamber:

294There is a moral sense in the proud beauty of this last image, a rich surfeit of the fancy,—as that well-known passage beginning, ‘Me of my lawful pleasure she restrained, and prayed me oft forbearance,’ sets a keener edge upon it by the inimitable picture of modesty and self-denial. Desdemona is another instance (almost to a proverb) of the devotedness of the sex to a favourite object. She is ‘subdued even to the very quality of her lord,’ and to Othello’s ‘honours and his valiant parts her soul and fortunes consecrates.’ The lady protests as much herself, and she is as good as her word. There is not a set description of her in any part of the play; and the only thing that tends that way is the equivocal and somewhat luscious dialogue that takes place between Iago and Cassio as an accompaniment to the ceremonies of the wedding-night. We see her visage in her mind: her character every where predominates over her person:

She is not a painted idol, carved out of the poet’s brain, but is herself a worshipper at the shrine of duty. As Milton dashes the luxurious effect of his descriptions by a moral, Shakespear qualifies it by the interest of the story, as in the scene where Othello takes Desdemona by the hand. The truth of conception, with which timidity and boldness are united in the same character, is marvellous. The extravagance of her actions, the pertinacity of her affections, in a manner arises out of the gentleness of her nature. It is an unreserved reliance on the purity of her intentions, a surrender of her fears to her love, a knitting of herself (heart and soul) to the fate of another. Bating the commencement of her passion, which is a little fantastical and self-willed (though that may be accounted for in the same way from an inability to resist a rising inclination) her whole character consists in having no will of her own, no prompter but her obedience. Her romantic turn is only a consequence of the domestic and practical part of her disposition; and instead of following Othello to Cyprus, she would rather have remained at home, ‘a moth of peace,’ if her husband could have staid with her. Her resignation and angelic sweetness of nature do not desert her at the last. The scenes in which she laments and tries to account for Othello’s harsh usage of her are exquisitely managed. After he has struck her and called her names, she says:

The scene which follows with her maid and the song of the Willow are equally beautiful, and shew Shakespear’s extreme power of varying the expression of passion, in all its moods and in all circumstances.

One of the finest passages in Mr. Wordsworth’s poems is that where he has given us his opinion of Desdemona:

We have said enough to explain our idea of the general turn of Shakespear’s female characters. We need not mention Ophelia or Cordelia, both of which admit of little external decoration, and which it would seem impossible to treat in any other way than as Shakespear has represented them, abstracted from every thing but their heart-breaking ties to others, if Tate had not adorned the person of Cordelia with a number of beauties, and finished her story with a lover. Cleopatra, who has certainly a personal identity of her own, and who is described in all the glowing pomp of eastern luxury, is not an exception to what we have said, for she is not intended as a model of her sex. What we best recollect of Cressida, is Pandarus’s description of her after bringing her to the tent, where he says,—‘And her heart beats like a new-ta’en sparrow’—which must be 296allowed to be quite Shakesperian. Miranda appears to be the most conscious of her charms of any of his favourites (perhaps from the very solitude in which she had lived), a sort of miracle of her father’s island, and the goddess of her new-found lover’s idolatry. Perdita is a very pretty low-born lass, the Queen of curds and cream—but she makes us think of other things more than of her face. There is one passage in which the poet has, we suspect, very artfully rallied the indifference of the sex to abstract reasoning:

Here the lady gives up the argument, but keeps her opinion. We had forgot one charming instance to our purpose, which is the character of Helen in All’s Well that Ends Well; and this also puts us in mind that Shakespear probably borrowed his female characters from the Italian novelists, and not from English women.

This theatre was opened for the present season under very favourable auspices; and we congratulate the public on the prospect of the continuance of this addition to the stock of elegant amusement. Though the opera is not among the ordinary resources of the lovers of the drama, it is a splendid object in the vista of a winter’s evening, and we should be sorry to see it mouldering into decay, its graceful columns and Corinthian capitals fallen, and its glory buried in Chancery. We rejoice when the Muses escape out of the fangs of the law, nor do we like to see the Graces arrested—in a pas de trois. We do not ‘like to see the unmerited fall of what has long flourished in splendour; any void produced in 300the imagination; any ruin on the face of Art.’ At present we hope better things from the known tastes and talents of the gentleman who is understood to have undertaken the management of the principal department, and from what we have seen of the performances with which the company have commenced their career. The pieces on Saturday and Tuesday were the Opera of Penelope by Cimarosa, and the inimitable comic Ballet, The Dansomanie. The first is, what it professes to be, a Grand Serious Opera: but it is somewhat heavy and monotonous. It introduced to the English Stage several actors of considerable eminence abroad. The principal were Mad. Camporese as Penelope, Madame Pasta as Telemachus, and Signor Crivelli as Ulysses. The last of these appears to be as good an actor as a singer. His gestures have considerable appropriateness and expression, besides having that sustained dignity and studied grace, which are essential to the harmony of the Opera; and his tones in singing are full, clear, and so articulate, that any one at all imbued with the Italian language can follow the words with ease. Madame Camporese performed Penelope, and drew down the frequent plaudits of the house by the sweetness of her voice, and the flexibility of execution which she manifested in some of the most difficult and impassioned passages. If we were to express our opinion honestly, we should say that we received most pleasure from Madame Pasta’s Telemachus. There is a natural eloquence about her singing which we feel, and therefore understand. Her dress and figure also answered to the classical idea we have of the youthful Telemachus. Her voice is good, her action is good: she has a handsome face, and very handsome legs. The ladies, we know, think otherwise: this is the only subject on which we think ourselves better judges than they.—Of the Dansomanie we will say nothing, lest we should be supposed to have caught the madness which it ridicules so sportively and gracefully. The whole is excellent, but the Minuet de la Cour is sublime: and the Gavot which succeeds it, is as good. Madame Leon was exquisite, and she had a partner worthy of her.

Really when we see these dances, and hear the music, which our old fantastical dancing master used to scrape upon his kit, played in full orchestra, we do not know what to make of it; we wish we were old dancing-masters, or learning to dance; or that we had lived in the time of Henry IV. The tears do not come in our eyes; that source is dry: but we exclaim with the Son of Fingal,

There has been little new this week. A new after-piece or melo-drame has been brought forward at Covent-garden, and the old farce of the Pannel revived at Drury-Lane. We can say but little in praise of the former, except the excellence of the acting and the manner in which it is got up. The strength of the house is mustered in a second-rate production, and from the list of names in the play-bills, the public go to see the performers, if not the performance, and come away at least half satisfied. They manage these things differently at Drury-lane, and not so well. We deny that the comic strength of the two houses is so unequal as is sometimes supposed. For instance, at Drury-lane, they have Munden, Dowton, Oxberry, and Knight; Harley is droll too; and in women, they beat them out and out, for they have Miss Kelly. To be sure, they have not Liston; so they 304must kick the beam. Mr. Liston is the greatest comic genius of the age. If we were very dull and sad indeed, we should avoid going to any farce or comedy in which he did not appear, as only tantalising to our feelings, and promising relief without affording it: but we must be dull indeed, if we did not bite at the bait of Mr. Liston’s Lubin Log. His comic humour is a sort of oil or ‘balsam of fierabras’ for all imaginary wounds that are not a foot deep. His laugh might tickle royalty itself after the howling of the rabble, or make one of the wax figures at Mrs. Salmon’s relax from the inflexibility of its state. Then there is Miss Stephens at Covent-garden, and there are the three Miss Dennets—like ‘Circe and the Sirens three.’ We always see the Miss Dennets at the theatre, and they sometimes glide before our imagination at other times; but we seldom hear Miss Stephens now. We want to see her again in Mandane, in which we have seen her eight times already, and to hear her sing If o’er the cruel tyrant Love, which we could hear her sing for ever. We want to see her in Polly for the seventh time, and in Rosetta for the fifth, we believe it will be, when we see her in it again, which will be when she next plays in it. Pray how long will it be first, Mr. Fawcett? We suppose not till Miss O’Neill is tired of tiring the audience in Mrs. Oakley, or ‘the ravens are hoarse that croak over Mr. Emery’s head’ in the Pangs of Conscience. Something new, always something new. That is the taste of Covent Garden, and the town. It is not our’s. We are for something old. Toujours perdrix. We like to read the same books, and to see the same plays, and the same faces over again—always provided we liked them at first. Now there is one face which we never liked, and never shall like, which is the face of Tyranny, and the older it gets, the uglier it gets in our eyes, and in this, as a matter of taste, we differ entirely with Mr. Canning, though he has been declared by a classical authority to be ‘the most elegant mind since Virgil.’ We differ with him notwithstanding.—The Ravens, or the Pangs of Conscience, is a melo-drame taken from the French, of the same breed, but an inferior specimen, as the Maid and Magpie, and the Family of Anglade. It is a kind of renewal of the age of augury adapted to the modern theories of probability, by being reduced within the limits of natural history. These pieces take for their text the lines,

In the Pangs of Conscience, as in the Maid of Palisseau, there is a robbery, a trial of persons innocently suspected of it, and a discovery of the real perpetrators, just at the critical moment, by the intervention 305of two of the feathered creation. Just as sentence has been pronounced on the supposed criminals (Terry and Blanchard) by the Judge, (Barrymore, who really performed this character admirably) two Ravens fly in upon the stage, the same who had hovered over the scene of the murder and robbery in the adjacent forest, and by their silent but dreadful appeal to the conscience of Jacques du Noir (Emery), who is not like his cousin Bruno du Noir (poor Farley) a hardened, but a conscientious villain, reveal the mystery of the whole transaction, by which the guilty are punished, and the innocent miraculously escape.—There was some fine and powerful acting by Emery in the part of the repentant assassin. Bruno in vain endeavours to appease and quiet him, but he still roars out lustily to give vent both to the pangs of his conscience and the ‘grief of a wound’ which he has got in the encounter from an old rusty fowling-piece of Fawcett’s, whom they plunder and kill. The greatest part of this romantic fiction is tedious, and the whole of it improbable, but from the goodness of the acting, and some strokes of interest in the situations, it went off with applause. Of the Pannel, we have only room to add that we think Beatrice, who is the subordinate heroine of the piece, the best specimen of Mrs. Alsop’s acting. We saw it from a remote part of the house, and her voice and manner at this distance sometimes reminded us of her mother’s.

When Mr. Dowton advertised for his benefit that he was to appear in the after-piece as John Gilpin, and to ride for that night only, we immediately felt tempted to go as the self-appointed executors and residuary legatees of the original author of the story, who concludes his account with these two lines—

So we took upon us to fulfil Cowper’s wish, and went to see, not John Gilpin, nor, as we are credibly informed, even Mr. Dowton, but something very laughable, and still more absurd, which had however a certain charm about it, from the very name of the hero of the piece. We have an interest in John Gilpin; aye, almost as great an interest as we have in ourselves; for we remember him almost as long. We remember the prints of him and his travels hung round a 306little parlour where we used to visit when we were children—just about the time of the beginning of the French Revolution. While the old ladies were playing at whist, and the young ones at forfeits, we crept about the sides of the room and tracked John Gilpin from his counter to his horse, from his own door to the turnpike, and far beyond the turnpike gate and the bell at Edmonton, with loss of wig and hat, but with an increasing impetus and reputation, the farther he went from home.

What an impression was here made, never to be effaced! What a thing it is to be an author, and how much better a thing it is to be a reader, with all the pleasure and without any of the trouble—but without any of the fame, you will say. That is not worth two-pence. And yet true fame is something, the fame, for instance, of Cowper or of Thomson—not to live in the mouths of pedants, and coxcombs, and professional men, but in the heart and soul of every living being, to mingle with every thought, to beat in every pulse, to be hailed with transport by those who are young, and to be remembered with regret by those who are old, to be ‘first, last, and midst’ in the minds of others. True fame is like a Lapland sun, that never goes down; it rises with us in the morning, and rolls round and round till our night of life. Why, look here, what a thing it is to be an author! John Gilpin delighted us when we were children, and were we to die to-morrow, the name of John Gilpin would excite a momentary sense of pleasure. The same feeling of delight, with which at ten years old we read the story, makes us thirty years after go, laughing, to see the play. In all that time, the remembrance has been cherished at the heart, like the pulse that sustains our life. ‘That ligament, fine as it was, was never broken!’ and yet it was nearly broken the other night, in the after-piece of this name, and would have been quite so for the evening, if it had not been for Mr. Munden, who, as a subordinate agent, prevented Mr. Dowton from breaking his neck in the principal character. We differed from the audience on this occasion, who did not much relish Mr. Munden in his part of a cockney: we relished him altogether and mightily. His speech, his countenance, and his dress, were in high costume and keeping. There was a greatness of gusto about Timothy Brittle, Mrs. Gilpin’s favourite but unfortunate son-in-law. It might be said of Mr. Munden in this character, that not only did his dress appear to have come fresh from the shop-board, his coat, his pantaloons, his waistcoat—but his speech 307was clipped and snipped as with a pair of sheers, and his face looked just as if the tailor’s goose had gone over it. It was a fine and inimitable piece of acting, but it was damned.—Dowton, in The Rivals, played Mrs. Malaprop, and Mrs. Sparks played Sir Anthony Absolute. We cannot say much of these transformations, for the performers themselves remained just the same, breeches and petticoats out of the question; nothing was transformed or ridiculous but their dress. Dowton was as blunt and bluff, and Mrs. Sparks was as keen, querulous, and scolding, as in any of their usual characters. The effect was flat after the first entrée, and the whole play was, in other respects, very poorly got up;—quite in the comic negligé of Drury-lane.—We ought to say something of Mrs. Hill, who came out on Tuesday evening as Lady Macbeth. She is neither a good nor a bad actress. She has, however, a sentimental drawl in her voice and manner which is very little to our taste, and not at all in character as Lady Macbeth. The King never dies. Why should Mrs. Siddons ever die? Why, because Kings are fictions in law: Mrs. Siddons was one of nature’s greatest works.

The last time we saw the Opera of Don Giovanni was from a distant part of the house: we saw it the other evening near; and as the impression was somewhat different, we wish to correct one or two things in our former statement. Madame Fodor sings and acts the part of Zerlina as charmingly as ever, but she does not look it so well near as at a greater distance. She has too much em bon point, is too broad-set for the idea of a young and beautiful country girl: her mouth is laughing and good-natured, but does not answer to Spenser’s description of Belphebe,—and it cannot be concealed that Zerlina, the delightful Zerlina, has a cast in her eyes. Her singing, however, made us forget all these defects, and after the second line of La ci darem, we had quite recovered from our disappointment. On the whole, we at present prefer the air of Vedrai Carino, which she sings to Masetto to comfort him, even to the duet with Don Giovanni. There was some uncertainty about encoring her in this song,—not, we apprehend, because the audience were afraid of tiring the actress, but because they were tired themselves. Madame Fodor was encored 308in all her songs throughout the piece.—This might be thought hard upon her; we dare say she would have thought it harder if she had not. Signor Ambrogetti’s acting as Don Giovanni improves upon a nearer acquaintance. There is a softness approaching to effeminacy in the expression of his face, which accords well with the character, and an insinuating archness in his eye, which takes off from the violent effect of his action. The serenade of Don Giovanni was omitted. As to Naldi, he is in too confirmed possession of the stage to be corrigible to advice. He is one of those old birds that are not to be caught with chaff. The sly rogue, Leporello, seems to have grown grey in the service of iniquity, and hangs his nose over the stage with a formidable bravura aspect, as if he could suspend the orchestra from it. Angrisani is an admirable, and we might say, first-rate comic actor. He has fine features; a manly, rustic voice; and we never saw disdain, impatience, the resentment and relenting of the jealous lover, better expressed than in the scene between him and Madame Fodor, where she makes that affecting appeal to his forgiveness in the song of Batte, Batte, Masetto. It was inimitably acted on both sides.

Mr. Kean has appeared in Eustace de St. Pierre in the Surrender of Calais. He has little to do in it; and he might as well not have appeared in the character, for he does not look well in it. He was badly dressed in a doublet of green baize, and in villainous yellow hose. It was like the player’s description of Hecuba—

But we shall not, ‘though we have seen this, with tongue in venom steep’d, pronounce treason against fortune’s state,’ or against the Managers of Drury-lane. Mr. Kean shewed his usual talents in this part; but it afforded less scope and fewer opportunities for them than any part in which we have ever seen him. We are not sorry, however, that he has got into the part, as a kind of truce with tragedy. Why should he not, like other actors, sometimes have a part to walk through? Must we for ever be expecting from him, as if he were a little Jupiter tonans, ‘thunder, nothing but thunder?’ It is too much for any mortal to play Othello and Sir Giles in the same week—we mean, as Mr. Kean plays them. He is, we understand, to appear in a new character, and sing a new song, for his benefit to-morrow week.

Guy Faux is made into the figure of a scare-crow, a fifth of November bugbear, in our history. Now that Mr. Hogg’s Jacobite Relics have dissipated the remains of an undue horror at Popery, it may seem the time to undertake the defence of so illustrious a character, who has hitherto been the victim of party-prejudice and national spite. Guy Faux was a Popish Priest in the reign of James I., and for his unsuccessful attempt to set fire to the House of Lords, and blow up the English Monarchy, the Protestant Religion, and himself, at one stroke, has had the honour to be annually paraded through the streets, and burnt in effigy in every 318town and village in England from that time to this—that is, for the space of two hundred years and upwards. It is sometimes doubtful, indeed, from the coincidence of dates and other circumstances, whether this annual ceremony, accompanied as it is with the ringing of bells, the firing of guns, and the preaching of sermons, is intended more to revive the formidable memory of ‘poor Guy,’ or in celebration of the glorious landing of William III., who came to deliver us from Popery and Slavery a hundred years afterwards—two things which Mr. Hogg treats as mere bagatelles in his Jacobite Relics, though they do not appear so in the History of England; and to which the same writer assures us, as an agreeable piece of court-news that the present Family are by no means averse in their hearts!

Guy Faux was a fanatic, but he was no hypocrite. He ranks among good haters. He was cruel, bloody-minded, reckless of all considerations but those of an infuriated and bigotted faith; but he was a true son of the Catholic Church, a martyr and a confessor, for all that. He who can prevail upon himself to devote his life for a cause, however we may condemn his opinions or abhor his actions, vouches at least for the honesty of his principles and the disinterestedness of his motives. He may be guilty of the worst practices, but he is capable of the greatest. He is no longer a slave, but free. The contempt of death is the beginning of virtue. The hero of the Gun-Powder Plot was, if you will, a fool, a madman, an assassin; call him what names you please: still he was neither knave nor coward. He did not propose to blow up the Parliament and come off, scot-free, himself: he shewed that he valued his own life no more than theirs in such a cause—where the integrity of the Catholic faith and the salvation of perhaps millions of souls was at stake. He did not call it a murder, but a sacrifice which he was about to achieve: he was armed with the Holy Spirit and with fire: he was the Church’s chosen servant and her blessed martyr. He comforted himself as ‘the best of cut-throats.’ How many wretches are there that would have undertaken to do what he intended for a sum of money, if they could have got off with impunity! How few are there who would have put themselves in Guy Faux’s situation to save the universe! Yet in the latter case we affect to be thrown into greater consternation than at the most unredeemed acts of villany, as if the absolute disinterestedness of the motive doubled the horror of the deed! The cowardice and selfishness of mankind are in fact shocked at the consequences to themselves (if such examples are held up for imitation,) and they make a fearful outcry against the violation of every principle of morality, 319lest they too should be called on for any such tremendous sacrifices—lest they in their turn should have to go on the forlorn hope of extra-official duty. Charity begins at home, is a maxim that prevails as well in the courts of conscience as in those of prudence. We would be thought to shudder at the consequences of crime to others, while we tremble for them to ourselves. We talk of the dark and cowardly assassin; and this is well, when an individual shrinks from the face of an enemy, and purchases his own safety by striking a blow in the dark: but how the charge of cowardly can be applied to the public assassin, who, in the very act of destroying another, lays down his life as a pledge and forfeit of his sincerity and boldness, I am at a loss to devise. There may be barbarous prejudice, rooted hatred, unprincipled treachery, in such an act; but he who resolves to take all the danger and odium upon himself, can no more be branded with cowardice, than Regulus devoting himself for his country, or Codrus leaping into the fiery gulf. A wily Father Inquisitor, coolly and with plenary authority condemning hundreds of helpless and unoffending victims to the flames or to the horrors of a living tomb, while he himself would not suffer a hair of his head to be hurt, is to me a character without any qualifying trait in it. Again; the Spanish conqueror and hero, the favourite of his monarch, who enticed thirty thousand poor Mexicans into a large open building, under promise of strict faith and cordial good-will, and then set fire to it, making sport of the cries and agonies of these deluded creatures, is an instance of uniting the most hardened cruelty with the most heartless selfishness. His plea was keeping no faith with heretics: this was Guy Faux’s too; but I am sure at least that the latter kept faith with himself: he was in earnest in his professions. His was not gay, wanton, unfeeling depravity; he did not murder in sport; it was serious work that he had taken in hand. To see this arch-bigot, this heart-whole traitor, this pale miner in the infernal regions, skulking in his retreat with his cloak and dark lanthorn, moving cautiously about among his barrels of gunpowder, loaded with death, but not yet ripe for destruction, regardless of the lives of others, and more than indifferent to his own, presents a picture of the strange infatuation of the human understanding, but not of the depravity of the human will, without an equal. There were thousands of pious Papists privy to and ready to applaud the deed when done:—there was no one but our old fifth-of-November friend, who still flutters in rags and straw on the occasion, that had the courage to attempt it. In him stern duty and unshaken faith prevailed over natural frailty. A man to undertake and contemplate with gloomy delight this desperate task, 320could not certainly in the first instance, be a man of tender sensibility, or over-liable to ‘the compunctious visitings of nature’; but he would so far only be on a level with many others, and he would be distinguished from them by a high principle of enthusiasm, and a disinterested zeal for truth. Greater love than this has no one, that he shall give up his life for the truth. We have no Guy Fauxes now:—not that we have not numbers in whom ‘the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’ We talk indeed of flinging the keys of the House of Commons into the Thames, by way of a little unmeaning splutter, and a little courting of popularity and persecution; but to fling ourselves into the gap, and blow up the system and our own bodies to atoms at once, upon an abstract principle of right, does not suit the radical scepticism of the age!

I like the spirit of martyrdom, I confess: I envy an age that had virtue enough in it to produce the mischievous fanaticism of a Guy Faux. A man’s marching up to a masked-battery for the sake of company, is nothing: but a man’s going resolutely to the stake rather than surrender his opinion, is a serious matter. It shews that in the public mind and feeling there is something better than life; that there is a belief of something in the universe and the order of nature, to which it is worth while to sacrifice this poor brief span of existence. To have an object always in view dearer to one than one’s-self, to cling to a principle in contempt of danger, of interest, of the opinion of the world,—this is the true ideal, the high and heroic state of man. It is in fact to have a standard of absolute and implicit faith in the mind, that admits neither of compromise, degree, nor exception. The path of duty is one, the grounds of encouragement are fixed and invariable. Perhaps it is hardly possible to have such a standard, but where the certain prospect of another world absolves us from a miserly compact with this, and the contemplation of infinity forms an habitual counterpoise to the illusions of time and sense. An object of the highest conceivable greatness leads to unmingled devotion: the belief in eternal truth embodies itself on practical principles of strict rectitude, or of obstinate, but noble-minded error.

There was an instance that happened a little before the time of Guy Faux, which, in a different way, has something of the same character, with a more pleasing conclusion. I mean the story of Margaret Lambrun; and as it is but little known, I shall here relate it as I find it:—

‘Margaret Lambrun was a Scotchwoman, and one of the retinue of Mary Queen of Scots; as was also her husband, who dying of grief for the tragical end of that princess, his wife took up a 321resolution of revenging the death of both upon Queen Elizabeth. For that purpose she put on a man’s habit; and assuming the name of Anthony Sparke, repaired to the Court of the Queen of England, always carrying with her a brace of pistols, one to kill Elizabeth, and the other to shoot herself, in order to avoid the hands of justice; but her design happened to miscarry by an accident, which saved the Queen’s life. One day, as she was pushing through the crowd to come up to her Majesty, who was then walking in her garden, she chanced to drop one of the pistols. This being seen by the guards, she was seized in order to be sent immediately to prison; but the Queen, not suspecting her to be one of her own sex, had a mind first to examine her. Accordingly, demanding her name, country, and quality, Margaret replied with an unmoved steadiness,—“Madam, though I appear in this habit, I am a woman; my name is Margaret Lambrun; I was several years in the service of Queen Mary, my mistress, whom you have so unjustly put to death; and by her death you have also caused that of my husband, who died of grief to see so innocent a queen perish so iniquitously. Now, as I had the greatest love and affection for both these persons, I resolved at the peril of my life to revenge their death by killing you, who are the cause of both.”—The Queen pardoned her, and granted her a safe conduct till she should be set upon the coast of France.’

Fanaticism expires with philosophy, and heroism with refinement. There can be no mixture of scepticism in the one, nor any distraction of interest in the other. That blind attachment to individuals or to principles, which is necessary to make us stake our all upon a single die, wears out with the progress of society. Sandt—(the last of that school)—was a religious fanatic—a reader of the book of Maccabees, a repeater of the story of Jael and Sisera, a chaunter of the song of Deborah. What lighted up the dungeon-gloom in which Guy Faux buried himself alive? The face of Heaven open to receive him. What cheered his undivided solitude? The full assembly of Just Men made perfect, the Glorious Company of Apostles, the Noble Army of Martyrs, the expecting Conclave of Sainted Popes, of Canonized Priests and Cardinals. What nerved his steady hand, and prepared it, with temperate, even pulse, to apply the fatal spark? The Hand of the Most High stretched out to meet him and to welcome him into the abodes of the blest—‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord!’ In his face we see an anticipated triumph that ‘no dim doubts alloy’; he hears with no mortal ears the recording angels ‘quiring to the young-eyed cherubim’; a light flashes round him, a 322beatific vision, from the wings of the Shining Ones: he sits, wreathed and radiant, in the real presence! What need he fear what men can do unto him? To a hope like his, swallowed up in fruition, the shock that is soon to shatter his mortal frame plays harmless as the summer-lightning: the flames that threaten to envelope him are the wedding-garment of the Spouse. ‘This night thou shalt sup with me in Paradise’—rings in his sleepless ears. On this rock he builds his faith, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it!—Guy Faux (poor wretch!) was as sure within himself of the reward of his crime in the eternal salvation of his soul, as of his intention to commit it: he no more doubted of another world than he doubted of his own existence. A question whether his whole creed might not be a delusion had never once crossed his mind. How should it? He had never once heard it called in question. He believed in it as he believed in all he had ever seen or heard, or thought or felt, or been told by others—he believed in a future state as he believed in this, with his senses and his understanding, and with all his heart. Poor Guy—that miserable fifth-of-November scare-crow, that stuffed straw figure, flaunting its own periodical disgrace—never once dreamt (oh! glorious inheritance!) that he should die like a dog. Otherwise, James and his parliament would have been in no jeopardy from him. He was not a person of that refinement. He thought for certain that he would go to Heaven or Hell; and he played a bold, but (as he fancied) a sure game, for the former. With such objects at stake, and with his own blinded reason, and a stifled conscience, and implicit faith, and vowed obedience, and holy Mother Church on his side, and a fixed hatred of heresy and of all that belonged to it, as of a strange birth in nature, that made his flesh creep and his brain reel, and a disregard of his own person, as ‘dross compared to the glory hereafter to be revealed,’ he acted up to his belief: the man was what he preached to others to be—no better, no worse. Without this belief supporting him, what would he have been? Like the wretched straw figure, the automaton we see representing him, ‘disembowelled of his natural entrails, without a real heart of flesh and blood beating in his bosom,’ a modern time-server, an unimpassioned slave, a canting Jesuit, a petty, cautious, meddling priest, a safe, underhand persecutor, an anonymous slanderer, a cringing sycophant, promoting his own interest by taking the bread out of honest mouths, a mercenary malignant coward, a Clerical Magistrate, a Quarterly Reviewer, a Member of the Constitutional Association, the concealed Editor of Blackwood’s Magazine!

Mr. Canning was the cleverest boy at Eton: he is, perhaps, the cleverest man in the House of Commons. It is, however, in the sense in which, according to Mr. Wordsworth, ‘the child is father to the man.’ He has grown up entirely out of what he then was. He has merely ingrafted a set of Parliamentary phrases and the technicalities of debate on the themes and school-exercises he was set to compose when a boy. Nor has he ever escaped from the trammels imposed on youthful genius: he has never assumed a manly independence of mind. He has been all his life in the habit of getting up a speech at the nod of a Minister, as he used to get up a thesis under the direction of his school-master. The matter is nothing; the only question is, how he shall express himself. The consequence has been as might be expected. Not being at liberty to chuse his own side of the question, nor to look abroad into the world for original (but perhaps unwelcome) observations, nor to follow up a strict chain of reasoning into its unavoidable consequences, the whole force of his mind has been exhausted in an attention to the ornaments of style and to an agreeable and imposing selection of topics. It is his business and his inclination to embellish what is trite, to gloss over what is true, to vamp up some feeble sophism, to spread the colours of a meretricious fancy over the unexpected exposure of some dark intrigue, some glaring iniquity—

335His reasoning is a tissue of glittering sophistry; his language is a cento of florid common-places. The smooth monotony of his style is indeed as much borrowed, is as little his own, as the courtly and often fulsome strain of his sentiments. He has no steady principles, no strong passions, nothing original, masculine, or striking in thought or expression. There is a feeble, diffuse, showy, Asiatic redundancy in all his speeches—something vapid, something second-hand in the whole cast of his mind. The light that proceeds from it gleams from the mouldering materials of corruption: the flowers that are seen there, gay and flaunting, bloom over the grave of humanity!—Mr. Canning never, by any chance, reminds one of the poet or the philosopher, of the admirer of nature, or even the man of the world—he is a mere House-of-Commons man, or, since he was transferred there from College, appears never to have seen or thought of any other place. He may be said to have passed his life in making and learning to make speeches. All other objects and pursuits seem to have been quite lost upon him. He has overlooked the ordinary objects of nature, the familiar interests of human life, as beneath his notice.^[38] There is no allusion in any of his speeches to anything passing out of the House, or not to be found in the classics. Their tone is quite Parliamentary—his is the Delphin edition of Nature. Not an image has struck his eye, not an incident has touched his heart, any farther than it could be got up for rhetorical and stage effect. This has an ill effect upon his speeches:—it gives them that shining and bloated appearance which is the result of the confined and heated atmosphere of the House. They have the look of exotics, of artificial, hot-house plants. Their glossiness, their luxuriance, and gorgeousness of colour are greater than their strength or stamina: they are forced, not lasting, nor will they bear transplanting from the rank and noxious soil in which they grow. Or rather, perhaps, they bear the same relation to eloquence that artificial flowers do to real ones—alike, yet not the same, without vital heat or the power of reproduction, printed, passionless, specious mockeries. They are, in fact, not the growth of truth, of nature, and feeling, but of state policy, of art, and practice. To deny that Mr. Canning has arrived to a great perfection (perhaps the greatest) in the manufacture of these sort of common-places, elegant, but somewhat tarnished, imposing, but not solid, would, we think, show a want of candour: to affirm that he has ever done anything 336more (in his serious attempts) would, we think, show an equal want of taste and understanding.^[39]

The way in which Mr. Canning gets up the staple-commodity of his speeches appears to be this. He hears an observation on the excellence of the English Constitution, or on the dangers of Reform and the fickleness and headstrong humours of the people, dropped by some Member of the House, or he meets with it in an old Debate in the time of Sir Robert Walpole, or in Paley’s Moral and Political Philosophy, which our accomplished scholar read, of course, as the established text-book at the University. He turns it in his mind: by dint of memory and ingenuity he illustrates it by the application of some well-known and well-authenticated simile at hand, such as ‘the vessel of the state,’ ‘the torrent of popular fury,’ ‘the precipice of reform,’ ‘the thunderbolt of war,’ ‘the smile of peace,’ &c. He improves the hint by the help of a little play upon words and upon an idle fancy into an allegory, he hooks this on to a verbal inference, which takes you by surprise, equally from the novelty of the premises and the flatness of the conclusion, refers to a passage in Cicero in support of his argument, quotes his authority, relieves exhausted attention by a sounding passage from Virgil, ‘like the morn risen on mid-noon,’ and launches the whole freight of wisdom, wit, learning, and fancy, on the floor of St. Stephen’s Chapel, where it floats and glitters amidst the mingled curiosity and admiration of both sides of the House—

Beneath the broad and gilded chandelier that throws its light upon ‘the nation’s Great Divan,’ Mr. Canning piles the lofty harangue, high over-arched with metaphor, dazzling with epithets, sparkling with jests—take it out of doors, or examine it by the light of common sense, and it is no more than a paltry string of sophisms, of trite truisms, and sorry buffooneries. There is also a House-of-Commons jargon as well as a scholastic pedantry in this gentleman’s style of oratory, which is very displeasing to all but professional ears. ‘The Honourable and Learned Gentleman,’ and ‘his Honourable and Gallant Friend,’ are trolled over the tongue of the Honourable Speaker, ‘loud as a trumpet with a silver sound,’ and fill up the pauses of the sense or the gaps in the logic with a degree of burlesque self-complacency and pompous inanity. Mr. Canning speaks by rote; 337and if the words he utters become the mouth and round a period well, he cares little how cheaply he comes by them, or how dear they cost the country! Such mechanic helps to style and technical flourishes and trappings of upstart self-importance are, however, unworthy of the meanest underling of office.

There is, notwithstanding, a facility, a brilliancy, and an elegance in Mr. Canning’s general style, always graceful, never abrupt, never meagre, never dry, copious without confusion, dignified without stiffness, perspicuous yet remote from common life, that must excite surprise in an extempore speaker. Mr. Canning, we apprehend, is not an extempore speaker. He only makes set speeches on set occasions. He indeed hooks them in as answers to some one that has gone before him in the debate, by taking up and commenting on a single sentence or so, but he immediately recurs to some old and favourite topic, launches into the middle of the stream, or mounts upon the high horse, and rides it to the end of the chapter. He never (that we are aware of) grappled with a powerful antagonist, overthrew him on the spot, or contested the point with him foot to foot. Mr. Canning’s replies are evasions. He indeed made a capital and very deservedly admired reply to Sir John Coxe Hippesley; but Sir John had given notice of all his motions a month beforehand, and Mr. Canning had only to lie in ambush for him with a whole magazine of facts, arguments, alliterations, quotations, jests, and squibs, prepared ready to explode and blow him up into the air in an instant. In this manner he contrives to slip into the debate and speak to the question, as if he had lately entered the House and heard the arguments on the other side stated for the first time in his life. He has conned his speeches over for a week or a month previously, but he gives these premeditated effusions the effect of witty impromptus—the spontaneous ebullitions of the laughter or indignation or lofty enthusiasm of the moment. His manner tells this. It is that of a person trying to recollect a speech, and reciting it from beginning to end with studied gesture, and in an emphatic but monotonous and somewhat affected tone of voice, rather than of a person uttering words and thoughts that have occurred to him for the first time, and hurried away by an involuntary impulse, speaking with more or less hesitation, faster or slower, and with more or less passion, according as the occasion requires.

Mr. Canning is a conventional speaker; he is an optional politician. He has a ready and splendid assortment of arguments upon all ordinary questions: he takes that side or view of a question that is dictated by his vanity, his interest, or his habits, and endeavours to make the best he can of it. Truth, liberty, justice, humanity, war or peace, civilization or barbarism, are things of little consequence, except for him to 338make speeches upon them. He thinks ‘the worse the better reason,’ if he can only make it appear so to others; and in the attempt to confound and mislead, he is greatly assisted by really perceiving no difference himself. It is not what a thing is, but what he can say about it, that is ever uppermost in his mind; and why should he be squeamish or have any particular choice, since his words are all equally fine, and delivered with equal volubility of tongue! His balanced periods are the scale ‘that makes these odds all even.’ Our Orator does not confine himself to any one view of a subject. He does not blind himself by any dull prejudice: he does not tie himself down to any pedantic rules or abstract principle. He does not listen implicitly to common sense, nor does he follow the independent dictates of his own judgment. No, he picks and chuses among all these, as best suits his purpose. He plucks out the grey hairs of a question, and then again the black. He shifts his position; it is a ride-and-tie system with him. He mounts sometimes behind prejudice, and sometimes behind reason. He is now with the wise, and then again with the vulgar. He drivels, or he raves. He is now wedded to antiquity, anon there is no innovation too startling for him. At one time he is literal, at another visionary and romantic. At one time the honour of the country sways him, at another its interest. One moment he is all for liberty, and the next for slavery. First we are to hold the balance of Europe, and to dictate and domineer over the whole world; and then we are to creep into our shells and draw in our horns; one moment resembling Don Quixote, and the next playing the part of Sancho Panza! And why not? All these are topics, are cues used in the game of politics, are colours in the changeable coat of party, are dilemmas in casuistry, are pretexts in diplomacy; and Mr. Canning has them all at his fingers’ ends. What is there then to prevent his using any of them as he pleases? Nothing in the world but feeling or principle; and as Mr. Canning is not withheld by these from running his heedless career, the application of his ingenuity and eloquence in all such cases is perfectly arbitrary, ‘quite optional,’ as Mr. Liston expresses it. A wise man would have some settled opinion, a good man would wish well to some cause, a modest man would be afraid to act without feeling sure of his ground, or to show an utter disregard of right or wrong. Mr. Canning has the luckless ambition to play off the tricks of a political rope-dancer, and he chuses to do it on the nerves of humanity! He has called out for war during thirty years without ceasing, ‘like importunate Guinea fowls, one note day and night;’ he has made the House and the country ring with his vain clamour, and now for the first time he is silent, ‘quite chopfallen.’ Like Bottom in the play, ‘he aggravates 339his voice like a sucking-dove;’ ‘he roars you an ’twere any nightingale!’ After the failure of Buonaparte’s Russian expedition, Mr. Canning exclaimed exultingly, and with a daring enthusiasm that seemed to come from the heart, that ‘he rejoiced that barbarism had been the first to resist invasion, since it showed that the love of national independence was an instinctive principle in every country, superior even to the love of liberty.’ This plea served its turn at the time, and we heard no more of it last year when the French invaded Spain. In the war to restore Ferdinand, Mr. Canning echoed with lungs of brass the roar of ‘the universal Spanish nation,’ and the words Liberty and Humanity hung like music on his tongue; but when the feeble Monarch was restored, and trod upon the necks of those who had restored him, and threw down the mock-scaffold of the Constitution that had raised him once more to the throne, we heard no more of ‘the universal Spanish nation,’ of Liberty and Humanity. When the speeches of Mr. Canning and the Manifestos of his friends had raised the power of France to a gigantic height that hung like a precipice over our heads, we were to go on, and fight out the battle of liberty and independence, though ‘we buried ourselves under the ruins of the civilized world.’ When a monstrous claim that threatens the liberty and existence of the civilized world is openly set up and acted upon, and a word from Mr. Canning would arrest its progress in the direction in which it is moving with obscene, ghastly, bloodstained strides, he courteously and with great condescension reminds his hearers of ‘the inimitable satire of Cervantes,’ that there is a proverbial expression borrowed from it, and that the epithet Quixotic would be eminently applicable to the conduct of Great Britain if she interfered in the affairs of the continent at the present juncture. And yet there are persons who persist in believing that Mr. Canning is any thing more than a pivot on whose oily hinges state policy turns easily at this moment, unheard, unseen, and that he has views and feelings of his own that are a pledge for his integrity. If all this were fickleness, caprice, forgetfulness, accident, folly, it would be well or would not much signify; we should stand a chance of sometimes being right, sometimes wrong; or if the ostensible motives were the real ones, they would balance one another. At one time we should be giving a lift to liberty, at another we should be advancing our own interests: now we should be generous to others, then we should be just to ourselves, but always we should be doing something or other fit to be done and to be named, and acting up to one or other of Mr. Canning’s fine pleas of religion, morality, or social order. Is that the case? Nothing was said for twenty years about the restoration of the Bourbons as the object of the war. Who doubts it now? This 340cause skulked behind the throne, and was not let out in any of Mr. Canning’s speeches. The cloven foot was concealed by so much flaunting oratory, by so many different facings and piebald patch-work liveries of ruinous policy or perfidious principle, as not to be suspected. This is what makes such persons as Mr. Canning dangerous. Clever men are the tools with which bad men work. The march of sophistry is devious: the march of power is one. Its means, its tools, its pretexts are various, and borrowed like the hues of the camelion from any object that happens to be at hand: its object is ever the same, and deadly as the serpent’s fang. It moves on to its end with crested majesty, erect, silent, with eyes sunk and fixed, undiverted by fear, unabashed by shame, and puny orators and patriot mountebanks play tricks before it to amuse the crowd, till it crushes the world in its monstrous folds. There is one word about which nothing has been said all this while in accounting for Mr. Canning’s versatility of mind and vast resources in reasoning—it is the word, Legitimacy. It is the key with which you ‘pluck out the heart of his mystery.’ It is the touchstone by which all his other eloquence is to be tried, and made good or found wanting. It is the casting-weight in the scale of sound policy, or that makes humanity and liberty kick the beam. It is the secret of the Ayes and Noes: it accounts for the Majorities and Minorities. It weighs down all other considerations, hides all flaws, makes up for all deficiencies, removes all obstacles, is the crown of success, and makes defeat glorious. It has all the power of the Crown on its side, and all the madness of the people. All Mr. Canning’s speeches are but so many different periphrases for this one word—Legitimacy. It is the foundation of his magnanimity and the source of his pusillanimity. It is the watch-word equally of his oratory or his silence. It is the principle of his interference and of his forbearance. It makes him move forward, or retreat, or stand still. With this word rounded closely in his ear, and with fifty evasions for it in his mouth, he advances boldly to ‘the deliverance of mankind’—into the hands of legitimate kings, but can do nothing to deliver them out of their power. When the liberty and independence of mankind can be construed to mean the cause of kings and the doctrine of divine right, Mr. Canning is a virago on the side of humanity—when they mean the cause of the people and the reducing of arbitrary power within the limits of constitutional law, his patriotism and humanity flag, and he is

This word makes his tropes and figures expand and blaze out like phosphorus, or ‘freezes his spirits up like fish in a pond.’ It smites 341with its petrific mace, it deadens with its torpedo touch, the Minister, the Parliament, the people, and makes this vast, free, enlightened, and enterprising country a body without a soul, an inert mass, like the hulks of our men of war, which Mr. Canning saw and described so well at Plymouth. It is the same word, that announcing the profanation of ‘the golden round that binds the hollow temples of a king’ by unhallowed hands, would fill their sails, and hurl their thunders on rebel shores. It denounces war, it whispers peace. It is echoed by the groans of the nations, is sanctified by their blood, bought with their treasure. It is this that fills the time-rent towers of the Inquisition with tears and piercing cries; and owing to this, Manzotti shrieks in Italian dungeons, while Mr. Canning soothes the House of Commons with the soft accents of liberty and peace! In fine, Mr. Canning’s success as an orator, and the space he occupies in the public mind, are strong indications of the Genius of the Age, in which words have obtained a mastery over things, ‘and to call evil good and good evil,’ is thought the mark of a superior and happy spirit. An accomplished statesman in our day is one who extols the Constitution and violates it—who talks about religion and social order, and means slavery and superstition. The Whigs are always reminding the reigning family of the principles that raised them to the throne—the Tories labour as hard to substitute those that will keep them there. There is a dilemma here, which is not easily got over; and to solve the difficulty and reconcile the contradiction, was the great problem of the late King’s reign. The doubtful lubricity of Mr. Canning’s style was one of the rollers by which the transition was effected, and Legitimacy shown to be a middle term between divine right and the choice of the people, compatible with both, and convertible into either, at the discretion of the Crown, or pleasure of the speaker. Mr. Canning does not disgrace his pretensions on other questions. He is a sophist by profession, a palliator of every powerful and profitable abuse. His shuffling, trifling speeches on Reform are well-known. He sometimes adds the petulance of the school-boy to his stock of worn-out invention; though his unfeeling taunt on the ‘revered and ruptured Ogden,’ met with a reception which will make him cautious how he tampers again with human infirmity and individual suffering, as the subject of ribald jests and profligate alliteration.

The thing in which Mr. Canning excels most is wit; and his wit is confined to parody. The Rejected Addresses have been much and deservedly admired; but we do not think the parodies in them, however ingenious or ludicrous, are to be compared with those in the ‘Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin,’ and some of the very best of these are by Mr. Canning. Among others are, we believe, the German Play, 342and the imitation of Mr. Southey’s Sapphics. Much as we admire, we do not wonder at Mr. Canning’s excellence in this department. Real, original wit, he has none; for that implies sense and feeling, and an insight into the real differences of things; but from a want of sympathy with anything but forms and common-places, he can easily let down the sense of others so as to make nonsense of it. He has no enthusiasm or sensibility to make him overlook the meanness of a subject, or a little irregularity in the treatment of it, from the interest it excites: to a mind like his, the serious and affecting is a kind of natural burlesque. It is a matter of course for him to be struck with the absurdity of the romantic or singular in any way, to whom every thing out of the beaten track is absurd; and ‘to turn what is serious into farce’ by transferring the same expressions to perfectly indifferent and therefore contemptible subjects. To make any description or sentiment ludicrous, it is only necessary to take away all feeling from it: the ludicrous is ready-made to Mr. Canning’s hands. The poetry, the heart-felt interest of every thing escapes through his apprehension, like a snake out of its skin, and leaves the slough of parody behind it. Any thing more light or worthless cannot well be imagined.^[40]

We once happened to be present, and indeed to assist in the following conversation between a young lady and an elderly gentleman pretty much of our own standing in such matters. ‘I believe, papa, 349grand-papa did not think so highly of Mr. Garrick as most people did?’ ‘Why, my dear, your grand-papa was not one of those who liked to differ very openly with the world; but he had an opinion of his own, which he imparted only to a few particular friends. He really thought Mr. Garrick was a quack, a better sort of Barthelemy-fair actor. He used to say (for he was a man that knew the world) ‘that the real secret of Mr. Garrick’s success was, that his friend Bate Dudley had puffed him into notice, as he afterwards did the Prince of Wales.’ We on this observed, in our individual capacity, that at least the dispenser of popularity had been more successful in the one case than in the other. ‘I believe, papa, you yourself were never a great admirer of Mrs. Siddons?’ ‘Why no, my dear, one does not like to say those things, but she always appeared to me one of the great impositions on the world. There was nothing in her, a mere tragedy-queen.’—‘Pray, ma’am, have you read Sir Walter’s last novel?’—‘Why no, I really cannot say I have. I have tried to get through one or two, but I find them so dry I have given up the attempt. I like “Sayings and Doings” much better. Pray, sir, can you tell me the name of the author?’ ‘Mr. Theodore Hook.’—‘Bless me, what a pretty name; I wish papa would invite him to dinner.’—Here we have the genealogy of modern taste. ’Fore gad, they were all in a story—three generations in succession thinking nothing of Garrick, Mrs. Siddons, and the author of ‘Waverley,’ and preferring Mr. Theodore Hook before the quintessence of truth and nature. And such is the opinion of nine-tenths of the world, if we could get at their real thoughts. The vulgar in their inmost souls admire nothing but the vulgar; the common-place admire nothing but the common-place; the superficial nothing but the superficial. How should it be otherwise? The rest is cant and affectation: and as to those who know better and have pretensions themselves, they are actuated by envy and malice, or some preconceived theory of their own. Instead of a great actor, for instance, they are looking for a hat and feather, are disappointed at not finding what they fondly expect, and more disappointed still at coming in collision with a power that shocks all their previous sympathies, rules, and definitions. Let a great man ‘fall into misfortune’ (like Captain Macheath) and then you discover the real dispositions of the reading, seeing, believing, loving public towards their pretended idol. See how they set upon him the moment he is down, how they watch for the smallest slip, the first pretext to pick a quarrel with him, how slow they are to acknowledge worth, how they never forgive an error, how they trample upon and tear ‘to tatters, to very rags,’ the common frailties, how they overlook and malign the transcendant 350excellence which they can neither reach nor find a substitute for! Who has praised Sir Walter, who has not had a fling at him, since he lost all that he was worth? Oh! if he would but write the ‘Life of George IV.!’ Who that had felt Kean’s immeasurable superiority in Othello, was not glad to see him brought to the ordinary level in a vulgar crim. con? No: a man of true genius and common observation, instead of being disappointed at not carrying the prize by acclamation, and exciting gratitude equal to the pleasure he gives, ought to be thankful that he is not hooted from the stage, and torn in pieces by the rabble, as soon as he quits his lair of solitary obscurity. Every man of that sort is assuredly looked upon by the vulgar as having dealings with the devil, because they do not see ‘the spells, the mighty magic he hath used’ and they would make an auto-da-fé of him if they durst, as they formerly burnt a witch! They contrive to torture him enough, as it is. What was it made men burn astrologers and alchemists in former times, but the sense of power and knowledge which the illiterate hind did not possess? Are the reading different from the unreading public? Believe it not. But this power was supposed to be exercised for evil purposes, whereas genius has a beneficial influence. That doubles the obligation, and fixes the ingratitude. The critical public view the appearance of an original mind with the sidelong glances and the doux yeux with which the animals at Exeter-’Change regard the strange visitants; but if any one trusting to the amiable looks and playful gambols of the one or the other opens the door of his own folly to let them out, he will soon see how it will fare with him. There are a million of people in this single metropolis, each of whom would willingly stand on the pedestal which you occupy. Will they forgive you for thrusting them from their place, or not triumph if they see you totter? Beware how you climb the slippery ascent; do not neglect your footing when you are there. Such is the natural feeling; and then comes the philosophical critic, and tells you with a face of lead and brass that ‘no more indulgence is to be shewn to the indiscretions of a man of genius than to any other!’ What! you make him drunk and mad with applause and then blame him for not being sober, you lift him to a pinnacle, and then say he is not to be giddy, you own he is to be a creature of impulse, and yet you would regulate him like a machine, you expect him to be all fire and air, to wing the empyrean, and to take you with him, and yet you would have him a muck-worm crawling the earth! But it is a Scotch critic who says this—let us pass on. If an actor is indeed six feet high, with a face like a pasteboard mask, he may pass in the crowd and will have the mob on his side; but if he can only boast

he stands in equal peril of the unthinking many, and the fastidious few. Or, if an actress is a foreigner, she may escape ‘the envy of less happier lands,’ and be encouraged as a luxury for the great—be wafted to us on a name, and take back with her our sighs and tears. Yet how frail is the tenure of fashion! Where is Madame Catalani now? Where does the siren’s voice flutter in the sunshine of her smiles?—

It was some time since we had seen Mr. Kean’s Shylock. Fourteen years ago we were desired to go and see a young actor from the country attempt the part at Drury-lane; and, as was expected, add another to the list of failures. When we got there, there were about fifty people in the pit, and there was that sense of previous damnation which a thin house inspires. When the new candidate came on, there was a lightness in his step, an airy buoyancy and self-possession different from the sullen, dogged, gaol-delivery look of the traditional Shylocks of the stage. A vague expectation was excited, and all went on well; but it was not till he came to the part, when leaning on his staff, he tells the tale of Jacob and his flock with the garrulous ease of old age and an animation of spirit, that seems borne back to the olden time, and to the privileged example in which he exults, that it was plain that a man of genius had lighted on the stage. To those who had the spirit and candour to hail the lucky omen, the recollection of that moment of startling, yet welcome surprise, will always be a proud and satisfactory one. We wished to see after a lapse of time and other changes, whether this first impression would still keep ‘true touch,’ and we find no difference. Besides the excellence of the impassioned parts of Mr. Kean’s acting, there is a flexibility and indefiniteness of outline about it, like a figure with a landscape back-ground—he is in Venice with his money-bags, his daughter and his injuries, but his thoughts take wing to the East, his voice swells and deepens at the mention of his sacred tribe and ancient law, and he dwells delighted on any digression to distant times and places, as a relief to his vindictive and rooted purposes. Of all Mr. Kean’s performances, we think this the most faultless and least mannered, always excepting his Othello, which is equally perfect and twenty times more powerful. Mr. Kean succeeded so well in this part in which he came out, that with the diffidence of the abilities of others so natural to us, it was concluded by the managers he could do nothing else, and he was kept in it so long that he had nearly failed 352in Richard, till the dying scene bore down all opposition by a withering spell, and as if a preternatural being had visibly taken possession of his form, and made the enthusiasm the greater from the uncertainty that had before prevailed. The Sir Giles Overreach stamped him with the players and the town, and Othello with the critics. He who has done a single thing that others never forget, and feel ennobled whenever they think of, need not regret his having been, and may throw aside this fleshly coil, like any other worn-out part, grateful and contented!

Monsieur Perlet is certainly a pearl of an actor. He does every part well, and every part varied from another. He is, however, a jewel set in lead: the rest of the company to which he belongs are but indifferent. He is exactly what a London star, engaged for a few nights to gratify the ‘upturned eyes of wondering audiences,’ is in a tattered troop of country-actors. Those who fancy that they see here a thorough sample of French acting, the elite of the capital of civilised society, are mistaken; and we perhaps should not undeceive them, but that we can assure them that they have a pleasure to come, something to look forward to, and something to look back upon, and which (we believe) can be found only at Paris. Oh! Paris, thou hast the Louvre, the garden of the Thuilleries, and the Thêatre Français; Madame Pasta we share by turns with you, as the sun sheds its light on either world—the rest is barbarous and common. A friend of ours once received a letter from a friend of his, dated Rome, with three marks of admiration after it, which he answered by writing London, with four marks of admiration after it: ‘and why shouldn’t he, since we had St. Paul’s, the Cartoons, the Elgin Marbles, and the Bridges?’ As to the three first, they were not ours; and as to the fourth, the reasoning puts me a little in mind of Sir William Curtis’s, who remarked that ‘it was very good of God, that wherever there was a great city, he had made a river by the side of it!’ There was another proud distinction, which our patriotic friend did not enumerate, though it was a thumping make-weight in the scale, and might have claimed a fifth mark of admiration, which was, that he himself was there. This is the triumphant argument in every Englishman’s imagination,—wherever he is, is the centre of gravity; whatever he calls his own, is the standard of excellence. It is our desire to shake off this feeling as much as possible that 353makes us frequent the theatre at the English Opera-house, and try (all we can) to ‘leave our country and ourselves’ at the door. Why in truth should an English Nobleman be convinced in himself and speak upon that conviction in his place in Parliament, that because he keeps a French cook, the French have no genius for anything but cookery? Or why, my dear Madam, should you have taken it in your head, that because you wear a French bonnet, there is nothing in Paris but milliners’ girls who are no better than they should be? Nay, that is what you really imagine, however you may deny it—but be assured, good, gentle, honest, reflecting reader of either sex, who feel your own existence so solid that every thing else is a fable to it, or your own virtue so clear that everything else is a spot to it, that there are things out of England besides what are imported into it—that French women not only make caps and bonnets, but wear them with a peculiar grace; that they have eyes glancing from under them full of fire and discretion; that they do not make a false step at every turn, though they do not walk like Englishwomen, that is, as if their limbs were an incumbrance to them; that the Chamber of Deputies think your Lordship’s speeches dry and tasteless, for want of a little French seasoning; that there are cities not built of bricks, faces not made of dough, a language that has a meaning though it is not ours, and virtue that is neither a statue nor a mask! For instance, we think good-manners is one part of ethics, and we do wish en passant that our fine gentlemen at the play would not loll on their seats, whistle, and thrust their sticks nearly in your face to show their superiority to the vulgar; and that those of the other sex, who are admitted on their good behaviour could be prevailed on not to talk and laugh so loud, not to nod or wink, not to slap their acquaintance on the back, or shut the doors with such violence after them, to attract admirers and shew an independent spirit. Strange that the English notion of independence consists in giving offence to and displaying your contempt for others! They order these things better in France, where they consult decency of appearance at least, and Venus is a prude in public—not a hoyden or a bully!

This brings us back to the French Theatre. As we do not approve every thing foreign or French, we are more bound to acknowledge and do justice to what we do like. Imprimis, we abhor French pictures. In the second place, we tolerate French tragedy. Thirdly, we adore French comedy. The characteristic of this in its best state, and as compared with our utmost efforts in the same line, 354is, that it is equally perfect throughout; and as that great philosopher of idleness (Mr. Coleridge) once wisely and wittily observed, ‘there is something in the idea of perfection exceedingly satisfactory to the mind of man.’ It is not as with us at present (it was not always so—or is it the haze of time, the tints of youth that made the difference?) where the most we can expect is one or two actors of disproportioned excellence, and all the others merely to fill the stage; but there all are in their place, and all are first-rate. Oh! it is a fine thing to see one of Moliere’s comedies acted (as they should be) at the Thêatre Français, with the sense of every pregnant line fully understood and developed, with the passion and character delineated to the life, every situation painted, and every shade and difference of absurdity hit off and realised; and not only this, but the whole so managed, with such studious attention to the public and respect to the art, that not the least bit of costume is out of place, and (what is more important) that every part is filled by an actor or actress not only who comprehends and enters into the spirit of it, but who seems made for it in person, gesture and features, as if they had been cast in a dramatic mould, or kept in a glass-case for that purpose from the first representation to the present day. Thus the long, nasal speeches are delivered by an actor with the prominent, pasteboard nose and arched eyebrows of the Oratory, and whose unusual height and shambling figure serve him as it were for a rostrum; the poetical dedicator in the Misanthrope has sparkling eyes and teeth, smiling delighted on his patron and himself; the confidante of Celimene, in the same piece, is slender, fragile, timid in appearance, a contrast to the firm precision and maturer enbon-point of Mademoiselle Mars; Orgon has a little, round, dimpled, credulous face, and easy contented corpulence; the Tartuffe has the sneaking sanctity of a monk and the grin of a monkey. Thus you have not only the poet’s verse exactly expressed and recited; but you have, in addition, the natural history of the part, the drapery, the grouping. The age of Louis XIV. revives again in all its masqued splendour; the folding-doors are thrown open, and you see men and women playing the fool deliciously, ‘new manners and the pomp of elder days,’ court-airs, court-dresses, the strut, the shrug, the bow, the curtsey, the paint, the powder, the patches, the perfume, the laced ruffles, the diamond buckle, the hoop-petticoat. Happy time! Enviable time to think of! When vanity and folly expanded in full bloom, and were spread out ostentatiously like the figures in a gaudy tapestry, instead of being folded up and thrust into a corner by the hand of a cynic and austere philosophy; when personal appearance and amorous intrigue were all in all; when a marquis stalked the God of his own idolatry, and 355Madame la Marquise was held for something divine by Monsieur Jourdain; when the whole creation was supposed to be concentred in the fantastic circle of lords and ladies, and the universal, the abstract, and the critical were held in the utter contempt which they deserve—and which they receive at the hands both of the ignorant and the adept! Nothing that we know of is a specific for conjuring up this shadow of the past, and making you (if you are in the mood) feel like a great booby school-boy, with a large bouquet at your breast, or an antiquated fop with a bag-wig and sword—but sitting at the Thêatre Français with Mademoiselle Mars and the whole corps dramatique drawn up on the stage. Then you have the very thing before you: it glitters in your eyes; it tingles in your ears, it sinks into the heart, and makes warm tears roll down the cheek of those, who have ever felt either what the present or the past is! It is said to be an ill wind that blows nobody good; and probably we owe it to the very exclusion of French players from general society, and their being compelled in self-defence to devote themselves wholly to their profession, that they keep up this sort of traditional copy of the manners, peculiarities, and tone of another age, ‘unmixed with baser matter.’ We could wish that a certain happy-spirited writer (who first gave the true pine-apple flavour to theatrical criticism, making it a pleasant mixture of sharp and sweet) would resume the subject of the age of Charles II. (our nearest approach to that of Louis XIV.) and as he has shocked the upstart petulance of Some of his Contemporaries, restore in his inimitable careless manner the wit and graces of a former period.

We expected to have seen Monsieur Perlet on Thursday evening in the Bourgeois Gentilhomme; and to make sure of the ground, had read three acts in the morning with great care and an anticipated relish of the acting. We were therefore disappointed; and the reader must accept of a rhapsody in lieu of a criticism. We think it bad policy to have many new pieces; for the English part of the audience in general require to peruse the text beforehand in order to follow the performance. We like to know exactly what we are about; and it is both a pride and a pleasure to have an excuse for rubbing up our acquaintance with an old and esteemed author. The universality of the French language is not an unalloyed advantage to them: it saves the trouble of learning any other, but the necessity of acquiring a new language is like the necessity of acquiring a new sense. It is an increase of knowledge and liberality. We are proud of understanding their authors. Why do they despise ours? Because they are ignorant of them. If they had known what ‘stuff’ we are made of, very likely we should not have beaten them. M. Perlet 356played the part of a strolling comedian in the new piece of the Landau, and eats and drinks in an admirable bravura style at a gentleman’s house on the road, where he passes himself off as a great man, and with that lively absorption in the present enjoyment and disregard of the consequences of his imposture, which are, we suspect, national traits. In the Landes which followed, he was equally happy in a poor, frightened servant, and expressed the surprises of fear and the tricks and disjointed pantomime antics, to which it resorted to screen itself, with admirable quaintness and drollery. The swagger and self-possession of the one character was totally opposed to the imbecility and helplessness of the other. Madame Falcoz made her first appearance in the Tyran Domestique as Madame Valmont. She is an elegant woman and an interesting actress, though with too much appearance of still-life. This is not the case with Madame Daudel. She has all the vivacity and bustle of a chambermaid. She ought always to come in with a broom in her hand; or rather, it is quite unnecessary.

We exhausted that subject last week, and were complimented upon it, which we took ill. Probably advisable to be ill this week, to let our absence be felt, or to make up with scraps and quotation. To transcribe four different accounts of the Tartuffe, Sir Walter Scott’s, Mr. Leigh Hunt’s, Monsieur Perlet’s, and one of our own, and to make it understood that the last is the best. To remark that Monsieur Perlet, ‘that soul of pleasure and that life of whim,’ is a provoking actor—for there is no fault to be found with him, and to give the reader an idea of his peculiar excellence is next to impossible. Whatever he does, his ease, self-possession, and spirit are the same. To make it a rule not to tell any one who asks me the plot of the Ecole des Maris, but to tell it myself. Borrowers of plots are like borrowers of snuff:—every one his own box-keeper. (Ha, ha, ha!) The laugh here comes from a friend of ours to whom we read this, and who kept repeating the whole evening—‘Every man his own box-keeper.’ (Ha, ha, ha!) Very well indeed. Sganarelle and Ariste are two brothers, both of them in years, who have two wards, Isabelle and Leonore, whom they propose to marry. Sganarelle is an old blockhead, who brings up his intended bride with the greatest severity, and will let her see no plays, go to no balls, receive no visits, lest it should corrupt her manners 357or divert her affection from him. He is very angry at his brother Ariste, who gives full liberty to his mistress Leonore, and contends that bars, bolts, female Arguses, and ill-humour are not the way to make women in love with virtue, or to prevent their inclination from wandering. Sganarelle laughs at him, but he turns out a true prophet. Isabelle, not thinking the disagreeable the most agreeable thing in the world, meets with a lover (Valere) more to her mind than her guardian. And here begins the interest of the plot. Having no other mode of communication, she sends Sganarelle to him, to let him know that she is apprized of the state of his affections, and to beg him not to persecute her with his amorous thoughts, if he has any regard for her honour or peace of mind. He understands the hint, and sends the supposed husband away, delighted with his confusion and repulse, who has no sooner returned to his intended, than she desires him to go back with a letter, which Ariste has just had the assurance to send her in his absence, full of his absurd passion. This Sganarelle consents to do, but proposes to open the letter first, which she will not allow him to do, saying it would betray curiosity to break the seal, and no woman of virtue should feel even a wish to know the improper sentiments entertained towards her. Her guardian delivers the letter with an air of triumph and pity for his rival, which Valere reads, and finds it a frank and passionate declaration of Isabelle’s attachment to him. Not satisfied with this, she informs Sganarelle that he has a design to carry her off by force, who goes to reproach him with the baseness of his conduct and the pretended terror and uneasiness of his ward. Valere affirming that Sganarelle has no authority to bring him these disdainful messages from the lady, Sganarelle brings them together in his presence, when an admirable scene of double-entendre follows: Isabelle declaring that she sees two objects before her, one which she adores, the other which she abhors, Sganarelle taking to himself the preference which is intended for Valere, and the latter rapturously kissing her hand behind his back, while her guardian affectionately embraces her. But in recompense for her fondness, he proposes to marry her the next day instead of at the end of eight days; and this driving Isabelle to despair, she takes the resolution to quit the house in the middle of the night, but is met by her guardian, who asking the meaning of this nocturnal expedition, she tells him that her sister has come to her house, violently in love with Valere, whom she is going in search of, to console her; but Sganarelle not being satisfied with this assignation, will not allow her to remain, and presently after turns his own bride out of doors, thinking it to be his brother’s ward Leonore, and goes with great glee to inform Ariste of the adventure, and to lecture him on the difference of their 358schemes of female education. In the meantime Leonore comes in from a ball, is scandalized at the story that she hears told of her; and the Notary that Sganarelle had sent for to witness her elopement and the treachery of Valere, having married him to Isabelle, she comes out from his house, and explains the whole mystery to the delight of every one but Sganarelle.—The plot is charming, and the style is profuse of sense and wit; but there is this remark to be made here, as on other of Moliere’s plays, that however elegant, ingenious, or natural, the scene must be laid in France, that the whole passes under that empire of words, which is confined to her airy limits, and that there is a credulous and unqualified assent to verbal professions necessary to carry on the plot, which can be found nowhere but in France. This comedy was correctly but somewhat faintly represented. Mademoiselle Falcoz, who played Isabelle, was dressed as we have an idea servants were formerly dressed, with a full handkerchief and a black silk apron. Perhaps it was the costume of young ladies at that period; but we suspect that this is carrying literal correctness too far, where it shocks instead of assisting the imagination, and instructing us at the expense of our amusement, which is against the law of dramatic propriety. If the play was not done quite as it might be, it received a brilliant comment from the looks of some of the audience: and as the stage is a mirror to nature, so these are a mirror to the stage itself. Bright eyes! Laughing lips! Tell-tale eyebrows! spare us or we retire incontinently from the French play,—‘To the woods, to the waves, to the winds we’ll complain’ of your inexorable cruelty and endless persecution!

This being Passion-week, there was no play. ‘Because thou art virtuous, shall we not have cakes and ale?’ In truth, however, we have no objection to this alternation of festivity and mourning: it mimics the order of the natural world. We require a truce with pleasure as well as pain, to enable us to endure the one or to enjoy the other: and we must put a stop at some period or other to the whirl of dissipation, unless we would grow quite stupid or giddy. One week out of the fifty-two, in which the theatres shut their doors in your face, in which the play-bills do not flaunt on either side of the way, and you are not followed through the streets while the letter-bell is ringing in your ears, with the importunate repetition of 359‘A Bill for Covent Garden or Drury Lane,’ is not amiss or out of reason; and the cry of ‘Hot-cross buns’ fills up the vacancy, and dallies with the interval of suspense not disagreeably. There is a large class of persons who only go to the play during Easter: it is hard if we cannot stay away from it during Passion-week. Our expectations and satisfaction are enhanced by the short restraint put upon them, and outward prevarication with our scruples. Without a little spice of hypocrisy or gravity the world would lose its savour: and by the periodical mark of reprobation thus set upon it, the play becomes a sort of pleasant sin all the rest of the year. As for the holiday-folks, Passion-week is to them a kind of bleak desert, beyond which they behold the land of promise,—a ha-ha, or line of circumvallation round the enchanted castle of Pleasure, over which they rush to storm the citadel with double eagerness and obstreperous glee, escaping from the formal gloom of Ash-Wednesday and Good-Friday, into the bright radiance of Easter-Sunday, as from the grave to a bridal, and ‘seizing their pleasures

We do not think the flutter of hope, the sparkle of joy, in the young or old adventurers, on these occasions of mirth and licence, would be complete, were it not for the sense of general restraint and privation which precedes them, and makes the release from the dead pause, the involuntary self-denial of the past week, a more precious achievement to all parties concerned. At least, this inference is pretty plainly discernible in the smiling looks and uneasy delight of the truant visitors in the boxes, and the noise and uproar of the overflowing galleries. To those who object to the disorderly interruptions of the latter, and consider the being present at an Easter-play as vulgar on that account, it may be proper to observe that there is no part of an audience so quiet and attentive as the galleries after the curtain once draws up, if it is not the fault of the actors or the author, who do not make themselves heard or understood so far; and again, we conceive it might be of service to dramatic writers sometimes to hazard their persons or compromise their dignity in the gallery, to see what impression their scenes make on hearts fresh from nature’s mint, instead of stationing themselves in the dress-boxes, to overhear polite whispers, or moulding their features in the glass of newspaper criticism the next day. The tears shed in silence by these untutored spectators, the breath held in, the convulsive sob, the eager gaze, the glance of delight, would afford better hints and lessons how to revive the spirit and the pathos of the primitive stage, than any instructions 360derived from drivelling Jerdan or from ranting Croly—nay, than from our own columns, the only ones, as modest Mr. Blackwood would say, worthy of the least attention in such matters. As to the players themselves, we do not know how Passion-week sits upon them. One would think it would be welcome to them as a break in the routine of business, as a pause in the wear-and-tear of life: but there is no saying. For they are so ‘stretched upon the rack of ecstasy,’ that almost any respite from it may be scarcely endurable. The public eye, the public voice, becomes a part of a man’s self, which he can hardly do without, even for an instant. The player out of his part is like the dram-drinker without his dram, the snuff-taker without his box. What organ is so sensitive as that of vanity? What thirst so insatiable, so incessant, as that of praise? The meagre days of Lent, one would argue previously, would be ‘gaudy-days’ to his Majesty’s servants, the drudges of public recreation,—snatched from the town, and given to retirement and oblivion,—brief interval to allay the feverish irritation of popular applause, to soothe the smart of mortification and disappointment. But no! the successful candidate thinks every moment lost in which he is robbed of the need of admiration; the unsuccessful is impatient to retrieve some error, to convince the public of theirs:—the hopeless performer thinks it better to be hissed than not noticed at all. Even the scene-shifters and candle-snuffers (to talk in the old style) fancy themselves, in a full house and busy night, persons of importance; and when left to themselves, must feel like fish out of water:—nothing else but the want of the customary excitement could probably enable actors to repeat their parts night after night: they stagger through them like drunken men. Many of the most fortunate seem uneasy, listless, and dissatisfied, when off the stage, because they do not see a thousand faces beaming with delight, because they do not hear at every step the shouts of Gods and men. Why do they not resort to Bartholomew-fair, where they may act every half-hour during the day, and not get a wink of sleep at night for the noise of cymbals and rattles? This is as if a man could never be easy unless he saw his person reflected in a thousand mirrors, or heard every word he utters repeated by a hundred echoes. Contempt, poverty, pain, want, and ‘all the natural ills that flesh is heir to,’ are preferable to this attainment of all that can be desired, and the craving after more. The lady in Love’s Labour Lost condemns her lover Biron, for his excess of levity, ‘to jest a twelvemonth in an hospital.’ For ourselves, we would impose it as a useful penance on those who are spoiled by the admiration of friends, to take the stage to the Land’s End, and return by themselves, so as to breathe for a few days out of 361the atmosphere of habitual adulation; and as to actors (who are anything more than walking gentlemen) we think they should be bound over never to sing a song, or tell a story in private. Their theatrical pulse is already at a hundred, without shining in company. Those who have nothing to say but ‘what is set down for them,’ stand the best chance for repose and moderation, and are also likely to make the best actors. An actor has not to study his own part, but somebody else’s, as a painter should not be taken up with himself, but his sitters.

The account of the death of the late Mr. Conway, the actor, came this week—a week of dole. It was melancholy enough, and must have occasioned regret to some who had at any time commented freely on his acting. Yet the original cause of it was not his fault, nor that of the critics—but rather of those who pushed him forward to run the gauntlet of public opinion, and attract a little momentary wonder and curiosity, without his being prepared to stand the trial, or meet the consequences. Popular favourites are too much like the innocent victims of superstition, led out, garlanded with flowers, to slaughter and to sacrifice. This was, we think, the case with Mr. Conway. He was a man of fine personal appearance, of modesty, and merit; but his more than usual height, and the disproportion between the shewiness of his figure and his genius for the drama (though he was by no means devoid of passion or talent) which at first made crowds of idle people run to look at and applaud him, afterwards subjected him to unavoidable, though in one sense (and such he felt it) unjust satire. It cannot be denied that he played Jaffier, for instance, with considerable force and feeling; and had he been of the ordinary stature (which is as necessary on the stage as in a group of statuary) he would have been highly respectable in that and other parts requiring a certain mixture of tenderness and vehemence. As it was, those who had at first extolled him to the skies, now swelled the cry against him; and the honey of adulation was naturally turned into gall and bitterness. Young, enthusiastic, and sincere, he attributed to malice and rooted enmity what was owing to accident, and the caprice and levity of the world, who keep up the sense of self-importance and excitement, by loading their thoughtless favourite with caresses one moment, and treating him with every mark of obloquy the next. Poor Conway was not prepared for this; he thought their admiration of him lasting and invaluable, their desertion wounded him to the quick. He did not know that the town was a hardened jilt, whose fondness or aversion are equally suspicious. He retired from the conflict, but bore with him the sense of ill-treatment which he had not knowingly merited, of disappointed hopes, 362which only the waters of oblivion could wash out, and which should deter others from encountering the same risk, who are not sure of the victory, or are not armed with fortitude equally proof against the homage or insults of mankind. Mr. Conway in his manners was mild and unaffected, spirited in his conduct, and if not a scholar, was distinguished by a love for reading and study.

We went on Monday to see young Mr. Kean in Lovers’ Vows, with the intention of expressing an opinion; but we have nothing to add in the way of criticism to what we have already said. We will however in so delicate a matter venture on two general remarks for our own satisfaction, and we should hope for that of others. The first is, it appears to us clear that Mr. Kean, jun., will never make so great an actor as his father; and if not, he had better rest contented with his father’s fame. The Marquis of Douro does not, we daresay, think of fighting the battle of Waterloo over again: why then should the son of Mr. Kean wish to lay up any hard-earned and doubtful theatrical laurels of his own? The crammed pit of Covent-Garden is his Mount St. Jean: the third act of Othello should be his escutcheon and his hereditary coat-of-arms. A pettifogging, cringing lawyer, a leader of a gang of ruffians, is made a lord, and ennobles a race of ciphers: if this is right, then why should not a man of genius reflect some of his glory on those next to him, and leave the dower of his great name to his immediate posterity? Because the gratitude of the public is insincere, and nobility a mere state-trick. It is not sentiment, but servility, that inclines us to pay respect to a long line of nobles or of princes. Take from the Marquis of Douro his estate of Strathfieldsay, and in a few years he might be in the King’s Bench, and the Times newspaper would not subscribe five pounds to help him out. If Mr. Kean had left a hundred thousand pounds behind him, his son might have sat for a close borough, or have made a ‘vulgar’ Minister of State. We do think there should be some distinctive mark, some ribbon of a Legion of Honour, with the smallest possible reversion of independence, some Tyburn ticket of merit, reserved for the sons of the Muses and the bastards of fortune, to exempt them alike from starving and the office of serving the public (which is much the same thing) for three generations. People talk of birth as necessary to 363honour and to power: did not the popes, the sons of peasants or of nobody, set their feet upon the necks of monarchs? People talk of the upstart pretensions of authors and men of intellect in modern times: did not the priest (the learned men of their day) come in as the first estate between heaven and the nobles? Why then taunt the flame of genius with being earth-born? It is the dotage of a prejudice to do so. We repeat, the sons of celebrated men are hardly off: the example of their parents (together with necessity) urges them to do something: that very example, from being too near, and almost seeming to save them the trouble of exertion, precludes the possibility of success. Even where the genius might be the same, the imitation and also the habitual idea of doing something extraordinary without knowing what, is prejudicial, if not fatal; and if they wish to turn out anything, they should strike into a path the opposite of what is always before them. Young Kean perhaps would shine as a University-wrangler, or a conveyancer under the bar; and the son of a philosopher should go to court! Again, Mr. Kean is said by his friends to be a promising young actor. We have nothing to say to that; but we will tell him one thing, there is no such person as a promising actor. It is here, as in all similar pursuits, performance or nothing. We do not say no great actor improves, but no actor becomes great by improvement. The sun is seen as soon as it appears above the horizon: there is the same glory round its rising and its setting: so may it always be with the sun of genius, which is the lamp of the world! Garrick fell as it were from the clouds: Mr. Kean’s father rose at once from obscurity. The late Mr. Kemble was the only actor that we remember to have attained to the first rank by gradual advances; and he was sustained in his progress by great stateliness of manner and advantages of person. In general, those who are always improving on themselves, are surpassed by others, and complain that, as they are about to seize the wreath of fame, it is snatched from them by some bolder and more fortunate hand. We do not presume to sit on Mr. Kean’s quantum meruit—we will not—but if he is not likely to become a first-rate actor, his name forbids him to be aught less. If he knows our tone in speaking when we are serious or merely splenetic, he will know that these remarks are dictated by anything but a feeling hostile to him.

A new melo-dramatic entertainment succeeded, called The Dumb Savoyard and his Monkey. The story is in few words, as follows: The Count Maldecini having been condemned to die (we know not why—for these inventions plunge us at once in medias res) his wife accompanied by their little child appears suddenly on the stage with a pardon for him. The ferryman at Ober Wesel, however, refuses 364to carry her up the river, as the hour is too late; and she is in despair, when the Savoyard, with the assistance of his monkey, undertakes to convey her to the place of destination. They arrive safely at the Falls of the Grenfells, near the salt-mine, in which her husband is confined, when they are attacked by a band of robbers who take a number of valuable ornaments from her, and among the rest the morocco-case, containing her husband’s pardon; but this, at her passionate and distracted entreaty, the chief restores in a fit of generosity, and with an appropriate speech for a German robber. Meantime, the monkey contrives to pick the pardon out of the case, and hide it in a crevice of the rock, on the top of which he sits grinning, the demon of mischief and meddlesomeness. When the Countess arrives at the prison, she accordingly misses what she had built all her hopes upon, but she deceives the jailor and escapes with her husband, also by the aid of the Savoyard and the dextrous Marmozette. They are pursued and overtaken just at the very spot where the precious document had been lost; and as the Count is about to be shot, in conformity to his sentence, which he reads and very sentimentally and loyally approves, the monkey betrays the hiding-place of the pardon, which the frantic Countess eagerly rescues from his grasp, and the whole ends happily. Mrs. W. West played the heroine, and looked forlorn and interesting. Mrs. Barrymore was Pipino, the Dumb Savoyard, and made a very pretty boy. As to the nimble Marmozette (Master Wieland), if it depended on us, we would make him skip. Our old acquaintance Jocko has left a numerous progeny behind him, and we are afraid we shall never see the end of the breed. Why, in the midst of the beautiful and enchanting scenery on the banks of the Rhine (so admirably represented in this piece) must we have an artificial monster staring us in the face like an ugly looking-glass the whole time. We have no patience on this point. We never could bear to see that branch of the species on or off the stage, and would shoot them like the man in Candide, even at a risk of similar consequences. We have no need of a menagerie in a play-house; the money taken at the door on such occasions should be a deodand to the proprietors of Exeter-’Change. We wish the Times, in its gravity, would take up the subject, and with its leaden mace drive these lusus naturæ and nauseous double-entendres from the scene.—We did not recover our equanimity till Miss Foote, as Meggy Macgilpin, and her pretty Highland dress, put us into good humour; and O’Keefe’s song of Twang twang darillo, between Gatty and Russell, scattered every particle of bile in a roar of laughter.

The holiday attraction of the week has been a melodrama called Tuckitomba, said to be founded on a fact which happened in Jamaica fifty years ago. The interest turns on a black sorceress who steals her master’s child out of revenge, on an old pirate (Tuckitomba) who runs away with a mulatto-girl for love, and on the blowing up of the vessel in which they set sail for Africa, by the carelessness of a tailor on board (Blanchard) who sets fire to the powder-magazine with the contents of his tobacco-pipe. There was a great deal of bustle, and a want of interest in this piece. The prominent trait was the acting of Keeley, who is called ‘for shortness’ Goliah. This gentleman really answers to Falstaff’s description of ‘a man made after supper of a cheese-paring.’ He is a shred of comedy; a pocket-Liston. He is great in little parts, and makes an amusing approach to a nonentity.—The Minor Theatres have each had their novelties during the week, and been tolerably successful. The critics are divided on the temper and behaviour of John Bull at this season. Some say he was lumpish and leaden at Drury-Lane on Monday, others, that he was in all his glory at Covent-Garden on the same evening. It is from seeing the confusion and uncertainty that prevail in the most authentic reports that we propose shortly to publish two Examiners a week, to set the town right in these and such-like particulars, and to save them the trouble of consulting the daily papers altogether. As to John’s behaviour, pleased or sulky, drunk or sober, we never could see any difference in it. Where we were, a man stood up on a bench in the pit, and another insisting on his getting down, and on his refusal threatening to call him out the next day, the first made answer—‘Aye, if your master will let you!’—‘Master! what do you mean by that? I have no master: I come and go where I please!’ The women now interfered, and one of them clapped her handkerchief to her husband’s mouth to prevent further disagreeables. All an Englishman’s ideas are modifications of his will; and it is strange that with all his boasted independence and equality, he thinks he has a right to insult every one who is not a better man than himself. The reason is, he has no respect for himself, nor consequently for others, except for some external advantage of wealth or situation; and his ill-humour can only be bribed to keep the peace by his self-interest. ‘Vice to be hated needs but to be seen:‘—we are sure that this at least may be said of ill-manners.

Turn we from them to the French play, where the object is to enjoy the scene, to be pleased with yourself, and not to insult your neighbours, or inquire which is master and which is man. There have been several debûts, all very creditable and successful, Monsieur 366Berteche, Madame Beaufre, and Mademoiselle Irma. We saw the former (who is of the Mademoiselle Mars school, and whose tongue runs faster than a race-horse) in the Ecole des Veillards with Monsieur Perlet, who plays the jealous husband with great point and spirit: but shall we add, that in the passionate parts, he does not let out enough, there is an interdicted and internal manner, a fidgetty and confined air, which is probably owing to the subordinate parts in which he usually acts. In this comedy, a gentleman pulls off his coat on the stage, which is with us an indecorum, except in farce. We mention this to show the difference of feeling in such matters. We missed Perlet in the Cheats of Scapin: he always contrives to cheat us of our favourite Moliere. But we had a full taste of him in the Anglaises pour rire. And these are our fair country-women—so they sit, speak, walk, sing, and dance, in the eyes of foreigners! No, it is Monsieur Pelissie and Monsieur Perlet—but very like!

The last week or two has been rich in theatricals; Miss Stephens in Love in a Village, where the scene opens with those two young beauties sitting in a bower of roses like a flower stuck in the stomacher of beauty, and where that unconscious siren ‘warbles her native wood-notes wild’ with such simplicity and sweetness; Charles Kemble in the Inconstant, who in one glorious scene plays tragedy and comedy to the life, and in one short moment tastes the ‘fierce extremes’ of pleasure and agony, of life and death; and Othello, with bumpers and three times three; to say nothing of Madame Vestris in the Invincibles, and Mr. John Reeve in the immortal Major Sturgeon. Why then did we take no notice of them? Notice we have taken, but it has been with ‘our mind’s eye,’ in ‘our heart’s core.’ Ill will it fare with us, when we do not cast a sidelong glance at those pregnant abridgments, the play-bills, and when their flaunting contents, that unfold to us the map of our life, no longer excite a smile or a sigh. Any one who pleases may then write our epitaph, though it will not be worth writing. At such a season, for instance, we saw Mrs. Siddons in such a part for the first time; in such another, Kemble walked with regal air across the stage, and his stately brow needed no diadem to set it off; in such a character Bannister was in all his glory; in that, Suett vented his resistless folly; here, Munden went the whole length of his face; here, Lewis was all life and air; 367here, Jack Palmer was great indeed; here, King was bitter in Touchstone, and Miss Pope romantic in Audrey; then, Mrs. Goodall played the part of Rosalind, and tripped in becoming page’s attire through the forest of Ardennes (days and years long past!); here, Dignum warbled as Amiens (before we had heard of the peace of Amiens); and here, Mrs. Jordan’s laugh comes over the heart, and if it has grown dry and seared, fills it with the remembrance of joy and gladness once more. Dodd and Parsons hover in the extreme verge of the horizon, but gay shadows, airy shapes. Then such a one took leave of the stage, drawing a narrower circle within the natural circle of his being; then Liston appeared in the Finger-Post, looking like a finger-post, with his nose only pointing to fun; Elliston in Wild Oats (will he never sow ’em?); Matthews in the Bee-Hive, as busy as a bee; Miss Kelly in chambermaids; Miss O’Neill in heroines; last, not least, Mr. Kean, the ‘bony prizer’ of the stage, who has knocked all other reputations and his own on the head. What a host of names and recollections is here! How many more are omitted, names that have embodied famous poets’ verse and been the ‘fancy’s midwife,’ that have gladdened a nation and made life worth living for, that have made the world pass in review as a gaudy pageant, and set before us in a waking dream the bodily shapes and circumstances of all that is most precious in joy or in sorrow! And is it come to this, that the drama is accounted vulgar by the vulgar, and that we are to cut our old acquaintances the players, those who have thrown a light upon the morning, noon, and evening of our day, ‘gay creatures of the element, that live ‘i th’ rainbow and play in the plighted clouds,’ and who have taken us so many hundred times to sit and laugh with them, or shed ‘tears such as angels weep,’ at a height where we could look down at the sordid of the earth—and at a universe of Operas, with their naked figurantes, and sense and soul muffled up in sound to suit the callous taste or ranker gust of ears polite! We may have said all this before; and here lies the misfortune of our office. A theatrical audience is supposed to vary every night: the reading public is assumed to be always the same body. We could praise Mr. Charles Kemble’s acting in Young Mirabel every time he does it, and are always glad to think he is going to play what does such credit to his art and gives such pleasure to others; but we can say nothing about it, having once expressed our opinion to that effect. An actor repeats a favourite part till farther notice; a singer may be encored in an air as often as his friends please; thank God, we have stockpieces that never wear out: but who ever ventured upon reviving a defunct criticism? It might pass with the million, but some good-natured friend would betray us. The writer’s secret would be found 368out, and he would be had up as an imposter. Nevertheless, having meditated a new criticism (or eulogy, for it is the same thing) on Mr. Kean’s Othello, and the overflowing house having excluded us from the Free-List, we venture upon borrowing an old one; and if we were to try, we do not know that we could mend our draught.

‘Mr. Kean’s Othello is, we suppose, the finest piece of acting in the world. It is impossible either to describe or praise it adequately. We have never seen any actor so wrought upon—so “perplexed in the extreme.” The energy of passion, as it expresses itself in action, is not the most terrific part: it is the agony of his soul, shewing itself in looks and tones of voice. In one part, where he listens in dumb despair to the fiend-like insinuations of Iago, he presented the very face, the marble aspect of Dante’s Count Ugolino. On his fixed eyelids “horror sat plumed.” In another part, where a gleam of hope or of tenderness returns to subdue the tumult of his passions, his voice broke in faultering accents from his overcharged breast. His lips might be said less to utter words than to distil drops of blood gushing from his heart. An instance of this was in his pronunciation of the line—

The whole of this last speech was indeed given with exquisite force and beauty. We only object to the virulence with which he delivers the last line, and with which he stabs himself—a virulence which Othello would neither feel against himself at the moment, nor against the “turbaned Turk” (whom he had slain) at such a distance of time. His exclamation on seeing his wife, “I cannot think but Desdemona’s honest,” was the “glorious triumph of exceeding love,” a thought flashing conviction on his mind, and irradiating his countenance with joy, like sudden sunshine. In fact almost every scene or sentence in this extraordinary exhibition is a master-piece of natural passion. The convulsed motion of the hands, and the involuntary swelling of the veins in the forehead, in some of the most painful situations, should not only suggest topics of critical panegyric, but might furnish studies to the painter or sculptor.’

After Othello on Wednesday, The Mayor of Garratt followed ‘with kindliest change.’ Mr. Reeve played Major Sturgeon, and Mr. Keeley, Jerry Sneak. Comparisons are odious: therefore they are made. Mr. Keeley’s Jerry was not so good as Russell’s formerly; nor Mr. Reeve’s Major Sturgeon equal to Dowton’s. This is saying nothing, for both those performances were of the very first water. Mr. Keeley’s person is diminutive, and he seems the natural butt of a virago: Russell was a goodly man of his inches; it was his spirit 369only that was hen-pecked, and that submitted to buffets and blows. Dowton again was the model of a train-band Captain in his own esteem, and never doubted of the ineffable superiority of his own pretensions: Reeve, in the midst of his insolence and vapouring, has a look of quizzing himself, and sees through the ridicule of his own character. He however throws much humour and fantastic absurdity into the part, à-la-Liston; but his drollery is conscious and knowing, not vacant and absolutely spontaneous, like that of his unrivalled prototype. At the end of the farce, there was some division of opinion whether the piece was not low, as if that which had mainly driven such manners and characters almost from the knowledge of the present generation was not a master-stroke of genius, and in fact an historical drama.

There has been a new farce here (called, disagreeably enough, The Little Offsprings). If Mr. Peake is one of the most amusing of our farce writers, it is because he pretends to be nothing better. He professes to write a farce, not a genteel comedy; and he generally succeeds accordingly. Our complaint against his present novelty is, that unlike most of his previous ones, it is not quite broad enough. He himself will smile at this objection, because assuredly it is quite broad enough where it is broad. But it is not ‘as broad as it is long,’ which is what all farces ought to be. Young ladies as well bred as they are well dressed, and young gentlemen ‘to match,’ are interlopers in the region of farce. Let Mr. Peake eschew all such amiable insipidities, and he will do well. In short, let him cultivate the gentilities of life not a step farther than they fall in with the case (anything but genteel) of Mr. Wrench; and then he cannot go very far wrong. Above all, let him have nothing to say to young ladies who are a whit more like Lady Teazle than Miss Kelly is. They are ticklish handling in all cases; and in his there is no answering for the mischief they may do.

and no more can the ultra-ridiculous and the flat common-place—Mr. Keeley as a Savoyard organ-boy, and Miss Goward as a sensitive school-girl. The contrast (so to speak) does not harmonize. Au reste, the name of the new farce is the worst thing belonging to it. 370It includes a fox-hunting Admiral, played, or rather worked, with great effect by Bartley;—a bluff and blundering boatswain, which Fawcett acted to the life, that is to say, somewhat disagreeably;—a person wearing a white hat and pea-green pantaloons, things always enough to make the sight of Mr. Wrench pleasant; a suppositious spinster (Mrs. Davenport), who turns out to be the parent of one of the ‘little offsprings,’ her brother the Admiral being similarly situated as to the other;—and finally, the ‘offsprings’ themselves, played (as aforesaid) by Miss Goward and Mr. Keeley, and about whom there is a good deal of ingenious equivoque which touches upon the extreme edge where such matters are, now-a-days, so apt to fall over. They pretty nearly did so on the above occasion, which has, no doubt, induced Mr. Peake to make the proper sacrifices to the suspicious delicacy of ‘some people’s ears.’

Don Giovanni was played at this theatre on Thursday for the benefit of Madame Caradori, in which Mademoiselle Sontag sustained the part of Donna Anna with great truth and effect.

We said something lately on the company at the holiday theatres: we have something to say on the company at the Opera. We have little hesitation in stating (we speak of the pit) that in its way it is quite as bad: from boisterous rudeness and familiarity it rises into distance and superciliousness. If for instance at the Surrey or the Coburg you see two fellows quarrelling which is the master and which is the man, at the King’s Theatre you hear an elegant discourse on ‘the higher and the lower orders.’ A critic at Covent-Garden or Drury-Lane thinks Sadler’s Wells or the East London low: a critic of the self-same stamp, but one of softer phrase, pronounces the condemnation of the drama in good set terms as altogether exploded in the fashionable circles, and as flourishing most in our manufacturing towns and the semi-barbarous states of North America. You hear another take up the lamentable theme of an interval in the succession of regular Opera-singers, as if it were a pause in nature; and when notwithstanding he has heard Braham sing very well in ‘this house,’ repeating the words as if the atmosphere at the Haymarket wafted other sounds than common air, and music were a geographical distinction. Thus it is that an Englishman is always pinning his faith on places and persons; and that he cannot arrive (for the soul of him, let him be taught and trammelled how he will) at the contemplation of an abstract idea: and yet the booby talks of refinement. He has no conception of anything but from the situation where he finds it; or the figure it makes in the eyes of some one as 371wise as himself; or from its being a foil to some defect in others. You hear none of this gabble at the Thêatre Français, or the Italian Opera in Paris, about those exploded authors Racine and Molière, or the low buffoonery of the Theatre des Varietés, because they understand or relish both: we, unfortunately, who understand and relish neither, are obliged to create an artificial admiration of what is exotic out of our contempt for what is native, and pamper our pretensions to refinement by constantly dwelling on the vulgarity of the lower orders. Delightful it is to hear the Frenchwomen speaking of ‘the vulgar Englishwomen’ in a lump, as these same Englishwomen speak of all the rest of their country-women! In France, to laugh and weep (at least with the comic or the tragic Muse) is not held vulgar. All wit is not confined to a shake of the toe, nor all sense to the squall of an Opera-singer, though they dance and give concerts as well as we. But in England our object is not the pursuit of pleasure, but to run away from the pleasures of others; and when a taste for the drama or anything else becomes a little common, we grow sulky and insensible by way of being spiritual and refined. We see no other refinement in the case, unless the getting rid of thought and feeling is a proof of refinement; and the figurantes at the Opera are an intermediate link, a soft imperceptible gradation, between the grossness of human passion and the absence of all human sympathy. Do the upper classes speak in recitative? Do they, in answer to a common question, vault into the air? Perhaps a Noble Duke might make one of his speeches intelligible by singing it, or solve the difficulties of the Corn question by calling out the Lord Chancellor to dance a minuet with him! We import Opera-singers, dancers, kings! Liberal land! That knows its own deficiencies in what is refined and elevated! Happy, that it finds others so ready to oblige it! All that they get from us, is hard blows or hard cash: all that we get from them, is politeness and luxury! In a word the question comes to this—Are the English an essentially vulgar people or not? If all that they have of their own is vulgar and unworthy of the notice of the upper classes, then the unavoidable inference is that the upper classes themselves are unworthy to see anything better, and are the most vulgar, fashionable audience in Europe. If we have the least possible capacity for the fine arts, namely, dancing, music, painting, then we must be, in spite of letters-patent of nobility, or a box at the opera, or a chapeau-bras, or an opera-glass, the worst possible judges of them; and if we would be anything at all, must set up for something else. Indeed, the effects are plain enough. There is that little Brocard; she was at one time a model of voluptuous, languishing grace; but it was thrown away upon the higher orders, and she now does nothing but walk on the 372tips of her toes. The little trifler, she that we have praised so often! We are after all in such matters a Bartlemy-fair audience—or for a tumbler’s show! Is Madame Pasta a favourite with the great vulgar? Not in the least. They hear her fame, but not her. What piteous, vacant aspects in the fine gentleman in the pit the first night of Mademoiselle Sontag’s appearance! And what would they not have given (before committing themselves beyond an applause which might be construed into a good-natured encouragement) to know what the newspapers would say the next day! What then is the amount of this exclusive preference and fastidious superiority of fashionable taste? Mere arrogance and affectation. Look at the men in the pit. Are they in raptures with the ballet or the music? They are solely occupied in thinking how they themselves look, whether their coat is of the right cut, their cravat properly tied, and whether their next neighbour is good enough for them to speak to. Each opera-beau ought to have a glass-case over him to keep him within a certain precise sphere of dandy repulsiveness and self-importance. In an O. P. row you are in danger of being knocked down: in the still-life of the Opera-house, every one seems in fear of touching his neighbour’s elbow. The disagreeable either in thought or action is inseparable from our fogs and sea-coal fires. Look at the women in the boxes. Are they at their ease? Or do they not keep one fixed attitude, or else loll, and laugh, and stare without meaning? The great thing is not to seem to take an interest; and this is not difficult, where none is felt. If to paint, to dress, to intrigue, and be insensible, is the height of refinement, then the women in the lobbies are even more refined than they. Do we then subscribe to this total disqualification of the English character? No: we have hearts and heads for other things besides the mechanism of the senses. We have books, which we send through the heart of all Europe; but our people of fashion and our parade of gentility are the laughing-stock of the world. One service which the work on Lord Byron and his Contemporaries has done the public, one offence it has given to the insolent few, is that it shews that even the strongest minds are not exempt from the shallowness and pedantry of this kind of jargon. The Noble Poet somewhere says that he and Tom Moore wrote well, because he himself from birth, and Mr. Moore from circumstances (circumstances indeed!) moved in the fashionable world. If this were all, we should have some thousands of fine geniuses come out every year, ‘the mob of gentlemen who write with ease!’ Why, instead of opening the casket to examine the contents, are we to be always looking at the outside? Or why, having found a jewel in it, persist that the wrapper was coarse brown paper? When we hear all the inhabitants of this 373great country whose names are not inscribed in the Red Book, or who are not crammed into the stifling, glittering atmosphere of the King’s Theatre, stigmatised with the sweeping epithet of ‘the lower orders,’ our patience is a little out at elbows, and the answer, we fear, will not come from the pen alone! What is it that my Lord-Duke brings with him from the Continent—that he shews to his fellow-travellers as a precious curiosity—that he folds up and unfolds with such care? Is it a cameo, a drawing by Raphael, a bit of Claude? It is a copy of the Great Tun of Heidelberg! When did the polite world think it allowable for the last time to throng to the English theatre in crowds and with their expectations excited to the utmost? To see young Mr. Kean, a boy just come from Eton (classical reminiscence!) in the part of Norval! Or to see the bottle-conjuror, or a thing born with a crown on its head, or any other rare and striking novelty! Spare us, man of fashion, in the name of refinement!

On Tuesday, the Beggars’ Opera was acted here; or rather, half the Beggars’ Opera to half a house. This is as it should be: if the Managers start and shrug up their shoulders at one half of a play, the public will shrink from the other. It is always wrong to cry stale fish. We suspect some clerical critic, some Jeremy Collier of the Times, has had a hand in this: what have these reverend divines to do with profane stage-plays, any more than poets and novelists with writing lay-sermons? Everything in our day is turned topsy-turvy: nothing prevails but ‘vanity, chaotic vanity.’ The consequence of this sort of slur and neglect thrown upon the piece is, that it is indifferently acted. There is not, in the expressive green-room phrase, ‘a hand in the house’: and without that, the performer has no heart to proceed. A player can no more act with spirit unless he sees the reflection of his excellences in the looks and satisfaction of the audience, than a fine lady can dress without a looking-glass. He makes a hit and it fails of effect; he is therefore thrown out, and the next time he does wrong or he does nothing. Filch (Meadows) picks a pocket as if he was afraid of being detected by the pit: Miss Kelly is shocked at the part of Lucy, and flounces and elbows through it as if she wished to get out of it, putting a negative on an encore that is likely to detain her five minutes longer in Newgate: Miss Stephens (the charming Polly) is frightened at the interest she might inspire, 374and is loth to ‘waste her sweetness on a blackguard air’: the Captain (Mr. Wood) is the only person who stands fire on the trying occasion. This gentleman is the best Macheath we have seen for a long time (for in criticism as in law we must have our statute of limitations)—more of a gentleman than Incledon, a better singer than Davies, less affected than Young, less finical than Sinclair, as ‘pretty a fellow’ as Madame Vestris—good-looking, gallant, debonair, and vocal. Bartley is too ‘splenetic and rash’ for Lockitt, who should be sullen and hardened as his prison-walls; Blanchard is not round and set enough for Peachum, his figure dangling and his voice crackling like a lawyer’s parchment; Mrs. Davenport alone remained in her original muslin apron, silk gown, and pinners (a Sybil, yet how unlike a prophetess!) to overlook and wonder at the desolation of the classic scene. We are more and more convinced that there is a time for everything, and that good plays must give place to bad ones. It is not possible (with a mixed audience) to keep alive the ridicule of manners after the manners themselves have ceased, nor to preserve them in the spirit of wit, or exhibit them even in mock-heroics. The stage is but the counterpart of existing follies—

However, the Beggars’ Opera has run a century. That’s pretty well. Oh George Colman the Younger, Messrs. Reynolds and Morton, how will you rejoice, could you lift up your heads a hundred years hence, and see a five-act play of yours cut down to a one-act farce! It is not that there are not plenty of rogues and pick pockets at present; but the Muse is averse to look that way; the imagination has taken a higher flight; wit and humour do not flow in that dirty channel, picking the grains of gold out of it. Instead of descending, we aspire; and the age has a sublime front given to it to contemplate the heaven of drawing-rooms and the milky-way of fashion. You are asked if you like Fielding, as if it were a statuteable offence; and it was justly observed the other day in a comparison between De Vere and Count Fathom, that in a refined period like ours, a rogue aims at nothing short of being Prime-Minister! In a word, the French Revolution has spoiled all, like a great stone thrown into a well ‘with hollow and rueful rumble,’ and left no two ideas in the public mind but those of high and low. The jealousy of gentility, the horror of being thought vulgar, has put an end to the harmless double-entendre of wit and humour; and the glancing lights and shades of life (nothing without each other) are sunk into the dull night of insipidity and affectation. So be it, and so it will be! Yet ‘we have heard 375the chimes at midnight’ for all this, and passed over Hounslow and Bagshot, not without a twinge of the recollection of other times, as well as responsive to the names of Pope, of Gay, and Queensberry’s Duchess! Nor is it so long since we have seen good company and full houses grace the representation of Tyburn tree: we remember old Sir John Sylvester among others (with we believe his two daughters) who had a keen relish for an execution, and stedfastly contemplated under black bushy eyebrows that irrefragable order of ideas (as Mr. Hobbes calls it) ‘the thief, the judge, and the gallows;’ and Mr. Vansittart, who smiled with conscious simplicity at the satirical allusions to Ministers of State, might be supposed to be comparing the terseness and point of Gay’s style with his own ‘wolds and sholds,’ and seemed to think that nothing but an evangelical housebreaker was wanting to the perfection of the plot!—We could not stay out A Race for Dinner, though invited by Mr. Wrench,—who has become as hungry as a hunter of late,—but made the best of our way to the other house (old Drury) in search of a criticism. We could almost fancy Covent Garden had got there before us, for there we found nearly the whole former strength of the rival house drawn up in battle-array before us—‘and Birnamwood was come to Dunsinane’—through what bickerings, what strifes, what heart-burnings, what jealousies between actors, what quarrels with managers, what want of pay, and demands for more, is easy (though not pleasant) to guess. They had also brought the Poor Gentleman with them; and both together brought a full house. Nothing could be better acted. Looking at them with ‘eyes of youth’ (which we always take with us to the theatre) we seemed as it were to witness something like a turn-out of Chelsea pensioners on the boards; and the sentiments of the play were of a piece with this patriotic and charitable impression. About thirty years ago, when John Bull took a particular fit of hatred against the French, he also fell in love with himself; and the dramatic writers of that day undertook to shew John his own face, his virtues or vices ‘to advantage dressed’ in a succession of plays which were properly Dedications to the English nation. We have the Whole Duty of Man bound up in a coarse, unattractive exterior; the Virtues in the front of the stage, though the Graces stand a little in the back-ground; and all the charities of private life clustering together on the stage, as they do round the domestic hearth. We have nothing but generous uncles, dry in their manner, but their heart and their purse overflowing with liberality—dutiful nephews, thoughtless but well-meaning, and falling into scrapes and love at every turn—reclaimed seducers—exemplary young ladies—old servants surly, but honest 376(the English character)—a chattering apothecary, the butt of the village and a foil to our self-love—an old soldier, a favourite in the family, and with us, for he has been wounded in our defence—a poor gentleman, in want of money which he refuses by mistake from some munificent patron, in consequence of not being so shrewd as the audience, and who is in hourly danger of a prison, from which we hope to escape. All this hits our delicate and improved moral tastes much better than sneering at our vices or laughing at our follies. Live sentiment, perish satire! Then there is so much distress, which it is so delightful to sympathize with—so much money circulating to relieve it (which it is so delightful to hear and to see; it is almost like attending a charity-sermon, or seeing Mr. Irving himself pawn his watch out of an excess of missionary zeal)—then there are so many tears starting into the eye, so many squeezes of the hand, so many friends and relations falling into one another’s arms, as cannot but move the most obdurate—so many bailiffs in the wind, so many duels broken off by the entrance of some antiquated spinster who is always prying into mischief, or of some charming young creature who is the cause of it. We hope the other actors and actresses who acquitted themselves so admirably in their several parts,—Mr. Dowton in Sir R. Bramble, Mr. Mathews in Ollapod, Mr. Liston in Corporal Foss, Mr. Cooper in Lieutenant Worthington, Mr. Jones in Frederic, Mrs. Davison in Miss Mactab,—will excuse us if we pass them over on this occasion to pay our compliments to Miss Ellen Tree, who played Emily Worthington, and who certainly comes under the description of persons last-mentioned. Without any appearance of art, she played so well that she seemed the character itself, with the ease and simplicity of an innocent school-girl. Her figure is very pleasing—her voice is like her sister’s—and she has the handsomest mouth in the world. We will not attempt to describe it for two reasons: first, because we cannot; secondly, because we dare not. In Mr. Jones’s School for Gallantry she might have been called the bon bouche. Amidst the chopping and changing of the theatres, we had forgotten Mr. Jones was at Drury Lane; and inquired after the success of his new piece at Covent Garden. We naturally enough received an answer almost as cold as the moon which shines through the bars of his hero’s prison-chamber. We were glad however to find that the wit and pleasantry diffused over it, if faint, had much of the agreeable lustre of that mild planet. We should suppose the plot borrowed from the country where the scene is laid. Cupid seems always on garrison-duty in the Prussian monarchy, and the spirit of adventure and gallantry somewhat languishes and grows trifling when it is kept (as everything there is) 377under lock and key. After what we have said of Miss E. Tree, we will not forfeit our reputation for gallantry by saying anything less obliging of Miss Love, who plays a young hussar officer in this piece, than that we like her best when she is drest most like herself.

The Taming of the Shrew was revived here on Wednesday, with the original words and additional songs. We however missed Christopher Sly, that supreme dramatic critic, who should have sat in lordly judgment on the piece, and given a drunken relief to it. This representing of a play within a play (of which Shakspeare was fond) produces an agreeable theatrical perspective—it is like painting a picture in a picture—and intimates pointedly enough that all are but shadows, the pageants of a dream. We also missed Mr. Liston in this part; for we understand he has some good quips and crotchets about it. Unless we saw him, we cannot pretend to say how he would do it; for we consider Mr. Liston in the light of an author rather than of an actor, and he makes his best parts out of his own head or face, in a sort of brown study, with very little reference to the text. He has nevertheless more comic humour oozing out of his features and person than any other actor in our remembrance, or than we have any positive evidence of since the time of Hogarth. No one is stultified, no one is mystified like him—no one is so deep in absurdity, no one so full of vacancy; no one puzzles so over a doubt, or goes the whole length of an extravagance like him—no one chuckles so over his own conceit, or is so dismayed at finding his mistake:—the genius of folly spreads its shining gloss over his face, tickles his nose, laughs in his eyes, makes his teeth chatter in his head, or draws up every muscle into a look of indescribable dulness, or freezes his whole person into a lump of ice (as in Lubin Log) or relaxes it into the very thaw and dissolution of all common sense (as in his Lord Grizzle). Munden’s acting (which many prefer, and in this number may be included Mr. Liston himself) was external, overdone, and aimed at the galleries—it was a sort of prodigious and inspired face-making—Liston’s humour bubbles up of itself, and runs over from the mere fulness of the conception. If he does not go out of himself, he looks into himself, and ruminates on the idea of the idle, the quaint, and the absurd, till it does his heart good within him, and makes ‘the lungs of others crow like 378chanticleer.’ Munden’s expressions, if they could have been taken off on the spot, would have made a capital set of grotesque masks: Liston’s would make a succession of original comic sketches, as rich as they are true:—Mr. Wilkie failed in attempting one of them—his pencil was not oily and unctuous enough. We have seen many better comedians, that is, better imitators of existing or supposed characters and manners—such as Emery, Little Simmons, Dowton, and others—we know no other actor who has such a fund of drollery in himself, or that makes one laugh in the same hearty unrestrained manner, free from all care or controul, that we do with Sancho Panza or Parson Adams. We have heard a story of Mr. Liston being prevented by some accident from attending his professional duties, and wrapping himself up in a flannel gown and heart’s-content over a winter fire, to read our good old English novelists for a fortnight together. What fine marginal notes his face would make! Which would he enjoy most, the blanket falling and discovering philosopher Square behind it, or the drawing up of the curtain and the broad laugh of the pit? We will answer that question for him. The meanest apprentice that sees a play for the first time from the gallery, has more pleasure than the most admired actor that ever trod the stage: there is more satisfaction in reading one page of a sterling author with good faith and good will, than the writer had in the composition or even the success of all his works put together. The admiration we bestow on others comes from the heart; but never returns back to it. Vanity closes up the avenues, or envy poisons it. This digression is too long: without sometimes going out of our way, we should hardly get to the end of our task.—The revival, on the whole, went off pleasantly, though the acting was not remarkably good, nor the music by any means enlivening. Jaques’s recommendation to Amiens—‘Warble, warble,’—seems to be the device of most modern composers, who think that, if they string a set of unmeaning notes together, it must be heavenly harmony. ’Tis pitiful. We are sick to death of this interpolated sing-song; nor do we think it much mended by proceeding from the mouth of Mr. Braham, who is in such cases a piece of operatic fleecy hosiery. He is a walking woolsack:—‘And when the bag was opened, the voice began to sing,’ &c. We may be wrong in this matter, and speak under correction of better judges; but we confess that the everlasting monotonous alternation of the thunder of the spheres and the softness of nightingales, of the notes of the trumpet and the lute, the forked lightning and gentle moon-beams, Mr. Braham’s thick-set person, infantine gestures and dying cadences, all together throw us into a fit of despondency. Miss Fanny Ayton’s shrill voice and 379acute features did not serve to dispel our chagrin. The rest of the piece was tolerably cast. Wallack was the hero of it, who does not want for spirit or confidence; and a man’s good opinion of himself is always half-way towards deserving it, and obtaining that of others. Cooper did not play his pretended master well: he is too grave and straight forward an actor for these sort of sudden shifts and doubtful subterfuges. The best-done scene was the quarrel between Russell as the tailor, and Harley as Petruchio’s man, about the gown and cap. The quaint antique humour was happily hit off, and studiously dallied with, so as not to slur it over, but to bring it out. Some fastidious critics may object to the puerile conceit and tenuity of meaning that pleased our ancestors in such idle squabbles—we think we could cite graver polemics to match it in shabby excuses and verbal trifling in the present day. The old-fashioned dresses recalled the image of former times; and the scenery that of places, which can never grow old. The last scene, in which the brides are sent for and brought in, had an excellent effect; and the second representation was announced with every sign of satisfaction. It may not be improper to add here, that the Taming of the Shrew is one of the pieces that have been transplanted (not without a good deal of pruning) to the French stage, and that Mademoiselle Mars plays the part of Katharine with equal spirit and success.

M. Perlet took the Avare for his benefit at this theatre last week. We are sorry we are about to lose this excellent actor, who has given us much pleasure and instruction. Au revoir. We saw him only in the latter part of Moliere’s Miser: his thinness, his dress, and the keys at his girdle fitted the character exactly. It was chiefly in the scenes where he runs mad at losing his casket of gold, or seizes on Anselme as the father of the supposed robber to demand restitution of him, that the ruling passion and the greater actor broke out. In the first of these scenes particularly, where he catches hold of his own arm, thinking to arrest the thief, he shews all the rage and phrensy of the most tragic vehemence; and in throwing himself exhausted on the ground, bewailing his hard hap, and appealing to the pity of an imaginary audience, whom his despair conjures up, and then lashing himself up to impatience and fury again, proves his entire acquaintance with the ebb and flow, the risings and sinkings of the human heart. These particular passages appeared to us, however, like patches or excrescences on the general texture of the performance (perhaps they are so in the play itself, which is not one of Moliere’s best). If we may hazard a conjecture 380on a subject on which we do not feel altogether at home, we should say that M. Perlet’s Miser was in its ordinary aspect rather the serving-man in a half-famished house, than a personification of the demon of selfishness, fretfulness, and avarice. It was hard and indifferent—not gloating enough, not morbid enough, not restless and harassed enough. Farther, we suspect there is this fault in his general acting and in French comedy: we grant it is not gross; is it not, on the other hand, too slight and evanescent? They charge us with over-doing; are they not then liable to under-do, and fall short of the mark? If there is such a thing as caricature, there is also an antithesis to it, and not only a danger of loading a character to excess, but of giving a profile or section of it for the whole, and not taking all the licence that truth and nature gives. We are dreadfully afraid of being misled by national prejudices; but (that being premised) we cannot but add our conviction that M. Perlet’s acting, with all its purity, propriety, and spirit, wants something of richness and breadth.—The little piece which followed the Avare, Ninette à la cour, was delightful both in itself and as giving Mademoiselle Fanny Vertpres an opportunity to display her mignon figure and provoking ways. There seem to be two styles of female coquetry in France, extreme flutter and vivacity, or perfect calmness and self-possession. The one is set in motion by everything; the other is put out of its way by nothing. Miss Fanny Vertpres is of the latter class. With great presence of mind and ready wit, she joins to the symmetry the apparent coolness and indifference of a marble statue. She takes everything in good part, and slides into a number of ticklish adventures and situations with all the ease imaginable. She is only troubled at being laughed at—a misfortune against which no French patience is proof. The scenes behind the looking-glass and behind her fan with her rustic lover (Laporte), whom she beguiles in an enchanting feigned voice (prettier even than her own) are quite delightful, and dispose one to believe that comedy has not yet exhausted all its precious stores. Mademoiselle St. Ange played the Countess with all her country’s ease and grace. Monsieur Laporte strikes us as a confirmation of the remarks we have made above on French comedy, by the very circumstance of his being an exception to them. There is nothing automatic in his manner. He not only utters a jest, but he enjoys it too—not that he forces it upon us either, except by the gentle violence of sympathy. There is (so to speak) an atmosphere of humour about him, which reflects the immediate object with kindly warmth and lustre. His acting both in Maître Jacques and in the after-piece evinced that easy play of feeling, that transition from 381grave to gay, that mixture of wit and folly, those natural varieties of laughter and tears, which mark the master in his art and the genuine son of Momus.

We dropped in at Covent Garden to see Mr. Warde in the Seraglio and Charles Kemble in Charles the Second, who seems really born for the character, and whose fine person and accomplishments are thrown away in these degenerate days. Mr. Power makes a very passable Irish Rochester: but the wit and the rake had defects enough of his own to answer for, without having the brogue added to them. The same fault may be found with Mr. Warde, who would make a very respectable actor in the middle walk of tragedy, could he but controul his voice within the compass of the four seas.

There has been no novelty this week at any of our theatres, English or French, except that little Mademoiselle Jenny Vertpre has been metamorphosed into a cat, and has been playing in the Pie Voleuse at the Lyceum. She played the first charmingly; the last prettily, though we have seen it done better. There is a calibre, a weight of metal in Miss Kelly’s pathos, which the French actress is without. Our lively neighbours are doubtless ‘born to converse, to live, and act with ease’—all is set in motion like a feather, stopped like a feather. Smiles play upon the lips, tears start into their eyes and are dried up for nothing; an exclamation and a sigh settle the account between life and death; all is a game at make-believe, thoughtless and innocent as childhood, in the baby-house of their imagination—but if you wish to see the heart-strings crack, go and see Miss Kelly in the Maid of Palisseau; or if you would see the stately pillar of Tragedy itself fall and crush the subjected world, then you should have witnessed Mrs. Siddons formerly in some of her overwhelming parts. That was a flood of tears indeed—a drinking of the brimming cup of human joys and woes to the very last drop, the recollection of which may serve one all the rest of one’s life. We understand that not long ago Sir Walter Scott and Mrs. Siddons met in the same room before Mr. Martin’s picture of the Fall of Nineveh—two such spectators the world cannot match again, the one by the common consent of mankind the foremost writer of his age, the other in the eyes of all who saw her prime or her maturity, the queen and mistress of the tragic scene. Forgive us, gentle, ever-living shade of Jenny Deans, agonised soul of Balfour of Burley, heroic spirit of Rebecca of York, immortal 382memory of Dumbie Dikes and of a thousand more, if we should have turned from you and from him who invented you, to bow the knee and kiss the hem of the garment of her who represented to our youthful gaze the Mourning Bride, Hermione, Belvidera, Beverley’s wife, and was the Muse of Tragedy personified. We are sorry that Mrs. Siddons has abridged Paradise Lost, and that Sir Walter has written a triumphant peroration over ‘the worst, the second fall of man.’ We are perhaps runagates and Goths; but the smell of the links that used to ply between Covent garden and Drury lane prevails in our imagination over all the heather-bloom of Scotland, and we declare that Mrs. Siddons appears to us the more masculine spirit of the two. Sir Walter (when all’s said and done) is an inspired butler, a ‘Yes and No, my Lord’ fellow in a noble family—Mrs. Siddons is like a cast from the antique, or rather like the original, divine or more than human, from which it was taken. Yet close to each other, within narrow space, were placed two heads, on which glory sat plumed, beat two hearts over which had rolled the volume of earth’s bliss or woe, were interchanged glances that had reflected the brightness of the universe. Who would not rather see Sir Walter Scott’s fringed eyelids and storied forehead than the vacant brow of prince or peer? When Mrs. Siddons used to sit in parties and at drawing-rooms, the Lady Marys and the Lady Dorothys of the day came and peeped into the room to get a glance of her, with more awe and wonder than if it had been a queen. This was honour, this was power. There was but one person in the world who would have drawn the gaping gaze of curiosity from these and from all the crowned heads in Europe; and Sir Walter exults that he perished like a felon in the grasp of a jailor. We must indeed admire the talents, when we forgive the use of them: or is it that genius, with its lofty crest and variegated colours, seems destined like the serpent to lick the dust, and crawl all its life with its belly on the ground? We can reckon up in our time three great tragic performers; Mrs. Siddons, Mr. Kean, and Madame Pasta. (If there is a fourth instance, we either know not of it, or it is Miss Kelly: but that in a parenthesis, as our private opinion, or that of persons no wiser than ourselves.) Of these three, Mrs. Siddons seemed to command every source of terror and pity, and to rule over their wildest elements with inborn ease and dignity. Her person was made to contain her spirit; her soul to fill and animate her person. Her eye answered to her voice. She wore a crown. She looked as if descended from a higher sphere, and walked the earth in majesty and pride. She sounded the full diapason, touched all chords of passion, they thrilled through her, and yet she preserved an elevation of thought and character above them, like the tall cliff round which the tempest 383roars, but its head reposes in the blue serene! Mrs. Siddons combined the utmost grandeur and force with every variety of expression and excellence: her transitions were rapid and extreme, but were massed into unity and breadth—there was nothing warped or starting from its place—she produced the most overpowering effects^[42] without the slightest effort, by a look, a word, a gesture. Mr. Kean, in the intellectual and impassioned part, is in our judgment equal to any one, but he produces his most striking effects by fits and starts, without the same general tone and elevation of character, and, for want of the instrumental advantages, with an appearance of effort and sometimes of extravagance. Madame Pasta, on the contrary, never goes out of her way, never aims at effect or startles by any one pointed passage, nor does she combine a variety of feelings together (as far as we have seen) but she rises to the very summit of her art, and satisfies every expectation by absolute and unbroken integrity of purpose, and by the increasing and unconscious intensity of passion. She has neither Mr. Kean’s inequalities nor Mrs. Siddons’s scope: she neither deviates from the passion nor rises above it, but she commits herself wholly to its impulse, borrows strength from its strength, ascends with it to heaven, or is buried in the abyss. In a word, she is the creature of truth and nature, and joins the utmost simplicity with the utmost force. This has little to do with Mademoiselle Jenny Vertpre: ah! she is charming too, and we hope to have a great deal to say in her praise—twenty years hence. She counts her silver spoons inimitably, and when she is suspected of stealing one of them says, ‘C’est desagreable,’ in a voice and manner that none but a Frenchwoman can. The Misanthrope and the Bourgeois Gentilhomme have been repeated at this theatre; and M. Perlet has done equal justice to Moliere’s sententious gravity in the one, and to his delightful flighty farce and fanciful exaggeration of folly in the other. Moliere is our Wycherley and O’Keefe, both in one: or it might be said that he possessed the critical sense of Montaigne, with the exuberant mirth and humour of Rabelais.—We believe this little theatre, with its lively company and excellent pieces, answers tolerably well, as most French theatres do. We were thinking of this the other evening, and thought we had accounted for it. The French performances, with a tenth of the 384audience, pay better than the English with ten times the number and receipts. How so? It arises, on a critical inquiry, from the unity of place, which is the fundamental law of the French drama. One barbarism leads to another;—a slight technical distinction involves manager after manager in bankruptcy and ruin. Where there is no change of situation, the scenery is the same; and where this is the case, it is no object either of attraction or expense. Little more is required than a drop-scene. Therefore, all you have to do is to get good plays, and a good company to perform them: three or four hundred people in the house will maintain a dozen or a score of comedians on the stage; and the excellence of the performance and the taste of the town keep pace with one another, and with the absence of show and extrinsic decoration. But with us all this is reversed. The scene travels, and our scene-shifters, scene-painters, mechanists, and the whole theatrical commissariat go along with it. The variety, the gaudiness, the expense is endless: to pay for the getting up such an immense apparatus, the houses must be enlarged to hold a proportionable rabble of ‘barren spectators:’ the farther off they are thrown, the stronger must be the glare, the more astonishing the effect, and the play and the players (with all relish for wit or nature) dwindle into insignificance, and are lost in the blaze of a huge chandelier or the grin of a baboon. We do not see the features of the actors, but we admire (very justly) Mr. Stanfield’s landscape back-grounds, or a castle set on fire by Mr. Farley; we hear the din and bray of the orchestra, not the honeyed words of the poet; and still we wonder that operas and melo-drames flourish, and that the legitimate stage and good old English Comedy languishes. Poor old green curtain! when thou wast withdrawn to make room for gas lights and shining marble pillars, the last relic of the heart-felt pageant faded; and the Veluti in speculum flew after Astræa to the skies!

The new comedy in three acts brought out at this theatre on Tuesday evening is, we apprehend, taken from a French piece, entitled Les Trois Quartiers. The Three Quarters of the town indicate the three sorts or stages of society, as they are to be met with in the Rue St. Honoré, the Rue Mont Blanc, and the Fauxbourg St. Germain, which may be supposed to answer (we speak under correction of the Secretary of the Admiralty, skilled as he is in the transitions from low to high 385life) to our Fish-street-hill, Russell and Grosvenor square. It was thought a nice distinction in Miss Burney, forty years ago, to place the residence of the Harrells in Portman square, and to assign Grosvenor square to the Delville family; the one being considered as the resort of the upstart fashionables, the other of the old gentry. To know whether this court-geography holds good in the present year, see the files of the John Bull, or the Last Series of Sayings and Doings, where such matters are noted and discussed with a becoming want of elegance and decorum, which is made up for by the innate loftiness of the subject. In the French piece, a rich adventurer from South America is introduced into these different circles by an officious go-between, as a travelled prodigy, un homme qui a vu Bolivar; and in each his perplexity and astonishment increases with the progress and refinement of manners in the Three Quarters of the town. There is some sense in that; and the French actors have the skill to make the line of demarcation intelligible. But here we vow that though we shift the scene, no progress is made; or we are at the top of the tree in the second stage. Kitty Corderoy is sufficiently forward and vulgar, it is true; Amelia Mammonton is naturally elegant and genteel; but we get no farther; or rather Lady Charlewood is a falling off, having neither natural nor acquired grace; and the Countess Dowager Delamere is distinguished by nothing but a rude and harsh familiarity of manner. The Banker (Mr. Cooper) has evidently the advantage of the Lord (Mr. Hooper); and Jack Pointer (Mr. Jones) a busybody and toad-eater, carries it hollow by dint of sheer impudence and impertinence. Mr. Jones’s Bond street slang—‘She’s a delicious creature’—is echoed every five minutes by Lady Delamere’s—‘You’ll excuse my freedom, Lady Charlewood;’ the changes are rung upon a few and slender notes of fashion, while the author has the full range of the Cockney dialect, and sinks deep in the bathos of low life. Mrs. Corderoy, we observe, is played by a Mrs. C. Jones. Is Mr. Jones lately married? If so, we congratulate him: she is an excellent cook. We could wish the accomplished author of Killing no Murder, he who dips his pen so carelessly in poison or honey, the expert improvisatori in fact or fiction, would turn his thoughts to this matter; give us a comedy or criticism to show our actors or play-wrights what they ought to do in these degenerate days; and from his ease of access to palaces or princes, give us a taste of true refinement, the court-air, the drawing-room grace, the after-dinner conversation, the mornings and the evenings of the great, instead of confining his abilities to teaching young gentlemen at Long’s how to eat their fish with a silver fork: the waiters might do that just as well. Or could not Mr. Croker, now that Augustus has given peace to sea and land, and who shakes 386epics and reviews from his brow ‘like dew-drops from the lion’s mane,’ smile a comedy that should point the nice gradations from the city to the court—

and make it for ever impossible for Cheapside to pass Temple-bar or Russell-square to step into the Regent’s Park? We understand, indeed, that Mr. Colburn has a plan in contemplation to remedy all this, and that we may look forward to the dawn of a new era in literature, through the happy idea which the little bookselling Buonaparte has conceived of establishing an inviolable Concordat between the world of genius and fashion. The proposal is to buy up the manuscripts of all authors by profession, to lock them in a drawer, so as to put the whole corps of Garretteers and Grub street writers on the shelf, and leave the door open to none but persons of quality and amateurs, lords, ladies, and hangers-on of the great. The scheme has in a great measure succeeded in the periodical department, and only requires a little management to be extended to the stage. What an air already breathes from the New Parnassus! What a light breaks over Drury-Lane and Covent-Garden! What delicacy, what discrimination, what refinement of sentiment! What halycon days! What peaceable productions! There will be no grossness, no violence, no political allusions or party spite! The best understanding will subsist between Government and men of letters, nor will there be any occasion for a Dramatic Censor, when Ministers of State furnish the plot, and Peeresses in their own right suggest the last corrections to the dialogue. There is no doubt the taste for the drama will be revived by means of such an arrangement—people of fashion will go to see what people of fashion write—the manners of high life will be reflected on the stage as in the mirrors at each end of the dress circle—

the hireling crew will withdraw to hide themselves in a garret or a jail—the pit will wonder—the galleries be silent or shut up—Lord Porchester’s tragedy will be crowned with bays, Lord Morpeth’s transferred from the closet to the stage—Mr. Moore, by particular desire of several persons of distinction, will try his hand at another Blue-Stocking affair—and the Sphynx, the Athenæum, the Argus (a new evening), and the Aurora (a new morning paper), which Mr. Buckingham will by that time have set up on the same independent principles of voluntary contribution, will applaud to the skies the change which Mr. Colburn’s spirit and genius will have brought like a perfect paradise upon earth. It is whispered that a certain Duke 387has got through the first act of a piece, called ‘The Deaf and Dumb Politician,’ but dreads the vulgar composition of the public taste:—nay, who knows but the coast being cleared of plebeian scribblers and the rabble of competitors, Majesty itself might not take the field, the Lady Godiva of the scene, in a night-gown and slippers, with a grand romantic interlude called ‘The Prince and the Pretender, or the Year 1745’—with Mr. O—holding the glass-door in Burlington street for three days together in his hand, and Mr. C—p—b—ll to officiate as Peeping Tom—‘Oh! dearest Ophelia, we are ill at these numbers:’ but neither Ups and Downs nor Carron-Side suggested anything better. Mr. Liston in the first played a city fortune-hunter, who pays his addresses to, who jilts, and is jilted by three mistresses in succession, to whom he is introduced by Jack Pointer (Jones), his pretensions rising with his fortune, and with whom he is confronted and exposed without much effect in the last act. He at first aspires no higher than to Kitty Corderoy, a tradesman’s daughter; but having twenty thousand pounds left him, he contrives to cut with her, to her great joy, she being secretly in love with Mr. Christopher Higgins (Russell), her father’s apprentice, a person by no means approved by her mother Mrs. Corderoy (Mrs. C. Jones), because he himself is ‘a little sneaking chap,’ and his father a tailor—as if tailors were not in the order of nature or of civil society. Our hero, that is, Mr. Felix Mudberry, next offers himself, with a large bunch of flowers and a suit of clothes picked up on the way at the Readymade Depôt, to Miss Amelia Mammonton (the charming Miss Ellen Tree), a banker’s sister, who is in love with Earl Delamere (Mr. Hooper), love and romantic sentiment, according to the situation or rank in which it is found, aiming at still greater and more airy heights. She laughs at him and his ‘delicate attentions’ (as she well may)—but being led to suppose that his uncle, Mr. Stanley, a Liverpool merchant, or as he used to call him ‘Black Boy Billy,’ is dead, and has left him a fortune of half a million, he begins to blubber out his sorrow for his uncle’s death and his own ‘good, he means, bad fortune,’ stammers his excuses for leaving the company of Mr. Mammonton and his sister, and is wound up to a Countess by his mischievous prompter. Lady Charlewood (Miss I. Paton) is disgusted with the behaviour of her new and absurd admirer; her mother, the Countess Dowager Delamere (Mrs. Davison), admires his fortune, and patronises the match according to the etiquette of rank and high life. His inconstancy and meanness are however exposed in the meantime by Miss Kitty Corderoy, who is intimate with both the young ladies, having been at the same school with them somewhere in the neighbourhood of London, and runs up and 388down ‘the Ladder of Life’ as she pleases (in the French play the corresponding character is a milliner, which is a little more in keeping)—and Mr. Felix Mudberry, in his own emphatic phrase, is ‘blown’ by all the three at once;—the bubble of his legacy also bursts, and Jack Pointer turning short round upon him at this extremity, advises him to go abroad again, make another fortune, and on his return, promises to introduce him to a Princess! Mr. Liston produced a good deal of laughter in the part, but perhaps from not being near enough to see his face, the drollery fell flat upon us. It was (to get within bow-shot of an Hibernicism) like hearing the report of a pistol, before seeing the flash. Weepers and a round hat do not move our risible muscles. We think Mr. Liston shines in the cockney, more than in the cockney and dandy together. ‘He knows his cue best without a prompter.’ His affectation even must be unaffected. We will match his lead against anybody’s, we will not answer for the tinsel. We have a delicate request to make of him, that he would play Madge for his benefit and our satisfaction—unless Moll Flagon should complain of it as compromising her dignity. Is this piece Mr. Kenney’s? It shivers on the brink of nothing, and plunges over head and ears into nonsense. We wish our authors and architects, if they must give us foreign models, would give them entire, and not by bits and samples, altering only to spoil.

Carron-Side, or the Fête Champêtre, a new Opera, the words by Mr. Planche, the music by M. Liverati, was brought out here on Tuesday, and was repeated on Thursday. The dialogue is tolerable; and so are the songs. Miss Stephens was the chief attraction in it; though she does not make much figure by Scottish stream or mountain. Mr. Sapio and Mr. Wood personated, the one a military, the other a naval hero in it, and maintained the superiority of their several professions in song and bold defiance—with equal loudness and skill. Miss Stephens (Blanche Mackay) the supposed daughter of a peasant, is in love with Captain Allan Lindsay (Sapio), and he with her, though he is about to be married to Grace Campbell (Miss Cawse), who likes another of her cousins, Cornet Hector Lindsay (Mr. Wood) quite as well or better, as far as we could judge by the event. When Blanche has to present a bouquet to the intended couple on the morning of their nuptials, and to sing a song of congratulation, her voice falters and she faints away in the midst of it. She then, partly through shame and partly through vexation, escapes to the house of the miller (Little Keely) and his wife (Miss Goward), 389where she is kindly received, but supposed by her own friends to have rashly drowned herself. The anguish of Captain Allan Lindsay is not to be restrained on this occasion, and betrays his passion for the unhappy girl, who is at the same time discovered not to be the real daughter of the old trumpeter Donald Mackay (Bartley), but the daughter of Mrs. Campbell, who had been supposed to be lost when an infant in the Spanish campaign. The mystery being cleared up, the secret of her birth is communicated to poor Blanche amidst her smiles and tears. Miss Grace Campbell under the circumstances, and from her previous indifference, declares for Cornet Lindsay, and Blanche is united to the Captain. Mr. Keely crept on and off the stage as usual; and Miss Cawse danced and flourished round it as she sung, because Madame Vestris does so. We are quite satisfied with Madame Vestris, without wishing to see her imitated.

We do not wonder at Mr. Kean’s want of success in Paris. As they do not like or understand Shakespear, it is not to be supposed they should like or understand any one who goes near to represent him, or who gives anything more than a trite version or modernised paraphrase of him. Voltaire has borrowed largely from the English dramatist, and has taken Othello’s dying speech almost entire, as far as the prose-ground of it, but has contrived to leave out all the striking, picturesque points of it:—so they would no doubt object to and cancel, by a sweeping condemnation, all the unexpected and marked beauties of an impassioned recitation of it. Whatever is not literal and conventional, is with them extravagant and grotesque: they have so long been accustomed (we are speaking of serious matters) to consider affectation as nature, that they consider nature when it comes across them as affectation and quaintness.

So the actor’s eye (if truly inspired) comprehends more than is set down for him, starts at hidden fancies that only pale passion sees; and his voice is the trembling echo and the broken instrument of 390thoughts and of an agony that lie too deep for mere words to express. This licence, that is, this truth of nature is, with our accomplished and more thorough-bred neighbours, entirely out of the question. Their art, whether in poetry, acting, painting, is well-drilled regimental art:—it is art in uniform and on parade. Thus tragic poetry cannot, in its dumb despair, call on all nature to supply it with an appropriate language, that places what it feels in palpable and lofty imagery before the reader: it must, on the contrary, have its rhetorical and didactic flourishes all ready for the occasion—these may be as tedious, as pompous, as bombastic as you please, but to pass or allude to anything beyond them, is vile and Gothic indeed. The actor may mouth, rant, and whine as much as he pleases, so that he does it in measured time, and seems in perfect health and spirits all the while; but if he is once thrown off his guard, and loses sight of himself and the audience in the sufferings of his hero, it is all over with him. Again, an actor’s face ‘should be as a book where one may read strange matters.’ This would be an inexpiable offence in France, where there is nothing strange, and where all must appear upon the surface or be kept quite out of sight, on the score of decency and good manners. As the poet must introduce no image or sentiment for which there is not a prescribed formula, so the tragedian must give no shade or inflection of feeling which the entire audience were not prepared complacently to anticipate. The self-love of the pit would rise in open rebellion if he did. In France it is a rule that no person is wiser than another: you cannot be beforehand with their conceit and infinite superiority in impertinence. So they themselves tell the story of a man who, hearing of the assassination of the Duke of Berri, and not willing to allow that his informant had the start of him on so interesting a topic, made answer—‘Yes, I knew it!’ We are not therefore surprised that the Parisians find fault with the only actor of much genius we possess: he must puzzle them almost as much as the Hetman Platoff; and this assuredly they cannot forgive, as in the present case their rank cowardice cannot get the better of their consummate vanity. It is ludicrous too that they should charge us with extravagance and fustian—they, who have their Pensions de l’Univers and Diligences de l’Univers^[43] stuck on every pillar and post! As we know what the most refined people in the universe do not like, we are also happy in learning what they do like. For others to despise what we admire, is always to assume an attitude of seeming superiority over us: to admire what we do not think much of, is to give us our revenge again. Fastidiousness is here, as in many other cases, the effect not 391of an excess of refinement, but of a want of conception. When Voltaire called Shakespear a barbarian, we were a little staggered in our previous opinion, as we could not tell what lofty models of excellence he contemplated in his own mind; but when he pronounced Addison’s Cato to be a perfect tragedy, we knew what to think of him and ourselves. He might as well have pronounced a marble slab to be a perfect statue. In like manner, it might ‘give us pause’ that such competent critics are dissatisfied with Mr. Kean, if we did not learn in the same breath that they are in raptures with Mr. C. Kemble, Mr. Macready, and Miss Smithson; not that we disapprove of the last, but that being our own country people, we beg leave to judge of their relative merits better than foreigners. If they scouted our pretentions altogether, we might despond; but as they laud us in the wrong place, we may smile in our turn. The contradiction between us is not owing to an inferiority of nature, but to a difference of opinion. We can understand why, with reason, they admire Macready: he declaims well, and so far resembles good French actors. Mr. C. Kemble is not only an excellent actor, but a very good-looking man; and good looks are a letter of recommendation, whether among the Laplanders or Hottentots, at Zenith or the Pole. Miss Smithson is tall; and the French admire tall women. All these come under a class, and meet with obvious sympathy and approbation. Mr. Kean, on the other hand, stands alone,—is merely an original; and the French hate originality: it seems to imply that there is some possible excellence or talent that they are without! Beside it appears that they expected him to be a giant. Mon Dieu qu’il est petit!—as if this was an insuperable bar to his bestriding the theatric world like a Colossus. He is diminutive, it is true: so was the Little Corporal: but since the latter disappeared from the stage, they have ceased to be the Great Nation. They stir up our bile by their arrogance and narrow-mindedness, and we cannot help its overflowing in some degree of ill-humour and petulance. We were heartily glad to find that Mr. Knowles’s tragedy of Virginius is well received in Paris—(we would always rather agree with, than differ from them, for we know their subtlety and double edge)—but this is to be attributed to the inherent and classical excellence of the composition. Its scenes present a series of elegant bas-reliefs, and are equally enchanting to the eye and to the ear.

We have received a letter from a Correspondent, praying us to put down the large poke-bonnets which ladies at present take with them to the theatre, and often persist in keeping on, as a female privilege. We confess, we do not see the custom in that amiable light: it 392appears to us the privilege of annoying others without any object. He says, that on applying to a gentleman in the gallery of the King’s Theatre, to know if a lady with him would have any objection to take off her bonnet, which, with her involuntary movements from side to side, prevented three persons behind her from seeing or enjoying the Opera, her friend answered, ‘You see she is in the same situation with yourself,’ pointing to another lady just before her. So that the evil being doubled was an argument for it. At this rate, people might go to the play with umbrellas, and hold them open the whole time,—or ladies with their parasols, if we must have a more light and portable nuisance,—and by thus setting up a screen to the performance, and making the absurdity truly English and complete, put an end to it by common consent of those who are only bent on incommoding others, when they think they are in some degree singular in doing it. We expect some novelty (of which we have had a dreary dearth of late) on the opening of the Haymarket Theatre next week, and a treat, which we greatly long for, in little Bartolozzi. But we must not count upon our good fortune too soon.

This theatre opened on Saturday with The School for Scandal and Past Ten O’clock. The chief novelty in the former was Munden’s Sir Peter Teazle. We cannot speak very favourably of it. He did not feel at home in the part, which is indeed quite out of his way. His lengthened visage and abrupt tones did not suit the character or sentiments of Sir Peter. Sir Peter is a common every-day sort of character, a tetchy amorous old bachelor, who has married a young wife, with an uneasy consciousness of his own infirmities, and placed in situations to make those infirmities more ridiculous. But still he is a classical character, and not a grotesque; and, therefore, the actor’s peculiar talents were thrown away upon him, or rather were judiciously kept as much as possible in the back-ground, and hardly dared to show themselves once the whole evening. Mr. Munden went through the part with laudable gravity and decorum, without making any hole in his manners; nor did he purposely play the clown or pantomime in any of the scenes. Yet the negation of farce is not comedy. Sir Peter was a knight newly dubbed as well as married, a gentleman on his good behaviour both with his mistress and the public. We missed the irresistible expansion of his broad, shining 393face; and reckoned up a number of suppressed shrugs, and embryo grimaces, that shrunk from the glare of the new gas lights. His eyebrows were not lifted up with wonder; his lips were not moistened with jests as with marmalade; nor did his chin drop down once its whole length as with a total dislocation of his ideas. In the scene of the discovery in the fourth act, where his wife as ‘the little French Milliner’ is concealed behind the screen, he took a greater license, but from the mechanical restraint to which he had been subjected, there was something even here dolorous and petrified in his manner. If, however, Mr. Munden did penance in Sir Peter, it was a holyday-time with him, high carnival in Old Nosy in the farce, where he made himself and the audience amends for all the temptations he had resisted to indulge his natural genius, and let out his whole faculties of face, voice, and gesture. In his character, as an old steward, he is reeling-ripe from the beginning to the end of the piece; and he produces a dizziness in the heads of the audience as unavoidable, though more pleasant than that which overtakes the passengers in a Margate hoy. The School for Scandal was, in the other characters, cast much as usual, and as well as the strength of the company in genteel comedy would permit. Mrs. Davison’s Lady Teazle, though not without spirit, is too coarse and hoydening. Wallack’s Joseph Surface wanted dignity and plausibility. Not to compare him with old Jack Palmer, he does not hit off the officious condescending solemnity of the character so well as Young. He seems sulky and reserved, instead of being self-complacent and ostentatious; to shrink into a cautious contemplation of his own designs and villainy, instead of protecting others under the shadow of his assumed virtues, and covering their failings and defects with a veil of pompous sentiment. It was said of Garrick, that he played the footman too like the fine gentleman; Mr. Wallack, on the other hand, plays the fine gentleman too much like the footman. When dressed to most advantage, he puts us in mind of a valet out of livery. Mr. Rae’s Charles Surface was without any thing to recommend it, but the wit, gaiety, and magnanimity of the author. His mode of speaking is more harsh and untuneable in comedy than in regular declamation, which in some measure hides its habitual defects. It is a brogue in full gallop suddenly stopped short by the turnpike gate of criticism. Harley’s Sir Benjamin Backbite was inoffensive from its insipidity; and Knight as old Crabtree had painted his eyebrows very naturally. The house was not very crowded. The curtain drew up punctually at seven, without any previous expression of impatience; and the play was over before ten: but the rapidity with which the acts followed one another, and the almost immediate interruption of the music between 394the acts as soon as it had struck up, produced on us an unpleasant effect. It was like going a journey in the mail-coach, where they do not allow you time for your meals. A good play, like a hearty dinner, requires some time for digestion: the music in the orchestra acts upon the imagination, like wine upon the stomach; and habit makes it as ungrateful to us to be disappointed of the one as to be deprived of the other.

This theatre opened last night with Hamlet, and the Miller and his Men. The chief improvement in the house seems to us to be the large mirrors at each end of the first row of boxes, which reflect the company in a brilliant perspective, and have a very magical effect. The great chandelier suspended from the top of the theatre, we should admire more, if it did not put out our eyes in looking at it; nor do we think the glare it produces any addition to the general appearance of the company or the house. The only advantage resulting from it—that of throwing the light upon the countenances of the actors from above instead of from below (which last method inverts the natural shadows of the face, and distorts the expression), is defeated by the gas lights which are still retained between the stage and the orchestra. Nor do we know how these can well be dispensed with, as it is by raising or withdrawing them that the stage is enlightened or darkened as the occasion requires it. The house was exceedingly full, and the play went off as well as could be expected. Mr. Young’s Hamlet is not his most happy or successful effort. He in a great measure imitates Mr. Kemble, and Mr. Kemble is a bad model in this part; even where he is original he is not more what he ought to be, not more like Hamlet. He declaims it very well, and rants it very well; but where is the expression of the feeling?—where the thought beyond all ordinary means of expression, wrapped up in itself as in a dim cloud, shown most by being hid, that derives its energy from rest, not from action, and is as it were audible from its very silence? Mr. Young, we allow, rehearsed several passages very well, as detached passages from a school-boy’s exercise: but he wanted keeping—the fine inflections, sudden or gradual, of the character—the unthought-of swellings of the passion—the involuntary ebbing and flowing of his idle purposes. This actor in fact executes his conception well: but then his conception is either common-place, 395or wrong. He has not always the judgment or the genius to pitch each passage in the right key, and in harmony with the rest. We will mention only two instances. In reciting the description of man as the noblest of creatures, ‘the paragon of animals,’ &c., Mr. Young was so vehement, that he seemed quite angry; and his sudden turning round to the players at the conclusion of the speech was exactly as if they had given him some serious offence by their ‘smiling.’ Again, he spoke the soliloquy after the scene in which the player gives the description of Pyrrhus, in a style not conveying the idea of his own melancholy and weakness as contrasted with the theatrical fury of the imaginary hero, but as if he had himself caught by mere physical infection the very fury which he describes himself to be without. This was certainly not right, but (what is perhaps better) it was applauded. Mr. Bonnell Thornton was Horatio, and appeared not to have recovered all the evening from his fright at first seeing the Ghost. His pronunciation is thick, as if he spoke with pebbles in his mouth; nor is his emphasis judicious. Mr. Egerton’s Ghost is the most substantial we ever saw. He does not look like one that has ‘peaked or pined’ long, and has by no means realized Hamlet’s wish—

Miss Matthews played ‘the pretty Ophelia’ very pleasingly. She is as good an Ophelia as we have lately seen—better, we think than Miss Stephens, because she does not sing quite so well. This character ought not indeed to be in general given to a fine singer; for it has been well observed, that ‘Ophelia does not go mad because she can sing, but she sings because she has gone mad.’

The excellent comedy of The Hypocrite was acted here last night. Dowton’s Dr. Cantwell, is a very admirable and edifying performance. The divine and human affections are ‘very craftily qualified’ in his composition, which is a mixture of the Methodist parson ingrafted on the old French pietist, and accomplished Abbé. The courtly air of Moliere’s Tartuffe has been considerably lowered down and vulgarised to fit the character to the grossness of modern times and circumstances: only the general features of the character, and the prominent incidents of the story, have been retained by the 396English translator, and they seem to require the long speeches, the oratorical sentiments, and laboured casuistry of the original author to render them probable or even credible. It has been remarked, that the wonderful success of this piece on the French stage is a lasting monument of the stress laid by that talking and credulous nation on all verbal professions of virtue and sincerity, and of the little difference they make between words and things. With all the pains that have been taken to bring it within the verge of verisimilitude by the aid of popular allusions and religious prejudices, it with difficulty naturalizes on our own stage, and remains at last an incongruous, though a very striking and instructive caricature. Dowton’s jovial and hearty characters are his best; his demure and hypocritical ones are only his second best. His Dr. Cantwell is not so good as his Major Sturgeon, or his Sir Anthony Absolute, but still it is very good. Their excellence consists in giving way to the ebullition of his feelings of social earnestness, or vainglorious ostentation; the excellence of this in the systematic concealment of his inmost thoughts and purposes. Cantwell sighs out his soul with the melancholy formality of a piece of clockwork, and exhibits the encroachments of amorous importunity under a mask of still life. The locks of his hair are combed with appropriate sleekness and unpretending humility over his forehead and shoulders: his face looks godly and greasy; his person and mind are well fortified in a decent suit of plain broad cloth, and the calves of his legs look stout and saint-like in stockings of dark pepper-and-salt fleecy hosiery. Bitter smiles contend with falling tears; the whining tones of the conventicle with the insolence of success, and the triumph of his unbridled rage in the last act over his phlegmatic hypocrisy is complete. He was admirably supported by Mrs. Sparks, as old Lady Lambert, and by Oxberry as Mawworm. This last character is as loose and dangling as the sails of a windmill, and is puffed up and set in motion by one continuous blast of folly and fanaticism. The other characters in the piece were less happily supported.

At this theatre last night Miss Brunton appeared in Rosalind, in As you Like it. She certainly played the part very respectably and very agreeably, but not exquisitely; and if it is not played exquisitely, in our mind it is spoiled. ‘But would Shakspeare’s 397Rosalind do so?’ is a question that, if put home as it ought to be, might deter many an accomplished young lady from attempting to give life to the careless, inimitable graces of this ideal creation of the poet’s art. Miss Brunton recited the different passages with considerable point, intelligence, and archness, like a lively and sensible school-girl, repeating it as an exercise; but she was not half giddy, fond, and rapturous enough for Rosalind. She spoke her sentences with ‘good emphasis and discretion,’ instead of running herself and the imaginations of the audience fairly out of breath with pleasure, love, wit, and playful gaiety. She has, however, white teeth and black eyes, a clear voice, a pleasing figure, with youth on her side, and a very good understanding to boot. What more can be required in a young actress, except by fastidious critics like us? She sung the Cuckoo song very prettily, and was encored in it. The other parts were not very elaborately got up. We liked Mr. Duruset’s two songs as well as any thing else. Mr. Young’s Jaques was less spirited than we have sometimes seen it: indeed, the character is in some measure spoiled to his hands by the prompt-book critics, who have put a great deal of improper praise of himself into the mouth of the melancholy Jaques. It required some contrivance to make him or Shakspeare an egotist! Mr. Fawcett’s Touchstone was amusing, but too rapid and slovenly. There are some parts of this character which the actor probably thinks it becoming his Managerial dignity to hurry over as fast as possible. Mrs. Gibbs’s Audrey is almost too good. If ‘the gods have not made her poetical,’ they have at least inspired her with the very spirit of folly, and with all its bliss. A Russian ballet, and The Libertine, closed the entertainments of the evening. The former of these is a curious exhibition of Russian costume, but it does not exhibit the Miss Dennetts to any advantage. The play of As you Like it was given out again for Monday, instead of The Slave.

Mr. Maywood appeared here in Zanga last night. It is not certainly from any wish to discourage, but we cannot speak so favourably of his performance of this character as of his Shylock. Considerable diffidence still appears in this actor’s manner, and retards his progress to reputation and excellence. He does not give sufficient scope and vehemence to the impassioned parts of the character, nor sufficient 398decision and significance to its wily and malignant duplicity. Zanga’s blood is on fire; it boils in his veins; it should dilate, and agitate his whole frame with the fiercest rage and revenge: and again, the suppression of his constitutional ardour, of the ungovernable passions that torment and goad on his mind, ought to be marked with a correspondent degree of artful circumspection and studied hypocrisy. In both extremes (for the character is in extremes throughout) we thought Mr. Maywood failed. His rage and hatred, where it had opportunity to vent itself in a torrent of exclamations, was not strong or sustained enough, and appeared in the very tempest and whirlwind of the passion, to recoil affrighted ‘from the sound itself had made.’ In the concealment of his purposes, and in the villainous insinuations with which he fills Alonzo’s mind, ‘distilling them like a leprous poison in his ear,’ he was ‘too tame,’ too servile and mechanical, and resembled more the busy, mercenary, credulous tale-bearer, than the dark, secret assassin of the peace, life, and honour, of his unsuspecting patron. The passage in which Mr. Maywood failed most, and in which the greatest symptoms of disapprobation manifested themselves, was that in which the greatest effect is generally produced, and where consequently the expectations are raised the highest: we mean, in the terrific and overpowering exclamation to Alonzo, ‘’Twas I that did it!’ In the long and nasal emphasis which Mr. Maywood laid on the monosyllable ‘I’ he shocked the ears and tired the patience of the auditors; less, we apprehend, from any thing wrong in his conception of the part, than from the remains of a provincial accent hanging on his pronunciation, and in passages of great vehemence and ardour, preventing him from having the full command of his utterance. In the less violent expression of passion, he was more successful; and gave one or two of the short soliloquies which occur of a more thoughtful and reasoning cast, with considerable depth of tone and feeling. We are not without hopes, when Mr. Kean returns, and imparts some of his confidence and admirable decision to his young rival or pupil, of seeing some very good acting between them: we say so without meaning a double-entendre.

This play of The Revenge is certainly a very indifferent piece of work; and in the hero of the story, Alonzo, Mr. Rae bolted some very ranting speeches, blank verse and all, clean out of his mouth like shot from the mouth of a cannon, with a tone and emphasis that might have startled ears less accustomed to the ‘forced gait’ and high clattering hoofs of his voice than ours. By stamping so hard, too, he raises not only a shout in the upper-gallery, but a cloud of dust from the green baize on the stage-floor.

The Wonder, or A Woman keeps a Secret, was performed here last night with admirable effect. Miss Brunton was the heroine of the piece, the charming Violante. We cannot speak in rapturous terms 402of her performance of the part. There is in the character itself an extreme spirit, and at the same time an extreme delicacy, which it is not easy to unite. Miss Brunton went through the different scenes, however, with a considerable degree of grace, vivacity, and general propriety, never falling below, and seldom rising above mediocrity. She does not

nor, according to another line of the same poet, which seems to convey a perfect idea of female comic acting,

We have already objected to this young lady’s recitation, a certain didactic, monotonous twang, and we cannot upon the present occasion recant our criticism. Miss Foote was Violante’s friend, Donna Isabella, and looked and lisped the part very mincingly. Charles Kemble’s Don Felix is one of his best parts. He raves, sighs, starts, frets, grows jealous, and relents, with all the characteristic spirit of an amorous hero; and in the drunken scene with old Don Lopez, where he produces his pistol as the marriage-contract, is particularly excellent and edifying. Fawcett played Lissardo as he plays almost every thing: he chattered like a magpie, and strutted like a crow in a gutter. But Emery’s Gibby was the thing: the genius of Scotland shone through his Highland plaid and broad bluff face: he seemed evidently afraid neither of having his voice heard, nor his face seen. In person he resembled the figure of the Highlander which we see stuck up as a sign at tobacconists’ windows. We never see nor wish to see better acting than this. Emery’s acting is indeed the most perfect imitation of common nature on the stage. Abbott was respectable as Colonel Briton. Mrs. Gibbs’s Flora was what every waiting-woman ought to be.

Otway’s noble tragedy of Venice Preserved was produced here last night. The effect upon the whole was not satisfactory. The novelties of the representation were Mr. H. Johnstone as Pierre, and Miss Campbell (from the Dublin Theatre) as Belvidera. Of Mr. Johnstone’s Pierre, after having seen Mr. Kemble in it, or even Mr. Young, we cannot speak in terms of applause. The character is not one of blunt energy, but of deep art. It is more sarcastic than fierce, and even the fierceness is more calculated to wound others than to shake or disturb himself. 403He is a master-mind, that plays with the foibles and passions of others and wields their energies to his dangerous purposes with conscious careless indifference. Mr. Johnstone was boisterous in his declamation, coarse in his irony, pompous and common-place in his action. Mr. Rae (as Jaffier), in the famous scene between these two characters, displayed some strong touches of nature and pathos. Miss Campbell, as Belvidera, did not altogether realize our idea of Otway’s heroine; one of ‘the most replenished sweet works of art or nature.’ Her face, though not handsome, is not without expression; but its character is strength, rather than softness. In her person she is graceful, and has a mixture of dignity and ease in her general deportment. Her voice is powerful, but in its higher tones it rises too much into a scream, and in its gentler ones subsides into a lisp, which is more infantine than feminine. In her general style of acting she put us sometimes in mind of Mrs Fawcit, sometimes of Miss Somerville, and more than once of Miss O’Neill. Her delineation of the part, if not sufficiently tender or delicate, was however forcible, impassioned, and affecting. We thought the last scene, in which she goes mad, and digs for her murdered husband in the grave, the best. We should indeed give her the preference over Miss O’Neill in this very trying scene. Her expression of the disordered wanderings of the imagination, and of the last desperate struggles of passion in her bosom, both by the intonations of her voice, and the varying actions of her body, were more natural, and less repulsive than the mere physical violence of Miss O’Neill in the same passage. The play was given out for repetition with some marks of disapprobation from a part of the audience.

Goldsmith’s comedy of She Stoops to Conquer was played at this theatre last night: its reception was highly favourable. It bears the stamp of the author’s genius, which was an indefinable mixture of the original and imitative. His plot, characters, and incidents, are all new, and yet they are all old, with little variation or disguise—that is, the writer sedulously avoided common-place, and sought for singularity, but found it rather in the unhackneyed and out-of-the-way inventions of those who had gone before him than in his own stores. His Vicar of Wakefield, which abounds more than any of his works in delightful and original traits, is still very much borrowed from Fielding’s Joseph Andrews. Again, the characters and adventures of Tony Lumpkin and 404his mother in the present comedy are a counterpart, even to the incident of the theft of the jewels, of those of the Widow Blackacre and her booby son in Wycherley’s Plain Dealer. The change of character and the rustic disguise of Miss Hardcastle, by which she gains her lover, are also a faint imitation of Letitia Hardy in The Belle’s Stratagem. This sort of plagiarism, which gives us a repetition of what are comparatively new and eccentric pictures of human life, is much to be preferred to the dull routine of trite, vapid, every-day common-places: but it is also more dangerous, as the stealing of pictures or family plate, where the goods are immediately identified, is surer of detection than the stealing of bank-notes or the current coin of the realm. Johnson’s sarcasm against some writer that ‘his singularity was not his excellence,’ cannot be applied to Goldsmith’s works in general: but we do not know whether it might not in severity be applied to She Stoops to Conquer. The incidents and characters are, some of them, exceedingly amusing; but it is a little at the expense of probability and bienseance. Tony Lumpkin is certainly a very essential, and unquestionably comic personage; and his absurdities or his humours were very effectually portrayed by Liston. His impenetrability and unconscious confusion of mind and face in reading and spelling out the letter was admirable. Charles Kemble’s bashful scene with his mistress was irresistibly ludicrous, and excellently well played: but still it did not quite overcome our incredulity as to the existence of such a character in such circumstances. It is a highly amusing caricature, a ridiculous fancy, but no more. One of the finest and most delicate touches of real acting we ever witnessed was in the transition of this modest gentleman’s manner to the easy and agreeable tone of familiarity with the supposed chambermaid, which was not total and abrupt, but exactly such in kind and degree as such a character of natural reserve and constitutional timidity would undergo from the change of circumstances. Miss Brunton’s Miss Hardcastle was a very correct and agreeable piece of acting. Mrs. Davenport’s Mrs. Hardcastle was like her acting in all such characters, as good as it could possibly be.

Macbeth (with Matthew Lock’s music) was played here last night. Mr. Kean was Macbeth, Miss Campbell Lady Macbeth. We never saw the former to such advantage in the part. Mr. Kean’s Macbeth 405did not use to be a great favourite with us, except in the murder scene: but he last night, we thought, lifted the general character to almost an equality with this single scene. At least, he played the whole in a style of boldness and grandeur which we have not seen before. He was ‘proud and lion-hearted, and lacked fear.’ A thousand hearts seemed swelling in his bosom. His voice rolled from the bottom of his breast like thunder, and his eye flashed scorching flame. Instead of going back (as some cunning critics who have been peeping out of their cells at him ever since he began his career, to watch for his first failure, and to fall upon him magnanimously at a disadvantage, have been predicting), he advances even beyond himself with manly steps and a heroic spirit. In the banquet-scene he was particularly excellent; and called forth, with complete effect, those deep tones of nature and passion, recoiling upon and bursting with a convulsive movement from the heart, which are his very best and surest resource, though he has as yet made the least use of them. Let him go on, and open all the sluices of passion in his breast which are yet unlocked. He has done much: let him do as much more, by giving as much depth of internal emotion (where it is required) as he has done of external vehemence, by adding stateliness and a measured march to infinite force and truth, that he may be the greatest poet, as he unquestionably is the greatest prose-actor of the stage. When we speak of him as deficient in these qualities, we only do so in comparison with Mrs. Siddons: it would be a mockery both of him and the public to compare him with any one else. But she had something of divine about her which Mr. Kean has not; he in general only shows us the utmost force of what is human. Of Miss Campbell’s Lady Macbeth we are almost afraid to speak, because we cannot speak favourably of it; yet a failure in this part is by no means decisive against the general merits of an actress. But she was altogether too tame and drawling for Lady Macbeth; and some attempts at originality failed of effect from the timidity with which they were executed.

Othello was played here on Saturday to a crowded house. There were two new appearances—Mr. Maywood as Iago, and a young lady as Desdemona. The name of this young debutante is not announced; but her reception was exceedingly flattering. Her face is handsome, her person elegant, her voice sweet, and her general deportment 406graceful and easy. There was also a considerable portion of tenderness and delicacy of feeling in several of the passages; but perhaps less than the character would bear. The only faults which we think it necessary to mention in her performance were, a too continual movement of the hands up and down, and sometimes a monotonous cadence in the recitation of the blank verse. Mr. Maywood’s Iago had some of the faults which we have noticed in his former characters; but in the most trying scenes in the third act with Othello, we thought him exceedingly happy and successful. His conception was just, and his execution effective. There was a cold stillness in his manner which was more frightful than the expression of the most inveterate malignity. He seemed to crawl and watch for his prey like the spider, instead of darting upon it like the serpent. In the commencement of the part his timidity appeared to prevent him from doing justice to his intention, and once or twice his voice grew loud and unmanageable, so as to excite some marks of disapprobation. Mr. Kean’s Othello is, we suppose, the finest piece of acting in the world. It is impossible either to describe or praise it adequately. We have never seen any actor so wrought upon, so ‘perplexed in the extreme.’ The energy of passion, as it expresses itself in action, is not the most terrific part; it is agony of his soul, showing itself in looks and tones of voice. In one part, where he listens in dumb despair to the fiend-like insinuations of Iago, he presented the very face, the marble aspect of Dante’s Count Ugolino. On his fixed eyelids ‘Horror sat plumed.’ In another part, where a gleam of hope or of tenderness returns to subdue the tumult of his passions, his voice broke in faltering accents from his overcharged breast. His lips might be said less to utter words, than to bleed drops of blood gushing from his heart. An instance of this was in his pronunciation of the line ‘Of one that loved not wisely but too well.’ The whole of this last speech was indeed given with exquisite force and beauty. We only object to the virulence with which he delivers the last line, and with which he stabs himself—a virulence which Othello would neither feel against himself at that moment, nor against the turbaned Turk (whom he had slain) at such a distance of time. His exclamation on seeing his wife, ‘I cannot think but Desdemona’s honest,’ was ‘the glorious triumph of exceeding love;’ a thought flashing conviction on his mind, and irradiating his countenance with joy, like sudden sunshine. In fact, almost every scene or sentence in this extraordinary exhibition is a master-piece of natural passion. The convulsed motion of the hands, and the involuntary swellings of the veins of the forehead in some of the most painful situations, should not only suggest topics of critical panegyric, but might furnish studies to the painter or anatomist.

Mr. Kean, after an absence of nearly six weeks, owing to serious indisposition, last night resumed his professional duties at this theatre, in the arduous character of Richard the Third. He was received on his appearance with all that warm greeting and enthusiastic applause, which are perhaps the highest meed of histrionic talent, and which are unfailingly called forth by this distinguished actor, after every suspension, however short, of the exercise of his art. This expression of good-will was increased, we think, in the present instance, by the recollection that the privation was caused by illness, and that it was possible the stage might have been deprived of one of its greatest ornaments. The acclamations, the waving of hats and handkerchiefs, continued for some minutes. Mr. Kean looks somewhat thinner than before his indisposition, but betrayed no deficiency of power; on the contrary, on account probably of our having for sometime past been doomed to witness very inferior performances, he appeared to surpass himself. He exhibited all that energy and discrimination, that faculty of identifying himself with the character he represents, which is to be ranked among the greatest efforts of human talents; he realized our conceptions of a being whose soul

The fine passages of this piece of acting are well known to the public; to quote them would be to extract the whole play. The conclusion of his career was marked by nearly as much applause as the commencement. The theatre was well filled, notwithstanding the extreme wetness of the evening.

Shakspeare’s tragedy of King John was acted last night at this theatre. Miss O’Neill performed the part of Constance; and though everything undertaken by this excellent actress must have a 411large proportion of good in it, we think that she is less successful in this than in most of her other characters: for this, physical causes, her youth for example, may be assigned; and her perfect delineation of Constance is, perhaps, reserved to the maturity of her age and her talents. She did not convey to us that warmth of temper, that susceptibility to grief and anger, which mark this injured Princess. Her speeches on the conclusion of the marriage with Blanch, which admit great variety of expression, were simple declamation, without passion and nearly in the same tone: but we would rather dwell on beauties than defects. Two or three lines at the end of the scene just mentioned made amends for all; when she says,

she utters the passage with beautiful feeling, and leaves nothing to be wished. The burst of indignation when Austria endeavours to silence her, subsiding instantly into a tone of the keenest contempt, was no less striking. Her very best effort was on quitting the stage, when, having uttered those pathetic exclamations for the loss of her son, she goes out in all the wildness of despair, as if occupied by no other thought than to seek him through the world. Young was a little too violent in some parts of the character of King John; but, on the whole, it may be considered a fine piece of acting: the two scenes with Hubert, and his ‘dying scene, were excellent. Faulconbridge, the bastard, is one of Charles Kemble’s happiest hits; his manly figure, and martial appearance, well bear him out in his scoffs at the Duke of Austria; he is no sooner knighted, than he seems made for his rank, and leads out Queen Elinor like a ‘lordly gallant.’ Some of the nobles of John’s court did not convey the idea of much dignity either in their dress or persons: we wish that the managers, who have the power of issuing patents of nobility at pleasure, would consider whether the general effect might not be improved by a little more attention to this point.

A debate has been lately going on, in the French House of Commons, respecting the Liberty of the Press. M. Jollivet said, ‘the Liberty of the Press is less necessary in a Representative Government than in any other.’ ‘The press’ he added, ‘is 412represented as the only instrument by which truth can be made known; but the passions of men are too impetuous, to permit the Press that liberty which some demand. The real national representation is in the King;^[44]—the legitimate inheritance of his Crown, from whence all powers and honours are derived, fixes there, with the destinies of the people. This is the primitive representation, from which all others emanate. There is the sacred depot of sovereignty. The powers established by the Charter are only the means of that sovereignty, for the dispensation of order and justice. We must then leave out of the question this pretended influence of the Liberty of the Press upon our representative Government, in favour of the branch called the Democratic. We must reject principles which can never return in France. By this course we may perhaps lose some commentaries upon the rights of man, but all classes of society will find their repose in it.’

So says M. Jollivet; and so sings a modern bard:—

Whether M. Jollivet, the French speaker, was one of the Orators of the Human Race in the time of Robespierre, we do not know; but this we know, that Mr. Coleridge was at that time delivering Conciones 413ad populum in a tone of mob-sycophancy, the height and heat of which could, it seems, only be qualified by the doctrines of Divine Right and Passive Obedience. The above exquisite morceau of political logic, and dramatic recantation of the author’s popular harangues, was intended for representation at Drury-Lane Theatre, and was one of the passages pointed out, if we are to believe Mr. Coleridge, as a reason for the rejection of this spurious offspring of his loyal Muse.

Mr. Southey has not yet given us a poetical version of the true Jus Divinum. We should like to know what he says to this speech of M. Jollivet—Content or Not Content—and whether this was the result he anticipated when he so sweetly and loudly, about three years ago, invited France ‘restored and shaking off her chain’ to join in his (Mr. Southey’s) triumphal song,—

Can that laurel wreathe which adorns his brows (if it still adorns them) any longer hide or prevent those blushes, deep and lasting, which should suffuse his once well-meaning face for having been the shameful dupe of a cozenage so shameful?

As to Mr. Wordsworth, another of these heroic deliverers, he is ‘a full solemne man,’ and you cannot get much out of him. But we should like to hear his opinion—Aye or No—of M. Jollivet’s allied notions of liberty and the rights of man. Is this sort of legitimate clapping down under the hatches the deliverance for which he mouthed out deep-toned Odes and Sonnets? Is this repose, the repose of lasting slavery and avowed, barefaced annihilation of the rights of human nature, the consummation devoutly to be wished, which kindled in him so much disinterested zeal against all his old friends and feelings? If he were to say so, the very echoes of his favourite mountains, ‘with thousand-fold reverberation,’ would contradict him. But he says nothing. He is profoundly silent. He will not answer Mum to our Budget. From the elevation of his former well-timed enthusiasm against tyrants and conquerors, he slid into a place: and he will never rise out of it by any ill-timed intemperance. Snug’s the word. St. Peter is well at Rome; and Mr. Wordsworth is attached to the Excise. What is it to him, seated on Rydal Mount, what M. Jollivet, a prating Frenchman, says to that poor creature, Louis XVIII? It is enough for Mr. Wordsworth that he signs his stamped receipts and distributes them:—he is not bound, by his office, to subscribe to M. Jollivet’s doctrines, or to circulate them in this country. He is a customhouse officer, and no longer a citizen of the world. He keeps 414himself quiet, like the philosopher of old, lest the higher powers should hear him. If he were to mutter a syllable against any one act of legitimate despotism, he knows (in his sleeve) that not all his odes on Hoffer and Schill, and the Cortes, or even to the King, would save him one hour. He is wise. After having endorsed the accommodation bills of the Allied Sovereigns on liberty and independence, with a pen which ought to have been sacred to humanity, he now leaves it to the people of France, Spain, Italy, to us, to the world, to take up these dishonoured forgeries, and will not utter a word of resentment or indignation, or contempt, against those who have made him a poor accomplice in a fraud upon mankind!

This sort of shuffling on the side of principle, and tenaciousness on the side of power, seems to be the peculiar privilege of the race of modern poets. The philosophers, if not much wiser, appear to be honester. Some of these had been taken in, but they want to be let out. They declare off in time to save at least their own characters, and will not sign and seal ‘a dateless bargain to all-engrossing despotism,’ when she unfolds the long dark scroll of her rotten parchment bonds to them, and they see it ‘stretching out even to the crack of doom.’ They had got into a bad house, it is true, thinking, though the owners were the same, they had changed their calling, in company with an old bawd masked, who pretended to have just escaped being robbed and ravished, if not murdered. They were proud of such an opportunity of shewing their gallantry. But as soon as the old lady pulled off her mask of Legitimacy, and shewed herself ‘the same, that is, that was, and is to be,’ our philosophers went to the window, threw up the sash, and alarmed the neighbourhood; while the poets, either charmed, with the paint and patches of the hag, or with her gold and trinkets, put a grave face upon the matter, make it a point of conscience, a match for life—for better or worse, stick to their filthy bargain, go to bed, and by lying quiet and keeping close, would fain persuade the people out of doors that all is well, while they are fumbling at the regeneration of mankind out of an old rotten carcase, and threatening us, as the legitimate consequence of their impotent and obscene attempts, with the spawn of Bible and Missionary Societies, Schools for All, and a little aiery of children, with a whole brood of hornbooks and catechisms,—a superfetation more preposterous than that of Mrs. Tofts, the rabbit-breeding lady in Hogarth.—Mr. Bentham was one of the philosophers who were so taken in by the projects of the Holy Alliance, but who did not chuse to continue so with his eyes open. He had lent an ear to the promises of kings. He thought tyrants had taken a sudden fancy to the abstract principles of 415sound legislation. With a little exuberance of philosophical vanity, and a little want of philosophical penetration, he thought he could ‘charm these deaf adders wisely.’ He thought absolute sovereigns, having suffered persecution, had learnt mercy: that they were convinced, by their own experience, of the value of justice, truth, and liberty. He did not suspect their appeal to humanity was the cry of the crocodile to allure and destroy: he, like many more, thought their tears were ‘drops which sacred pity had engendered.’ Not so. He soon found his mistake; and no sooner found, than he hastes to amend it. He does not try (half fool, half knave) to hush up the affair, to screen their villainy, or salve his own idle vanity. Out the whole story comes, in a book which he has just published,^[45] containing an account of the papers, and correspondence which passed between himself and the Emperor Alexander. Mr. Bentham sent the autocrat a plan of legislation, and the sovereign sent him a snuff-box in return. The Emperor however took no other notice of the plan, and the legislator returned the snuff-box. This was as it should be. It is of course the favourite object of Alexander to be lord over millions of slaves: it must be Mr. Bentham’s greatest ambition to be a wise and honest man. He had committed his character for wisdom sufficiently in supposing that the lord of millions of slaves would, in the pure coxcombry of his heart, and in the giddy round of gold snuff-boxes, and in his delight in the infinite multiplication of his own pictures set in brilliants, set millions of slaves free! The Emperor would as soon let Mr. Bentham cuckold him as resign his people to the Platonic embraces of Mr. Bentham’s legislative genius. But having gone thus far on a wrong calculation of the characters of rulers, Mr. Bentham was too honest a man to try to repeat the imposition upon others of which he had been made the momentary dupe himself. He was not ambitious any longer to remain that tool

He would not be made a mild decoy of humanity, and go a dottrel-catching with the Emperor Alexander in Finland, in Poland, or in South America. He would not be made an amiable stalking-horse of liberty and equality for royal sportsmen to catch their silly prey, the human race, and then to be turned loose, stripped of his netting and his ribbons, to graze where he could. He had a spirit above it. He could not brook this league with detected hypocrisy and barefaced power. He had not the stomach to swallow a lie for truth. 416He could not bring himself to say, or by any tampering with his own mind to believe that a thing was what he knew it was not. He was by habit a logician—by nature, a plain, literal man. ‘The Gods had not made him poetical.’ That is, Mr. Bentham had not, like Messrs. Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey, been playing at fast and loose with fiction, till he could like them believe whatever he pleased of matter of fact, and stand to it stoutly too with ‘a mingled air of cunning and of impudence,’—to the equal satisfaction of his understanding and his conscience!

‘On Friday evening Mr. Coleridge gave his first Lecture on Shakspeare to a numerous and genteel audience. He stated the permanent objects Shakspeare had in view in drawing his characters, and how obviously he disregarded those that were of a transitory nature. The character of Caliban, as an original and caricature of Jacobinism, so fully illustrated at Paris during the French Revolution, he described in a vigorous and lively manner, exciting repeated bursts of applause. He commenced an inquiry into the order of succession in which Shakspeare wrote his plays, and decided that Love’s Labour Lost must have been the first, as there are so many allusions in it such as a youth would make, few or none resulting from an experience of the world. That play and The Tempest were the chief objects of his discourse, into which, however, he introduced a great variety of new and striking remarks, not confined to any particular play. As for instance, he said, wherever Shakspeare had drawn a character addicted to sneering, and contempt for the merits of others, that character was sure to be a villain. Vanity, envy, and malice, were its certain accompaniments: too prudent to praise itself, it fed its concentrated egotism by sarcasm and lowering others. This is but a poor description of the very glowing language, ample detail, and profound thought, Mr. Coleridge displayed on this topic, which produced a thunder of applause.’—Courier, Feb. 9.

Mr. Coleridge, in his prospectus, modestly observed, that the attending his course of Lectures on Poetry, and ‘those fair parts that there adjacent lie,’ would enable any grown gentleman to talk on all subjects of polite conversation, except religion and politics. By the above extract, and from what we have heard, it should appear that Mr. Coleridge has gone beyond his engagement, and given his grown gentleman a slice of religion and politics in the same 417dish with his account of the Dark Ages. Not like a lady who puts her mind into the postscript, Mr. C. does that first which he promised last. Whatever may be the case with his metaphysical hypercriticisms, his religious and political opinions seem pretty transparent. As he has sent a passage against Jacobinism to his friend Mr. Stuart, of the Courier, we wonder that he could not (as he still retains all his old sentiments, with only the advantage of new light added to them) have vamped up a sly passage from his Conciones ad Populum, in favour of the so-called Jacobin principles he formerly professed, to have sent it to us. We should gladly do all in our power to assist Mr. Coleridge in publishing a harmony of his opinions, which are, we suspect, too liberal and multifarious to be comprised, in all their speculative and practical bearings, in a shabby Evening Paper. As to this argument about Caliban, we suspect it must have been sadly curtailed and scissarsed by Mr. Stuart, in order to fit his cloth to his coat, and to bring Mr. Coleridge’s ‘unhouselled free conditions into the circumscription and confine’ of the Editor’s party politics. Caliban is so far from being a prototype of modern Jacobinism, that he is strictly the legitimate sovereign of the isle, and Prospero and the rest are usurpers, who have ousted him from his hereditary jurisdiction by superiority of talent and knowledge. ‘This island’s mine, by Sycorax my mother;’ and he complains bitterly of the artifices used by his new friends to cajole him out of it. He is the Louis XVIII. of the enchanted island in The Tempest: and Dr. Stoddart would be able to prove by the civil law, that he had the same right to keep possession of it, ‘independently of his conduct or merits, as Mr. Coke has to his estate at Holkham.’ Even his affront to the daughter of that upstart philosopher Prospero, could not be brought to bar his succession to the natural sovereignty of his dominions. His boast that ‘he had peopled else this isle with Calibans,’ is very proper and dignified in such a person; for it is evident that the right line would be supplanted in failure of his issue; and that the superior beauty and accomplishments of Ferdinand and Miranda could no more be opposed to the legitimate claims of this deformed and loathsome monster, than the beauty and intellect of the Bonaparte family can be opposed to the bloated and ricketty minds and bodies of the Bourbons, cast, as they are, in the true Jus Divinum mould! This is gross. Why does Mr. Coleridge provoke us to write as great nonsense as he talks? Why also does he not tell, in his general ‘lunes and abstractions,’ what to think of Prospero’s brother, the Duke, who usurped his crown, and drove him into banishment; or of those finished Court-practitioners, Sebastian and Antonio, who wanted to murder the sleeping King? Were 418they Jacobins like Caliban, or legitimate personages, like Mr. Coleridge? Did they belong to the new school or the old? That is the question; but it is a question which our lay-preacher will take care not to answer. Shakespear, says Mr. Coleridge, always spoke of mobs with contempt, but with kindness. Mr. Coleridge does better: he speaks of mobs with contempt, and of Courts with kindness. Again, says this critical discoverer of a meaning in a millstone, Caliban had that envy of superior genius and virtue, which was a mark of the true Jacobins in the time of the French Revolution. We are sorry to hear, that on one occasion Mr. C. was interrupted in a tirade upon this favourite topic, on which he was led out of pure generosity, to enlighten the grown gentlemen who came to hear him, by a person calling out in good broad Scotch, ‘But you once praised that Revolution, Mr. Coleridge!’ The worst is, that Mr. Coleridge praised that Revolution when it was triumphant, going on ‘conquering and to conquer,’ as it was thought; and now that it is fallen, this man of mighty mind,—of gigantic genius, and superiority to interested motives and mob-sycophancy, insults over it,—tramples on the carcase,—kicks it with his asinine hoofs,—and brays a long, loud, dreary, doleful bravura over it. Of what the Jacobins were in the year 1793, this person has a right to speak, both from experience and observation. The worst he can say of them is, that he was once one of the set. He says that Jacobins are envious people,—and that envious people, not being able to praise themselves openly, take an indirect method of doing this, by depreciating and secretly slandering others. Was it upon this principle that the reformed Jacobin, Mr. Coleridge (what is bred in the bone will never come out of the flesh) took such pains, two years ago, to praise himself by depreciating and canting profound German mysticism against Mr. Maturin’s successful tragedy of Bertram, which he proved, being himself in the secret, to be ultra-Jacobinism, and quite different in its philosophical and poetical tendency from his own sweet injured Zapolya,—the harbinger of Legitimacy and the Bourbons, which was offered to Mr. Whitbread for his acceptance, as a piece of ultra-Royalism, and accordingly rejected by that friend of constitutional government and the people; but which any one may see represented to the life at the Royal Circus, accompanied with music, and compressed into three acts, to make it ‘tedious and brief.’ Or was it from the remains of the Jacobin leaven in our philosophical poet, that in a public library at Bristol he endeavoured to advance his own reputation on the ruins of that of a friend, by that lofty panegyric which he pronounced on our laurel-honouring laureat:—‘The man may indeed be a reviewer, but God help him if he fancies himself a 419poet?’ And is this the man to talk about the envy of the people towards hereditary virtue and wisdom, as the cause and root of Jacobinism? This—

It is well for the author of this tragedy that it has been praised in the Quarterly Review,—or we should not wonder to see Mr. Coleridge, as well from these lines as from its being acted with universal applause at the Theatre Royal Covent Garden, set about proving it to be a very ultra-Jacobinical performance.—But ‘to leave this keen encounter of the wits, and fall to something of a slower method.’ The reason—(for Mr. Coleridge knows, that if we have not ‘reason as plenty as blackberries,’ yet what we have, we are ready ‘to give to any man without compulsion’)—the reason why Mr. Coleridge is not what he might be, is, that he would be thought what he is not. His motto is, to be nothing or every thing. His levity or his vanity is not satisfied with being admired for what he is, but for all that he is capable of becoming, wise or foolish, knave or not. He is not contented to be ‘the inconstant moon,’ unless he can be the halo round it. He would glitter in the sunshine of public favour, and yet he would cast no shadow. Please all and please none is his rule, he has succeeded. He thinks it a great disparagement of his parts, a proof of a narrow and contracted mind, to be thought to hold only the sentiments which he professes. His capacious mind has room for all opinions, both those which he believes and those which he does not. He thinks he shews the greatest magnanimity when he shews the greatest contempt for his own principles, past, 420present, and to come. He would be esteemed greatly superior, not only to the rest of the world, but to himself. Would any one catch him in the trammels of a sect? Would any one make him swear to the dogmas of a party? Would any one suppose that he has any prejudices in favour of his own notions? That he is blindly wedded to one single view of a subject, as a man is wedded to one wife? He is shocked at any such imputation of intellectual uxoriousness. Would the Presbyterians try to hook him in?—he knows better than Socinus or old John Knox. Would the Established Church receive him at her wide portals?—he carries too great a weight of the Fathers and school divinity at his back. Would the Whigs patronise him?—he is too straitened in antiquated notions and traditional prejudices. Would the Tories take him in?—he is too liberal, enlightened, and transcendental for them. Would principle bind him?—he shuffles out of it, as a clog upon his freedom of thought, ‘his large discourse of reason, looking before and after.’ Would interest lay dirty hands upon him?—he jockies her too by some fetch or conundrum, borrowed from the great clerks of the so-called Dark Ages. You can no more know where to have him than an otter. You might as well hedge the cuckoo. You see him now squat like a toad at the ear of the Courier; and oh! that we could rouse him up once more into an archangel’s shape. But what is it to him what so poor a thing as he himself is, who is sublimely indifferent to all other things, and who may be looked upon as a terrible petrification of religion, genius, and the love of liberty. Yet it is too much to think that he who began his career with two Sonnets to Lord Stanhope and Mary Wolstonecraft, in the Morning Chronicle, should end with slimy, drivelling abuse of Jacobinism and the French Revolution, in the Courier;—that, like some devoted fanatic, he should seek the praise of martyrdom by mangling his own soul with a prostituted, unpaid-for pen, and let out his last breath as a pander to that which would be a falsehood, but that it means nothing.

The fourth and last canto of Childe Harold has disappointed us. It is a falling off from the three former ones. We have read it carefully through, but it has left only the same impression on our minds that a troubled dream does,—as disturbed, as confused, as disjointed, as 421harassing, and as unprofitable. It is an indigestion of the mind. It is the lassitude or feverish tossing and tumbling of the imagination, after having taken a surfeit of pleasure, and fed upon the fumes of pride. Childe Harold is a spoiled child of the Muses—and of Fortune. He looks down upon human life, not more with the superiority of intellect than with the arrogance of birth. The poet translates the lord into high sounding and supercilious verse. It is Agamemnon and Thersites in one person. The common events and calamities of the world afford matter for the effusions of his spleen, while they seem resented as affronts to his personal dignity.

So when ‘the very age and body of the time’ comes between his Lordship’s speculative notions and hereditary prejudices, he stops the nose at it, and plays some very fantastic tricks before the public, who are lookers-on. In general, the idle wants, the naughty airs, the ill humours and ennui, the contempt for others, and disgust at themselves, common to exalted birth and station, are suffered to corrupt and stagnate in the blood that inherits them;—they are a disease in the flesh, an obstinate tumour in the mind, a cloud upon the brow, a venom that vents itself in hateful looks and peevish words to those about them; but in this poem and this author they have acquired ‘an understanding and a tongue,’—are sublimed by imagination, systematised by sophistry—mount the steps of the Capitol, fulmine over Greece, and are poured in torrents of abuse on the world. It is well if the world like it—we are tired of the monotony of his Lordship’s griefs, of which we can perceive neither beginning nor end. ‘They are begot of nothing, born of nothing.’ He volunteers his own Pilgrimage,—appoints his own penance,—makes his own confession,—and all—for nothing. He is in despair, because he has nothing to complain of—miserable, because he is in want of nothing. ‘He has tasted of all earth’s bliss, both living and loving,’ and therefore he describes himself as suffering the tortures of the damned. He is in love with misery, because he has possessed every enjoyment; and because he has had his will in every thing, is inconsolable because he cannot have impossibilities. His Lordship, in fact, makes out his own hard case to be, that he has attained all those objects that the rest of the world admire; that he has met with none of those disasters which embitter their lives; and he calls upon us to sympathise with his griefs and his despair.

422This will never do. It is more intolerable than even Mr. Wordsworth’s arbitrary egotism and pampered self-sufficiency. He creates a factitious interest out of nothing: Lord Byron would destroy our interest in all that is. Mr. Wordsworth, to salve his own self-love, makes the merest toy of his own mind,—the most insignificant object he can meet with,—of as much importance as the universe: Lord Byron would persuade us that the universe itself is not worth his or our notice; and yet he would expect us to be occupied with him.

These lines, written by one of these two poets, might be addressed to both of them with equal propriety.

Lord Byron, in this the fourth and last Canto of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, seems to have worn out the glowing fervour of his genius to a calx, and to have exhausted the intense enthusiasm of his favourite topics of invective. There is little about himself, historically speaking—there is no plot, no story, no interest excited, no catastrophe. The general reflections are connected together merely by the accidental occurrence of different objects—the Venus of Medici, or the statue of Pompey,—the Capitol at Rome, or the Bridge of Sighs at Venice,—Shakespear, and Mrs. Radcliffe,—Bonaparte, and his Lordship in person,—are brought together as in a phantasmagoria, and with as little attention to keeping or perspective, as in Hogarth’s famous print for reversing the laws of vision. The judgements pronounced are often more dogmatical than profound, and with all their extravagance of expression, common-place. His Lordship does not understand the Apollo Belvidere or the Venus de Medicis, any more than Bonaparte. He cants about the one and against the other, and in doing the last, cuts his own throat. We are not without hopes that his friend Mr. Hobhouse will set this matter right in his ‘Historical Illustrations’; and shew that, however it may suit his Noble Friend’s poetical cross-purposes, politically and practically speaking, a house divided against itself cannot stand. He first, in his disdain of modern times, finds nothing to compare with the grandeur of antiquity but Bonaparte; and then ‘as ’twere in spite of scorn,’ goes on to disdain this idol, which he had himself gratuitously set up, in a strain of effeminate and rancorous abuse worthy of Mr. Wordsworth’s pastoral, place-hunting Muse. Suppose what is here said of ‘the child and champion of Jacobinism’ to be true, are there 423not venal tongues and venal pens enough to echo it, without his Lordship’s joining in the cry? Will ‘the High Legitimates, the Holy Band’ be displeased with these captious efforts to level the object of their hate to the groveling standard of royalty? Is there not a division of labour even on Mount Parnassus? The other writers of prose and verse, who enter the Temple of Fame by Mr. Murray’s door in Albemarle-street, have their cues. Mr. Southey, for instance, never sings or says, or dreams of singing or saying, that the Prince Regent is not so great a man as Julius Cæsar. Why then should Lord Byron force the comparison between the modern and the ancient hero? It is because the slaves of power mind the cause they have to serve, because their own interest is concerned; but the friends of liberty always sacrifice their cause, which is only the cause of humanity, to their own spleen, vanity, and self-opinion. The league between tyrants and slaves is a chain of adamant; the bond between poets and the people is a rope of sand. Is this a truth, or is it not? If it is not, let Lord Byron write no more on this subject, which is beyond his height and his depth. Let him not trample on the mighty or the fallen! Bonaparte is not Beppo.

The versification and style of this poem are as perverse and capricious as the method or the sentiments. One stanza perpetually runs on into the next, making the exception the rule, merely because it properly ends in itself; and there is a strange mixture of stately phraseology and far-fetched metaphor, with the most affected and bald simplicity of expression and uncouthness in the rhymes. It is well his Lordship is born so high, or all Grub street would set him down as a plebeian for such lines as the following:—

What will the Critics of the Cockney School of Poetry say to this?—Lie on, and swear that it is high patrician poetry, and of very noble birth.

The introductory stanzas are on the same subject, Venice; and are better.

The thought expressed in the last stanza, ‘but nature doth not die,’ is particularly fine, and consolatory to the mind. We prefer the stanza relating to the tomb of Petrarch, to any others in the poem:—

424The apostrophe to Tasso and to his patron is written with great force, but in a different spirit:—

In the same strain, and with an alternate mixture of enthusiasm and spleen, the author pays the tribute of acknowledgement to the artist of ‘the statue that enchants the world,’ to the shades of Michael Angelo, Alfieri, ‘the starry Galileo,’ Machiavel, and to the Bard of Prose, ‘him of the Hundred Tales of Love’—Boccacio.

From these recollections the poet proceeds to describe the fall of the Velino, ‘a hell of waters.’ We cannot say but that we think his powers better suited to express the human passions than to reflect the forms of nature. In the present instance, however, the poet has not invoked the genius of the place in vain: it represents, in some measure, the workings of his own spirit,—disturbed, restless, labouring, foaming, sparkling, and now hid in labyrinths and plunging into the gloom of night. The following description is obscure, tortuous, perplexed, and abortive; yet who can say that it is not beautiful, striking, and impassioned?—

We’ll look no more: such kind of writing is enough to turn the brain of the reader or the author. The repetitions in the last stanza are like interlineations in an imperfect manuscript, left for afterselection; such as, ‘Hope upon a death-bed’—‘Love watching madness,’—‘Unworn its steady dies’—‘Serene its brilliant hues,’—‘the distracted waters’—‘the torture of the scene,’ &c. There is here in every line an effort at brilliancy, and a successful effort; and yet, in the next, as if nothing had been done, the same thing is attempted to be expressed again with the same labour as before, the same success, and with as little appearance of repose or satisfaction of mind.

It is in vain to attempt a regular account of the remainder of this poem, which is a mass of discordant things, incoherent, not gross, seen ‘now in glimmer and now in gloom,’ and ‘moving wild laughter in the throat of death.’ The poem is like the place it describes:—

This is undoubtedly fine: but Rome was glorious, before she became a ruin; stately, before she was laid low; was ‘seen of all eyes,’ before she was confounded in oblivion. Lord Byron’s poetry, in its irregular and gloomy magnificence, we fear, antedates its own doom; and is buried in a desolation of his own creating, where the mists of fancy cloud, instead of lighting up the face of nature; and the fierceness of the passions, like the Sirocco of the Desart, withers and consumes the heart. We give this judgment against our wills; and shall be happy, should we live to see it reversed by another generation. All our prejudices are in favour of the Noble Poet, and against his maligners. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage is dedicated to Mr. Hobhouse, and there are passages both in the dedication and the poem which would bribe our opinions, were they to be bribed either by our admiration of genius or our love of liberty. Such are the following passages:—

But we must conclude; not, however, till we have made two extracts more. We shall not give the passages relating to his separation from his wife, or the death of the Princess Charlotte: we see nothing remarkable in the events, or in his Lordship’s reflections on them. As to his vow of revenge, which is to end in forgiveness, it is unconscious, constitutional caprice and contradiction: it is self-will exerting itself in straining at a violent conclusion; and then, by another exertion, defeating itself by doing nothing. So also he expatiates on the boundless anticipated glories of a female reign, which were never likely, and are now impossible, only that he may rail at lady Fortune in good set terms, and indulge a deeper disgust at all that is real or possible. We will give what is better than such cant,—the description of the dying Gladiator, and the conclusion of the poem:—

O si sic Omnia! All, however, is not so. The stanzas immediately following, on the story of the Grecian Daughter and the Apollo Belvidere, are in as false and sophisticated a taste, as these are pure and sublime. But, at the close of the poem, in addressing the pathless 426ocean,—the self-willed, untamed mighty world of waters,—his genius resumes its beauty and its power, and the Pilgrim sinks to rest in strains as mild and placid as the breath of childhood, that frets itself asleep.

The Opera is a fine thing: the only question is, whether it is not too fine. It is the most fascinating, and at the same time the most tantalising of all places. It is not the too little, but the too much, that offends us. Every object is there collected, and displayed in ostentatious profusion, that can strike the senses or dazzle the imagination; music, dancing, painting, poetry, architecture, the blaze of beauty, ‘the glass of fashion, and the mould of form;’ and yet we are not satisfied—because the multitude and variety of objects distracts the attention, and by flattering us with a vain shew of the highest gratification of every faculty and wish, leaves us at last in a state of listlessness, disappointment, and ennui. The powers of the mind are exhausted, without being invigorated; our expectations are excited, not satisfied; and we are at some loss to distinguish an excess of irritation from the height of enjoyment. To sit at the Opera for a whole evening, is like undergoing the process of animal magnetism for the same length of time. It is an illusion and a mockery, where the mind is made ‘the fool of the senses,’ and cheated of itself; where pleasure after pleasure courts us, as in a fairy palace; where the Graces and the Muses, waving in a gay, fantastic round with one another, still turn from our pursuit; where art, like an enchantress with a thousand faces, still allures our giddy admiration, shifts her mask, and again disappoints us. The Opera, in short, proceeds upon a false estimate of taste and morals; it supposes that the capacity for enjoyment may be multiplied with the objects calculated to afford it. It is a species of intellectual prostitution; for we can no more receive pleasure from all our faculties at once than we can be in love with a number of mistresses at the same time. Though we have different senses, we have but one heart; and if we attempt to force it into the service of them all at once, it must grow restive or torpid, hardened or enervated. The spectator may say to the sister-arts of Painting, Poetry, and Music, as they advance to him in a Pas de Trois at the Opera, ‘How happy could I be with either, were 427t’other dear charmer away;’ but while ‘they all tease him together,’ the heart gives a satisfactory answer to none of them;—is ashamed of its want of resources to supply the repeated calls upon its sensibility, seeks relief from the importunity of endless excitement in fastidious apathy or affected levity; and in the midst of luxury, pomp, vanity, indolence, and dissipation, feels only the hollow, aching void within, the irksome craving of unsatisfied desire, because more pleasures are placed within its reach than it is capable of enjoying, and the interference of one object with another ends in a double disappointment. Such is the best account we can give of the nature of the Opera,—of the contradiction between our expectations of pleasure and our uneasiness there,—of our very jealousy of the flattering appeals which are made to our senses, our passions, and our vanity, on all sides,—of the little relish we acquire for it, and the distaste it gives us for other things. Any one of the sources of amusement to be found there would be enough to occupy and keep the attention alive; the tout ensemble fatigues and oppresses it. One may be stifled to death with roses. A head-ache may be produced by a profusion of sweet smells or of sweet sounds: but we do not like the head-ache the more on that account. Nor are we reconciled to it, even at the Opera.

What makes the difference between an opera of Mozart’s, and the singing of a thrush confined in a wooden cage at the corner of the street? The one is nature, and the other is art: the one is paid for, and the other is not. Madame Fodor sings the air of Vedrai Carino in Don Giovanni so divinely, because she was hired to sing it; she sings it to please the audience, not herself, and does not always like to be encored in it; but the thrush that awakes at daybreak with its song, does not sing because it is paid to sing, or to please others, or to be admired or criticised. It sings because it is happy: it pours the thrilling sounds from its throat, to relieve the overflowings of its own heart—the liquid notes come from, and go to the heart, dropping balm into it, as the gushing spring revives the traveller’s parched and fainting lips. That stream of joy comes pure and fresh to the longing sense, free from art and affectation; the same that rises over vernal groves, mingled with the breath of morning, and the perfumes of the wild hyacinth, that waits for no audience, that wants no rehearsing, and still—

This is the great difference between nature and art, that the one is what the other seems, and gives all the pleasure it expresses, because it feels it itself. Madame Fodor sings, as a musical instrument may be made to play a tune, and perhaps with no more real delight: but 428it is not so with the linnet or the thrush, that sings because God pleases, and pours out its little soul in pleasure. This is the reason why its singing is (so far) so much better than melody or harmony, than bass or treble, than the Italian or the German school, than quavers or crotchets, or half-notes, or canzonets, or quartetts, or any thing in the world but truth and nature!

The Opera is the most artificial of all things. It is not only art, but ostentatious, unambiguous, exclusive art. It does not subsist as an imitation of nature, but in contempt of it; and instead of seconding, its object is to pervert and sophisticate all our natural impressions of things. When the Opera first made its appearance in this country, there were strong prejudices entertained against it, and it was ridiculed as a species of the mock-heroic. The prejudices have worn out with time, and the ridicule has ceased; but the grounds for both remain the same in the nature of the thing itself. At the theatre, we see and hear what has been said, thought, and done by various people elsewhere; at the Opera, we see and hear what was never said, thought, or done any where but at the Opera. Not only is all communication with nature cut off, but every appeal to the imagination is sheathed and softened in the melting medium of Siren sounds. The ear is cloyed and glutted with warbled ecstacies or agonies; while every avenue to terror or pity is carefully stopped up and guarded by song and recitative. Music is not made the vehicle of poetry, but poetry of music: the very meaning of the words is lost or refined away in the effeminacy of a foreign language. A grand serious Opera is a tragedy wrapped up in soothing airs, to suit the tender feelings of the nurselings of fortune—where tortured victims swoon on beds of roses, and the pangs of despair sink in tremulous accents into downy repose. Just so much of human misery is given as to lull those who are exempted from it into a deeper sense of their own security: just enough of the picture of human life is shewn to relieve their languor, without disturbing their indifference;—not to excite their sympathy, but ‘with some sweet, oblivious antidote,’ to pamper their sleek and sordid apathy. In a word, the whole business of the Opera is to stifle emotion in its birth, and to intercept every feeling in its progress to the heart. Every impression that, left to itself, might sink deep into the mind, and wake it to real sympathy, is overtaken and baffled by means of some other impression, plays round the surface of the imagination, trembles into airy sound, or expires in an empty pageant. In the grand carnival of the senses,

429the pulse of life is suspended, the link which binds us to humanity is broken; the soul is fretted by the sense of excessive softness into a feverish hectic dream; truth becomes a fable, good and evil matters of perfect indifference, except as they can be made subservient to our selfish gratification; and there is hardly a vice for which the mind on coming out of the Opera is not prepared, no virtue of which it is capable!

But what shall we say of the company at the Opera? Is it not grand, select, splendid, and imposing? Do we not see there ‘the flower of Britain’s warriors, her statesmen, and her fair,’ her nobles and her diplomatic characters? First, we only know the diplomatic characters by their taking prodigious quantities of snuff. As to great warriors, some that we know had better not shew their faces—if there is any truth in physiognomy; and as to great men, we know of but one in modern times, and neither Europe nor the Opera-house was big enough to hold him. With respect to Lords and Ladies, we see them as we do gilded butterflies in glass cases. We soon get tired of them, for they seem tired of themselves, and one another. They gape, stare, affect to whisper, laugh, or talk loud, to fill up the vacuities of thought and expression. They do not gratify our predilection for happy faces! But do we not feel the throb of pleasure from the blaze of beauty in the side-boxes? That blaze would be brighter, were it not quenched in the sparkling of diamonds. As for the rest, the grapes are sour. Beauty is a thing that is not made only to be seen. Who can behold it without a transient wish to be near it, to adore, to possess it? He must be a fool or a coxcomb, whom the sight of a beauty dazzles, but does not warm; whom a thousand glances shot from a thousand heavenly faces pierce without wounding; who can behold without a pang the bowers of Paradise opening to him by a thousand doors, and barred against him by magic spells!—Bright creatures, fairest of the fair, ye shine above our heads, bright as Ariadne’s crown, fair as the dewy star of evening: but ye are no more to us! There is no golden chain let down to us from you: we have sometimes seen you at a play, or caught a glimpse of your faces passing in a coronet-coach; but——As we are growing romantic, we shall take a turn into the crush-room, where, following the train of the great statesmen, the warriors, and the diplomatic characters, we shall meet with a nearly equal display of external elegance and accomplishment, without the pride of sex, rank, or virtue! If the women were all Junos before, here they are all Venuses, and no less Goddesses! Those who complained of inaccessible beauty before, may here find beauty more accessible, and take their revenge on the boxes in the lobbies!

430In fine, though we do not agree with a contemporary critic, that the Opera is an entertainment that ought to be held in general estimation, yet we think the present a very proper time for its encouragement. It may serve to assist the euthanasia of the British character, of British liberty, and British morals,—by hardening the heart, while it softens the senses, and dissolving every manly and generous feeling in an atmosphere of voluptuous effeminacy.

The question whether Pope was a poet, has hardly yet been settled, and is hardly worth settling; for if he was not a great poet, he must have been a great prose writer, that is, he was a great writer of some sort. He was a man of exquisite faculties, and of the most refined taste; and as he chose verse (the most obvious distinction of poetry) as the vehicle to express his ideas, he has generally passed for a poet, and a good one. If, indeed, by a great poet we mean one who gives the utmost grandeur to our conceptions of nature, or the utmost force to the passions of the heart, Pope was not in this sense a great poet; for the bent, the characteristic power of his mind, lay the contrary way; namely, in representing things as they appear to the indifferent observer, stripped of prejudice and passion, as in his critical essays; or in representing them in the most contemptible and insignificant point of view, as in his satires; or in clothing the little with mock-dignity, as in his poems of fancy; or in adorning the trivial incidents and familiar relations of life with the utmost elegance of expression, and all the flattering illusions of friendship or self-love, as in his epistles. He was not then distinguished as a poet of lofty enthusiasm, of strong imagination, with a passionate sense of the beauties of nature, or a deep insight into the workings of the heart; but he was a wit, and a critic, a man of sense, of observation, and the world; with a keen relish for the elegancies of art, or of nature when embellished by art, a quick tact for propriety of thought and manners, as established by the forms and customs of society, a refined sympathy with the sentiments and habitudes of human life, as he felt them, within the little circle of his family and friends. He was, in a word, the poet not of nature but of art: and the distinction between the two is this. The poet of nature is one who, from the elements of beauty, of power, and of passion in his own breast, sympathises with whatever is beautiful, and grand, and impassioned in nature, in its simple majesty, in its immediate appeal to the senses, 431to the thoughts and hearts of all men; so that the poet of nature, by the truth, and depth, and harmony of his mind, may be said to hold communion with the very soul of nature; to be identified with, and to foreknow, and to record the feelings of all men, at all times and places, as they are liable to the same impressions; and to exert the same power over the minds of his readers, that nature does. He sees things in their eternal beauty, for he sees them as they are; he feels them in their universal interest; for he feels them as they affect the first principles of his and our common nature. Pope was not assuredly a poet of this class, or in the first rank of it. He saw nature only dressed by art; he judged of beauty by fashion; he sought for truth in the opinions of the world; he judged of the feelings of others by his own. The capacious soul of Shakespeare had an intuitive and mighty sympathy with whatever could enter into the heart of man in all possible circumstances; Pope had an exact knowledge of all that he himself loved or hated, wished or wanted. Milton has winged his daring flight from heaven to earth through chaos and old night. Pope’s muse never wandered with safety but from his library to his grotto, or from his grotto into his library again. His mind dwelt with greater pleasure on his own garden, than on the garden of Eden; he could describe the faultless whole-length mirror that reflected his own person better than the smooth surface of the lake that reflects the face of heaven; a piece of cut glass, or a pair of paste buckles with more brilliance and effect than a thousand dew-drops glittering in the sun. He would be more delighted with a patent lamp than with ‘the pale reflex of Cynthia’s brow,’ that fills the skies with its soft silent lustre, trembles through the cottage casement, and cheers the watchful mariner on the lonely wave. In short, he was the poet of personality and of polished life. That which was nearest to him was the greatest: the fashion of the day bore sway in his mind over the immutable laws of nature. He preferred the artificial to the natural in external objects, because he had a stronger fellow-feeling with the self-love of the maker or proprietor of a gewgaw than admiration of that which was interesting to all mankind alike. He preferred the artificial to the natural in passion, because the involuntary and uncalculating impulses of the one hurried him away with a force and vehemence with which he could not grapple, while he could trifle with the conventional and superficial modifications of mere sentiment at will, laugh at or admire, put them on or off like a masquerade dress, make much or little of them, indulge them for a longer or a shorter time as he pleased, and because, while they amused his fancy and exercised his ingenuity, they never once disturbed his vanity, his levity, or indifference. His 432mind was the antithesis of strength and grandeur: its power was the power of indifference. He had none of the inspired raptures of poetry: he was in poetry what the sceptic is in religion. It cannot be denied that his chief excellence lay more in diminishing than ‘in aggrandizing objects,—in checking than in encouraging our enthusiasm,—in sneering at the extravagancies of fancy or passion, instead of giving a loose to them,—in describing a row of pins and needles rather than the embattled spears of Greeks and Trojans,—in penning a lampoon or a compliment,—and in praising Martha Blount!

Shakespeare says,—

There is hardly any of this rough work in Pope. His muse was on a peace establishment, and grew somewhat effeminate by long ease and indulgence. He lived in the smiles of fortune, and basked in the favour of the great. In his smooth and polished verse we meet with no prodigies of nature, but with miracles of wit; the thunders of his pen are whispered flatteries; his forked lightnings playful sarcasms; for the ‘gnarled oak’ he gives us ‘the soft myrtle’; for rocks, and seas, and mountains, artificial grass-plats, gravel-walks, and tinkling rills; for earthquakes and tempests, the breaking of a flower-pot, or the fall of a china-jar; for the tug and war of the elements, or the deadly strife of the passions, we have

Yet within this retired and narrow circle, how much, and that how exquisite, was contained! What discrimination, what wit, what delicacy, what fancy, what lurking spleen, what elegance of thought, what refinement of sentiment! It is like looking at the world through a microscope, where every thing assumes a new character and a new consequence,—where things are seen in their minutest circumstances and slightest shades of difference,—when the little becomes gigantic, the deformed beautiful, and the beautiful deformed. The wrong end of the magnifier is, to be sure, held to every thing; but still the exhibition is highly curious, and we know not whether to be most pleased or surprised.

Fashion is an odd jumble of contradictions, of sympathies and antipathies. It exists only by its being participated among a certain number of persons, and its essence is destroyed by being communicated to a greater number. It is a continual struggle between ‘the great vulgar and the small’ to get the start of or keep up with each other in the race of appearances, by an adoption on the part of the one of such external and fantastic symbols as strike the attention and excite the envy or admiration of the beholder, and which are no sooner made known and exposed to public view for this purpose, than they are successfully copied by the multitude, the slavish herd of imitators, 438who do not wish to be behind-hand with their betters in outward show and pretensions, and which then sink, without any farther notice, into disrepute and contempt. Thus fashion lives only in a perpetual round of giddy innovation and restless vanity. To be old-fashioned is the greatest crime a coat or a hat can be guilty of. To look like nobody else is a sufficiently mortifying reflection; to be in danger of being mistaken for one of the rabble is worse. Fashion constantly begins and ends in the two things it abhors most, singularity and vulgarity. It is the perpetual setting up and disowning a certain standard of taste, elegance, and refinement, which has no other foundation or authority than that it is the prevailing distinction of the moment, which was yesterday ridiculous from its being new, and to-morrow will be odious from its being common. It is one of the most slight and insignificant of all things. It cannot be lasting, for it depends on the constant change and shifting of its own harlequin disguises; it cannot be sterling, for, if it were, it could not depend on the breath of caprice; it must be superficial, to produce its immediate effect on the gaping crowd; and frivolous, to admit of its being assumed at pleasure by the numbers of those who affect, by being in the fashion, to be distinguished from the rest of the world. It is not any thing in itself, nor the sign of any thing but the folly and vanity of those who rely upon it as their greatest pride and ornament. It takes the firmest hold of the most flimsy and narrow minds, of those whose emptiness conceives of nothing excellent but what is thought so by others, and whose self-conceit makes them willing to confine the opinion of all excellence to themselves and those like them. That which is true or beautiful in itself, is not the less so for standing alone. That which is good for any thing, is the better for being more widely diffused. But fashion is the abortive issue of vain ostentation and exclusive egotism: it is haughty, trifling, affected, servile, despotic, mean, and ambitious, precise and fantastical, all in a breath—tied to no rule, and bound to conform to every whim of the minute. ‘The fashion of an hour old mocks the wearer.’ It is a sublimated essence of levity, caprice, vanity, extravagance, idleness, and selfishness. It thinks of nothing but not being contaminated by vulgar use, and winds and doubles like a hare, and betakes itself to the most paltry shifts to avoid being overtaken by the common hunt that are always in full chase after it. It contrives to keep up its fastidious pretensions, not by the difficulty of the attainment, but by the rapidity and evanescent nature of the changes. It is a sort of conventional badge, or understood passport into select circles, which must still be varying (like the water-mark in bank-notes) not to be counterfeited by those without the pale of fashionable 439society; for to make the test of admission to all the privileges of that refined and volatile atmosphere depend on any real merit or extraordinary accomplishment, would exclude too many of the pert, the dull, the ignorant, too many shallow, upstart, and self-admiring pretenders, to enable the few that passed muster to keep one another in any tolerable countenance. If it were the fashion, for instance, to be distinguished for virtue, it would be difficult to set or follow the example; but then this would confine the pretension to a small number, (not the most fashionable part of the community), and would carry a very singular air with it. Or if excellence in any art or science were made the standard of fashion, this would also effectually prevent vulgar imitation, but then it would equally prevent fashionable impertinence. There would be an obscure circle of virtù as well as virtue, drawn within the established circle of fashion, a little province of a mighty empire;—the example of honesty would spread slowly, and learning would still have to boast of a respectable minority. But of what use would such uncourtly and out-of-the-way accomplishments be to the great and noble, the rich and the fair, without any of the eclat, the noise and nonsense which belong to that which is followed and admired by all the world alike? The real and solid will never do for the current coin, the common wear and tear of foppery, and fashion. It must be the meretricious, the showy, the outwardly fine, and intrinsically worthless—that which lies within the reach of the most indolent affectation, that which can be put on or off at the suggestion of the most wilful caprice, and for which, through all its fluctuations, no mortal reason can be given, but that it is the newest absurdity in vogue! The shape of a head-dress, whether flat or piled (curl on curl) several stories high by the help of pins and pomatum, the size of a pair of paste buckles, the quantity of gold-lace on an embroidered waistcoat, the mode of taking a pinch of snuff, or of pulling out a pocket-handkerchief, the lisping and affected pronunciation of certain words, the saying Me’m for Madam, Lord Foppington’s Tam and ’Paun honour, with a regular set of visiting phrases and insipid sentiments ready sorted for the day, were what formerly distinguished the mob of fine gentlemen and ladies from the mob of their inferiors. These marks and appendages of gentility had their day, and were then discarded for others equally peremptory and unequivocal. But in all this chopping and changing, it is generally one folly that drives out another; one trifle that by its specific levity acquires a momentary and surprising ascendency over the last. There is no striking deformity of appearance or behaviour that has not been made ‘the sign of an inward and invisible grace.’ Accidental imperfections are laid hold of to hide real defects. Paint, 440patches, and powder, were at one time synonymous with health, cleanliness, and beauty. Obscenity, irreligion, small oaths, tippling, gaming, effeminacy in the one sex and Amazon airs in the other, any thing is the fashion while it lasts. In the reign of Charles II., the profession and practice of every species of extravagance and debauchery were looked upon as the indispensable marks of an accomplished cavalier. Since that period the court has reformed, and has had rather a rustic air. Our belles formerly overloaded themselves with dress: of late years, they have affected to go almost naked,—‘and are, when unadorned, adorned the most.’ The women having left off stays, the men have taken to wear them, if we are to believe the authentic Memoirs of the Fudge Family. The Niobe head is at present buried in the poke bonnet, and the French milliners and marchands des modes have proved themselves an overmatch for the Greek sculptors, in matters of taste and costume.

A very striking change has, however, taken place in dress of late years, and some progress has been made in taste and elegance, from the very circumstance, that, as fashion has extended its empire in that direction, it has lost its power. While fashion in dress included what was costly, it was confined to the wealthier classes: even this was an encroachment on the privileges of rank and birth, which for a long time were the only things that commanded or pretended to command respect, and we find Shakespear complaining that ‘the city madam bears the cost of princes on unworthy shoulders;’ but, when the appearing in the top of the mode no longer depended on the power of purchasing certain expensive articles of dress, or the right of wearing them, the rest was so obvious and easy, that any one who chose might cut as coxcombical a figure as the best. It became a matter of mere affectation on the one side, and gradually ceased to be made a matter of aristocratic assumption on the other. ‘In the grand carnival of this our age,’ among other changes this is not the least remarkable, that the monstrous pretensions to distinctions in dress have dwindled away by tacit consent, and the simplest and most graceful have been in the same request with all classes. In this respect, as well as some others, ‘the age is grown so picked, the peasant’s toe comes so near the courtier’s heel, it galls his kibe;’ a lord is hardly to be distinguished in the street from an attorney’s clerk; and a plume of feathers is no longer mistaken for the highest distinction in the land! The ideas of natural equality and the Manchester steam-engines together have, like a double battery, levelled the high towers and artificial structures of fashion in dress, and a white muslin gown is now the common costume of the mistress and the maid, instead of their wearing, as heretofore, rich silks 441and satins or coarse linsey-wolsey. It would be ridiculous (on a similar principle) for the courtier to take the wall of the citizen, without having a sword by his side to maintain his right of precedence; and, from the stricter notions that have prevailed of a man’s personal merit and identity, a cane dangling from his arm is the greatest extension of his figure that can be allowed to the modern petit-maître.

What shews the worthlessness of mere fashion is, to see how easily this vain and boasted distinction is assumed, when the restraints of decency or circumstances are once removed, by the most uninformed and commonest of the people. I know an undertaker that is the greatest prig in the streets of London, and an Aldermanbury haberdasher, that has the most military strut of any lounger in Bond-street or St. James’s. We may, at any time, raise a regiment of fops from the same number of fools, who have vanity enough to be intoxicated with the smartness of their appearance, and not sense enough to be ashamed of themselves. Every one remembers the story in Peregrine Pickle, of the strolling gipsy that he picked up in spite, had well scoured, and introduced her into genteel company, where she met with great applause, till she got into a passion by seeing a fine lady cheat at cards, rapped out a volley of oaths, and let nature get the better of art. Dress is the great secret of address. Clothes and confidence will set anybody up in the trade of modish accomplishment. Look at the two classes of well-dressed females whom we see at the play-house, in the boxes. Both are equally dressed in the height of the fashion, both are rouged, and wear their neck and arms bare,—both have the same conscious, haughty, theatrical air;—the same toss of the head, the same stoop in the shoulders, with all the grace that arises from a perfect freedom from embarrassment, and all the fascination that arises from a systematic disdain of formal prudery,—the same pretence and jargon of fashionable conversation,—the same mimicry of tones and phrases,—the same ‘lisping, and ambling, and painting, and nicknaming of Heaven’s creatures;’ the same every thing but real propriety of behaviour, and real refinement of sentiment. In all the externals, they are as like as the reflection in the looking-glass. The only difference between the woman of fashion and the woman of pleasure is, that the one is what the other only seems to be; and yet, the victims of dissipation who thus rival and almost outshine women of the first quality in all the blaze, and pride, and glitter of shew and fashion, are, in general, no better than a set of raw, uneducated, inexperienced country girls, or awkward, coarse-fisted servant maids, who require no other apprenticeship or qualification to be on a level with persons of the highest distinction 442in society, in all the brilliancy and elegance of outward appearance, than that they have forfeited its common privileges, and every title to respect in reality. The truth is, that real virtue, beauty, or understanding, are the same, whether ‘in a high or low degree;’ and the airs and graces of pretended superiority over these which the highest classes give themselves, from mere frivolous and external accomplishments, are easily imitated, with provoking success, by the lowest, whenever they dare.

The two nearest things in the world are gentility and vulgarity—

Where there is much affectation of the one, we may be always sure of meeting with a double share of the other. Those who are conscious to themselves of any real superiority or refinement, are not particularly jealous of the adventitious marks of it. Miss Burney’s novels all turn upon this slender distinction. It is the only thing that can be said against them. It is hard to say which she has made out to be the worst; low people always aping gentility, or people in high life always avoiding vulgarity. Mr. Smith and the Brangtons were everlastingly trying to do as their fashionable acquaintances did, and these again were always endeavouring not to do and say what Mr. Smith and the Brangtons did or said. What an instructive game at cross-purposes! ‘Kings are naturally lovers of low company,’ according to the observation of Mr. Burke; because their rank cannot be called into question by it, and they can only hope to find, in the opposite extreme of natural and artificial inequality, any thing to confirm them in the belief, that their personal pretensions at all answer to the ostensible superiority to which they are raised. By associating only with the worst and weakest, they persuade themselves that they are the best and wisest of mankind.

This is a more important subject than it seems at first sight. It is as serious in its results as it is contemptible in the means by which those results are brought about. Nicknames for the most part govern the world. The history of politics, of religion, of literature, of morals, and of private life, is too often little less than the history 443of nicknames. What are half the convulsions of the civilised world, the frequent overthrow of states and kingdoms, the shock and hostile encounter of mighty continents, the battles by sea and land, the intestine commotions, the feuds of the Vitelli and Orsini, of the Guelphs and Gibellines, the civil wars in England, and the League in France, the jealousies and heart-burnings of cabinets and councils, the uncharitable proscriptions of creeds and sects, Turk, Jew, Pagan, Papist and Puritan, Quaker and Methodist,—the persecutions and massacres, the burnings, tortures, imprisonments, and lingering deaths inflicted for a different profession of faith,—but so many illustrations of the power of this principle? Fox’s Book of Martyrs, and Neale’s History of the Puritans, are comments on the same text. The fires in Smithfield were fanned by nicknames, and a nickname set its seal on the unopened dungeons of the Holy Inquisition. Nicknames are the talismans and spells that collect and set in motion all the combustible part of men’s passions and prejudices, which have hitherto played so much more successful a game, and done their work so much more effectually than reason, in all the grand concerns and petty details of human life, and do not yet seem tired of the task assigned them. Nicknames are the convenient portable tools by which they simplify the process of mischief, and get through their job with the least time and trouble. These worthless, unmeaning, irritating, envenomed words of reproach are the established signs by which the different compartments of society are ticketted, labelled, and marked out for each other’s hatred and contempt. They are to be had, ready cut and dry, of all sorts and sizes, wholesale and retail, for foreign exportation or home consumption, and for all occasions in life. ‘The priest calls the lawyer a cheat, the lawyer beknaves the divine.’ The Frenchman hates the Englishman because he is an Englishman, and the Englishman hates the Frenchman for as good a reason. The Whig hates the Tory, and the Tory the Whig. The Dissenter hates the Church-of-England-man, and the Church-of-England-man hates the Dissenter, as if they were of a different species, because they have a different designation. The Mussulman calls the worshipper of the Cross ‘Christian dog,’ spits in his face, and kicks him from the pavement, by virtue of a nickname; and the Papist retorts the indignity upon the Infidel and the Jew by the same infallible rule of right. In France, they damn Shakespear in the lump, by calling him a barbare; and we talk of Racine’s verbiage with inexpressible contempt and self-complacency. Among ourselves, an anti-Jacobin critic denounces a Jacobin poet and his friends, at a venture, ‘as infidels and fugitives, who have left their wives destitute, and their children fatherless’—whether they have wives and children or not. 444The unenlightened savage makes a meal of his enemy’s flesh, after reproaching him with the name of his tribe, because he is differently tattooed; and the literary cannibal cuts up the character of his opponent by the help of a nickname. The jest of all this is, that a party nickname is always a relative term, and has its counter-sign, which has just the same force and meaning, so that both must be perfectly ridiculous and insignificant. A Whig implies a Tory; there must be ‘Malcontents’ as well as ‘Malignants’; Jacobins and Anti-Jacobins; French and English. These sort of noms des guerres derive all their force from their contraries. Take away the meaning of the one, and you take the sting out of the other. They could not exist but upon the strength of mutual and irreconcileable antipathies; there must be no love lost between them. What is there in the names themselves to give them a preference over each other? ‘Sound them, they do become the mouth as well; weigh them, they are as heavy; conjure with them, one will raise a spirit as soon as the other.’ If there were not fools and madmen who hated both, there could not be fools and madmen bigotted to either. I have heard an eminent character boast that he had done more to produce the late war by nicknaming Buonaparte ‘the Corsican,’ than all the state-papers and documents on the subject put together. And yet Mr. Southey asks triumphantly, ‘Is it to be supposed that it is England, our England, to whom that war was owing?’ As if, in a dispute between two countries, the conclusive argument which lies in the pronoun our, belonged only to one of them. I like Shakespear’s version of the matter better:

In all national disputes, it is common to appeal to the numbers on your side as decisive on the point. If every body in England thought the late war right, every body in France thought it wrong. There were ten millions on one side of the question, (or rather of the water), and thirty millions on the other side. That’s all. I remember some one arguing, in justification of our ministers interfering on that occasion, ‘That governments would not go to war for nothing;’ to which I answered, Then they could not go to war at all, for, at that rate, neither of them could be in the wrong, and yet both of them must be in the right, which was absurd. The only meaning of these vulgar nicknames and party-distinctions, where they are urged most violently 445and confidently, is, that others differ from you in some particular or other, (whether it be opinion, dress, clime, complexion), which you highly disapprove of, forgetting, that, by the same rule, they have the very same right to be offended at you because you differ from them. Those who have reason on their side do not make the most obstinate and furious appeals to prejudice and abusive language. I know but of one exception to this general rule, and that is, where the things that excite disgust are of such a kind that they cannot well be gone into without offence to decency and good manners; but it is equally certain in this case, that those who are most shocked at the things are not those who are most forward to apply the names. A person will not be fond of repeating a charge, or adverting to a subject, that inflicts a wound on his own feelings, even for the sake of wounding the feelings of another. A man should be very sure that he himself is not what he has always in his mouth. The greatest prudes have been often accounted the greatest hypocrites, and a satirist is at best but a suspicious character. The loudest and most unblushing invectives against vice and debauchery will as often proceed from a desire to inflame and pamper the passions of the writer, by raking into a nauseous subject, as from a wish to excite virtuous indignation against it in the public mind, or to reform the individual. To familiarise the mind to gross ideas is not the way to increase your own or the general repugnance to them. But, to return to the subject of nicknames.

The use of this figure of speech is, that it excites a strong idea without requiring any proof. It is a shorthand compendious mode of getting at a conclusion, and never troubling yourself or any body else with the formalities of reasoning or the dictates of common sense. It is superior to all evidence, for it does not rest upon any, and operates with the greatest force and certainty in proportion to the utter want of probability. Belief is only a strong impression, and the malignity or extravagance of the accusation passes for a proof of the crime. ‘Brevity is the soul of wit;’ and of all eloquence a nickname is the most concise, and of all arguments the most unanswerable. It gives carte blanche to the imagination, throws the reins on the neck of the passions, and suspends the use of the understanding altogether. It does not stand upon ceremony, on the nice distinctions of right and wrong. It does not wait the slow processes of reason, or stop to unravel the web of sophistry. It takes every thing for granted that serves for nourishment for the spleen. It is instantaneous in its operations. There is nothing to interpose between the effect and it. It is passion without proof, and action without thought,—‘the unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations.’ It does not, as Mr. Burke 446expresses it, ‘leave the will puzzled, undecided, and sceptical in the moment of action.’ It is a word and a blow.

The ‘No Popery’ cry, raised a little while ago, let loose all the lurking spite and prejudice which had lain rankling in the proper receptacles for them for above a century, without any knowledge of the past history of the country which had given rise to them, or any reference to their connection with present circumstances; for the knowledge of the one would have prevented the possibility of their application to the other. Facts present a tangible and definite idea to the mind, a train of causes and consequences, accounting for each other, and leading to a positive conclusion—but no farther. But a nickname is tied down to no such limited service; it is a disposable force, that is almost always perverted to mischief. It clothes itself with all the terrors of uncertain abstraction, and there is no end of the abuse to which it is liable but the cunning of those who employ, or the credulity of those who are gulled by it. It is a reserve of the ignorance, bigotry, and intolerance of weak and vulgar minds, brought up where reason fails, and always ready, at a moment’s warning, to be applied to any, the most absurd purposes. If you bring specific charges against a man, you thereby enable him to meet and repel them, if he thinks it worth his while; but a nickname baffles reply, by the very vagueness of the inferences from it, and gives increased activity to the confused, dim, and imperfect notions of dislike connected with it, from their having no settled ground to rest upon. The mind naturally irritates itself against an unknown object of fear or jealousy, and makes up for the blindness of its zeal by an excess of it. We are eager to indulge our hasty feelings to the utmost, lest, by stopping to examine, we should find that there is no excuse for them. The very consciousness of the injustice we may be doing another makes us only the more loud and bitter in our invectives against him. We keep down the admonitions of returning reason, by calling up a double portion of gratuitous and vulgar spite. The will may be said to act with most force in vacuo; the passions are the most ungovernable when they are blindfolded. That malignity is always the most implacable which is accompanied with a sense of weakness, because it is never satisfied of its own success or safety. 447A nickname carries the weight of the pride, the indolence, the cowardice, the ignorance, and the ill-nature of mankind on its side. It acts, by mechanical sympathy, on the nerves of society. Any one who is without character himself may make himself master of the reputation of another by the application of a nickname, as, if you do not mind soiling your fingers, you may always throw dirt on another. No matter how undeserved the imputation, it will stick; for, though it is sport to the bye-standers to see you bespattered, they will not stop to see you wipe out the stains. You are not heard in your own defence; it has no effect, it does not tell, excites no sensation, or it is only felt as a disappointment of their triumph over you. Their passions and prejudices are inflamed by the charge, ‘as rage with rage doth sympathise;’ by vindicating yourself, you merely bring them back to common sense, which is a very sober, mawkish state. Give a dog a bad name, and hang him, is a proverb. ‘A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man.’ It is a bugbear to the imagination, and, though we do not believe it, it still haunts our apprehensions. Let a nickname be industriously applied to our dearest friend, and let us know that it is ever so false and malicious, yet it will answer its end; it connects the person’s name and idea with an ugly association, you think of them with pain together, or it requires an effort of indignation or magnanimity on your part to disconnect them; it becomes an uneasy subject, a sore point, and you will sooner desert your friend, or join in the conspiracy against him, than be constantly forced to repel charges without truth or meaning, and have your penetration or character called in question by a rascal. Nay, such is the unaccountable construction of language and of the human mind, that the affixing the most innocent or praiseworthy appellation to any individual or set of individuals, as a nickname, has all the effect of the most opprobrious epithets. Thus the cant name ‘The Talents,’ was successfully applied as a stigma to the Whigs at one time; it held them up to ridicule, and made them obnoxious to public feeling, though it was notorious to every body that the Whig leaders were ‘the Talents,’ and that their adversaries nicknamed them so from real hatred and pretended derision. ‘The Party’ is now substituted for ‘the Talents,’ since success has given their own set the monstrous affectation of being men of talents; and the poor Morning Chronicle is persecuted daily as the Party as it formerly stood the brunt (innocently enough) of all the abuse and sarcasms that were showered on the Talents. Call a man short by his Christian name, as Tom or Dick such a one, or by his profession, (however respectable), as Canning pelted a noble lord with his left-off title of Doctor,—and you undo him for ever, if he has a reputation 448to lose. Such is the tenaciousness of spite and ill-nature, or the jealousy of public opinion, even this will be peg enough to hang doubtful inuendos, weighty dilemmas upon. ‘With so small a web as this will I catch so great a fly as Cassio.’ The public do not like to see their favourites treated with impertinent familiarity—it lowers the tone of admiration very speedily. It implies that some one stands in no great awe of their idol, and he perhaps may know as much about the matter as they do. It seems as if a man whose name, with some contemptuous abbreviation, is always dinned in the public ear, was distinguished by nothing else. By repeating a man’s name in this manner you may soon make him sick of it, and of his life too. Mr. Southey has by this time, I should suppose, a tolerable surfeit of his title of Laureate! Children do not like to be called out of their names. It is questioning their personal identity. A writer, who has made his vocabulary rich in nicknames, (the late Editor of the Times,) thought he had made a great acquisition to his stock, when it was pretended at one time that Bonaparte’s real name was not Napoleon but Nicholas. He congratulated himself on this discovery, as a standing jest and a lasting triumph. Yet there was nothing in the name to signify. Nicholas Poussin was an instance of a great man in the last age, and in our own times, have we not Nicholas Vansittart? The same writer has the merit of having carried this figure of speech as far as it would go. He fairly worried his readers into conviction by abuse and nicknames. People surrendered their judgments to escape the persecution of his style, and the disgust and indignation which his incessant violence and vulgarity excited, at last made you hate those who were the objects of it. Causa causæ causa causati. He made people sick of a subject by making them sick of his arguments. Yet he attributed the effect he produced to the eloquence of his phraseology and the force of his reasonings!

A parrot may be taught to call names; and if the person who keeps the parrot has a spite to his neighbours, he may give them a great deal of annoyance without much wit, either in the employer or the puppet. The insignificance of the instrument has nothing to do with the efficacy of the means. Hotspur would have had ‘a starling taught to repeat nothing but Mortimer,’ in the ears of his enemy. Nature, it is said, has given arms to all creatures the most proper to defend themselves, and annoy others: to the lowest she has given the use of nicknames.

There are some droll instances of the effect of proper names combined with circumstances. A young student had come up to London from Cambridge, and went in the evening and planted himself in the pit of the play-house. He had not been seated long when, in one of 449the front boxes near him, he discovered one of his college tutors, with whom he felt an immediate and strong desire to claim acquaintance, and called out in a low and respectful voice, ‘Dr. Topping!’ The appeal was, however, ineffectual. He then repeated in a louder tone, but still in an under key, so as not to excite the attention of any one but his friend, ‘Dr. Topping!’ The Doctor took no notice. He then grew more impatient, and repeated ‘Dr. Topping, Dr. Topping!’ two or three times pretty loud, to see whether the Doctor did not or would not hear him. Still the Doctor remained immovable. The joke began at length to get round, and one or two persons, as he continued his invocations of the Doctor’s name, joined with him in them; these were reinforced by others calling out, ‘Dr. Topping! Dr. Topping!’ on all sides, so that he could no longer avoid perceiving it, and at length the whole pit rose and roared, ‘Dr. Topping!’ with loud and repeated cries, and the Doctor was forced to retire precipitately, frightened at the sound of his own name. There is sometimes an inconvenience in common as well as uncommon names. On the night that Garrick took his leave of the stage, an inveterate playgoer could not get a seat in any part of the house. At length he went up into the gallery, but found that equally full with the rest. In this extremity a thought struck him, and he called out as loud as he could, ‘Mr. Smith, you’re wanted. Your wife’s taken suddenly ill, and you must go home immediately.’ In an instant, half a dozen persons started up from different parts of the gallery to go out, and the gentleman took possession of the first place that offered. No doubt these persons would be disposed to quarrel with their names and their wives for some time after.

The calling people by their Christian or surnames is a proof of affection, as well as of hatred. They are generally the best good fellows with whom their friends take this sort of liberty. Diminutives are titles of endearment. Dr. Johnson’s calling Goldsmith ‘Goldy’ did equal honour to both. It shewed the regard he had for him. This familiarity may perhaps imply a certain want of formal respect; but formal respect is not necessary to, if it is consistent with, cordial friendship. Titles of honour are the reverse of nicknames,—they convey the idea of respect as the others do of contempt, and equally mean little or nothing. Junius’s motto, Stat nominis umbra, is a very significant one, it might be extended farther. A striking instance of the force of names, standing by themselves, is in the respect felt towards Michael Angelo in this country. We know nothing of him but his name. It is an abstraction of fame and greatness. Our admiration of him supports itself, and our idea of his superiority seems self-evident, because it is attached to his name only. Some of our 450artists seem trying to puff their names into reputation from an instinctive knowledge of this principle,—by talking incessantly of themselves and doing nothing. It is not, indeed, easy to deny the merit of the works—which they do not produce. Those which they have produced are very bad.

Taste is nothing but sensibility to the different degrees and kinds of excellence in the works of art or nature. This definition will perhaps be disputed; for I am aware the general practice is to make it consist in a disposition to find fault.

A French man or woman will in general conclude their account of Voltaire’s denunciation of Shakespeare and Milton as barbarians, on the score of certain technical improprieties, with assuring you, that ‘he (Voltaire) had a great deal of taste.’ It is their phrase, Il avait beaucoup du goût. To which the proper answer is, that that might be; but that he did not shew it in this case; as the overlooking great and countless beauties, and being taken up only with petty or accidental blemishes, shews as little strength of understanding as it does refinement or elevation of taste. The French author, indeed, allows of Shakespeare, that ‘he had found a few pearls on his enormous dunghill.’ But there is neither truth nor proportion in this sentence, for his works are (to say the least),

Genius is the power of producing excellence: taste is the power of perceiving the excellence thus produced in its several sorts and degrees, with all their force, refinement, distinctions, and connections. In other words, taste (as it relates to the productions of art) is strictly the power of being properly affected by works of genius. It is the proportioning admiration to power, pleasure to beauty: it is entire sympathy with the finest impulses of the imagination, not antipathy, not indifference to them. The eye of taste may be said to reflect the impressions of real genius, as the even mirror reflects the objects of nature in all their clearness and lustre, instead of distorting or diminishing them;

451To take a pride and pleasure in nothing but defects (and those perhaps of the most paltry, obvious, and mechanical kind)—in the disappointment and tarnishing of our faith in substantial excellence, in the proofs of weakness, not of power, (and this where there are endless subjects to feed the mind with wonder and increased delight through years of patient thought and fond remembrance), is not a sign of uncommon refinement, but of unaccountable perversion of taste. So, in the case of Voltaire’s hypercriticisms on Milton and Shakespeare, the most common-place and prejudiced admirer of these authors knows, as well as Voltaire can tell him, that it is a fault to make a sea-port (we will say) in Bohemia, or to introduce artillery and gunpowder in the war in Heaven. This is common to Voltaire, and the merest English reader: there is nothing in it either way. But what he differs from us in, and, as it is supposed, greatly to his advantage, and to our infinite shame and mortification, is, that this is all that he perceives, or will hear of in Milton or Shakespeare, and that he either knows, or pretends to know, nothing of that prodigal waste, or studied accumulation of grandeur, truth, and beauty, which are to be found in each of these authors. Now, I cannot think, that, to be dull and insensible to so great and such various excellence,—to have no feeling in unison with it, no latent suspicion of the treasures hid beneath our feet, and which we trample upon with ignorant scorn, to be cut off, as by a judicial blindness, from that universe of thought and imagination that shifts its wondrous pageant before us, to turn aside from the throng and splendour of airy shapes that fancy weaves for our dazzled sight, and to strut and vapour over a little pettifogging blunder in geography or chronology, which a school-boy, or a village pedagogue, would be ashamed to insist upon, is any proof of the utmost perfection of taste, but the contrary. At this rate, it makes no difference whether Shakespeare wrote his works or not, or whether the critic, who ‘damns him into everlasting redemption’ for a single slip of the pen, ever read them;—he is absolved from all knowledge, taste, or feeling, of the different excellencies, and inimitable creations of the poet’s pen—from any sympathy with the wanderings and the fate of Imogen, the beauty and tenderness of Ophelia, the thoughtful abstraction of Hamlet; his soliloquy on life may never have given him a moment’s pause, or touched his breast with one solitary reflection;—the Witches in Macbeth may ‘lay their choppy fingers upon their skinny lips’ without making any alteration in his pulse,—and Lear’s heart may break in vain for him;—he may hear no strange noises in Prospero’s island,—and the moonlight that sleeps on beds of flowers, where fairies couch in the Midsummer Night’s Dream, may never once have steeped his senses in repose. Nor will it avail Milton to 452‘have built high towers in Heaven,’ nor to have brought down heaven upon earth, nor that he has made Satan rear his giant form before us, ‘majestic though in ruin,’ or decked the bridal bed of Eve with beauty, or clothed her with innocence, ‘likest heaven,’ as she ministered to Adam, and his angel guest. Our critic knows nothing of all this, of beauty or sublimity, of thought or passion, breathed in sweet or solemn sounds, with all the magic of verse ‘in tones and numbers hit;’ he lays his finger on the map, and shews you, that there is no sea-port for Shakespeare’s weather-beaten travellers to land at in Bohemia, and takes out a list of mechanical inventions, and proves that gunpowder was not known till long after Milton’s battle of the angels; and concludes, that every one who, after these profound and important discoveries, finds anything to admire in these two writers, is a person without taste, or any pretensions to it. By the same rule, a thorough-bred critic might prove that Homer was no poet, and the Odyssey a vulgar performance, because Ulysses makes a pun on the name of Noman. Or some other disciple of the same literal school might easily set aside the whole merit of Racine’s Athalie, or Moliere’s Ecole des Femmes, and pronounce these chef d’œuvres of art barbarous and Gothic, because the characters in the first address one another (absurdly enough) as Monsieur and Madame, and because the latter is written in rhyme, contrary to all classical precedent. These little false measures of criticism may be misapplied and retorted without end, and require to be eked out by national antipathy or political prejudice to give them currency and weight. Thus it was in war-time that the author of the ‘Friend’ ventured to lump all the French tragedies together as a smart collection of epigrams, and that the author of the ‘Excursion, a poem, being portion^[49] of a larger poem, to be named the Recluse,’ made bold to call Voltaire a dull prose-writer—with impunity. Such pitiful quackery is a cheap way of setting up for exclusive taste and wisdom, by pretending to despise what is most generally admired, as if nothing could come up to or satisfy that ideal standard of excellence, of which the 453person bears about the select pattern in his own mind. ‘Not to admire any thing’ is as bad a test of wisdom as it is a rule for happiness. We sometimes meet with individuals who have formed their whole character on this maxim, and who ridiculously affect a decided and dogmatical tone of superiority over others, from an uncommon degree both of natural and artificial stupidity. They are blind to painting—deaf to music—indifferent to poetry; and they triumph in the catalogue of their defects as the fault of these arts, because they have not sense enough to perceive their own want of perception. To treat any art or science with contempt, is only to prove your own incapacity and want of taste for it: to say that what has been done best in any kind is good for nothing, is to say that the utmost exertion of human ability is not equal to the lowest, for the productions of the lowest are worth something, except by comparison with what is better. When we hear persons exclaiming that the pictures at the Marquis of Stafford’s or Mr. Angerstein’s, or those at the British Gallery, are a heap of trash, we might tell them that they betray in this a want not of taste only, but of common sense, for that these collections contain some of the finest specimens of the greatest masters, and that that must be excellent in the productions of human art, beyond which human genius, in any age or country, has not been able to go. Ask these very fastidious critics what it is that they do like, and you will soon find, from tracing out the objects of their secret admiration, that their pretended disdain of first-rate excellence is owing either to ignorance of the last refinements of works of genius, or envy at the general admiration which they have called forth. I have known a furious Phillippic against the faults of shining talents and established reputation subside into complacent approbation of dull mediocrity, that neither tasked the kindred sensibility of its admirer beyond its natural inertness, nor touched his self-love with a consciousness of inferiority; and that, by never attempting original beauties, and never failing, gave no opportunity to intellectual ingratitude to be plausibly revenged for the pleasure or instruction it had reluctantly received. So there are judges who cannot abide Mr. Kean, and think Mr. Young an incomparable actor, for no other reason than because he never shocks them with an idea which they had not before. The only excuse for the over-delicacy and supercilious indifference here described, is when it arises from an intimate acquaintance with, and intense admiration of, other and higher degrees of perfection and genius. A person whose mind has been worked up to a lofty pitch of enthusiasm in this way, cannot perhaps condescend to notice, or be much delighted with inferior beauties; but then neither will he dwell upon, and be preposterously offended with, slight faults. 454So that the ultimate and only conclusive proof of taste is even here not indifference, but enthusiasm; and before a critic can give himself airs of superiority for what he despises, he must first lay himself open to reprisals, by telling us what he admires. There we may fairly join issue with him. Without this indispensable condition of all true taste, absolute stupidity must be more than on a par with the most exquisite refinement; and the most formidable drawcansir of all would be the most impenetrable blockhead. Thus, if we know that Voltaire’s contempt of Shakespeare arose from his idolatry of Racine, this may excuse him in a national point of view; but he has no longer any advantage over us; and we must console ourselves as well as we can for Mr. Wordsworth’s not allowing us to laugh at the wit of Voltaire, by laughing now and then at the only author whom he is known to understand and admire!^[50]

Instead of making a disposition to find fault a proof of taste, I would reverse the rule, and estimate every one’s pretensions to taste by the degree of their sensibility to the highest and most various excellence. An indifference to less degrees of excellence is only excusable as it arises from a knowledge and admiration of higher ones; and a readiness in the detection of faults should pass for refinement only as it is owing to a quick sense and impatient love of beauties. In a word, fine taste consists in sympathy, not in antipathy; and the rejection of what is bad is only to be accounted a virtue when it implies a preference of and attachment to what is better.

There is a certain point, which may be considered as the highest point of perfection at which the human faculties can arrive in the conception and execution of certain things: to be able to reach this point in reality is the greatest proof of genius and power; and I imagine that the greatest proof of taste is given in being able to appreciate it when done. For instance, I have heard (and I can believe) that Madame Catalani’s manner of singing ‘Hope told a flattering tale,’ was the perfection of singing; and I cannot conceive that it would have been the perfection of taste to have thought nothing at all of it. There was, I understand, a sort of fluttering of the voice 455and a breathless palpitation of the heart, (like the ruffling of the feathers of the robin-redbreast), which completely gave back all the uneasy and thrilling voluptuousness of the sentiment; and I contend that the person on whom not a particle of this expression was lost, (or would have been lost, if it had even been finer), into whom the tones of sweetness or tenderness sink deeper and deeper as they approach the farthest verge of ecstacy or agony, he who has an ear attuned to the trembling harmony, and a heart ‘pierceable’ by pleasure’s finest point, is the best judge of music,—not he who remains insensible to the matter himself, or, if you point it out to him, asks, ‘What of it?’ I fancied that I had a triumph some time ago, over a critic and connoisseur of music, who thought little of the minuet in Don Giovanni; but the same person redeemed his pretensions to musical taste in my opinion by saying of some passage in Mozart, ‘This is a soliloquy equal to any in Hamlet.’ In hearing the accompaniment in the Messiah of angels’ voices to the shepherds keeping watch at night, who has the most taste and delicacy, he who listens in silent rapture to the silver sounds, as they rise in sweetness and soften into distance, drawing the soul from earth to heaven, and making it partaker of the music of the spheres, or he who remains deaf to the summons, and remarks that it is an allegorical conceit? Which would Handel have been most pleased with, the man who was seen standing at the performance of the Coronation anthem in Westminster Abbey, with his face bathed in tears, and mingling ‘the drops which sacred joy had engendered’ with that ocean of circling sound, or with him who sat with frigid, critical aspect, his heart untouched and his looks unaltered as the marble statue on the wall?^[51] Again, if any one, in looking at Rembrandt’s picture of Jacob’s Dream, should not be struck with the solemn awe that surrounds it, and with the dazzling flights of angels’ wings like steps of golden light, emanations of flame or spirit hovering between earth and sky, and should observe very wisely that Jacob was thrown in one corner of the picture like a bundle of clothes, without power, form, or motion, and should think this a defect, I should say that such a critic might possess great knowledge of the mechanical part of painting, but 456not an atom of feeling or imagination.^[52] Or who is it that, in looking at the productions of Raphael or Titian, is the person of true taste? He who finds what there is, or he who finds what there is not in each? Not he who picks a petty vulgar quarrel with the colouring of Raphael or the drawing of Titian is the true critic and judicious spectator, but he who broods over the expression of the one till it takes possession of his soul, and who dwells on the tones and hues of the other till his eye is saturated with truth and beauty, for by this means he moulds his mind to the study and reception of what is most perfect in form and colour, instead of letting it remain empty, ‘swept and garnished,’ or rather a dull blank, with ‘knowledge at each entrance quite shut out.’ He who cavils at the want of drawing in Titian is not the most sensible to it in Raphael; instead of that, he only insists on his want of colouring. He who is offended at Raphael’s hardness and monotony is not delighted with the soft, rich pencilling of Titian; he only takes care to find fault with him for wanting that which, if he possessed it in the highest degree, he would not admire or understand. And this is easy to be accounted for. First, such a critic has been told what to do, and follows his instructions. Secondly, to perceive the height of any excellence, it is necessary to have the most exquisite sense of that kind of excellence through all its gradations: to perceive the want of any excellence, it is merely necessary to have a negative or abstract notion of the thing, or perhaps only of the name. Or, in other words, any the most crude and mechanical idea of a given quality is a measure of positive deficiency, whereas none but the most refined idea of the same quality can be a standard of superlative merit. To distinguish the finest characteristics of Titian or Raphael, to go along with them in their imitation of Nature, is to be so far like them: to be occupied only with that in which they fell short of others, instead of that in which they soared above them, shows a vulgar, narrow capacity, insensible to any thing beyond mediocrity, and an ambition still more grovelling. To be dazzled by admiration of the greatest excellence, and of the highest works of genius, is natural to the best capacities, and the best natures; envy and dulness are most apt to detect minute blemishes and unavoidable inequalities, as we see the spots in the sun by having its rays 457blunted by mist or smoke. It may be asked, then, whether mere extravagance and enthusiasm are proofs of taste? And I answer, no, where they are without reason and knowledge. Mere sensibility is not true taste, but sensibility to real excellence is. To admire and be wrapt up in what is trifling or absurd, is a proof of nothing but ignorance or affectation: on the contrary, he who admires most what is most worthy of admiration, (let his raptures or his eagerness to express them be what they may), shows himself neither extravagant nor ‘unwise.’ When Mr. Wordsworth once said that he could read the description of Satan in Milton,

till he felt a certain faintness come over his mind from a sense of beauty and grandeur, I saw no extravagance in this, but the utmost truth of feeling. When the same author, or his friend Mr. Southey, says, that the Excursion is better worth preserving than the Paradise Lost, this appears to me, I confess, a great piece of impertinence, or an unwarrantable stretch of friendship. Nor do I think the preference given by certain celebrated reviewers, of Mr. Rogers’s Human Life over Mr. Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads, founded on the true principles of poetical justice; for something is, after all, better than nothing.

To hasten to a conclusion of these desultory observations. The highest taste is shown in habitual sensibility to the greatest beauties; the most general taste is shown in a perception of the greatest variety of excellence. Many people admire Milton, and as many admire Pope, while there are but few who have any relish for both. Almost all the disputes on this subject arise, not so much from false, as from confined taste. We suppose that only one thing can have merit; and that, if we allow it to any thing else, we deprive the favourite object of our critical faith of the honours due to it. We are generally right in what we approve ourselves; for liking proceeds from a certain conformity of objects to the taste; as we are generally wrong in condemning what others admire; for our dislike mostly proceeds from our want of taste for what pleases them. Our being totally senseless to what excites extreme delight in those who have as good a right to judge as we have, in all human probability implies a defect of faculty in us, rather than a limitation in the resources of nature or art. Those who are pleased with the fewest things, know the least; as those who are pleased with every thing, know nothing. Shakespeare makes Mrs. Quickly say of Falstaff, by a pleasant blunder, that ‘Carnation was a colour he could never abide.’ So there are persons who cannot 458like Claude, because he is not Salvator Rosa; some who cannot endure Rembrandt, and others who would not cross the street to see a Vandyke; one reader does not like the neatness of Junius, and another objects to the extravagance of Burke; and they are all right, if they expect to find in others what is only to be found in their favourite author or artist, but equally wrong if they mean to say, that each of those they would condemn by a narrow and arbitrary standard of taste, has not a peculiar and transcendent merit of his own. The question is not, whether you like a certain excellence, (it is your own fault if you do not), but whether another possessed it in a very eminent degree. If he did not, who is there that possessed it in a greater—that ranks above him in that particular? Those who are accounted the best, are the best in their line. When we say that Rembrandt was a master of chiaro-scuro, for instance, we do not say that he joined to this the symmetry of the Greek statues, but we mean that we must go to him for the perfection of chiaro-scuro, and that a Greek statue has not chiaro-scuro. If any one objects to Junius’s Letters, that they are a tissue of epigrams, we answer, Be it so; it is for that very reason that we admire them. Again, should any one find fault with Mr. Burke’s writings as a collection of rhapsodies, the proper answer always would be, Who is there that has written finer rhapsodies? I know an admirer of Don Quixote who can see no merit in Gil Blas, and an admirer of Gil Blas who could never get through Don Quixote. I myself have great pleasure in reading both these works, and in that respect think I have an advantage over both these critics. It always struck me as a singular proof of good taste, good sense, and liberal thinking, in an old friend, who had Paine’s Rights of Man and Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution, bound up in one volume, and who said, that, both together, they made a very good book. To agree with the greatest number of good judges, is to be in the right; and good judges are persons of natural sensibility and acquired knowledge.^[53] On the other hand, it must be owned, there are critics whose praise is a libel, and whose recommendation of any work is enough to condemn it. Men of the greatest genius and originality are not always persons of the most liberal and unprejudiced taste; they have a strong bias to certain qualities themselves, are for reducing others to their own standard, and lie less open to the general impressions of things. This exclusive preference of their own peculiar excellencies 459to those of others, in writers whose merits have not been sufficiently understood or acknowledged by their contemporaries, chiefly because they were not common-place, may sometimes be seen mounting up to a degree of bigotry and intolerance, little short of insanity. There are some critics I have known who never allow an author any merit till all the world ‘cry out upon him,’ and others who never allow another any merit that any one can discover but themselves. So there are connoisseurs who spend their lives and waste their breath in extolling sublime passages in obscure writers, and lovers who choose their mistresses for their ugly faces. This is not taste, but affectation. What is popular is not necessarily vulgar; and that which we try to rescue from fatal obscurity, had in general much better remain in it.

Taste relates to that which, either in the objects of nature, or the imitation of them or the Fine Arts in general is calculated to give pleasure. Now, to know what is calculated to give pleasure, the way is to enquire what does give pleasure: so that taste is, after all, much more a matter of fact and less of theory than might be imagined. We may hence determine another point, viz.—whether there is any universal or exclusive standard of taste, since this is to inquire, in other words, whether there is any one thing that pleases all the world alike, or whether there is only one thing that pleases anybody, both which questions carry their own answers with them. Still it does not follow, because there is no dogmatic or bigoted standard of taste, like a formula of faith, which whoever does not believe without doubt he shall be damned everlastingly, that there is no standard of taste whatever, that is to say, that certain things are not more apt to please than others, that some do not please more generally, that there are not others that give most pleasure to those who have studied the subject, that one nation is most susceptible of a particular kind of beauty, and another of another, according to their characters, &c. It would be a difficult attempt to force all these into one general rule or system, and yet equally so to deny that they are absolutely capricious, and without any foundation or principle whatever. There are, doubtless, books for children that we discard as we grow up; yet, what are the majority of mankind, or even readers, but grown children? If put to the vote of all the milliners’ girls in London, Old Mortality, or even Heart of Midlothian, would not carry the day (or, at least, not very triumphantly) over a common Minerva-press novel; and I will hazard another opinion, that no 460woman ever liked Burke. Mr. Pratt, on the contrary, said that he had to ‘boast of many learned and beautiful suffrages.’^[54] It is not, then, solely from the greatest number of voices, but from the opinion of the greatest number of well-informed minds, that we can establish, if not an absolute standard, at least a comparative scale, of taste. Certainly, it can hardly be doubted that the greater the number of persons of strong natural sensibility or love for any art, and who have paid the closest attention to it, who agree in their admiration of any work of art, the higher do its pretensions rise to classical taste and intrinsic beauty. In this way, as the opinion of a thousand good judges may outweigh that of nearly all the rest of the world, so there may be one individual among them whose opinion may outweigh that of the other nine hundred and ninety-nine; that is, one of a still stronger and more refined perception of beauty than all the rest, and to whose opinion that of the others and of the world at large would approximate and be conformed, as their taste or perception of what was pleasing became stronger and more confirmed by exercise and proper objects to call it forth. Thus, if we were still to insist on an universal standard of taste, it must be that, not which does, but which would please universally, supposing all men to have paid an equal attention to any subject and to have an equal relish for it, which can only be guessed at by the imperfect and yet more than casual agreement among those who have done so from choice and feeling. Taste is nothing but an enlarged capacity for receiving pleasure from works of imagination, &c. It is time, however, to apply this rule. There is, for instance, a much greater number of habitual readers and playgoers in France, who are devoted admirers of Racine or Molière than there are in England of Shakspeare: does Shakspeare’s fame rest, then, on a less broad and solid foundation than that of either of the others? I think not, supposing that the class of judges to whom Shakspeare’s excellences appeal are a higher, more independent, and more original court of criticism, and that their suffrages are quite as unanimous (though not so numerous) in the one case as in the other. A simile or a sentiment is not the worse in common opinion for being somewhat superficial and hackneyed, but it is the worse in poetry. The perfection of common-place is that which would unite the greatest number of suffrages, if there were not a tribunal above common-place. For instance, in Shakspeare’s description of flowers, primroses are mentioned—

461Now, I do not know that this expression is translatable into French, or intelligible to the common reader of either nation, but raise the scale of fancy, passion, and observation of nature to a certain point, and I will be bold to say that there will be no scruple entertained whether this single metaphor does not contain more poetry of the kind than is to be found in all Racine. As no Frenchman could write it, so I believe no Frenchman could understand it. We cannot take this insensibility on their part as a mark of our superiority, for we have plenty of persons among ourselves in the same predicament, but not the wisest or most refined, and to these the appeal is fair from the many—‘and fit audience find, though few.’ So I think it requires a higher degree of taste to judge of Titian’s portraits than Raphael’s scripture pieces: not that I think more highly of the former than the latter, but the world and connoisseurs in general think there is no comparison (from the dignity of the subject), whereas I think it difficult to decide which are the finest. Here again we have a common-place, a preconception, the moulds of the judgment preoccupied by certain assumptions of degrees and classes of excellence, instead of judging from the true and genuine impressions of things. Men of genius, or those who can produce excellence would be the best judges of it—poets of poetry, painters of painting, &c.—but that persons of original and strong powers of mind are too much disposed to refer everything to their own peculiar bias, and are comparatively indifferent to merely passive impressions. On the other hand, it is wholly wrong to oppose taste to genius, for genius in works of art is nothing but the power of producing what is beautiful (which, however, implies the intimate sense of it), though this is something very different from mere negative or formal beauties, which have as little to do with taste as genius.

I have, in a former essay, ascertained one principle of taste or excellence in the arts of imitation, where it was shown that objects of sense are not as it were simple and self-evident propositions, but admit of endless analysis and the most subtle investigation. We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts. To suppose that we see the whole of any object, merely by looking at it, is a vulgar error: we fancy that we do, because we are, of course, conscious of no more than we see in it, but this circle of our knowledge enlarges with further acquaintance and study, and we then perceive that what we perhaps barely distinguished in the gross, or regarded as a dull blank, is full of beauty, meaning, and curious details. He sees most of nature who understands its language best, or connects one thing with the greatest number of other things. Expression is the key to the human countenance, and unfolds a 462thousand imperceptible distinctions. How, then, should every one be a judge of pictures, when so few are of faces? A merely ignorant spectator, walking through a gallery of pictures, no more distinguishes the finest than your dog would, if he was to accompany you. Do not even the most experienced dispute on the preference, and shall the most ignorant decide? A vulgar connoisseur would even prefer a Denner to a Titian, because there is more of merely curious and specific detail. We may hence account for another circumstance, why things please in the imitation which do not in reality. If we saw the whole of anything, or if the object in nature were merely one thing, this could not be the case. But the fact is, that in the imitation, or in the scientific study of any object, we come to an analysis of the details or some other abstract view of the subject which we had overlooked in a cursory examination, and these may be beautiful or curious, though the object in the gross is disgusting, or connected with disagreeable or uninteresting associations. Thus, in a picture of still life, as a shell or a marble chimney-piece, the stains or the gradations of colour may be delicate, and subjects for a new and careful imitation, though the tout ensemble has not, like a living face, the highest beauty of intelligence and expression. Here lie and here return the true effects and triumphs of art. It is not in making the eye a microscope, but in making it the interpreter and organ of all that can touch the soul and the affections, that the perfection of fine art is shown. Taste, then, does not place in the first rank of merit what merely proves difficulty or gratifies curiosity, unless it is combined with excellence and sentiment, or the pleasures of imagination and the moral sense. In this case the pleasure is more than doubled, where not only the imitation but the thing imitated, is fine in itself. Hence the preference given to Italian over Dutch pictures.

In respect to the imitation of nature, I would further observe that I think Sir Joshua Reynolds was wrong in making the grandeur of the design depend on the omission of the details, or the want of finishing. This seems also to proceed on the supposition that there cannot be two views of nature, but that the details are opposed to and inconsistent with an attention to general effect. Now this is evidently false, since the two things are undoubtedly combined by nature. For instance, the grandeur of design or character in the arch of an eyebrow is not injured or destroyed in reality by the hair-lines of which it is composed. Nor is the general form or outline of the eyebrow altered in the imitation, whether you make it one rude mass or descend into the minutiæ of the parts, which are arranged in such a manner as to produce the arched form and give the particular expression. So the general form of a nose, say an aquiline one, is not 463affected, whether I paint a wart which may happen to be on it or not, and so of the outline and proportions of the whole face. That is, general effect is consistent with individual details, and though these are not necessary to it, yet they often assist it, and always confirm the sense of verisimilitude. The most finished paintings, it is true, are not the grandest in effect; but neither is it true that the greatest daubs are the most sublime in character and composition. The best painters have combined an eye to the whole with careful finishing, and as there is a medium in all things, so the rule here seems to be not to go on ad infinitum with the details, but to stop when the time and labour necessary seem, in the judgment of the artist, to exceed the benefit produced.

Beauty does not consist in a medium, but in gradation or harmony. It has been the fashion of late to pretend to refer everything to association of ideas (and it is difficult to answer this appeal, since association, by its nature, mixes up with everything), but as Hartley has himself observed, who carried this principle to the utmost extent, and might be supposed to understand its limits, association implies something to be associated, and if there is a pleasing association, there must be first something naturally pleasing from which the secondary satisfaction is reflected, or to which it is conjoined. The chirping of a sparrow is as much a rural and domestic sound as the notes of the robin or the thrush, but it does not serve as a point to link other interests to because it wants beauty in itself; and, on the other hand, the song of the nightingale draws more attention to itself as a piece of music, and conveys less sentiment than the simple note of the cuckoo, which, from its solitary singularity, acts as the warning voice of time. Those who deny that there is a natural and pleasing softness arising from harmony or gradation, might as well affirm that sudden and abrupt transitions do not make our impressions more distinct as that they do not make them more harsh and violent. Beauty consists in gradation of colours or symmetry of form (conformity): strength or sublimity arises from the sense of power, and is aided by contrast. The ludicrous is the incoherent, arising, not from a conflicting power, but from weakness or the inability of any habitual impulse to sustain itself. The ideal is not confined to creation, but takes place in imitation, where a thing is subjected to one view, as all the parts of a face to the same expression. Invention is only feigning according to nature, or with a certain proportion between causes and effects. Poetry is infusing the same spirit into a number of things, or bathing them all as it were, in the same overflowing sense of delight (making the language also soft and musical), as the same torch kindles a number of lamps. I think invention is chiefly confined to poetry and words 464or ideas, and has little place in painting or concrete imagery, where the want of truth, or of the actual object, soon spoils the effect and force of the representation. Indeed, I think all genius is, in a great measure, national and local, arising out of times and circumstances, and being sustained at its full height by these alone, and that originality is not a deviation from, but a recurrence to nature. Rules and models destroy genius and art; and the excess of the artificial in the end cures itself, for it in time becomes so uniform and vapid as to be altogether contemptible, and to seek perforce some other outlet or purchase for the mind to take hold of.

The metaphysical theory above premised will account not only for the difficulty of imitating nature, but for the excellence of various masters, and the diversity and popularity of different styles. If the truth of sense and nature were one, there could be but one mode of representing it, more or less correct. But nature contains an infinite variety of parts, with their relations and significations, and different artists take these, and altogether do not give the whole. Thus Titian coloured, Raphael designed, Rubens gave the florid hue and motions, Rembrandt chiaro-scuro, &c.; but none of these reached perfection in their several departments, much less with reference to the whole circumference of art. It is ridiculous to suppose there is but one standard or one style. One artist looks at objects with as different an eye from another, as he does from the mathematician. It is erroneous to tie down individual genius to ideal models. Each person should do that, not which is best in itself, even supposing this could be known, but that which he can do best, which he will find out if left to himself. Spenser could not have written Paradise Lost, nor Milton the Faerie Queene. Those who aim at faultless regularity will only produce mediocrity, and no one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves. Did Correggio know what he had done when he had painted the ‘St. Jerome’—or Rembrandt when he made the sketch of ‘Jacob’s Dream?’ Oh, no! Those who are conscious of their powers never do anything.

It was a fine impertinence of the younger Pliny, to try to persuade Tacitus, in one of his epistles, that the diffuse style was better than the concise. ‘Such a one,’ says he, ‘aims at the throat of his adversary: now I like to strike him wherever I can.’ I may be 465thought guilty of a like piece of officiousness in the remarks here offered on several of the most prominent of our parliamentary speakers. In general, to suggest advice, or hazard criticism, is to recommend it to others to do something, which we know they either will not or cannot do: or it is to desire them either to please us, or do nothing. The present article may be considered as a marginal note or explanatory addition to a former one, on nearly the same subject—like one of Lord Castlereagh’s long parentheses: but I hope there will be more in it. It is a subject of which I wish to make clear work as I go; for it is one to which, if I can once get rid of it, I am not likely to recur.

The haughty tone of invective which I have already ascribed to Lord Chatham, was very different from that didactic style of parliamentary oratory which has since been imported from northern colleges and lecture-rooms. Of this school Sir James Mackintosh and Mr. Brougham may be reckoned at the head.

This method consists, not so much in taking a side, as in stating a question. The speaker takes upon him to be the judge rather than the advocate; and if he had the authority of a judge, or could direct the decision, as well as sum up the evidence, it would be all very well. An orator of this stamp does not seat himself on the Opposition side of the House to urge or to reply to particular points, but in a Professor’s chair of Humanity, to read a lecture to the tyros of the Treasury-Bench, on the elementary principles and all the possible bearings, the objections and answers, the difficulties and the solutions of every question in philosophy, jurisprudence, politics, and political economy,—on war, peace, ‘domestic treason, foreign levy,’ colonial produce, copy-right of authors, prison discipline, the hulks, the corn-bill, the penitentiary, prostitutes, and pick-pockets. Nothing comes amiss to him that can puzzle himself or pose his hearers; and he lets out all his knowledge indiscriminately, whether it makes for or against him, with deliberate impartiality and scrupulous exactness. Such persons might be called Orators of the Human Mind. They are a little out of their place, it must be owned, in the House of Commons. The object there is—not to put the majority in possession of the common grounds of judging, as in a class of students—(these are taken for granted as already known)—but to carry a point, to gain a verdict for yourself or for truth, by throwing the weight of eloquence and argument into the scale against interest, prejudice, or sophistry. There are retainers enough on the other side to manage for the crown, who are ready to take all advantages without your volunteering to place yourself in their power, or to put excuses in their mouths, to help them out at a dead-lift. If they 466were candid, if they were disinterested, if they were not hostilely disposed, it might be a feasible scheme to consider a debate as an amicable communication of doubts and lights, as a comparison of strength or a confession of weakness: but why hint a doubt, or start a difficulty needlessly in your own path, which will be eagerly caught at, and made use of in the most insulting manner to defeat a host of real proofs, and overturn the most legitimate conclusions? Why tamper with your own cause? Why play at fast and loose with your object? Why restore the weapons into your enemies’ hands, which you have just wrested from them? Why ‘make a wanton’ of the First Minister of State? It is either vanity, weakness, or indifference to do so. You might as well in confidence tell an adversary where you meant to strike him, point out to him your own weak sides, or wait in courtesy for the blow. Gamesters do not show one another their hands: neither should politicians, who understand what they are about—that is, knaves will not, and honest men ought not. Others will find out the rotten parts of a question: do you stick to the sound—knowledge is said to be power: but knowledge, applied as we have seen it, neutralises itself. Mere knowledge, to be effectual, must act in vacuo: but the House of Commons is by no means a vacuum, and empty receiver for abstract truth and airy speculation. There is the resistance, the refrangibility of dense prejudice and crooked policy: you must concentrate, you must enforce, you must urge to glowing sympathy: and enthusiasm, zeal, perfect conviction on your part, is the only principle that can be brought into play against the cool calculations or gross incentives of selfishness and servility on the opposite side. A middle line of conduct does not excite respect, but contempt. They do not think you sincere, but lukewarm. They give you credit for affectation or timidity, but none for heartiness in a cause, or fidelity to a party. They have more hopes of you than fears. By everlasting subtle distinctions, and hesitating, qualified, retracting dissent from measures you would be thought most to reprobate, you do more harm than good. In theory there are infinite shades of difference, but in practice the question must be decided one way or other: either the Ayes or the Noes must have it. In all such cases, those who are not for us are against us. In political controversy, as in a battle, there are but two sides to chuse between; and those who create a diversion in favour of established abuses by setting up a third, fanciful, impracticable standard of perfection of their own, in the most critical circumstances, betray the cause they pretend to espouse with such overweening delicacy. For my own part, I hate a fellow who picks a hole in his own coat, who finds a flaw in his own argument, who treats his enemies as if they might become friends, 467or his friends as if they might become enemies. I hate your shuffling, shilly-shally proceedings, and diagonal sidelong movements between right and wrong. Fling yourself into the gap at once—either into the arms, or at the heads of Ministers!

I remember hearing, with some pain and uneasiness, Sir James Mackintosh’s maiden speech on the Genoa business. It was a great, but ineffectual effort. The mass of information, of ingenuity, and reasoning, was very prodigious; but the whole was misdirected, no impression whatever was made. It was like an inaugural dissertation on the general principles of ethics, on the laws of nature and nations, on ancient and modern history—a laboured treatise de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis. There were all the rules of moral arithmetic, all the items in a profligate political account; but the bill was not properly cast up, the case was not distinctly made out, the counsel got no damages for his client. Nothing was gained by this motion, nor could there be. When he had brought his heaviest artillery to bear with probable success upon a certain point, he stopped short like a scientific demonstrator (not like a skilful engineer) to show how it might be turned against himself. When he had wound up the charge of treachery or oppression to a climax, he gratuitously suggested a possible plea of necessity, accident, or some other topic, to break the force of his inference; or he anticipated the answers that might be made to it, as if he was afraid he should not be thought to know all that could be said on both sides of the question. This enlarged knowledge of good and evil may be very necessary to a philosopher, but it is very prejudicial to an orator. No man can play the whole game in this manner, blow hot and cold in a breath, or take an entire debate into his own hands, and wield it in which way he pleases. He will find his own load enough for his own shoulders to bear. The exceptions if you chuse to go into them, multiply faster than the rules: the various complications of the subject distract, instead of convincing: you do your adversary’s work for him; the battle is lost without a blow being struck; and a speech of this sceptical kind requires and receives no answer. It falls by its own weight, and buries any body but the Minister under its ruins—or it is left, not a triumphal arch, but a splendid mausoleum of the learning, genius, and eloquence of the speaker.—The Cock-pit of St. Stephen’s does not relish this scholastic refinement, this method of holding an argument with a man’s self: a little bear-garden, cut-and-thrust work would be much better understood. Sir James has of late improved his tact and knowledge of the House. He has taken up Sir Samuel Romilly’s department of questions relating to the amelioration of the penal code and general humanity, and I have no doubt Government will leave 468him in quiet possession of it. They concede these sort of questions as an amiable diversion, or friendly bonus, to the indefatigable spirit of Opposition.

Mr. Brougham is, I conceive, another instance of this analytical style of debating, which ‘plays round the head, but does not reach the heart.’ There is a want of warmth, of momentum, of impulse in his speeches. He loses himself in an infinity of details, as his learned and honourable friend does in a wide sea of speculation. He goes picking up a number of curious pebbles on the shore, and at the outlets of a question—but he does not ‘roll all his strength and all his sharpness up into one ball,’ to throw at and crush his enemies beneath his feet. He enters into statistics, he calls for documents, he examines accounts. This method is slow, perplexing, circuitous, and not sure. While the evidence is collecting, the question is lost. While one thing is substantiating, another goes out of your mind. These little detached multifarious particulars, which require such industry and sagacity in the speaker to bring them forward, have no clue in the minds of the hearers to connect them together. There is no substratum of prejudice, no cement of interest. They do not grow out of the soil of common feeling and experience, but are set in it; nor do they bear the fruits of conviction. Mr. Brougham can follow the ramifications of an intricate subject, but he is not so well acquainted with the springs of the human mind. He finds himself at the end of his speech,—in the last sentence of it,—just where he was at the beginning, or in any other given part of it. He has not acquired any additional impetus, is not projected forward with any new degree of warmth or vigour. He was cold, correct, smart, pointed at first, and he continues so still. A repetition of blows, however, is of no use, unless they are struck in the same place: a change of position is not progression. As Sir James Mackintosh’s speeches are a decomposition of the moral principles of society, so Mr. Brougham’s are an ingenious taking in pieces of its physical mechanism. While they are at work with their experiments, their antagonists are putting in motion the passions, the fears, and antipathies of mankind, and blowing their schemes of reform above the moon.

Talent alone, then, is not sufficient to support a successful Opposition. There is talent on the other side too, of some sort or other; and, in addition, there is another weight, that of influence, which requires a counterpoise. This can be nothing else but fixed principle, but naked honesty, but undisguised enthusiasm. That is the expansive force that must shatter the strongholds of corruption if ever they are shattered, that must make them totter, if ever they are made to totter, about the heads of their possessors. Desire to expose a 469ministry, and you will do it—if it be, like ours, vulnerable all over. Desire to make a display of yourself, and you will do it, if you have a decent stock of acquirements. Mr. Brougham has a great quantity of combustible materials constantly passing through his hands, but he has not the warmth in his own heart to ‘kindle them into a flame of sacred vehemence.’ He is not a good hater. He is not an impassioned lover of the popular cause. He is not a Radical orator: he is not a Back-bone debater. He wants nerve, he wants impetuosity. He may divide on a question, but he will never carry it. His circumspection, which he thinks his strength, is in reality his weakness. He makes paltry excuses, unmanly concessions. His political warfare is not a bellum internecinum. He commits no mortal offences. He has not yet cut off his retreat. In a word, he trims too much between all parties. A person who does this too long, loses the confidence, loses the cordiality of all parties; loses his character; and when he has once lost that, there is nothing to stand in his way to office and the first honours of the State!

He who is not indifferent himself will find out, from his own feelings, what it is that interests others in a cause. An honest man is an orator by nature. The late Mr. Whitbread was an honest man, and a true parliamentary speaker. He had no artifices, no tricks, no reserve about him. He spoke point-blank what he thought, and his heart was in his broad, honest, English face. He had as much activity of mind as Mr. Brougham, and paid the same attention to business as that gentleman does; but it was with him a matter of feeling, and had nothing of a professional look. His objects were open and direct; and he had a sufficient stock of natural good sense and practical information, not to be made the dupe of sophistry and chicane. He was always in his place, and ready to do his duty. If a falsehood was stated, he contradicted it instantly in a few plain words: if an act of injustice was palliated, it excited his contempt; if it was justified, it roused his indignation: he retorted a mean insinuation with manly spirit, and never shrunk from a frank avowal of his sentiments. He presented a petition or complaint against some particular grievance better than any one else I ever saw. His manner seemed neither to implicate him in the truth of the charge, nor to signify a wish to disclaim it beforehand. He was merely the organ through which any alleged abuse of power might meet the public ear, and he either answered or redressed, according to the merits of the case upon inquiry. In short, he was the representative of the spontaneous, unsophisticated sense of the English people on public men and public measures. Any plain, well-meaning man, on hearing him speak, would say, ‘That is just what I think’; or from observing his 470manner, would say, ‘That is just what I feel.’ He was not otherwise a powerful debater or an accomplished speaker. He could not master a general view of any subject, or get up a set speech with effect. One or two that I heard him make (particularly one on the Princess of Wales and the situation of her affairs in 1813, in which he grew pathetic) were complete failures. He could pull down better than he could build up. The irritation of constant contradiction was necessary to his full possession of himself:—give him ‘ample scope and verge enough,’ and he lost his way. He stuck close to the skirts of Ministry, but he was not qualified to originate or bring to a triumphant conclusion any great political movement. His enthusiasm ran away with his judgment, and was not backed by equal powers of reasoning or imagination. He was a sanguine, high-spirited man, but not a man of genius, or a deep thinker; and his fortitude failed him, when the last fatal blow was given to himself and his party. He could not have drawn up so able a political statement as Mr. Brougham; but he would have more personal adherents in the House of Commons, for he was himself the adherent of a cause.

Mr. Tierney is certainly a better speaker and a cleverer man. But he can never make a leader for want of earnestness. He has no Quixotic enthusiasm in himself; much less any to spare for his followers. He cares nothing (or seems to care nothing) about a question; but he is impatient of absurdity, and has a thorough contempt for the understandings of his opponents. Sharpened by his spleen, nothing escapes his acuteness. He makes fine sport for the spectators. He takes up Lord Castlereagh’s blunders, and Mr. Vansittart’s no-meanings; and retorts them on their heads in the finest style of execution imaginable. It is like being present on a Shrove-Tuesday, and seeing a set of mischievous unfeeling boys throwing at a brace of cocks, and breaking their shins. Mr. Tierney always brings down his man: but beyond this you feel no confidence in him; you take no interest in his movements but as he is instrumental in annoying other people. He (to all appearance) has no great point to carry himself, and no wish to be thought to have any important principle at stake. He is by much too sincere for a hypocrite, but is not enough in earnest for a parliamentary leader. For others to sympathise with you, you must first sympathise with them. When Mr. Whitbread got up to speak, you felt an interest in what he was going to say, in the success of his arguments: when you hear that Mr. Tierney is on his legs, you feel that you shall be amused with an admirable display of dexterity and talent, but are nearly indifferent as to the result. You look on as at an exhibition of extraordinary skill in fencing or prize-fighting.

471Of all those who have for some years past aspired by turns to be leaders of the Opposition, Mr. Ponsonby was the person who had the fewest pretensions. He was a literal arguer. He affected great sagacity and judgment, and referred every thing, in a summary way, to the principles of common sense, and the reason of the case. He abounded in truisms, which seldom go far in deciding disputable points. He generally reduced the whole range of the debate into the narrow compass of a self-evident proposition:—to make sure of his object, he began by taking the question for granted, and necessarily failed when he came to the particular application. He was not aware of the maxim, that he who proves too much, proves nothing. His turn of observation was legal, not acute: his manner was dry, but his blows were not hard: his features were flat on his face, and his arguments did not stand out from the question. He might have been a tolerable special-pleader, but he was a bad orator, and, I think, a worse politician. Any one who argues on strict logical grounds must be prepared to go all lengths, or he will be sure to be defeated at every step he takes: but the gentleman’s principles were of a very cautious and temporising cast. I have seen him, more than once, give himself great airs over those who took more general views of the subject; and he was very fastidious in the choice of associates, with whom he would condescend to act.

Mr. Ponsonby’s style of speaking was neither instructive nor entertaining. In this respect, it was the reverse of Mr. Grattan’s, which was both. To see the latter make one of his promised motions on Catholic Emancipation, was one of the most extraordinary exhibitions, both bodily and mental, which could possibly be witnessed. You saw a little oddly-compacted figure of a man, with a large head and features,—such as they give to pasteboard masks, or stick upon the shoulders of Punch in the puppet-show,—rolling about like a Mandarin—sawing the air with his whole body from head to foot, sweeping the floor with a roll of parchment, which he held in one hand, and throwing his legs and arms about like the branches of trees tossed by the wind:—every now and then striking the table with impatient vehemence, and, in a sharp, slow, nasal, gutteral tone, drawling out, with due emphasis and discretion, a set of little smart antithetical sentences,—all ready-cut and dry, polished and pointed;—that seemed as if they ‘would lengthen out in succession to the crack of doom.’ Alliterations were tacked to alliterations,—inference was dove-tailed into inference,—and the whole derived new brilliance and piquancy from the contrast it presented to the uncouthness of the speaker, and the monotony of his delivery. His were compositions that would have done equally well to be said or sung. The rhyme was placed at the 472beginning instead of the end of each line; he sharpened the sense on the sound, and clenched an argument by corresponding letters of the alphabet. It must be confessed, that there was something meretricious, as well as alluring, in this style. After the first surprise and startling effect is over, and the devoted champion of his country’s cause goes on ringing the changes on ‘the Irish People and the Irish Parliament’—on ‘the Guinea and the Gallows,’ as the ultimate resources of the English government,—on ‘ministerial mismanagement, and privileged profligacy,’—we begin to feel that there is nothing in these quaint and affected verbal coincidences more nearly allied to truth than falsehood:—there is a want of directness and simplicity in this warped and garbled style; and our attention is drawn off from the importance of the subject by a shower of epigrammatic conceits, and fanciful phraseology, in which the orator chuses to veil it. It is hardly enough to say, in defence of this jingle of words, (as well as of the overstrained hyperbolical tone of declamation which accompanies it) that ‘it is a custom of Ireland.’^[55] The same objection may be made to it in point of taste that has been made to the old-fashioned, obsolete practice of cutting trees into the shape of arm-chairs and peacocks, or to that style of landscape-gardening, where

and I am afraid that this objection cannot be got over, at least, on this side the water.^[56]

The best Irish speaker I ever heard (indeed the best speaker without any exception whatever) is Mr. Plunkett; who followed Mr. Grattan in one of the debates on the Catholic question above alluded to. The contrast was not a little striking; and it was certainly in favour of Mr. Plunkett. His style of workmanship was more manly and more masterly. There were no little Gothic ornaments or fantastic excrescences to catch and break the attention: no quaintness, witticism, or conceit. Roubilliac, after being abroad, said, that ‘what he had 473seen there made his own work in Westminster Abbey look like tobacco-pipes.’ You had something of the same sort of feeling with respect to Mr. Grattan’s artificial and frittered style, after hearing Mr. Plunkett’s defence of the same side of the question. He went strait forward to his end with a force equal to his rapidity. He removed all obstacles, as he advanced. He overturned Mr. Banks with his right hand, and Mr. Charles Yorke with his left—the one on a chronological question of the Concordat, and the other as to the origin of the Corporation and Test Acts. One wonders how they ever got up again, or trusted themselves on a ground of matter-of-fact ever after. Mr. Secretary Peele did not offer to put himself in his way. No part of the subject could come amiss to him—history, law, constitutional principle, common feeling, local prejudices, general theory,—all was alike within his reach and his controul. Having settled one point, he passed on to another, carrying his hearers with him:—it was as if he knew all that could be said on the question, and was anxious to impart his knowledge without any desire of shining. There was no affectation, no effort, but equal ease and earnestness. Every thing was brought to bear that could answer his purpose, and there was nothing superfluous. His eloquence swept along like a river,

Every step told: every sentence went to account. I cannot say that there was any thing very profound or original in argument, imposing in imagination, or impassioned in sentiment, in any part of this address—but it was throughout impregnated with as much thought, imagination and passion as the House would be likely to understand or sympathise with. It acted like a loadstone to the feelings of the House; and the speaker raised their enthusiasm, and carried their convictions as far as he wished, or as it was practicable. The effect was extraordinary: the impression grew stronger from first to last. No one stirred the whole time, and, at the end, the lobbies were crowded with members going up stairs and saying, ‘Well, this is a speech worth going without one’s dinner to hear,’ (Oh, unequivocal testimony of applause!) ‘there has been nothing like this since the time of Fox,’ etc. For myself, I never heard any other speech that I would have given three farthings to have made. It did not make the same figure in the newspapers the next day; for it was but indifferently reported, owing to the extreme fluency with which it was delivered. There was no boggling, no straggling, irrelevant matter;—you could not wait for him at the end of a long parenthesis, and go on with your report as if nothing had happened in the interval, 474as is sometimes the case,^[57]—and besides, for the reason above given, it was a speech better calculated to strike in the hearing than the perusal; for though it was fully up to the tone of the House, the public mind can bear stronger meats. Another such speech would have decided the question, and made the difference of four votes by which it was lost. While the impression was fresh in the mind, it was not easy for any one, pretending to honesty, to look his neighbour in the face and vote against the motion. But Mr. Plunkett, in the mean time, sailed for Ireland. Any one who can speak as he can, and is a friend to his own, or any other country, ought not to let the present men retain their seats six months longer. Nothing but the will is wanting.—The ability, I will venture to say, is there.

And what shall I say of Lord Castlereagh—that spouter without beginning, middle, or end—who has not an idea in his head, nor a word to say for himself—who carries the House of Commons by his manner alone—who bows and smiles assent and dissent—who makes a dangling proposition of his person, and is himself a drooping figure of speech—what shall I say of this inanimate automaton? Nothing! For what can be said of him?

Neither have I any thing to say of the style of eloquence of Mr. Alderman Wood, or Mr. Waithman, or Sir. W. Curtis—except that the latter always appears to me a very fit and lively representative of the good living, drinking, and eating of the city. This is but reasonable. The bodies of the city, not their minds, should be represented. A large turtle in the House (with a proxy to the minister) would answer the purpose just as well.

Mr. Wilberforce is a speaker whom it is difficult to class either with ministers or opposition. His character and his pretensions are altogether equivocal. He is a man of some ability, and, at one time, had considerable influence. He is what might be called ‘a sweet speaker’: his silver voice floats and glides up and down in the air, as 475if it was avoiding every occasion of offence, and dodging the question through its various avenues of reason and interest.

There is a finical flexibility of purpose, and a cautious curiosity of research, that would put you in pain for him, if the want of proper self-respect did not take away all common fellow-feeling. His stratagems are so over-wrought that you wish them to fail: his evasions are so slippery and yet so palpable that you laugh in his face. Mr. Wilberforce is a man that has always two strings to his bow: as an orator, he is a kind of lay-preacher in parliament. He is at continual hawk and buzzard between character and conscience, between popularity and court favour, between his loyalty and his religion, between this world and the next. Is not this something like trying to serve God and Mammon? He is anxious to stand fair with the reflecting part of the community, without giving umbrage to power. He is shocked at vice in low stations:

He would go with the popular cause as long as it was popular, and gave him more weight than he lost by it; but would desert it the instant it became obnoxious, and that an obstinate adherence to it was likely to deprive him of future opportunities of doing good. He had rather be on the right side than the wrong, if he loses nothing by it. His reputation costs him nothing; though he always takes care to save appearances. His virtues compound for his vices in a very amicable manner. His humanity is at the horizon, three thousand miles off,—his servility stays at home, at the beck of the minister. He unbinds the chains of Africa, and helps (we trust without meaning it) to rivet those of his own country, and of Europe. As a general truth,—(not meaning any undue application in the present instance,) it may be affirmed, that there is not a more insignificant as well as a dangerous character crawling between heaven and earth, than that of the pretended patriot, and philanthropist, who has not courage to take the plain reward of vice or virtue—who crouches to authority, and yet dreads the censure of the world, who gives a sneaking casting vote on the side of conscience only when he can do it with impunity,—or else throws the weight of his reputation into the scale of his interest and the profligacy of others—who makes an affectation of principle a stalking-horse to his pitiful desire of distinction, and betrays a cause, sooner than commit himself.

476‘Out upon such half-faced fellowship.’ We have another example of trumpery ambition in the person of Mr. C. Wynne; who, officious, indefatigable in his petty warfare with the abuses of power, is chiefly anxious to stand well with those who sanction them. He interprets the text literally, not to do evil that good may come. He is so fearful of the imputation of the least wrong, that he will never do or let any one else do the greatest right. Summum jus summa injuria, has never entered his head. He is the dog in the political manger: a technical marplot. He takes a systematic delight in giving a lift to his enemies, and in hampering his friends. He is a regular whipper-in on the side of opposition, to all those who go but a hairs-breadth beyond his pragmatical notions of discretion and propriety. He sets up for a balance-master of the constitution and, by insisting on its never deviating from its erect, perpendicular position, is sure to have it overturned. He professes to be greatly scandalized at the abuses and corruptions in our ancient institutions, which are ‘as notorious as the sun at noon-day,’ and would have them removed—but he is much more scandalized at those indiscreet persons who bring to light any of these notorious abuses, in order to have them remedied. He is more angry at those with whom he differs in the smallest iota than at those who differ from him toto cælo: and is at mortal enmity with every antiministerial measure that is not so clogged with imbecility and objections as to be impracticable or absolutely unavailing. He is therefore a bad partisan, and does little mischief, only because he is little attended to. Indeed, his voice is against him.

I did not much like Sir Samuel Romilly’s significant, oracular way of laying down the law in the House:—his self-important assumption of second-hand truths, and his impatience of contradiction, as if he gave his time there to humanity for nothing. He was too solemn a speaker: as Garrow was too flippant and fluent. The latter appeared to have nothing to do but to talk nonsense by the yard, for the pleasure of exposing himself or being exposed by others. He might be said to hold in his hand a general retainer for absurdity, and to hold his head up in the pillory of his own folly with a very unabashed and unblushing gaiety of demeanour. Lawyers, as a general rule, are the very worst speakers in the House: if there are a few nominal exceptions, it is because they are not lawyers.

I do not recollect any other speaker of importance but Mr. Canning; and he requires a chapter by himself. Thus then I would try to estimate him.—The orator and the writer do not always belong to the same class of intellectual character; nor is it, I think, in general, fair to judge of the merit of popular harangues by reducing them to the standard of literary compositions. Something,—a great 477deal,—is to be given to the suddenness of the emergency, the want of preparation, the instantaneous and effectual, but passing appeal to individual characters, feelings, and events. The speaker has less time allowed him to enforce his purpose, and to procure the impression he aims at than the writer; and he is therefore entitled to produce it by less scrupulous, by more obvious and fugitive means. He must strike the iron while it is hot. The blow must be prompt and decisive. He must mould the convictions and purposes of his hearers while they are under the influence of passion and circumstances,—as the glass-blower moulds the vitreous fluid with his breath. If he can take the popular mind by surprise, and stamp on it, while warm, the impression desired, it is not to be demanded whether the same means would have been equally successful on cool reflection or after the most mature deliberation. That is not the question at issue. At a moment’s notice the expert debater is able to start some topic, some view of a subject, which answers the purpose of the moment. He can suggest a dextrous evasion of his adversaries’ objections, he knows when to seize and take advantage of the impulse of popular feeling, he is master of the dazzling fence of argument, ‘the punto, the stoccado, the reverso,’ the shifts, and quirks, and palpable topics of debate; he can wield these at pleasure, and employ them to advantage on the spur of the occasion—this is all that can be required of him; for it is all that is necessary, and all that he undertakes to do. That another could bring forward more weighty reasons, offer more wholesome advice, convey more sound and extensive information in an indefinite period, is nothing to the purpose; for all this wisdom and knowledge would be of no avail in the supposed circumstances; the critical opportunity for action would be lost, before any use could be made of it. The one thing needful in public speaking is not to say what is best, but the best that can be said in a given time, place, and circumstance. The great qualification therefore of a leader in debate (as of a leader in fight) is presence of mind: he who has not this, wants every thing, and he who has it, may be forgiven almost all other deficiencies. The current coin of his discourses may be light and worthless in itself; but if it is always kept bright and ready for immediate use, it will pass unquestioned; and the public voice will affix to his name the praise of a sharp-witted, able, fluent, and eloquent speaker. We ‘no further seek his merits to disclose, or scan his frailties in their brief abode,’—the popular ear and echo of popular applause. What he says may be trite, pert, shallow, contradictory, false, unfounded, and sophistical; but it was what was wanted for the occasion, and it told with those who heard it. Let it stop there, and all is well. The rest is forgotten; nor is it worth remembering.

478But Mr. Canning has an ill habit of printing his speeches: and I doubt where the same oratorical privileges can be extended to printed speeches; or to this gentleman’s speeches in general, even though they should not be printed. Whether afterwards committed to the press or not, they have evidently, I think, been first committed, with great care, to paper or to memory. They have all the marks, and are chargeable with all the malice prepense of written compositions. They are not occasional effusions, but set harangues. They are elaborate impromptus; deeply concerted and highly polished pieces of extempore ingenuity. The repartee has been conceived many months before the luckless observation which gives ostensible birth to it; and an argument woven into a debate is sure to be the counterpart or fag-end of some worn-out sophism of several years’ standing. Mr. Canning is not so properly an orator as an author reciting his own compositions. He foresees (without much of the spirit of prophecy) what will, may, or can be said on some well-conned subject, and gets up, by anticipation, a tissue of excellent good conceits, indifferent bad arguments, classical quotations, and showy similes, which he contrives, by a sort of rhetorical join-hand, to tack on to some straggling observation dropped by some Honourable Member,—and so goes on, with folded arms and sonorous voice, neither quickened nor retarded, neither elevated nor depressed by the hear him’s that now rise on the one side, or are now echoed from the other;—never diverted into laughing gaiety, never hurried into incontrolable passion—till he is regularly delivered in the course of the same number of hours of the labour of weeks and months. To those who are in the secret of the arts of debating, who are versed in the complicated tactics of parliamentary common-place, there is nothing very mysterious in the process, though it startles the uninitiated. The fluency, the monotony, the unimpressible, imposing style of his elocution,—‘swinging slow with sullen roar,’ like the alternate oscillation of a pendulum—afraid of being thrown off his balance—never trusting himself with the smallest inflection of tone or manner from the impulse of the moment,—all shew that the speaker relies on the tenaciousness of his memory, not on the quickness and fertility of his invention. Mr. Canning, I apprehend, never answered a speech: he answers, or affects to answer some observation in a speech, and then manufactures a long tirade out of his own ‘mother-wit and arts well-known before.’ He caps an oration, as school-boys cap verses; and gets up his oracular responses, as Sidrophel and Whackum did theirs, by having met with his customers of old. From that time he has the debate entirely in his own hands, and exercises over it ‘sole sovereign sway and masterdom.’ One of these spontaneous mechanical sallies of his resembles 479a voluntary played on a barrel-organ: it is a kind of Pan-harmonic display of wit and wisdom—such as Mr. Canning possesses! The amplest stores of his mind are unfolded to their inmost source—the classic lore, the historic page, the philosophic doubt, the sage reply, the sprightly allusion, the delicate irony, the happy turning of a period or insinuation of a paragraph with senatorial dignity and Ovidian grace—are all here concocted, studied, revised, varnished over, till the sense aches at their glossy beauty and sickens at hopeless perfection. Our modern orator’s thoughts have been declared by some to have all the elegance of the antique; I should say, they have only the fragility and smoothness of plaster-cast copies!

If I were compelled to characterize Mr. Canning’s style by a single trait, I should say that he is a mere parodist in verse or prose, in reasoning or in wit. He transposes arguments as he does images, and makes sophistry of the one, and burlesque of the other. ‘What’s serious, he turns to farce.’ This is perhaps, not art in him, so much as nature. The specific levity of his mind causes it to subsist best in the rarified atmosphere of indifference and scorn: it attaches most interest and importance to the slight and worthless. There is a striking want of solidity and keeping in this person’s character. The frivolous, the equivocal, is his delight—the element in which he speaks, and writes, and has his being, as an orator and poet. By applying to low and contemptible objects the language or ideas which have been appropriated to high and swelling contemplations, he reduces the latter to the same paltry level, or renders the former doubly ridiculous. On the same principle, or from not feeling the due force and weight of different things, as they affect either the imagination or the understanding, he brings the slenderest and most evanescent analogies to bear out the most important conclusions; establishes some fact in history by giving it the form of an idle interrogation, like a school-boy declaiming on he knows not what; and thinks to overturn the fixed sentiment of a whole people by an interjection of surprise at what he knows to be unavoidable and unanswerable. There is none of the gravity of the statesman, of the enthusiasm of the patriot, the impatient zeal of the partizan, in Mr. Canning. We distinguish through the disguise of pompous declamation, or the affectation of personal consequence, only the elegant trifler, the thoughtless epigrammatist, spreading ‘a windy fan of painted plumes,’ to catch the breath of popular applause, or to flutter in the tainted breeze of court-favour. ‘As those same plumes, so seems he vain and light,’—never applying his hand to useful action, or his mind to sober truth. A thing’s being evident, is to him a reason for attempting to falsify it: its being right is a reason for straining every nerve to 480evade or defeat it at all events. It might appear, that with him inversion is the order of nature. ‘Trifles light as air, are’ to his understanding, ‘confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ:’ and he winks and shuts his apprehension up to the most solemn and momentous truths as gross and vulgar errors. His political creed is of an entirely fanciful and fictitious texture—a kind of moral, religious, political, and sentimental filligre-work: or it is made up of monstrous pretexts, and idle shadows, and spurious theories, and mock-alarms. Hence his gravest reasonings have very much an air of concealed irony; and it might sometimes almost be suspected that, by his partial, loose, and unguarded sophisms, he meant to abandon the very cause he professes to magnify and extol.^[59] It is indeed, his boast, his pride, his pleasure, ‘to make the worse appear the better reason,’ which he does with the pertness of a school-boy and the effrontery of a prostitute: he assumes indecent postures in the debate, confounds the sense of right and wrong by his licentious disregard of both, puts honesty out of countenance by the familiarity of his proposals, makes a jest of principle,—‘takes the rose from the fair forehead of a virtuous cause, and plants a blister there.’

The House of Lords does not at present display much of the aristocracy of talent. The scene is by no means so amusing or dramatic here as in the House of Commons. Every speaker seems to claim his privilege of peerage in the awful attention of his auditors, which is granted while there is any reasonable hope of a return: but it is not easy to hear Lord Grenville repeat the same thing regularly four times over, in different words—to listen to the Marquis of Wellesley who never lowers his voice for four hours from the time he begins, nor utters the commonest syllable in a tone below that in which Pierre curses the Senate—Lord Holland might have other pretensions to alacrity of mind than an impediment of speech, and Lord Liverpool might introduce less of the vis inertiæ of office into his official harangues, than he does. Lord Ellenborough was great ‘in the extremity of an oath.’ Lord Eldon, ‘his face ’twixt tears and smiles contending,’ never loses his place or his temper. It is a pity to see Lord Erskine sit silent, who was once a popular and powerful speaker; and when he does get up to speak, you wish he had said nothing. This nobleman, the other day, on his return to Scotland after an absence of fifty years, made a striking speech on the instinctive and indissoluble attachment of all persons to the country where they are born,—which he considered as an innate and unerring 481principle of the human mind; and, in expatiating on the advantages of patriotism, argued by way of illustration, that if it were not for this original dispensation of Providence, attaching, and, as it were, rooting every one to the spot where he was bred and born,—civil society should never have existed, nor mankind have been reclaimed from the barbarous and wandering way of life, to which they were in the first instance addicted! How these persons should become attached by habit to places where it appears, from their vagabond dispositions, they never stayed at all, is an oversight of the speaker which remains unexplained. On the same occasion, the learned Lord, in order to produce an effect, observed that when, advancing farther north, he should come to the old playground near his father’s mansion, where he used to play at ball when a child, his sensations would be of a most affecting description. This is possible; but his Lordship returned homewards the next day, thinking, no doubt, he had anticipated all the sentiment of the situation. This puts one in mind of the story one has heard of Tom Sheridan, who told his father he had been down to the bottom of a coal-pit. ‘Then, you are a fool, Tom,’ said the father. ‘Why so, Sir?’ ‘Because,’ said the other, ‘it would have answered all the same purpose to have said you had been down!’

We have prefixed to the present number an engraved outline of this picture (which we hope will be thought satisfactory), and we subjoin the following description of it in the words of the artist’s catalogue.

‘Christ’s Agony in the Garden.—The manner of treating this subject in the present picture has not been taken from the account of any one Apostle [Evangelist] in particular, but from the united relations of the whole four.

‘The moment selected for the expression of our Saviour is the moment when he acquiesces to (in) the necessity of his approaching sacrifice, after the previous struggle of apprehension.

‘It is wished to give an air of submissive tenderness, while a quiver of agony still trembles on his features. The Apostles are resting a little behind, on a sort of garden-bank; St. John in an unsound doze—St. James in a deep sleep—St. Peter has fallen into a disturbed slumber against a tree, while keeping guard with his sword, and is on the point of waking at the approach of light. Behind St. Peter, and 482stealing round the edge of the bank, comes the mean traitor, Judas, with a centurion, soldiers, and a crowd; the centurion has stepped forward from his soldiers (who are marching up) to look with his torch, where Christ is retired and praying; while Judas, alarmed lest he might be surprised too suddenly, presses back his hand to enforce caution and silence, and crouching down his malignant and imbecile face beneath his shoulders, he crawls forward like a reptile to his prey, his features shining with the anticipated rapture of successful treachery.

‘It is an inherent feeling in human beings, to rejoice at the instant of a successful exercise of their own power, however despicably directed.

‘The Apostles are supposed to be lit by the glory which emanates from Christ’s head, and the crowd by the torches and lights about them.’

The printed catalogue contains also elaborate and able descriptions of Macbeth, the murder of Dentatus, and the judgment of Solomon, which have been already before the public.

We do not think Christ’s Agony in the Garden the best picture in this collection, nor the most striking effort of Mr. Haydon’s pencil. On the contrary, we must take leave to say, that we consider it as a comparative failure, both in execution and probable effect. We doubt whether, in point of policy, the celebrated artist would not have consulted his reputation and his ultimate interest more, by waiting till he had produced another work on the same grand and magnificent scale as his last, instead of trusting to the ebb of popularity, resulting from the exhibition of Christ’s Entrance into Jerusalem, to float him through the present season. It is well, it may be argued, to keep much before the public, since they are apt to forget their greatest favourites: but they are also fastidious; and it is safest not to appear always before them in the same, or a less imposing, attitude. It is better to rise upon them at every step, if possible (and there is yet room for improvement in our artist’s productions), to take them by surprise, and compel admiration by new and extraordinary exertions—than to trust to their generosity or gratitude, to the lingering remains of their affection for old works, or their candid construction of some less arduous undertaking. A liberal and friendly critic has, indeed, declared on this occasion, that if the spirits of great men and lofty geniuses take delight in the other world, in contemplating what delighted them in this, then the shades of Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Correggio, can find no better employment than to descend again upon the earth, once more teeming with the birth of high art, and stand with hands crossed, and eyes uplifted in mute wonder, before 483Mr. Haydon’s picture of Christ’s Agony in the Garden. If we believed that the public in general sympathised seriously in this sentiment, we would not let a murmur escape us to disturb it;—the opinion of the world, however erroneous, is not easily altered; and if they are happy in their ignorance, let them remain so;—but if the artist himself, to whom this august compliment has been paid, should find the hollowness of such hyperbolical commendation, a hint to him, as to its cause in the present instance, may not be thrown away. The public may, and must, be managed to a certain point; that is, a little noise, and bustle, and officious enthusiasm, is necessary to catch their notice and fix their attention; but then they should be left to see for themselves; and after that, an artist should fling himself boldly and fairly into the huge stream of popularity (as Lord Byron swam across the Hellespont), stemming the tide with manly heart and hands, instead of buoying himself up with borrowed bloated bladders, and flimsy newspaper paragraphs. When a man feels his own strength, and the public confidence, he has nothing to do but to use the one, and not abuse the other. As his suspicions of the lukewarmness or backwardness of the public taste are removed, his jealousy of himself should increase. The town and the country have shown themselves willing, eager patrons of Mr. Haydon’s AT HOME:—he ought to feel particular obligations not to invite them by sound of trumpet and beat of drum to an inferior entertainment; but, like our advertising friend, Matthews, compass ‘sea, earth, and air,’ to keep up the eclat of his first and overwhelming accueil! So much for advice; now to criticism.

We have said, that we regard the present performance as a comparative failure; and our reasons are briefly and plainly these following:—First, this picture is inferior in size to those that Mr. Haydon has of late years painted, and is so far a falling off. It does not fill a given stipulated space in the world’s eye. It does not occupy one side of a great room. It is the Iliad in a nutshell. It is only twelve feet by nine, instead of nineteen by sixteen; and that circumstance tells against it with the unenlightened many, and with the judicious few. One great merit of Mr. Haydon’s pictures is their size. Reduce him within narrow limits, and you cut off half his resources. His genius is gigantic. He is of the race of Brobdingnag, and not of Lilliput. He can manage a groupe better than a single figure: he can manage ten groupes better than one. He bestrides his art like a Colossus. The more you give him to do, the better he does it. Ardour, energy, boundless ambition, are the categories of his mind, the springs of his enterprises. He only asks ‘ample room and verge enough.’ Vastness does not confound him, difficulty rouses him, 484impossibility is the element in which he glories. He does not concentrate his powers in a single point, but expands them to the utmost circumference of his subject, with increasing impetus and rapidity. He must move great masses, he must combine extreme points, he must have striking contrasts and situations, he must have all sorts of characters and expressions; these he hurries over, and dashes in with a decided, undistracted hand;—set him to finish any one of these to an exact perfection, to make ‘a hand, an ear, an eye,’ that, in the words of an old poet, shall be ‘worth an history,’ and his power is gone. His forte is in motion, not in rest; in complication and sudden effects, not in simplicity, subtlety, and endless refinement. As it was said in the Edinburgh Review, Mr. Haydon’s compositions are masterly sketches;—they are not, as it was said in Blackwood’s Magazine, finished miniature pictures. We ourselves thought the Christ in the triumphant Entry into Jerusalem, the least successful part of that much admired picture: but there it was lost, or borne along in a crowd of bold and busy figures, in varied or violent actions. Here it is, not only the principal, but a solitary, and almost the only important figure: it is thrown in one corner of the picture like a lay-figure in a painter’s room; the attitude is much like still-life: and the expression is (in our deliberate judgment) listless, feeble, laboured, neither expressing the agony of grief, nor the triumph of faith and resignation over it. It may be, we are wrong: but if so, we cannot help it. It is evident, however, that this head is painted on a different principle from that of the Christ last year. It is wrought with care, and even with precision, in the more detailed outlines: but it is timid, without relief, and without effect. The colour of the whole figure is, as if it had been smeared over, and neutralized, with some chalky tint. It does not stand out from the canvas, either in the general masses, or in the nicer inflections of the muscles and surface of the skin. It has a veil over it, not a glory round it. We ought, in justice, to add, that a black and white copy (we understand by a young lady) of the head of Christ has a more decided and finer apparent character. To what can this anomaly be owing? Is it that Mr. Haydon’s conception and drawing of character is good, but that his mastery in this respect leaves him, when he resigns the port-crayon; and that, instead of giving additional force and beauty to the variations of form and expression, by the aid of colour and real light and shade, he only smudges them over with the pencil, and leaves the indications of truth and feeling more imperfect than he found them? We believe that Mr. Haydon generally copies from nature only with his port-crayon; and paints from conjecture or fancy. If so, it would account for what we have here considered as a difficulty. We 485have reason to believe that the old painters copied form, colour,—every thing, to the last syllable,—from nature. Indeed, we have seen two of the heads in the celebrated Madonna of the Garland, the Mother, and the fine head of Joseph, as original, finished studies of heads (the very same as they are in the large composition) in the collection at Burleigh-house. By the contrary practice, Mr. Haydon, as it appears to us, has habituated his hand and eye to giving only the contour of the features or the grosser masses:—when he comes to the details of those masses, he fails. Some one, we suspect from the style of this picture, has been advising our adventurous and spirited artist to try to finish, and he has been taking the advice: we would advise him to turn back, and consult the natural bent of his own genius. A man may avoid great faults or absurdities by the suggestion of friends: he can only attain positive excellence, or overcome great difficulties, by the unbiassed force of his own mind.

The crowd coming, with Judas at their head, to surprise our Saviour, is not to our taste. We dislike mobs in a picture. There is, however, a good deal of bustle and movement in the advancing group, and it contrasts almost too abruptly with the unimpassioned stillness and retirement of the figure of Christ. Judas makes a bad figure both in Mr. Haydon’s catalogue, and on his canvas. We think the original must have been a more profound and plausible-looking character than he is here represented. He should not grin and show his teeth. He was by all accounts, a grave, plodding, calculating personage, usurious, and with a cast of melancholy, and soon after went and hanged himself. Had Mr. Haydon been in Scotland when he made this sketch? Judas was not a laughing, careless wag; he was one of the ‘Melancholy Andrews.’—The best part of this picture is decidedly (in our opinion) the middle ground, containing the figures of the three Apostles. There is a dignity, a grace, a shadowy repose about them which approaches close indeed upon the great style in painting. We have only to regret that a person, who does so well at times, does not do well always. We are inclined to attribute such inequalities, and an appearance of haste and unconcoctedness in some of Mr. Haydon’s plans, to distraction and hurry of mind, arising from a struggle with the difficulties both of art and of fortune; and as the last of these is now removed, we trust this circumstance will leave him at leisure to prosecute the grand design he has begun (the Raising of Lazarus) with a mind free and unembarrassed; and enable him to conclude it in a manner worthy of his own reputation, and that of his country!

Many people boast of being masters in their own house. I pretend to be master of my own mind. I should be sorry to have an ejectment served upon me for any notions I may chuse to entertain there. Within that little circle I would fain be an absolute monarch. I do not profess the spirit of martyrdom; I have no ambition to march to the stake or up to a masked battery, in defence of an hypothesis: I do not court the rack: I do not wish to be flayed alive for affirming that two and two make four, or any other intricate proposition: I am shy of bodily pains and penalties, which some are fond of, imprisonment, 509fine, banishment, confiscation of goods: but if I do not prefer the independence of my mind to that of my body, I at least prefer it to every thing else. I would avoid the arm of power, as I would escape from the fangs of a wild beast: but as to the opinion of the world, I see nothing formidable in it. ‘It is the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil.’ I am not to be brow-beat or wheedled out of any of my settled convictions. Opinion to opinion, I will face any man. Prejudice, fashion, the cant of the moment, go for nothing; and as for the reason of the thing, it can only be supposed to rest with me or another, in proportion to the pains we have taken to ascertain it. Where the pursuit of truth has been the habitual study of any man’s life, the love of truth will be his ruling passion. ‘Where the treasure is, there the heart is also.’ Every one is most tenacious of that to which he owes his distinction from others. Kings love power, misers gold, women flattery, poets reputation—and philosophers truth, when they can find it. They are right in cherishing the only privilege they inherit. If ‘to be wise were to be obstinate,’ I might set up for as great a philosopher as the best of them; for some of my conclusions are as fixed and as incorrigible to proof as need be. I am attached to them in consequence of the pains, the anxiety, and the waste of time they have cost me. In fact, I should not well know what to do without them at this time of day; nor how to get others to supply their place. I would quarrel with the best friend I have sooner than acknowledge the absolute right of the Bourbons. I see Mr. —— seldomer than I did, because I cannot agree with him about the Catalogue Raisonnée. I remember once saying to this gentleman, a great while ago, that I did not seem to have altered any of my ideas since I was sixteen years old. ‘Why then,’ said he,’ you are no wiser now than you were then!’ I might make the same confession, and the same retort would apply still. Coleridge used to tell me, that this pertinacity was owing to a want of sympathy with others. What he calls sympathising with others is their admiring him, and it must be admitted that he varies his battery pretty often, in order to accommodate himself to this sort of mutual understanding. But I do not agree in what he says of me. On the other hand, I think that it is my sympathising beforehand with the different views and feelings that may be entertained on a subject, that prevents my retracting my judgment, and flinging myself into the contrary extreme afterwards. If you proscribe all opinion opposite to your own, and impertinently exclude all the evidence that does not make for you, it stares you in the face with double force when it breaks in unexpectedly upon you, or if at any subsequent period it happens to suit your interest or convenience to listen to objections which vanity or 510prudence had hitherto overlooked. But if you are aware from the first suggestion of a subject, either by subtlety of tact, or close attention, of the full force of what others possibly feel and think of it, you are not exposed to the same vacillation of opinion. The number of grains and scruples, of doubts and difficulties, thrown into the scale while the balance is yet undecided, add to the weight and steadiness of the determination. He who anticipates his opponent’s arguments, confirms while he corrects his own reasonings. When a question has been carefully examined in all its bearings, and a principle is once established, it is not liable to be overthrown by any new facts which have been arbitrarily and petulantly set aside, nor by every wind of idle doctrine rushing into the interstices of a hollow speculation, shattering it in pieces, and leaving it a mockery and a bye-word; like those tall, gawky, staring, pyramidal erections which are seen scattered over different parts of the country, and are called the Follies of different gentlemen! A man may be confident in maintaining a side, as he has been cautious in chusing it. If after making up his mind strongly in one way, to the best of his capacity and judgment, he feels himself inclined to a very violent revulsion of sentiment, he may generally rest assured that the change is in himself and his motives, not in the reason of things.

I cannot say that, from my own experience, I have found that the persons most remarkable for sudden and violent changes of principle have been cast in the softest or most susceptible mould. All their notions have been exclusive, bigoted, and intolerant. Their want of consistency and moderation has been in exact proportion to their want of candour and comprehensiveness of mind. Instead of being the creatures of sympathy, open to conviction, unwilling to give offence by the smallest difference of sentiment, they have (for the most part) been made up of mere antipathies—a very repulsive sort of personages—at odds with themselves, and with every body else. The slenderness of their pretensions to philosophical inquiry has been accompanied with the most presumptuous dogmatism. They have been persons of that narrowness of view and headstrong self-sufficiency of purpose, that they could see only one side of a question at a time, and whichever they pleased. There is a story somewhere in Don Quixote, of two champions coming to a shield hung up against a tree with an inscription written on each side of it. Each of them maintained, that the words were what was written on the side next him, and never dreamt, till the fray was over, that they might be different on the opposite side of the shield. It would have been a little more extraordinary if the combatants had changed sides in the heat of the scuffle, and stoutly denied that there were any such words on the 511opposite side as they had before been bent on sacrificing their lives to prove were the only ones it contained. Yet such is the very situation of some of our modern polemics. They have been of all sides of the question, and yet they cannot conceive how an honest man can be of any but one—that which they hold at present. It seems that they are afraid to look their old opinions in the face, lest they should be fascinated by them once more. They banish all doubts of their own sincerity by inveighing against the motives of their antagonists. There is no salvation out of the pale of their strange inconsistency. They reduce common sense and probity to the straitest possible limits—the breasts of themselves and their patrons. They are like people out at sea on a very narrow plank, who try to push every body else off. Is it that they have so little faith in the cause to which they have become such staunch converts, as to suppose that, should they allow a grain of sense to their old allies and new antagonists, they will have more than they? Is it that they have so little consciousness of their own disinterestedness, that they feel if they allow a particle of honesty to those who now differ with them, they will have more than they? Those opinions must needs be of a very fragile texture which will not stand the shock of the least acknowledged opposition, and which lay claim to respectability by stigmatising all who do not hold them as ‘sots, and knaves, and cowards.’ There is a want of well-balanced feeling in every such instance of extravagant versatility; a something crude, unripe, and harsh, that does not hit a judicious palate, but sets the teeth on edge to think of. ‘I had rather hear my mother’s cat mew, or a wheel grate on the axle-tree, than one of these same metre-balladmongers’ chaunt his incondite retrograde lays without rhyme and without reason.

The principles and professions change: the man remains the same. There is the same spirit at the bottom of all this pragmatical fickleness and virulence, whether it runs into one extreme or another:—to wit, a confinement of view, a jealousy of others, an impatience of contradiction, a want of liberality in construing the motives of others either from monkish pedantry, or a conceited overweening reference of every thing to our own fancies and feelings. There is something to be said, indeed, for the nature of the political machinery, for the whirling motion of the revolutionary wheel which has of late wrenched men’s understandings almost asunder, and ‘amazed the very faculties of eyes and ears;’ but still this is hardly a sufficient reason, why the adept in the old as well as the new school should take such a prodigious latitude himself, while at the same time he makes so little allowance for others. His whole creed need not be turned topsy-turvy, 512from the top to the bottom, even in times like these. He need not, in the rage of party spirit, discard the proper attributes of humanity, the common dictates of reason. He need not outrage every former feeling, nor trample on every customary decency, in his zeal for reform, or in his greater zeal against it. If his mind, like his body, has undergone a total change of essence, and purged off the taint of all its early opinions, he need not carry about with him, or be haunted in the persons of others with, the phantoms of his altered principles to loathe and execrate them. He need not (as it were) pass an act of attainder on all his thoughts, hopes, wishes, from youth upwards, to offer them at the shrine of matured servility: he need not become one vile antithesis, a living and ignominious satire on himself. Mr. Wordsworth has hardly, I should think, so much as a single particle of feeling left in his whole composition, the same that he had twenty years ago; not ‘so small a drop of pity,’ for what he then was, ‘as a wren’s eye,’—except that I do not hear that he has given up his theory that poetry should be written in the language of prose, or applied for an injunction against the Lyrical Ballads. I will wager a trifle, that our ingenious poet will not concede to any patron, (how noble and munificent soever) that the Leech Gatherer is not a fit subject of the Muse, and would sooner resign the stamp-distributorship of two counties, than burn that portion of the Recluse, a Poem, which has been given to the world under the title of the Excursion. The tone, however, of Mr. Wordsworth’s poetical effusions requires a little revision to adapt it to the progressive improvement in his political sentiments: for, as far as I understand the Poems themselves or the Preface, his whole system turns upon this, that the thoughts, the feelings, the expressions of the common people in country places are the most refined of all others; at once the most pure, the most simple, and the most sublime:—yet, with one stroke of his prose-pen, he disfranchises the whole rustic population of Westmoreland and Cumberland from voting at elections, and says there is not a man among them that is not a knave in grain. In return, he lets them still retain the privilege of expressing their sentiments in select and natural language in the Lyrical Ballads. So much for poetical justice and political severity! An author’s political theories sit loose upon him, and may be changed like his clothes. His literary vanity, alas! sticks to him like his skin, and survives in its first gloss and sleekness, amidst

Mr. Southey still makes experiments on metre, not on governments, and seems to think the last resort of English liberty is in 513court-iambics. Still the same upstart self-sufficiency, still the same itch of new fangled innovation directed into a new channel, still the same principle of favouritism, still the same overcharged and splenetic hostility—all is right that he approves, all is wrong that opposes his views in the smallest particular. There is no inconsistency in all these anomalies. Absurdity is uniform; egotism is the same thing; a limited range of comprehension is a habit of mind that a man seldom gets the better of, and may distinguish equally the Pantisocratist or Constitutional Association-monger.

To quit this, which is rather a stale topic, as well as a hopeless one, and give some instances of a change of sentiment in individuals, which may serve for materials of a history of opinion in the beginning of the 19th century:—A gentleman went to live, some years ago, in a remote part of the country, and as he did not wish to affect singularity he used to have two candles on his table of an evening. A romantic acquaintance of his in the neighbourhood, smit with the love of simplicity and equality, used to come in, and without ceremony snuff one of them out, saying, it was a shame to indulge in such extravagance, while many a poor cottager had not even a rush-light to see to do their evening’s work by. This might be about the year 1802, and was passed over as among the ordinary occurrences of the day. In 1816 (oh! fearful lapse of time, pregnant with strange mutability), the same enthusiastic lover of economy, and hater of luxury, asked his thoughtless friend to dine with him in company with a certain lord, and to lend him his man servant to wait at table; and just before they were sitting down to dinner, he heard him say to the servant in a sonorous whisper—‘and be sure you don’t forget to have six candles on the table!’ Extremes meet. The event here was as true to itself as the oscillation of the pendulum. My informant, who understands moral equations, had looked for this reaction, and noted it down as characteristic. The impertinence in the first instance was the cue to the ostentatious servility in the second. The one was the fulfilment of the other, like the type and anti-type of a prophecy. No—the keeping of the character at the end of fourteen years was as unique as the keeping of the thought to the end of the fourteen lines of a Sonnet! Would it sound strange if I were to whisper it in the reader’s ear, that it was the same person who was thus anxious to see six candles on the table to receive a lord, who once (in ages past) said to me, that ‘he saw nothing to admire in the eloquence of such men as Mansfield and Chatham; and what did it all end in, but their being made Lords?’ It is better to be a lord than a lacquey to a lord. So we see that the swelling pride and preposterous self-opinion which exalts itself above the mightiest, looking 514down upon, and braying the boasted pretensions of the highest rank and the most brilliant talents as nothing, compared with its own conscious powers and silent unmoved self-respect, grovels and licks the dust before titled wealth, like a lacquered slave, the moment it can get wages and a livery! Would Milton or Marvel have done thus?

Mr. Coleridge, indeed, sets down this outrageous want of keeping to an excess of sympathy, and there is, after all, some truth in his suggestion. There is a craving after the approbation and concurrence of others natural to the mind of man. It is difficult to sustain the weight of an opinion singly for any length of way. The intellect languishes without cordial encouragement and support. It exhausts both strength and patience to be always striving against the stream. Contra audentior ito—is the motto but of few. Public opinion is always pressing upon the mind, and, like the air we breathe, acts unseen, unfelt. It supplies the living current of our thoughts, and infects without our knowledge. It taints the blood, and is taken into the smallest pores. The most sanguine constitutions are, perhaps, the most exposed to its influence. But public opinion has its source in power, in popular prejudice, and is not always in accord with right reason, or a high and abstracted imagination. Which path to follow where the two roads part? The heroic and romantic resolution prevails at first in high and heroic tempers. They think to scale the heights of truth and virtue at once with him ‘whose genius had angelic wings, and fed on manna,’—but after a time find themselves baffled, toiling on in an uphill road, without friends, in a cold neighbourhood, without aid or prospect of success. The poet

He hears murmurs loud or suppressed, meets blank looks or scowling faces, is exposed to the pelting of the pitiless press, and is stunned by the shout of the mob, that gather round him to see what sort of a creature a poet and a philosopher is. What is there to make him proof against all this? A strength of understanding steeled against temptation, and a dear love of truth that smiles opinion to scorn? These he perhaps has not. A lord passes in his coach. Might he not get up, and ride out of the reach of the rabble-rout? He is invited to stop dinner. If he stays he may insinuate some wholesome truths. He drinks in rank poison—flattery! He recites some verses to the ladies, who smile delicious praise, and thank him through their tears. The master of the house suggests a happy allusion in the turn of an expression. ‘There’s sympathy.’ This is better than the company he lately left. Pictures, statues meet his raptured eye. Our Ulysses finds himself in the gardens of Alcinous: our 515truant is fairly caught. He wanders through enchanted ground. Groves, classic groves, nod unto him, and he hears ‘ancestral voices’ hailing him as brother-bard! He sleeps, dreams, and wakes cured of his thriftless prejudices and morose philanthropy. He likes this courtly and popular sympathy better. ‘He looks up with awe to kings; with honour to nobility; with reverence to magistrates,’ &c. He no longer breathes the air of heaven and his own thoughts, but is steeped in that of palaces and courts, and finds it agree better with his constitutional temperament. Oh! how sympathy alters a man from what he was!

A spirit of contradiction, a wish to monopolise all wisdom, will not account for uniform consistency, for it is sure to defeat and turn against itself. It is ‘every thing by turns, and nothing long.’ It is warped and crooked. It cannot bear the least opposition, and sooner than acquiesce in what others approve it will change sides in a day. It is offended at every resistance to its captious, domineering humour, and will quarrel for straws with its best friends. A person under the guidance of this demon, if every whimsy or occult discovery of his own is not received with acclamation by one party, will wreak his spite by deserting to the other, and carry all his talent for disputation with him, sharpened by rage and disappointment. A man, to be steady in a cause, should be more attached to the truth than to the acquiescence of his fellow-citizens. A young student, who came up to town a few years since with some hypercritical refinements on the modern philosophy to introduce him to the Gamaliels of the age, but who would allow no one else to have a right view of the common doctrines of the school, or to be able to assign a reason for the faith that was in him, was sent to Coventry by the true adepts, who were many of them as wise and as fastidious as himself. He therefore turned round upon the whole set for this indignity, and has been playing off the heavy artillery of his scurrilous abuse, his verbal logic, and the powerful distinctions of the civil and canon law upon the devoted heads of his tasteless associates; ‘perpetual volley, arrowy sleet,’ ever since! It is needless to mention names. The learned gentleman having left his ungrateful party and unprofitable principles in dudgeon, has gone into the opposite extreme like mad, sticks at nothing, is callous to public opinion, so that he pleases his employers, and can become ‘a thorn in the side of freedom’; and fairly takes 516the bridle in his teeth, stop him who can. A more obstinate being never took pen in hand. Yet, by agreeing to his conclusions, and subscribing to his arguments (such as they are) it would be still possible to make him give up every one of his absurdities in succession, and to drive him to set up another New Daily Paper against himself!

I can hardly consider Mr. Coleridge as a deserter from the cause he first espoused, unless one could tell what cause he ever heartily espoused, or what party he ever belonged to, in downright earnest. He has not been inconsistent with himself at different times, but at all times. He is a sophist, a casuist, a rhetorician, what you please; and might have argued or declaimed to the end of his breath on one side of a question or another, but he never was a pragmatical fellow. He lived in a round of contradictions, and never came to a settled point. His fancy gave the cue to his judgment, and his vanity set his invention afloat in whatever direction he could find most scope for it, or most sympathy, that is, admiration. His Life and Opinions might naturally receive the title of one of Hume’s Essays—‘A Sceptical Solution of Sceptical Doubts.’ To be sure, his Watchman and his Friend breathe a somewhat different tone on subjects of a particular description, both of them apparently pretty high-raised, but whoever will be at the pains to examine them closely, will find them to be voluntaries, fugues, solemn capriccios, not set compositions with any malice prepense in them, or much practical meaning. I believe some of his friends, who were indebted to him for the suggestion of plausible reasons for conformity, and an opening to a more qualified view of the letter of their paradoxical principles, have lately disgusted him by the virulence and extravagance to which they have carried hints, of which he never suspected that they would make the least possible use. But if Mr. Coleridge is satisfied with the wandering Moods of his Mind, perhaps this is no reason that others may not reap the solid benefit. He himself is like the idle sea-weed on the ocean, tossed from shore to shore: they are like barnacles fastened to the vessel of state, rotting its goodly timbers!

There are some persons who are of too fastidious a turn of mind to like any thing long, or to assent twice to the same opinion. —— always sets himself to prop the falling cause, to nurse the ricketty bantling. He takes the part which he thinks in most need of his support, not so much out of magnanimity, as to prevent too great a degree of presumption or self-complacency on the triumphant side. ‘Though truth be truth, yet he contrives to throw such changes of vexation on it as it may lose some colour.’ I have been delighted to hear him expatiate with the most natural and affecting simplicity on a favourite passage or picture, and all the while afraid of agreeing with 517him, lest he should instantly turn round and unsay all that he had said, for fear of my going away with too good an opinion of my own taste, or too great an admiration of my idol—and his own. I dare not ask his opinion twice, if I have got a favourable sentence once, lest he should belie his own sentiments to stagger mine. I have heard him talk divinely (like one inspired) of Boccaccio, and the story of the Pot of Basil, describing ‘how it grew, and it grew, and it grew,’ till you saw it spread its tender leaves in the light of his eye, and wave in the tremulous sound of his voice; and yet if you asked him about it at another time, he would, perhaps, affect to think little of it, or to have forgotten the circumstance. His enthusiasm is fickle and treacherous. The instant he finds it shared in common, he backs out of it. His enmity is equally refined, but hardly so unsocial. His exquisitely turned invectives display all the beauty of scorn, and impart elegance to vulgarity. He sometimes finds out minute excellencies, and cries up one thing to put you out of conceit with another. If you want him to praise Sir Joshua con amore, in his best manner, you should begin with saying something about Titian—if you seem an idoliser of Sir Joshua, he will immediately turn off the discourse, gliding like the serpent before Eve, wary and beautiful, to the graces of Sir Peter Lely, or ask if you saw a Vandyke the other day, which he does not think Sir Joshua could stand near. But find fault with the Lake Poets, and mention some pretended patron of rising genius, and you need not fear but he will join in with you and go all lengths that you can wish him. You may calculate upon him there. ‘Pride elevates, and joy brightens his face.’ And, indeed, so eloquent is he, and so beautiful in his eloquence, that I myself, with all my freedom from gall and bitterness, could listen to him untired, and without knowing how the time went, losing and neglecting many a meal and hour,

When I cease to hear him quite, other tongues, turned to what accents they may of praise or blame, will sound dull, ungrateful, out of tune, and harsh, in the comparison.

An overstrained enthusiasm produces a capriciousness in taste, as well as too much indifference. A person who sets no bounds to his admiration takes a surfeit of his favourites. He over-does the thing. He gets sick of his own everlasting praises, and affected raptures. His preferences are a great deal too violent to last. He wears out an author in a week, that might last him a year, or his life, by the eagerness with which he devours him. Every such favourite is in 518his turn the greatest writer in the world. Compared with the lord of the ascendant for the time being, Shakspeare is common-place, and Milton a pedant, a little insipid or so. Some of these prodigies require to be dragged out of their lurking-places, and cried up to the top of the compass;—their traits are subtle, and must be violently obtruded on the sight. But the effort of exaggerated praise, though it may stagger others, tires the maker, and we hear of them no more after a while. Others take their turns, are swallowed whole, undigested, ravenously, and disappear in the same manner. Good authors share the fate of bad, and a library in a few years is nearly dismantled. It is a pity thus to outlive our admiration, and exhaust our relish of what is excellent. Actors and actresses are disposed of in the same conclusive peremptory way: some of them are talked of for months, nay, years; then it is almost an offence to mention them. Friends, acquaintance, go the same road;—are now asked to come six days in the week, then warned against coming the seventh. The smallest faults are soon magnified in those we think too highly of: but where shall we find perfection? If we will put up with nothing short of that, we shall have neither pictures, books, nor friends left—we shall have nothing but our own absurdities to keep company with! ‘In all things a regular and moderate indulgence is the best security for a lasting enjoyment.’ Burke.

There are numbers who judge by the event, and change with fortune. They extol the hero of the day, and join the prevailing clamour whatever it is; so that the fluctuating state of public opinion regulates their feverish, restless enthusiasm, like a thermometer. They blow hot or cold, according as the wind sets favourably or otherwise. With such people the only infallible test of merit is success; and no arguments are true that have not a large or powerful majority on their side. They go by appearances. Their vanity, not the truth, is their ruling object. They are not the last to quit a falling cause, and they are the first to hail the rising sun. Their minds want sincerity, modesty, and keeping. With them—

They still, ‘with one consent, praise new-born gauds,’ and Fame, as they construe it, is

519Such servile flatterers made an idol of Buonaparte while fortune smiled upon him, but when it left him, they removed him from his pedestal in the cabinet of their vanity, as we take down the picture of a relation that has died without naming us in his will. The opinion of such triflers is worth nothing: it is merely an echo. We do not want to be told the event of a question, but the rights of it. Truth is in their theory nothing but ‘noise and inexplicable dumb show.’ They are the heralds, outriders, and trumpeters in the procession of fame; are more loud and boisterous than the rest, and give themselves great airs, as the avowed patrons and admirers of genius and merit.

As there are many who change their sentiments with circumstances, (as they decided lawsuits in Rabelais with the dice), so there are others who change them with their acquaintance. ‘Tell me your company, and I’ll tell you your opinions,’ might be said to many a man who piques himself on a select and superior view of things, distinct from the vulgar. Individuals of this class are quick and versatile, but they are not beforehand with opinion. They catch it, when it is pointed out to them, and take it at the rebound, instead of giving the first impulse. Their minds are a light, luxuriant soil, into which thoughts are easily transplanted, and shoot up with uncommon sprightliness and vigour. They wear the dress of other people’s minds very gracefully and unconsciously. They tell you your own opinion, or very gravely repeat an observation you have made to them about half a year afterwards. They let you into the delicacies and luxuries of Spenser with great disinterestedness, in return for your having introduced that author to their notice. They prefer West to Raphael, Stothard to Rubens, till they are told better. Still they are acute in the main, and good judges in their way. By trying to improve their taste, and reform their notions according to an ideal standard, they perhaps spoil and muddle their native faculties, rather than do them any good. Their first manner is their best, because it is the most natural. It is well not to go out of ourselves, and to be contented to take up with what we are, for better for worse. We can neither beg, borrow, nor steal characteristic excellencies. Some views and modes of thinking suit certain minds, as certain colours suit certain complexions. We may part with very shining and very useful qualities without getting better ones to supply them. Mocking is catching, only in regard to defects. Mimicry is always dangerous.

It is not necessary to change our road in order to advance on our journey. We should cultivate the spot of ground we possess to the utmost of our power, though it may be circumscribed and comparatively barren. A rolling stone gathers no moss. People may collect all the wisdom they will ever attain, quite as well by staying 520at home as by travelling abroad. There is no use in shifting from place to place, from side to side, or from subject to subject. You have always to begin again, and never finish any course of study or observation. By adhering to the same principles you do not become stationary. You enlarge, correct, and consolidate your reasonings, without contradicting and shuffling about in your conclusions. If truth consisted in hasty assumptions and petulant contradictions, there might be some ground for this whiffling and violent inconsistency. But the face of truth, like that of nature, is different and the same. The first outline of an opinion, and the general tone of thinking, may be sound and correct, though we may spend any quantity of time and pains in working up and uniting the parts at subsequent sittings. If we have mistaken the character of the countenance altogether at first, no alterations will bring it right afterwards. Those who mistake white for black in the first instance, may as well mistake black for white when they reverse their canvass. I do not see what security they can have in their present opinions, who build their pretension to wisdom on the total folly, rashness, and extravagance (to say no worse) of their former ones. The perspective may change with years and experience: we may see certain things nearer, and others more remote; but the great masses and landmarks will remain, though thrown into shadow and tinged by the intervening atmosphere: so the laws of the understanding, the truth of nature, will remain, and cannot be thrown into utter confusion and perplexity by our blunders or caprice, like the objects in Hogarth’s Rules of Perspective, where every thing is turned upside down, or thrust out of its well-known place. I cannot understand how our political Harlequins feel after all their summersaults and metamorphoses. They can hardly, I should think, look at themselves in the glass, or walk across the room without stumbling. This at least would be the case if they had the least reflection or self-knowledge. But they judge from pique and vanity solely. There should be a certain decorum in life as in a picture, without which it is neither useful nor agreeable. If my opinions are not right, at any rate they are the best I have been able to form, and better than any others I could take up at random, or out of perversity, now. Certainly opinions vitiate one another, and destroy the simplicity and clearness of the mind: nothing is good that has not a beginning, a middle, and an end; and I would wish my thoughts to be

The author of Waverley is here himself again; and it is on English ground that he has come upon his feet. Peveril of the Peak is all but equal to the best of the Scotch Novels. It is no weaving up of old odds and ends; no lazy repetition of himself at second-hand, and the worse for the wear. Peveril is all new, good,^[65] full of life, spirit, character, bustle, incident, and expectation; nothing is wanting to make it quite equal to the very best of his former productions, but that it has not the same intense interest, nor the same preternatural and overpowering imagery. Fenella, a deaf and dumb dwarf, attached to the Countess of Derby, is, indeed, an exquisitely drawn character, and exerts a sort of quaint, apparently magic influence over the scene; but her connection with it is so capricious, so ambiguous, and at last so improbable, as to produce or to leave none of those thrilling and awe-struck impressions which were so irresistibly interwoven with some former delineations of the same kind. But as a sketch, as a picture, the little fairy attendant of the Queen of Man is one of the most beautiful and interesting the author ever struck out with his enchanting and enchanted pencil. The present Novel comes the nearest to Old Mortality, both in the class of subjects of which it treats, and in the indefatigable spirit and hurried movement of the execution. It differs from that noble master-piece in this, that Sir Walter (or whoever else, in the devil’s name, it is) has not infused the same depth or loftiness of sentiment into his English Roundheads and Cavaliers, as into his Scotch Covenanters and Royalists; that the characters are left more in the outlines and dead colouring; and though the incidents follow one another as rapidly, and have great variety and contrast, there is not the same accumulation of interest, the same thickening of the plot, nor the same thronging together of eager and complicated groups upon the canvas. His English imagination 538is not so fully peopled with character, manners, and sentiment, as his Scotch understanding is; but, by the mass, they are not ‘thinly scattered to make up a show.’ There is cut and come again. We say this the more willingly, because we were among those who conceived there was a falling off, a running to seed, in some of the later productions of the author. The Fortunes of Nigel showed a resuscitation in his powers; that is, a disposition to take new ground, and proceed with real pains and unabated vigour; and in his Peveril, we think he has completed his victory over excusable idleness and an inexcusable disregard of reputation. He may now go on upon a fresh lease, and write ten more Novels, just as good or as bad as he pleases!

There were two things that we used to admire of old in this author, and that we have had occasion to admire anew in the present instance, the extreme life of mind or naturalness displayed in the descriptions, and the magnanimity and freedom from bigotry and prejudice shewn in the drawing of the characters. This last quality is the more remarkable, as the reputed author is accused of being a thorough-paced partisan in his own person,—intolerant, mercenary, mean; a professed toad-eater, a sturdy hack, a pitiful retailer or suborner of infamous slanders, a literary Jack Ketch, who would greedily sacrifice any one of another way of thinking as a victim to prejudice and power, and yet would do it by other hands, rather than appear in it himself. Can this be all true of the author of Waverley; and does he deal out such fine and heaped justice to all sects and parties in time past? Perhaps (if so) one of these extremes accounts for the other; and, as ‘he knows all qualities with a learned spirit,’ probably he may be aware of this practical defect in himself, and be determined to shew to posterity, that when his own interest was not concerned, he was as free from that nauseous and pettifogging bigotry, as a mere matter of speculation, as any man could be. As a novel-writer, he gives the devil his due, and he gives no more to a saint. He treats human nature scurvily, yet handsomely; that is, much as it deserves; and, if it is the same person who is the author of the Scotch novels, and who has a secret moving hand in certain Scotch Newspapers and Magazines, we may fairly characterize him as

Among other characters in the work before us, is that of Ned Christian, a cold-blooded hypocrite, pander, and intriguer; yet a man of prodigious talent,—of great versatility,—of unalterable self-possession and good humour, and with a power to personate agreeably, and to the life, any character he pleased. Might not such a man have written the Scotch Novels?

539It has been suggested, with great modesty, that the Author of Waverley was like Shakspeare. We beg leave with equal modesty to suggest another comparison, which we think much nearer the mark; and that is, to the writings of Mr. Cobbett. The peculiarity of Shakspeare’s mind is (we humbly apprehend) that sort of power which completely levels the distinction between imagination and reality. His mind properly has wings, and it is indifferent to him whether he treads the air or walks the earth. He makes us acquainted with things we did not know before, as if we knew them familiarly. Now Sir Walter Scott only recals to us what we already knew—he deals wholly in realities, or what are commonly received as such; and so does Mr. Cobbett. Both are downright matter-of-fact minds, and have little, if any, of that power which throws into objects more than ordinary opinion or feeling connects with them. Naturalness is the forte of both these writers. They have a strong, vivid, bodily perception (so to speak), a material intuition of what they write about. All their ideas are concrete, and not abstracted. Mention an old, dilapidated castle, and a thriving, substantial brick mansion to Sir Walter Scott, and he immediately has an actual image of some such objects conjured up in his mind, and describes them as he has seen them, with all their local circumstances, and so as to bring back some similar recollection to the reader’s mind, as if there had been just two such buildings in the place where he was brought up. But this revived reality is all; there is no new light thrown upon the subject. It is a sort of poetic memory. Good. So set Mr. Cobbett to work upon the subject of our agricultural distress, and with quite as much poetry, as much of the picturesque, and in as good English as Sir Walter Scott writes Scotch, he will describe you to the life a turnip-field with the green sprouts glittering in the sun, the turnips frozen to a mere clod, the breath of the oxen steaming near that are biting it, and the dumb patience of the silly sheep. We should like to know whether he is not as great a hand at this sort of ocular demonstration as Sir Walter himself? He shall describe a Scotch heath, or an American wilderness against Sir Walter for a thousand pounds. Then for character; who does it with more master-strokes, with richer gusto, or a greater number of palpable hits than the Editor of the Political Register? Again, as to pathos, let Mr. Cobbett tell a story of a pretty servant girl or soldier’s wife, left by her sweetheart, or shot dead in his arms, and see if he will not come near the Heart of Mid Lothian? You may say it is not this or that, it is coarse, low, the man has no feeling, but it is nature, and that’s quite enough. The truth is, these two original geniuses have found out a secret; they write as they feel. It is just like school 540boys being able to read as they would talk. It is a very awkward difficulty to get over, but being once accomplished, the effect is prodigious. Then, there is the same strong sarcastic vein of roystering pot-house humour in the one as in the other; and as for giving both sides of a question, nobody has done that more effectually than Mr. Cobbett in the course of his different writings. His style also is as good, nay, far better: and if it should be said that Mr. Cobbett sometimes turns blackguard, it cannot be affirmed that he is a cat’s paw—which is the dernier resort of humanity, into which Sir Walter has retreated, and shuts himself up in it impregnably as in a fortress. To conclude this parallel, we will be bold to say in illustration of our argument, that there is hardly a single page in the Scotch Novels which Mr. Cobbett could not write, if he set his mind to it; and there is not a single page in Shakspeare, either the best or the worst, which he could write for his life, and let him try ever so. Such is the genius of the three men.

So much by way of preface to our account of the most magnanimous Peveril of the Peak, and now for extracts. We have not time or limits to give the story, which, however, relates to the Civil Wars of England; but we shall furnish our readers with a specimen of the spirit with which it is written; it is the description of the meeting of Peveril with the dwarf Fenella, where she tries to prevent his going to meet Alice Bridgenorth at the Goddard Crovann-stone in the Isle of Man.

[The whole of Chap. XVI. of Peveril of the Peak is set out].

We have been led to such length by the beauty of this description that we have not room for another extract, or we would give that master-piece of wit and irony, the scene where Peveril meets with Ganlesse and Smith at a low alehouse, on his route through Derbyshire.

I. The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure much.

II. Liberty is the only true riches. Of all the rest we are at once the masters and the slaves.

III. Do I not feel this from the least shadow of restraint, of obligation, of dependence? Why then do I complain? I have had 541nothing to do all my life but to think, and have enjoyed the objects of thought, the sense of truth and beauty, in perfect integrity of soul. No one has said to me, Believe this, do that, say what we would have you; no one has come between me and my free-will; I have breathed the very air of truth and independence. Compared with this unbiassed, uncontrouled possession of the universe of thought and nature, what I have wanted is light in the balance, and hardly claims the tribute of a sigh. Oh! Liberty, what a mistress art thou! Have I not enjoyed thee as a bride, and drank thy spirit as of a wine-cup, and will yet do so to my latest breath!

IV. But is not Liberty dangerous, and self-will excessive? I do not think so: for those who are not governed by their own feelings are led away by prejudice or interest; and reason is a safer guide than opinion, liberty a nobler one than fear.

V. Do I see a Claude? What is there to prevent me from fixing my eye, my heart, my understanding, upon it? What sophist shall deter me from thinking it fine? What is there to make me afraid of expressing what I think? I enter into all its truth and beauty. I wonder over it, I detect each hidden grace, I revel and luxuriate in it, without any doubts or misgivings. Is not this to be master of it and of myself? But is the picture mine? No—oh! yes, ten times over!

VI. That thing, a lie, has never come near my soul. I know not what it is to fear to think or to say what I think.

VII. I am choked, pent up in any other atmosphere but this. I cannot imagine how kings and courtiers contrive to exist. I could no more live without daring to speak, to look, to feel what I thought, than I could hold in my breath for any length of time. Nor could I bear to debar others of this privilege. Were it not that the Great would play the part of slaves themselves, they would hate to be surrounded with nothing but slaves, and to see meanness and hypocrisy crawling before them, as much as we do to see a spider crawling in our path.

VIII. I never knew what it was to feel like a footman. How many lords in waiting can say as much?

IX. When I consider how little difference there is in mankind (either in body or mind) I cannot help being astonished at the airs some people give themselves.

542X. I am proud up to the point of equality—every thing above or below that appears to me arrant impertinence or abject meanness.

XI. The ignorant and vulgar think that a man wants spirit, if he does not insult and triumph over them. This is a great mistake.

XII. For a man to be a coxcomb, shews a want of imagination. No one will ever pride himself on his beauty who has studied the head of the Antinous, or be in danger of running into the excess of the fashion, who has any knowledge of the Antique. The ideal is incompatible with personal vanity.

XIII. A scholar is like a book written in a dead language—it is not every one that can read in it.

XIV. Just as much as we see in others, we have in ourselves.

XV. A painter gives only his own character in a portrait, whether grave or gay, gross or refined, wise or foolish. Even in copying a head, there is some difficulty in making the features unlike our own. A person with a low forehead or a short chin puts a constraint upon himself in painting a high forehead or a long chin. So much has sympathy to do with the operations both of the eye and the hand, with observation and practice!

XVI. People at a play hiss an unsuccessful author or actor, as if the latter had committed some heinous crime—he has committed the greatest crime, that of setting up a superiority over us which he has failed to make good.

XVII. The rich, who do nothing themselves, represent idleness as the greatest crime. They have reason: it is necessary that some one should do something.

XVIII. What a pity that kings and great men do not write books, instead of mere authors! What superior views they must have of things, and how the world would be benefited by the communication!

XIX. The greatest proof of superiority is to bear with impertinence.

XX. No truly great man ever thought himself so.

XXI. Every man, in judging of himself, is his own contemporary.

XXII. Abuse is an indirect species of homage.

543XXIII. From the height from which the great look down on the world, all the rest of mankind seem equal.

XXIV. It is a bad style that requires frequent breaks and marks of admiration.

XXV. It happens in conversation as in different games. One person seems to excel, till another does better, and we then think no more of the first.

XXVI. Those who can keep secrets, have no curiosity. We only wish to gain knowledge, that we may impart it.

XXVII. Genius is native to the soil where it grows—is fed by the air, and warmed by the sun—and is not a hot-house plant or an exotic.

XXVIII. All truly great works of art are national in their character and origin.

XXIX. People are distinguished less by a genius for any particular thing, than by a peculiar tone and manner of feeling and thinking, whatever be the subject. The same qualities of mind or characteristic excellence that a man shows in one art, he would probably have displayed in any other. I have heard Mr. Northcote say, that he thought Sir Joshua Reynolds would have written excellent genteel comedies. His Discourses certainly are bland and amiable (rather than striking or original) like his pictures.

XXX. The same kind of excellence may be observed to prevail in different arts at the same period of time, as characteristic of the spirit of the age. Fielding and Hogarth were cotemporaries.

XXXI. There is an analogy in the style of certain authors to certain professions. One writes like a lawyer: it seems as if another would have made an eminent physician. Mandeville said of Addison that he was ‘a parson in a tye-wig:’ and there is something in The Spectator to justify this description of him.

XXXII. Salvator Rosa paints like a soldier; Nicholas Poussin like a professor at a University; Guido like a finished gentleman; Parmegiano with something of the air of a dancing master. Alas! Guido was a gamester and a madman; and Parmegiano a searcher after the philosopher’s stone. One of the happiest ideas in modern criticism was that of designating different living poets by the cups 544Apollo gives them to drink out of: thus Wordsworth is made to drink out of a wooden bowl, Lord Byron out of a skull chased with silver, &c.

XXXIII. Extreme impatience and irritability are often combined with a corresponding degree of indifference and indolence. When the eagerness of pursuit or the violence of opposition ceases, nothing is left to interest the mind, that has been once accustomed to a state of morbid excitement.

XXXIV. Artists and other studious professions are not happy, for this reason: they cannot enjoy mental repose. A state of lassitude and languor succeeds to that of overstrained, anxious exertion.

XXXV. It is the custom at present to exclude all but Scientific and Mechanical subjects from our fashionable Public Institutions, lest any allusions to popular sentiments or the cause of humanity should by chance creep in, to the great annoyance of the polite and well-informed part of the audience.

XXXVI. People had much rather be thought to look ill than old: because it is possible to recover from sickness, but there is no recovering from age.

XXXVII. I never knew but one person who had a passion for truth—and only one who had the same regard to the distinction between right and wrong, that others have to their own interest.

XXXVIII. Women are the sport of caprice, the slaves of custom.

XXXIX. When men are not favourites with women, it is either from habits of vulgar debauchery, or from constitutional indifference, or from an overstrained and pedantic idea of the sex, taken from books, and answering to nothing in real life.

XL. The object of books is to teach us ignorance; that is, to throw a veil over nature, and persuade us that things are not what they are, but what the writer fancies or wishes them to be.

XLI. My little boy said the other day, ‘He could not tell what to do without a book to read—he should wander about without knowing what to do with himself.’ So have I wandered about, till now, and, waking from the dream of books at last, don’t know what to do with myself. My poor little fellow! may’st thou dream long amidst thy darling books, and never wake!

545XLII. Political truth is a libel; religious truth, blasphemy.

XLIII. The greatest crime in the eye of the world is to endeavour to instruct or amend it.

XLIV. Weighing remote consequences in the mind is like weighing the air in scales.

XLV. A hypocrite seems to be the only perfect character—since it embraces the extremes of what human nature is, and of what it would be thought.

XLVI. The Scotch understanding differs from the English, as an Encyclopedia does from a circulating library. An Englishman is contented to pick up a few odds and ends of knowledge; a Scotchman is master of every subject alike. Here each individual has a particular hobby and favourite bye-path of his own: in Scotland learning is a common hack, which every one figures away with, and uses at his pleasure.

XLVII. A misanthropic writer might be called the Devil’s amanuensis.

XLVIII. To be a lord, a papist, and poor, is the most enviable distinction of humanity. There is all the pride and sense of independence, irritated and strengthened by being proscribed by power, and liable to be harassed by petty daily insults from every, the meanest vassal. What a situation to make the mind recoil from the world upon itself, and to sit and brood in moody grandeur and disdain of soul over fallen splendours and present indignities! It is just the life I should like to have led.

XLIX. The tone of good company is marked by the absence of personalities. Among well-informed persons, there are plenty of topics to discuss, without giving pain to any one present—without submitting to act the part of a butt, or of that still poorer creature, the wag that plays upon him.

L. Londoners complain of the dullness of the country, and country people feel equally uncomfortable and at a loss what to do with themselves in town. The fault is neither in the town nor in the country—every one is naturally unsettled and dissatisfied without his usual resources and occupations, let them be what or where they may.

LI. Each rank in society despises that which is a step below it, and the highest looks down upon them all. To get rid of the 546impertinence of artificial pretensions, we resort to nature at last. Kings, for this reason, are fond of low company; and lords marry actresses and barmaids. The Duke of York (not the present, but the late King’s brother) was at a ball at Plymouth. He danced with a Miss Byron, a very pretty girl, daughter of the admiral of that name, and aunt to our poet. But there was a Mrs. Fanning present, who was a paragon of beauty. The Duke asked, ‘Who is she?’ ‘A baker’s daughter,’ was the answer. ‘I don’t mean that; but what is she now?’—‘A broker’s wife.’ The lady did not perceive, that to a prince of the blood there was little difference between a tradesman’s wife and the daughter of a naval officer; but that the handsomest woman at a ball was an object of admiration in spite of circumstances.

LII. It has been asked, whether Lord Byron is a writer likely to live? Perhaps not: he has intensity of power, but wants distinctive character. In my opinion, Mr. Wordsworth is the only poet of the present day that is likely to live—should he ever happen to be born! But who will be the midwife to bring his works to light? It is a question whether Milton would have become popular without the help of Addison; nay, it is a question whether he is so, even with it.

LIII. An anecdote is told of General Wolfe,^[66] that he was out with a party of friends in a boat the day before the Battle of Quebec. It was a beautiful summer’s evening, and the conversation turned to Gray’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard, which was just then published. Wolfe repeated the lines, ‘For who to dumb forgetfulness a prey,’ &c., with enthusiasm, and said, ‘I would rather be the author of those lines than beat the French to-morrow!’ He did beat the French, and was himself killed the next day. Perhaps it was better to be capable of uttering a sentiment like this, than to gain a battle or write a poem.

LIV. Authors, a short time since, set upon Government: Government have of late turned the tables on them, and set upon authors. In one respect, it must be confessed, the court-tools have greatly the advantage of us: they can go all lengths in vulgar Billingsgate and abuse, without being charged with vulgarity. They have the sanction of the Court; they plead the King’s privilege. It is not to be supposed that any thing inelegant or gross can be patronised at Carlton-house. Every thing about a place, even the convenience of an Admiralty secretary, must, one would think, be kept sweet and wholesome. But instead of the least refinement and polish, they treat 547us with nothing, but garbage. A lie and a nickname are their favourite figures of rhetoric—the alternate substitutes for wit and argument—the twin-supporters of the Bible and the Crown. They use us (it seems) contrary to the advice of Hamlet, ‘according to our own deserts, and not their own dignity.’ The dirt they fling sticks on their opponents, without soiling their own fingers. Loyalty is ‘the true fuller’s earth that takes out all stains.’ At all events, do or say what they can, it is they who are the gentlemen, and we who are the blackguards. If we were to call Sir Walter Scott a Sawney writer, or Mr. Croker Jackey, it would be thought shocking, indecent, vulgar, and no one would look at our publication twice: yet on the Tory side the same thing passes for the height of sense and wit; and ladies of quality are delighted with the John Bull, gentlemen read Blackwood, and divines take in the Quarterly. There is Mr. William Mudford, of the Courier—a vapid common-place hack, pert and dull—but who would think of calling him by the diminutive of his Christian name? No; these are the extreme resources reserved for the Court-classics, who, in the zeal of their loyalty, are allowed to forget their manners. There is, in fact, nothing too mean for the genius of these writers, or too low for the taste of their employers.

LV. A Tory can rise no higher than the assumption of a question. If he relied on any thing but custom and authority, he would cease to be a Tory. He has a prejudice in favour of certain things, and against certain persons. This is all he knows of the matter. He therefore gives you assertions for argument, and abuse for wit. If you ask a reason for his opinions, he calls you names; and if you ask why he does so, he proves that he is in the right, by repeating them a thousand times. A nickname with him is the test of truth. It vents his spleen, strengthens his own prejudices, and communicates them mechanically to his hearers.

LVI. When an Elector of Hanover is made into a King of England, what does he become in the course of a century?—A George the Fourth.

LVII. If I were to give a toast at a loyal and patriotic meeting, it should be, Down with the Stuarts all over the world!

LVIII. The taste of the great in pictures is singular, but not unaccountable. The King is said to prefer the Dutch to the Italian school of painting; and if you hint your surprise at this, you are looked upon as a very Gothic and outré sort of person. You are told, however, by way of consolation, ‘To be sure, there is Lord 548Carlisle likes an Italian picture—Mr. Holwell Carr likes an Italian picture—the Marquis of Stafford is fond of an Italian picture—Sir George Beaumont likes an Italian picture.’ These, notwithstanding, are regarded as quaint and daring exceptions to the established rule; and their preference is a species of lèse-majesté in the Fine Arts—as great an eccentricity and want of fashionable etiquette, as if any gentleman or nobleman still preferred old claret to new, when the King is known to have changed his mind on this subject, or was guilty of the offence of dipping his fore-finger and thumb in the middle of a snuff-box, instead of gradually approximating the contents to the edge of the box, according to the most approved models. One would imagine that the great and exalted in station would like lofty subjects in works of art, whereas they seem to have an exclusive predilection for the mean and mechanical. One would think those whose word is law, would be pleased with the great and striking effects of the pencil^[67]: on the contrary, they admire nothing but the little and elaborate. They have a fondness for cabinet or furniture pictures, and a proportionable antipathy to works of genius. Even arts with them must be servile, to be tolerated. Perhaps the seeming contradiction may be thus explained. These persons are raised so high above the rest of the species, that the more violent and agitating pursuits of mankind appear to them like the turmoil of ants on a molehill. Nothing interests them but their own pride and self-importance. Our passions are to them an impertinence; an expression of high sentiment they rather shrink from as a ludicrous and upstart assumption of equality. They, therefore, like what glitters to the eye, what is smooth to the touch; but they shun, by an instinct of sovereign taste, whatever has a soul in it, and implies a reciprocity of feeling. The gods of the earth can have no interest in any thing human; they are cut off from all sympathy with the ‘bosoms and businesses of men.’ Instead of requiring to be wound up beyond their habitual feeling of stately dignity, they wished to have the springs of overstrained pretension let down, to be relaxed with ‘trifles light as air,’ to be amused with the familiar and frivolous, and to have the world appear a scene of still life, except as they disturb it! The little in thought and internal sentiment is a necessary relief and set-off to the oppressive sense of external magnificence. Hence Kings 549babble and repeat they know not what. A childish dotage often accompanies the consciousness of absolute power. Repose is somewhere necessary, and the soul sleeps, while the senses gloat around. Besides, the mechanical and high-finished style of art may be considered as something done to order. It is a task to be executed more or less perfectly, according to the price given and the industry of the artist. We stand by, as it were, see the work done, insist upon a greater degree of neatness and accuracy, and exercise a sort of petty jealous jurisdiction over each particular. We are judges of the minuteness of the details, and though ever so nicely executed, as they give us no ideas beyond what we had before, we do not feel humbled in the comparison. The artisan scarcely rises into the artist; and the name of genius is degraded, rather than exalted in his person. The performance is so far ours that we have paid for it, and the highest price is all that is necessary to produce the highest finishing. But it is not so in works of genius and imagination. Their price is above rubies. The inspiration of the Muse comes not with the fiat of a monarch, with the donation of a patron; and therefore the Great turn with disgust or effeminate indifference from the mighty masters of the Italian school because such works baffle and confound their self-will, and make them feel that there is something in the mind of man which they can neither give nor take away.

LIX. The style of conversation in request in courts proceeds much upon the same principle. It is low, and it is little. I have known a few persons who have had access to the Presence (and who might be supposed to catch what they could of the tone of royalty at second-hand, bating the dignity—God knows there was nothing of that!) and I should say they were the highest finishers in this respect I ever met with. No circumstance escaped them, they worked out all the details (whether to the purpose or not) like a fac-simile, they mimicked every thing, explained every thing; the story was not told, but acted over again. It is true, there were no grandes pensées, there was a complete truce with all thought and reflection; but they were everlasting dealers in matters of fact, and there was no end of their minute prolixity—one must suppose this mode pleased their betters, or was copied from them. Dogberry’s declaration—‘Were I as tedious as a king, I could find in my heart to bestow it all upon your worship’—is not so much a blunder of the clown’s, as a sarcasm of the poet’s. Are we to account for the effect (as before) from supposing that their overstrained attention to great things makes them seek for a change in little ones?—Or that their idea of themselves as raised 550above every one else is confirmed by dwelling on the meanest and most insignificant objects?—Or is it that from their ignorance and seclusion from the world, every thing is alike new and wonderful to them? Or that dreading the insincerity of those about them, they exact an extraordinary degree of trifling accuracy, and require every one to tell a story, as if he was giving evidence on oath before a court of justice? West said that the late King used to get him up into a corner, and fairly put his hands before him so that he could not get away, till he had got every particular out of him relating to the affairs of the Royal Academy. This weakness in the mind of kings has been well insisted on by Peter Pindar. It is of course like one of the spots in the sun.

LX. I hate to be near the sea, and to hear it roaring and raging like a wild beast in its den. It puts me in mind of the everlasting efforts of the human mind, struggling to be free, and ending just where it began.

LXI. Happy are they that can say with Timon—‘I am Misanthropos, and hate mankind!’ They can never be at a loss for subjects to exercise their spleen upon: their sources of satisfaction must hold out while the world stands. Those who do not pity others, assuredly need not envy them: if they take pleasure in the distresses of their fellow-creatures, they have their wish. Let them cast an eye on that long disease, human life, on that villainous compound, human nature, and glut their malice. There is madness, there is idiotcy, there is sickness, old age, and death; there is the cripple, the blind, and the deaf; there is the deformed in body, the weak in mind, the prisoner and the gaoler, the beggar and the dwarf; there is poverty, labour, pain, ignominy; there is riches, pride, griping avarice, bloated luxury; there is the agony of suffering or the lassitude of ennui; there is the sickness of the heart from hope delayed, and the worse and more intolerable sickness from hope attained; there is the gout, the stone, the plague, cold, fever, thirst, and nakedness, shipwreck, famine, fire and the sword, all are instruments of human fate, and pamper the dignity of human nature: there are the racking pains of jealousy, remorse, and anguish, the lingering ones of disappointment, sorrow, and regret; there is the consciousness of unmerited, hopeless obscurity, and ‘the cruel sunshine thrown by fortune on a fool;’ there is unrequited love, and—marriage; there is the coquet slighting others and slighted in her turn, the jilt, the antiquated prude, the brutal husband, and the common-place wife; there are vows of celibacy and lost character; there is the cabal, the idle 551gossiping, the churlishness and dulness of the country, the heartlessness and profligacy of great cities; there are the listless days, the sleepless nights, the having too much or too little to do; years spent in vain in a pursuit, or, if successful, the having to leave it at last; there are the jealousies of different professions among themselves or of each other, lawyers, divines, physicians, artists; the contempt of the more thriving for the less fortunate, and the hatred and heart-burnings with which it is repaid; there is hypocrisy, oppression, falsehood, treachery, cowardice, selfishness, meanness; the luck of fools, the respectability of knaves; the cant of piety, loyalty, and humanity; the lamentations of West-India planters over the ingratitude of their negro slaves, and Louis XVIII. resigning to God and the Mother of all Saints the credit of the success of his arms; there are sects and parties, kings and their subjects, queens and common-council men, speeches in Parliament, plays and actors damned, or successful for a time and then laid on the shelf, and heard of no more; quacks at all corners, mountebanks in the pulpit, and drones in the state, peace and war, treaties of offence and defence, conspiracies, revolutions, Holy Alliances, the sudden death of Lord Castlereagh, and the oratory of his successor Mr. Canning, hid for the present like the moon ‘in its vacant interlunar cave;’ and Ferdinand and his paper-kites, and the Cortes, unconscious of the rebel maxim, ‘Catch a king and kill a king’; and Slop raving at the bloodthirsty victims of courtly assassins, and whetting mild daggers for patriot throats; and Mr. Croker’s cheat-the-gallows face in the Quarterly, and Lord Wellington’s heart in the cause of Spanish liberty, and a beloved Monarch retired amid all this to shady solitude ‘to play with Wisdom.’ A good hater may here find wherewithal to feed the largest spleen and swell it, even to bursting!

LXII. Happiness, like mocking, is catching. At least, none but those who are happy in themselves, can make others so. No wit, no understanding, neither riches nor beauty, can communicate this feeling—the happy alone can make happy. Love and Joy are twins, or born of each other.

LXIII. No one knows when he is safe from ridicule.

LXIV. Is it a misfortune or a happiness that we so often like the faults of one we love better than the virtues of any other woman; that we like her refusals, better than all other favours; that we like her love of others, better than any one else’s love of us?

LXV. If a man were refused by a woman a thousand times, and 552he really loved her, he would still think that at the bottom of her heart she preferred him to every one else. Nor is this wonderful, when we consider that all passion is a species of madness; and that the feeling in the mind towards the beloved object is the most amiable and delightful thing in the world. Our love to her is heavenly, and so (the heart whispers us) must hers be to us—though it were buried at the bottom of the sea; nay, from the tomb our self-love would revive it! We never can persuade ourselves that a mistress cares nothing about us, till we no longer care about her. No! It is certain that there is nothing truly deserving of love but love, and

we still believe in the justice of the blind God!

LXVI. It would be easy to forget a misplaced attachment, but that we do not like to acknowledge ourselves in the wrong.

LXVII. A great mind is one that can forget or look beyond itself.

LXVIII. The grand scenes of Nature are more adapted for occasional visits than for constant residence. They are the temples of the Goddess, not fit dwellings for her worshippers. Familiarity breeds contempt or indifference; and it is better to connect this feeling with the petty and trivial than with the lofty and sublime. Besides, it is unnecessary to run the risk in the latter case. One chief advantage of the great and magnificent objects of Nature is, that they stamp their image on the mind for ever; the blow need not be repeated to have the desired effect. We take them with us wherever we go; we have but to think of them and they appear; and at the distance of half a life or of the circumference of the globe, we unlock the springs of memory, and the tall mountain shoots into the sky, the lake expands its bosom, and the cataract rushes from the pine-clad rock. The bold majestic outline is all that there is to discover in such situations, and this we can always remember. In more cultivated and artificial scenes we may observe a thousand hedge-row beauties with curious eye, or pluck the tender flower beneath our feet, while Skiddaw hovers round our heads, and the echoes of Helvellyn thunder in our hearts.

LXIX. I should always choose to live within reach of a fine prospect, rather than to see one from my windows. A number of romantic, distant objects staring in upon one (uncalled-for) tantalise the imagination, and tempt the truant feet; whereas, at home, I wish to feel satisfied where I am, and sheltered from the world.

553LXX. Mr. Martin’s picture of Adam and Eve in Paradise has this capital defect, that there is no repose in it. You see two insignificant naked figures, and a preposterous architectural landscape, like a range of buildings overlooking them. They might as well be represented sleeping on the top of the pinnacle of the Temple with the world and all the glories thereof spread out before them. They ought to have been painted imparadised in one another’s arms, shut up in measureless content, with Eden’s choicest bowers closing round them, and Nature stooping to clothe them with vernal bowers. Nothing could be too retired, too voluptuous, too sacred from day’s garish eye: instead of which, you have a gaudy panoramic view, a glittering barren waste, a triple row of clouds, of rocks, and mountains piled one upon the other, as if the imagination already bent its idle gaze over that wide world, which was so soon to be their place of exile, and the aching restless spirit of the artist was occupied in building a stately prison for our first parents, instead of decking their bridal bed, and wrapping them in a short-lived dream of bliss!

LXXI. The mind tires of variety, but becomes reconciled to uniformity. Change produces a restless habit, a love of farther change: the recurrence of the same objects conduces to repose, and to content. My Uncle Toby’s bowling-green bounded his harmless ambition; Bonaparte, not contented with France and Europe for a pleasure-ground, wanted to have Russia for an ice-house; and Alexander, at the farthest side of India, wept for new worlds to conquer. If we let our thoughts wander abroad, there is no end to fantastic projects, to the craving after novelty, to fickleness, and disappointment: if we confine them at home, Peace may find them there. Mr. Horne Tooke used to contend that all tendency to excess was voluntary in the mind: the wants of Nature kept within a certain limit. Even if a person adhered to a regular number of cups of tea or glasses of wine, he did not feel tempted to exceed this number: but if he once went beyond his usual allowance, the desire to transgress increased with its indulgence, and the artificial appetite was proportioned to the artificial stimulus. It has been remarked that in the tropical climates, where there is no difference of seasons, time passes away on smoother and swifter pinions, ‘the earth spins round on its soft axle,’ unnoticed, unregretted: and life wears out soonest and best in sequestered privacy, within the round of a few, simple, unenvied enjoyments.

LXXII. The retailing of a set of anecdotes is not conversation. A story admits of no answer: a remark or an opinion naturally calls 554forth another, and leads to as many different views of a subject as there are minds in company. An officer in a Scotch marching regiment has always a number of very edifying anecdotes to communicate: but unless you are of the same mess or the same clan, you are necessarily sent to Coventry. Prosing, mechanical narrations of this kind are tedious, as well as tinctured with egotism: if they are set off with a brilliant manner, with mimicry, and action, they become theatrical: the speaker is a kind of Mr. Matthews at home, and the audience are more or less delighted and amused with the exhibition; but there is an end of society, and you no more think of interrupting a confirmed story-teller, than you would of interrupting a favourite actor on the stage.

LXXIII. The Queen’s trial gave a deathblow to the hopes of all reflecting persons with respect to the springs and issues of public spirit and opinion. It was the only question I ever knew that excited a thorough popular feeling. It struck its roots into the heart of the nation; it took possession of every house or cottage in the kingdom; man, woman, and child took part in it, as if it had been their own concern. Business was laid aside for it: people forgot their pleasures, even their meals were neglected, nothing was thought of but the fate of the Queen’s trial. The arrival of the Times Newspaper was looked upon as an event in every village, the Mails hardly travelled fast enough; and he who had the latest intelligence in his pocket was considered as the happiest of mortals. It kept the town in a ferment for several weeks: it agitated the country to the remotest corner. It spread like wildfire over the kingdom; the public mind was electrical. So it should be on other occasions; it was only so on this. An individual may be oppressed, a nation may be trampled upon, mankind may be threatened with annihilation of their rights, and the threat enforced; and not a finger is raised, not a heart sinks, not a pulse beats quicker in the public or private quarrel, a momentary burst of vain indignation is heard, dies away, and is forgotten. Truth has no echo, but folly and imposture have a thousand reverberations in the hollowness of the human heart. At the very time when all England went mad about the poor Queen, a man of the name of Bruce was sent to Botany Bay for having spoken to another who was convicted of sedition; and no notice was taken of it. We have seen what has been done in Spain, and Earth does not roll its billows over the heads of tyrants, to bury them in a common grave. What was it then in the Queen’s cause that stirred this mighty ‘coil and pudder’ in the breast? Was it the love of truth, of justice, of liberty? No such thing! Her case was at best doubtful, and she had only suffered the 555loss of privileges peculiar to herself. But she was a Queen, she was a woman, and a thorn in the King’s side. There was the cant of loyalty, the cant of gallantry, and the cant of freedom mixed altogether in delightful and inextricable confusion. She was a Queen—all the loyal and well-bred bowed to the name; she was a wife—all the women took the alarm; she was at variance with the lawful sovereign—all the free and independent Electors of Westminster and London were up in arms. ‘The Queen’s name was a tower of strength,’ which these persons had hitherto wanted, and were glad to catch at. Though a daughter of the Duke of Brunswick, though a grand-daughter of George III., yet because she was separated from her husband, she must be hand-and-glove with the people, the wretched, helpless, doating, credulous, meddlesome people, who are always ready to lick the hands, not just then raised to shed their blood or rivet on their chains. There was here an idol to pull down and an idol to set up. There was an imperial title and meretricious frontispiece to the spurious volume of Liberty. There was the mock-majesty of an empty throne behind the real one, and the impertinence of mankind was interested to thrust the unwelcome claimant into it. City patriots stood a chance of becoming liege men, and true to a Queen—of their own choosing. The spirit of faction was half merged in the spirit of servility. There was a rag-fair of royalty—every one carried his own paints and patches into the presence of the new Lady of Loretto—there was a sense of homage due, of services and countenance bestowed on Majesty. This popular farce had all the charm of private theatricals. The Court of St. James’s was nothing to the make-believe Court at Kew. The king was a sort of state-fixture; but the Queen-Consort, the favourite of the rabble, was herself one of them. The presence-doors were flung open, and every blackguard and blockhead rushed in. What an opportunity to see, to hear, to touch a Queen! To gratify the itch of loyalty by coming in contact with the person of the Sovereign was a privilege reserved for a few; but to receive this favour at the Queen’s hands was a distinction common to all. All the trades of London came to kiss the Queen’s hand: Presbyterian parsons knelt to kiss the hand of their royal mistress; the daughters of country curates and of city knights sipped loyalty from the back of her Majesty’s hand. Radicals and reformers contended who should be first in paying homage to the Queen; there was a race for precedence, quarrelling and pulling of caps between the wives of distinguished orators and caricaturists, at the very footsteps of the throne; while Mr. Alderman Wood,

556strove to keep the peace, and vindicate the character of civic dames for courtly manners. Mr. Place, Mr. Hone, Mr. Thelwall, Sir Richard Phillips, kissed her Majesty’s hand; Mr. Cobbett alone was not invited,—it was thought he might bite. What a pity that it was before Mr. Irving’s time, or he might have thrown in the casting-weight of his perfect mind and body, and ousted both the King and Bergami! In the midst of all this, his Majesty went to the play, bowed to the boxes, the pit, the gallery, and to the actors, and you would suppose in four days’ time, that a whisper had never been uttered to imply that the King not only was not the most graceful man in his dominions, but the best of monarchs and of husbands. The Queen and her pic-nic parties were no more thought of. What a scene for history to laugh at!

LXXIV. A crowd was collected under the Horse-Guards, and on enquiry I found it was to see the Duke of York come out. ‘What went they forth for to see?’ They were some of the lowest and most wretched of the people, and it was perhaps the sense of contrast,—a sense of which the great and mighty have always availed themselves liberally, to cherish the enthusiasm of their admirers. It was also curiosity to see a name, a sound that they had so often heard, reduced to an object of sight; a metaphysical and political abstraction actually coming out of a door with a ruddy face and a frock-coat. It was, in the first place, the Commander-in-Chief, and the commander of the troops at Dunkirk, the author of the love-letters to Mrs. Clarke and of army-circulars, the son of the King, and presumptive heir to the Crown;—there were all these contradictions embodied in the same person. ‘Oh, the wonderful works of nature,’ as the Recruit in the play says on looking at the guinea which has just enlisted him: so we may say on looking at a king or a king’s brother. I once pointed out the Duke of York to a Scotchman. ‘Is that his Grace—I mean his Royal Highness?’ said the native of the North, out of breath to acknowledge the title, and pay with his tongue the instinctive adulation which his heart felt!

LXXV. When Effie Deans becomes a fine lady, do we not look back with regret to the time when she was the poor faded lily of St. Leonards, the outcast and condemned prisoner? So, should the cause of liberty and mankind ever become triumphant, instead of militant, may we not heave a sigh of regret over the past, and think that poor suffering human nature, with all its wrongs and insults, trodden into the earth like a vile weed, was a more interesting topic for reflection? We need not be much alarmed for the event, even 557if this should be so; for the way to Utopia is not ‘the primrose path of dalliance;’ and at the rate we have hitherto gone on, it must be many thousand years off!

LXXVI. Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and idols—it is all that they ask; the distinctions of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to them.

LXXVII. The Devil was a great loss in the preternatural world. He was always something to fear and to hate. He supplied the antagonist powers of the imagination, and the arch of true religion hardly stands firm without him. Mr. Irving may perhaps bring him into fashion again.

LXXVIII. Perhaps the evils arising from excessive inequality in a state would be sufficiently obviated if property were divided equally among the surviving children. But it is said it would be impossible to make a law for this purpose, under any circumstances or with any qualifications, because the least interference with the disposal of property would be striking at its existence and at the very root of all property. And yet this objection is urged in those very countries, where the law of primogeniture (intended to keep it in disproportionate masses, and setting aside the will of the testator altogether) is established as an essential part of the law of the land. So blind is reason, where passion or prejudice intervenes!

LXXIX. Kings, who set up for Gods upon earth, should be treated as madmen, which one half of them, or as idiots, which the other half, really are.

LXXX. Tyrants are at all times mad with the lust of power.

LXXXI. Reformers are naturally speculative people; and speculative people are effeminate and inactive. They brood over ideas, till realities become almost indifferent to them. They talk when they should act, and are distracted with nice doubts and distinctions, while the enemy is thundering at the gates, and the bomb-shells are bursting at their feet. They hold up a paper Constitution as their shield, which the sword pierces through, and drinks their heart’s blood! They are cowards, too, at bottom; and dare not strike a decisive blow, lest it should be retaliated. While they merely prate of moderation and the public good, they think, if the worst comes to the worst, there may still be a chance of retreat for them, hoping to 558screen themselves behind their imbecility. They are not like their opponents, whose all is at stake, and who are urged on by instinctive fury and habitual cunning to defend it: the common good is too remote a speculation to call forth any violent passions or personal sacrifices; and if it should be lost, it is as fine a topic as ever to harangue and lament about. Patriots are, by the constitution of their minds, poets; and an Elegy on the fall of Liberty is as interesting to hear or to recite as an Ode on its most triumphant success. They who let off Ferdinand the other day, confiding in the promises of a traitor and in the liberality of a despot, were greater hypocrites to themselves than he was.

LXXXII. In the late quarrel about Liberty, upwards of five millions of men have been killed, and one king.

LXXXIII. The people (properly speaking) are not a herd of slaves just let loose, or else goaded on, like blind drudges, to execute the behests of their besotted taskmasters; but the band of free citizens, taught to know their rights, and prepared to exercise them.

LXXXIV. The people are the slaves of ignorance and custom; the friends of the people are the dupes of reason and humanity. Power stops at nothing but its own purposes.

LXXXV. The Author of Waverley observes—‘In truth, the Scottish peasantry are still infected with that rage for funeral ceremonial, which once distinguished the grandees of the kingdom so much, that a sumptuary law was made by the Parliament of Scotland for the purpose of restraining it; and I have known many in the lowest stations who have denied themselves not merely the comforts, but almost the necessaries of life, in order to save such a sum of money as might enable their surviving friends to bury them like Christians, as they termed it; nor could their faithful executors be prevailed upon, though equally necessitous, to turn to the use and maintenance of the living the money vainly wasted upon the interment of the dead.’—‘Antiquary,’ vol. IV. p. 48. If I were to attempt an explanation of the peculiar delight and pride which the Scotch are thus supposed to take in funeral ceremonies, I should say, that as inhabitants of wild and barren districts, they are more familiar with the face of nature than with the face of man; and easily turn to it as their place of rest and final home. There is little difference, in their imaginations, between treading the green mountain turf, and being laid beneath it. The world itself is but a living tomb to them. Their mode of subsistence is cold, hard, comfortless, bare of luxuries 559and of enjoyments, torpid, inured to privations and self-denial; and death seems to be its consummation and triumph, rather than its unwelcome end. Their life was a sort of struggle for a dreary existence; so that it relapses into the grave with joy and a feeling of exultation. The grey rock out of which their tomb is cut is a citadel against all assaults of the flesh and the spirit; the kindred earth that wraps the weather-beaten, worn-out body, is a soft and warm resting-place from the hardships it has had to encounter. It is no wonder, therefore, that the Scotch prepare for the due celebration of this event with the foresight characteristic of them, and that their friends consign them to the earth with becoming fortitude and costly ceremony. ‘Man,’ says Sir Thomas Brown, though in quite a different spirit, ‘man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave; solemnising nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery, even in the INFAMY of his nature.—See his URN BURIAL.

LXXXVI. In the Heart of Midlothian vol. IV. p. 13, we meet with the following reflections: ‘Perhaps one ought to be actually a Scotchman to conceive how ardently, under all distinctions of rank and situation, they feel their mutual connection with each other as natives of the same country. There are, I believe, more associations common to the inhabitants of a rude and wild than of a well-cultivated and fertile country: their ancestors have more seldom changed their place of residence; their mutual recollection of remarkable objects is more accurate; the high and the low are more interested in each other’s welfare; the feelings of kindred and relationship are more widely extended; and, in a word, the bonds of patriotic affection, always honourable, even when a little too exclusively strained, have more influence on men’s feelings and actions.’ Thus far our author, but without making much progress in the question he has started. ‘Via Goodman Dull! thou hast spoken no word all this while’—I might say, but I do not choose, to say so, to the Great Unknown. There is an enumeration of particulars, slightly and collaterally connected with the subject, but, as ‘Douce David Deans’ would say, ‘they do not touch the root of the matter.’ In fact, then, the mind more easily forms a strong and abstracted attachment to the soil (in which it was bred) in remote and barren regions, where few artificial objects or pursuits fritter away attention, or divert it from its devotion to the naked charms of nature—(perhaps the privations, dangers, and loneliness incident to such situations also enhance the value and deepen the interest we take in them)—and again, in a rude and scattered population, where there is a dearth and craving after general 560society, we naturally become more closely and permanently attached to those few persons with whom neighbourhood, or kindred, or a common cause, or similar habits or language, bring us into contact. Two Englishmen meeting in the wilds of Arabia would instantly become friends, though they had never seen one another before, from the want of all other society and sympathy. So it is in the ruder and earlier stages of civilisation. This is what attaches the Highlander to his hill and to his clan. This is what attaches Scotchmen to their country and to one another. A Londoner, in his fondness for London, is distracted between the play-houses, the opera, the shops, the coffee-houses, the crowded streets, &c. An inhabitant of Edinburgh has none of these diversities to reconcile: he has but one idea in his head or in his mouth,—that of the Calton Hill; an idea which is easily embraced, and which he never quits his hold of, till something more substantial offers,—a situation as porter in a warehouse, or as pimp to a great man.