CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE EDINBURGH REVIEW (continued 5)

With regard to the claims of the philosopher of Malmesbury as the first discoverer of the principle of association, as it is now understood among metaphysicians, Mr. C. thinks fit to deny it in toto, because Descartes’s work, ‘De Methodo,’ in which there is an intimation of the same doctrine, preceded Hobbes’s ‘De Natura Humana’ by a whole year.—What an interval to invent and mature a whole system in!—But we conceive that Hobbes has a strict claim to the merit of originality in this respect, because he is the first writer who laid down this principle as the sole and universal law of connexion among our ideas:—which principle Hartley afterwards illustrated and applied to an infinite number of particular cases, but did not assert the general theorem itself more broadly or explicitly. We deny that the statement of this principle, as the connecting band of our ideas, is to be found in any of those writers before Hobbes, whom Mr. Coleridge enumerates; Descartes or Melancthon, or those more ‘illustrious obscure,’ Ammerbach, or Ludovicus Vives, or even Aristotle. It is not the having remarked, that association was one source of connexion among certain ideas, that would anticipate this discovery or the theory of Hartley; but the asserting, that this principle was alone sufficient to account for every operation of the human mind, and that there was no other source of connexion among our ideas,—a proposition which Hobbes was undoubtedly the first to assert, and by the assertion of which he did certainly anticipate the system of Hartley; for all that the latter could do, or has attempted to do, after this, was to prove the proposition in detail, or to reduce all the phenomena to this one general law. That Hobbes was in fact the original inventor of the doctrine of Association, and of the modern system of philosophy in general, is matter of fact and history; as to which, we are surprised 144that Mr. C. should profess any doubt, and which we had gratified ourselves by illustrating by a series of citations from his greater works,—which nothing but a sense of the prevailing indifference to such discussions prevents us from laying before our readers.

As for the great German oracle Kant, we must take the liberty to say, that his system appears to us the most wilful and monstrous absurdity that ever was invented. If the French theories of the mind were too chemical, this is too mechanical:—if the one referred every thing to nervous sensibility, the other refers every thing to the test of muscular resistance, and voluntary prowess. It is an enormous heap of dogmatical and hardened assertions, advanced in contradiction to all former systems, and all unsystematical opinions and impressions. He has but one method of getting over difficulties:—when he is at a loss to account for any thing, and cannot give a reason for it, he turns short round upon the inquirer, and says that it is self-evident. If he cannot make good an inference upon acknowledged premises, or known methods of reasoning, he coolly refers the whole to a new class of ideas, and the operation of some unknown faculty, which he has invented for the purpose, and which he assures you must exist,—because there is no other proof of it. His whole theory is machinery and scaffolding—an elaborate account of what he has undertaken to do, because no one else has been able to do it—and an assumption that he has done it, because he has undertaken it. If the will were to go for the deed, and to be confident were to be wise, he would indeed be the prince of philosophers. For example, he sets out with urging the indispensable necessity of answering Hume’s argument on the origin of our idea of cause and effect; and because he can find no answer to this argument, in the experimental philosophy, he affirms, that this idea must be ‘a self-evident truth, contained in the first forms or categories of the understanding;’ that is, the thing must be as he would have it, whether it is so or not. Again, he argues that external objects exist because they seem to exist; and yet he denies that we know any thing at all about the matter, further than their appearances. He defines beauty to be perfection, and virtue to consist in a conformity to our duty; with other such deliberate truisms; and then represents necessity as inconsistent with morality, and insists on the existence and certainty of the free-will as a faculty necessary to explain the moral sense, which could not exist without it. This transcendental philosopher is also pleased to affirm, in so many words, that we have neither any possible idea, nor any possible proof of the existence of the Soul, God, or Immortality, by means of the ordinary faculties of sense, understanding, or reason; and he therefore (like a man who had been employed to construct a machine for some 145particular purpose), invents a new faculty, for the admission and demonstration of these important truths, namely, the practical reason; in other words, the will or determination that these things should be infinitely true because they are infinitely desirable to the human mind,—though he says it is impossible for the human mind to have any idea whatever of these objects, either as true or desirable. But we turn gladly from absurdities that have not even the merit of being amusing; and leave Mr. Coleridge to the undisturbed adoration of an idol who will have few other worshippers in this country. His own speculations are, beyond all comparison, more engaging.

In chap. IX. Mr. Coleridge, taking leave of that ‘sound book-learnedness’ which he had opposed, in the Lay Sermon, to the upstart pretensions of modern literature, praises the inspired ignorance, upward flights, and inward yearnings of Jacob Behmen, George Fox and De Thoyras, and proceeds to defend himself against the charge of plagiarism, of which he suspects that he may be suspected by the readers of Schlegel and Schelling, when he comes to unfold, in fulness of time, the mysterious laws of the drama and the human mind. And thereafter, the ‘extravagant and erring’ author takes leave of the Pantheism of Spinoza, of Proclus, and Gemistius Pletho, of the philosopher of Nola, ‘whom the idolaters of Rome, the predecessors of that good old man, the present Pope, burnt as an atheist in the year 1660;’ of the Noumenon, or Thing in itself; of Fichte’s Ordo Ordinans, or exoteric God; of Simon Grynæus, Barclay’s Argenis, and Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity, from whom the author ‘cites a cluster of citations, to amuse the reader, as with a voluntary before a sermon’—to plunge into Chap. X., entitled ‘A Chapter of Digressions and Anecdotes, as an interlude preceding that on the Nature and Genesis of the Imagination or Plastic Power!’

As this latter chapter, by the advice of a correspondent, has been omitted, we must make the most of what is left, and ‘wander down into a lower world obscure and wild,’ to give the reader an account of Mr. Coleridge’s setting up the Watchman, which is one of the first things to which he digresses, in the tenth chapter of his Literary Biography. Out of regard to Mr. C. as well as to our readers, we give our longest extract from this narrative part of the work—which is more likely to be popular than any other part—and is, upon the whole, more pleasingly written. We cannot say much, indeed, either for the wit or the soundness of judgment it displays. But it is an easy, gossipping, garrulous account of youthful adventures—by a man sufficiently fond of talking of himself, and sufficiently disposed to magnify small matters into ideal importance.

‘Toward the close of the first year from the time that, in an 146inauspicious hour, I left the friendly cloysters, and the happy grove of quiet, ever-honoured, Jesus College, Cambridge, I was persuaded, by sundry Philanthropists and Antipolemists, to set on foot a periodical work, entitled The Watchman, that (according to the general motto of the work) all might know the truth, and that the truth might make us free! In order to exempt it from the stamp-tax, and likewise to contribute as little as possible to the supposed guilt of a war against freedom, it was to be published on every eighth day, thirty-two pages, large octavo, closely printed, and price only Fourpence. Accordingly, with a flaming prospectus, “Knowledge is power,” &c. to try the state of the political atmosphere, and so forth, I set off on a tour to the North, from Bristol to Sheffield, for the purpose of procuring customers; preaching by the way in most of the great towns, as a hireless volunteer, in a blue coat and white waistcoat, that not a rag of the woman of Babylon might be seen on me. For I was at that time, and long after, though a Trinitarian (i.e. ad normam Platonis) in philosophy, yet a zealous Unitarian in religion; more accurately, I was a psilanthropist, one of those who believe our Lord to have been the real son of Joseph, and who lay the main stress on the resurrection, rather than on the crucifixion. O! never can I remember those days with either shame or regret. For I was most sincere, most disinterested! My opinions were indeed in many and most important points erroneous; but my heart was single. Wealth, rank, life itself then seemed cheap to me, compared with the interests of (what I believed to be) the truth, and the will of my Maker. I cannot even accuse myself of having been actuated by vanity; for in the expansion of my enthusiasm, I did not think of myself at all.

‘My campaign commenced at Birmingham; and my first attack was on a rigid Calvinist, a tallow-chandler by trade. He was a tall dingy man, in whom length was so predominant over breadth, that he might almost have been borrowed for a foundery poker. O that face! a face κατέμφασιν! I have it before me at this moment. The lank, black, twine-like hair, pingui-nitescent, cut in a straight line along the black stubble of his thin gunpowder-eyebrows, that looked like a scorched after-math from a last week’s shaving. His coat-collar behind in perfect unison, both of colour and lustre, with the coarse, yet glib cordage, that I suppose he called his hair, and which, with a bend inward at the nape of the neck, (the only approach to flexure in his whole figure), slunk in behind his waistcoat; while the countenance, lank, dark, very hard, and with strong perpendicular furrows, gave me a dim notion of some one looking at me through a used gridiron, all soot, grease, and iron! But he was one of the thoroughbred, 147a true lover of liberty; and (I was informed) had proved to the satisfaction of many, that Mr. Pitt was one of the horns of the second beast in the Revelation, that spoke like a dragon. A person, to whom one of my letters of recommendation had been addressed, was my introducer. It was a new event in my life, my first stroke in the new business I had undertaken, of an author; yea, and of an author trading on his own account. My companion, after some imperfect sentences, and a multitude of hums and haas, abandoned the cause to his client; and I commenced an harangue of half an hour to Phileleutheros the tallow-chandler, varying my notes through the whole gamut of eloquence, from the ratiocinative to the declamatory, and in the latter, from the pathetic to the indignant. I argued, I described, I promised, I prophesied; and, beginning with the captivity of nations, I ended with the near approach of the millennium; finishing the whole with some of my own verses, describing that glorious state, out of the Religious Musings.

—‘“Such delights,

As float to earth, permitted visitants!

When in some hour of solemn jubilee

The massive gates of Paradise are thrown

Wide open: and forth come in fragments wild

Sweet echoes of unearthly melodies,

And odours snatched from beds of amaranth,

And they that from the chrystal river of life

Spring up on freshen’d wings, ambrosial gales!”

‘My taper man of lights listened with perseverant and praiseworthy patience, though (as I was afterwards told on complaining of certain gales that were not altogether ambrosial) it was a melting day with him. And what, Sir! (he said, after a short pause) might the cost be? Only four-pence, (O! how I felt the anti-climax, the abysmal bathos of that four-pence!) only four-pence, Sir, each Number, to be published on every eighth day. That comes to a deal of money at the end of a year. And how much did you say there was to be for the money? Thirty-two pages, Sir! large octavo, closely printed. Thirty and two pages? Bless me; why, except what I does in a family way on the Sabbath, that’s more than I ever reads, Sir! all the year round. I am as great a one as any man in Brummagem, Sir! for liberty, and truth, and all them sort of things; but as to this, (no offence, I hope, Sir!) I must beg to be excused.

‘So ended my first canvass: from causes that I shall presently mention, I made but one other application in person. This took place at Manchester, to a stately and opulent wholesale dealer in cottons. He took my letter of introduction, and having perused it, 148measured me from head to foot, and again from foot to head, and then asked if I had any bill or invoice of the thing. I presented my prospectus to him; he rapidly skimmed and hummed over the first side, and still more rapidly the second and concluding page; crushed it within his fingers and the palm of his hand; then most deliberately and significantly rubbed and smoothed one part against the other; and lastly, putting it into his pocket, turned his back on me with an “overrun with these articles!” and so without another syllable retired into his counting-house—and, I can truly say, to my unspeakable amusement.

‘This, I have said, was my second and last attempt. On returning baffled from the first, in which I had vainly essayed to repeat the miracle of Orpheus with the Brummagem patriot, I dined with the tradesman who had introduced me to him. After dinner, he importuned me to smoke a pipe with him, and two or three other illuminati of the same rank. I objected, both because I was engaged to spend the evening with a minister and his friends, and because I had never smoked except once or twice in my lifetime; and then it was herb tobacco, mixed with Oronooko. On the assurance, however, that the tobacco was equally mild, and seeing too that it was of a yellow colour, (not forgetting the lamentable difficulty I have always experienced in saying, No! and in abstaining from what the people about me were doing), I took half a pipe, filling the lower half of the bole with salt. I was soon, however, compelled to resign it, in consequence of a giddiness and distressful feeling in my eyes, which, as I had drank but a single glass of ale, must, I knew, have been the effect of the tobacco. Soon after, deeming myself recovered, I sallied forth to my engagement; but the walk and the fresh air brought on all the symptoms again; and I had scarcely entered the minister’s drawing-room, and opened a small packet of letters which he had received from Bristol for me, ere I sunk back on the sofa, in a sort of swoon rather than sleep. Fortunately I had found just time enough to inform him of the confused state of my feelings, and of the occasion. For here and thus I lay, my face like a wall that is white-washing, deathly pale, and with the cold drops of perspiration running down it from my forehead, while, one after another, there dropt in the different gentlemen, who had been invited to meet and spend the evening with me, to the number of from fifteen to twenty. As the poison of tobacco acts but for a short time, I at length awoke from insensibility, and looked around on the party; my eyes dazzled by the candles which had been lighted in the interim. By way of relieving my embarrassment, one of the gentlemen began the conversation with “Have you seen a paper to-day, Mr. Coleridge?”—“Sir! 149(I replied, rubbing my eyes), I am far from convinced, that a Christian is permitted^[9] to read either newspapers or any other works of merely political and temporary interest.” This remark, so ludicrously inapposite to, or rather incongruous with, the purpose for which I was known to have visited Birmingham, and to assist me in which they were all then met, produced an involuntary and general burst of laughter; and seldom, indeed, have I passed so many delightful hours as I enjoyed in that room, from the moment of that laugh to an early hour the next morning. Never, perhaps, in so mixed and numerous a party, have I since heard conversation sustained with such animation, enriched with such variety of information, and enlivened with such a flow of anecdote. Both then and afterwards, they all joined in dissuading me from proceeding with my scheme; assured me, with the most friendly, and yet most flattering expressions, that the employment was neither fit for me, nor I fit for the employment. Yet if I had determined on persevering in it, they promised to exert themselves to the utmost to procure subscribers, and insisted that I should make no more applications in person, but carry on the canvass by proxy. The same hospitable reception, the same dissuasion, and (that failing) the same kind exertions in my behalf, I met with at Manchester, Derby, Nottingham, Sheffield, indeed at every place in which I took up my sojourn. I often recall, with affectionate pleasure, the many respectable men who interested themselves for me, a perfect stranger to them, not a few of whom I can still name among my friends. They will bear witness for me, how opposite, even then, my principles were to those of Jacobinism, or even of Democracy, and can attest the strict accuracy of the statement which I have left on record in the 10th and 11th Numbers of The Friend.’ p. 174.

We shall not stop at present to dispute with Mr. Coleridge, how far the principles of the Watchman, and the Conciones ad Populum were or were not akin to those of the Jacobins. His style, in general, admits of a convenient latitude of interpretation. But we think we are quite safe in asserting, that they were still more opposite to those of the Anti-Jacobins, and the party to which he admits he has gone over.

150Our author next gives a somewhat extraordinary account of his having been set upon with his friend Wordsworth, by a Government spy, in his retreat at Nether-Stowey—the most lively thing in which is, that the said spy, who, it seems had a great red nose, and had overheard the friends discoursing about Spinosa, reported to his employers, that he could make out very little of what they said,—only he was sure they were aware of his vicinity, as he heard them very often talking of Spy-nosy! If this is not the very highest vein of wit in the world, it must be admitted at least to be very innocent merriment. Another excellent joke of the same character is his remark on an Earl of Cork not paying for his copy of the Friend—that he might have been an Earl of Bottle for him!—We have then some memorandums of his excursion into Germany, and the conditions on which he agreed, on his return home in 1800, to write for the Morning Post, which was at that time not a very ministerial paper, if we remember right.

A propos of the Morning Post, Mr. C. takes occasion to eulogise the writings of Mr. Burke, and observes, that ‘as our very sign-boards give evidence that there has been a Titian in the world, so the essays and leading paragraphs of our journals are so many remembrancers of Edmund Burke.’ This is modest and natural we suppose for a newspaper editor: But our learned author is desirous of carrying the parallel a little further,—and assures us, that nobody can doubt of Mr. Burke’s consistency. ‘Let the scholar,’ says our biographer, ‘who doubts this assertion, refer only to the speeches and writings of Edmund Burke at the commencement of the American war, and compare them with his speeches and writings at the commencement of the French Revolution. He will find the principles exactly the same, and the deductions the same—but the practical inferences almost opposite in the one case from those drawn in the other, yet in both equally legitimate and confirmed by the results.’

It is not without reluctance that we speak of the vices and infirmities of such a mind as Burke’s: But the poison of high example has by far the widest range of destruction; and, for the sake of public honour and individual integrity, we think it right to say, that however it may be defended upon other grounds, the political career of that eminent individual has no title to the praise of consistency. Mr. Burke, the opponent of the American war—and Mr. Burke, the opponent of the French Revolution, are not the same person, but opposite persons—not opposite persons only, but deadly enemies. In the latter period, he abandoned not only all his practical conclusions, but all the principles on which they were founded. He proscribed all his former sentiments, denounced all his former friends, rejected 151and reviled all the maxims to which he had formerly appealed as incontestable. In the American war, he constantly spoke of the rights of the people as inherent, and inalienable: After the French Revolution, he began by treating them with the chicanery of a sophist, and ended by raving at them with the fury of a maniac. In the former case, he held out the duty of resistance to oppression, as the palladium, and only ultimate resource, of natural liberty; in the latter, he scouted, prejudged, vilified and nicknamed, all resistance in the abstract, as a foul and unnatural union of rebellion and sacrilege. In the one case, to answer the purposes of faction, he made it out, that the people are always in the right; in the other, to answer different ends, he made it out that they are always in the wrong—lunatics in the hands of their royal keepers, patients in the sick-wards of an hospital, or felons in the condemned cells of a prison. In the one, he considered that there was a constant tendency on the part of the prerogative to encroach on the rights of the people, which ought always to be the object of the most watchful jealousy, and of resistance, when necessary: In the other, he pretended to regard it as the sole occupation and ruling passion of those in power, to watch over the liberties and happiness of their subjects. The burthen of all his speeches on the American war was conciliation, concession, timely reform, as the only practicable or desirable alternative of rebellion: The object of all his writings on the French Revolution was, to deprecate and explode all concession and all reform, as encouraging rebellion, and an irretrievable step to revolution and anarchy. In the one, he insulted kings personally, as among the lowest and worst of mankind; in the other, he held them up to the imagination of his readers as sacred abstractions. In the one case, he was a partisan of the people, to court popularity; in the other, to gain the favour of the Court, he became the apologist of all courtly abuses. In the one case, he took part with those who were actually rebels against his Sovereign; in the other, he denounced, as rebels and traitors, all those of his own countrymen who did not yield sympathetic allegiance to a foreign Sovereign, whom we had always been in the habit of treating as an arbitrary tyrant.

Judging from plain facts and principles, then, it is difficult to conceive more ample proofs of inconsistency. But try it by the more vulgar and palpable test of comparison. Even Mr. Fox’s enemies, we think, allow him the praise of consistency. He asserted the rights of the people in the American war, and continued to assert them in the French Revolution. He remained visibly in his place; and spoke, throughout, the same principles in the same language. When Mr. Burke abjured these principles, he left this associate; nor did it 152ever enter into the mind of a human being to impute the defection to any change in Mr. Fox’s sentiments—any desertion by him of the maxims by which his public life had been guided. Take another illustration, from an opposite quarter. Nobody will accuse the principles of his present Majesty, or the general measures of his reign, of inconsistency. If they had no other merit, they have at least that of having been all along actuated by one uniform and constant spirit: Yet Mr. Burke at one time vehemently opposed, and afterwards most intemperately extolled them; and it was for his recanting his opposition, not for his persevering in it, that he received his pension. He does not himself mention his flaming speeches in the American war, as among the public services which had entitled him to this remuneration.

The truth is, that Burke was a man of fine fancy and subtle reflection; but not of sound and practical judgment—nor of high or rigid principles.—As to his understanding, he certainly was not a great philosopher; for his works of mere abstract reasoning are shallow and inefficient:—Nor a man of sense and business; for, both in counsel and in conduct, he alarmed his friends as much at least as his opponents:—But he was a keen and accomplished pamphleteer—an ingenious political essayist. He applied the habit of reflection, which he had borrowed from his metaphysical studies, but which was not competent to the discovery of any elementary truth in that department, with great felicity and success, to the mixed mass of human affairs. He knew more of the political machine than a recluse philosopher; and he speculated more profoundly on its principles and general results than a mere politician. He saw a number of fine distinctions and changeable aspects of things, the good mixed with the ill, the ill mixed with the good; and with a sceptical indifference, in which the exercise of his own ingenuity was always the governing principle, suggested various topics to qualify or assist the judgment of others. But for this very reason he was little calculated to become a leader or a partisan in any important practical measure: For the habit of his mind would lead him to find out a reason for or against any thing: And it is not on speculative refinements, (which belong to every side of a question), but on a just estimate of the aggregate mass and extended combinations of objections and advantages, that we ought to decide and act. Burke had the power, almost without limit, of throwing true or false weights into the scales of political casuistry, but not firmness of mind—or, shall we say, honesty enough—to hold the balance. When he took a side, his vanity or his spleen more frequently gave the casting vote than his judgment; and the fieriness of his zeal was in exact proportion 153to the levity of his understanding, and the want of conscious sincerity.

He was fitted by nature and habit for the studies and labours of the closet; and was generally mischievous when he came out;—because the very subtlety of his reasoning, which, left to itself, would have counteracted its own activity, or found its level in the common sense of mankind, became a dangerous engine in the hands of power, which is always eager to make use of the most plausible pretexts to cover the most fatal designs. That which, if applied as a general observation on human affairs, is a valuable truth suggested to the mind, may, when forced into the interested defence of a particular measure or system, become the grossest and basest sophistry. Facts or consequences never stood in the way of this speculative politician. He fitted them to his preconceived theories, instead of conforming his theories to them. They were the playthings of his style, the sport of his fancy. They were the straws of which his imagination made a blaze, and were consumed, like straws, in the blaze they had served to kindle. The fine things he said about Liberty and Humanity, in his speech on the Begum’s affairs, told equally well, whether Warren Hastings was a tyrant or not: Nor did he care one jot who caused the famine he described, so that he described it in a way to attract admiration. On the same principle, he represents the French priests and nobles under the old regime as excellent moral people, very charitable, and very religious, in the teeth of notorious facts,—to answer to the handsome things he has to say in favour of priesthood and nobility in general; and, with similar views, he falsifies the records of our English Revolution, and puts an interpretation on the word abdication, of which a schoolboy would be ashamed. He constructed his whole theory of government, in short, not on rational, but on picturesque and fanciful principles; as if the King’s crown were a painted gewgaw, to be looked at on gala days; titles an empty sound to please the ear; and the whole order of society a theatrical procession. His lamentation over the age of chivalry, and his projected crusade to restore it, is about as wise as if any one, from reading the Beggar’s Opera, should take to picking of pockets; or, from admiring the landscapes of Salvator Rosa, should wish to convert the abodes of civilized life into the haunts of wild beasts and banditti. On this principle of false refinement, there is no abuse, nor system of abuses, that does not admit of an easy and triumphant defence; for there is something which a merely speculative inquirer may always find out, good as well as bad, in every possible system, the best or the worst; and if we can once get rid of the restraints of common sense and honesty, we may easily prove, by plausible words, that liberty and 154slavery, peace and war, plenty and famine, are matters of perfect indifference. This is the school of politics, of which Mr. Burke was at the head; and it is perhaps to his example, in this respect, that we owe the prevailing tone of many of those newspaper paragraphs, which Mr. Coleridge thinks so invaluable an accession to our political philosophy.

Burke’s literary talents, were, after all, his chief excellence. His style has all the familiarity of conversation, and all the research of the most elaborate composition. He says what he wants to say, by any means, nearer or more remote, within his reach. He makes use of the most common or scientific terms, of the longest or shortest sentences, of the plainest and most downright, or of the most figurative modes of speech. He gives for the most part loose reins to his imagination, and follows it as far as the language will carry him. As long as the one or the other has any resources in store to make the reader feel and see the thing as he has conceived it,—in its nicest shade of difference, in its utmost degree of force and splendour,—he never disdains, and never fails to employ them. Yet, in the extremes of his mixed style there is not much affectation, and but little either of pedantry or of coarseness. He everywhere gives the image he wishes to give, in its true and appropriate colouring: and it is the very crowd and variety of these images that have given to his language its peculiar tone of animation, and even of passion. It is his impatience to transfer his conceptions entire, living, in all their rapidity, strength, and glancing variety—to the minds of others, that constantly pushes him to the verge of extravagance, and yet supports him there in dignified security—

‘Never so sure our rapture to create,

As when he treads the brink of all we hate.’

He is, with the exception of Jeremy Taylor, the most poetical of prose writers, and at the same time his prose never degenerates into the mere glitter or tinkling of poetry; for he always aims at overpowering rather than at pleasing; and consequently sacrifices beauty and grandeur to force and vividness. He has invariably a task to perform, a positive purpose to execute, an effect to produce. His only object is therefore to strike hard, and in the right place; if he misses his mark, he repeats his blow; and does not care how ungraceful the action, or how clumsy the instrument, provided it brings down his antagonist.

Mr. C. enters next into a copious discussion of the merits of his friend Mr. Wordsworth’s poetry,—which we do not think very remarkable either for clearness or candour; but as a very great part 155of it is occupied with specific inculpations of our former remarks on that ingenious author, it would savour too much of mere controversy and recrimination, if we were to indulge ourselves with any observations on the subject. Where we are parties to any dispute, and consequently to be regarded as incapable of giving an impartial account of our adversary’s argument, we shall not pretend to give any account of it at all; and therefore, though we shall endeavour to give all due weight to Mr. C.’s reasonings, when we have occasion to consider any new publication from the Lake school, we must for the present decline any notice of the particular objections he has here urged to our former judgments on their productions; and shall pass over all this part of the work before us, by merely remarking, that with regard to Mr. Wordsworth’s ingenious project of confining the language of poetry to that which is chiefly in use among the lower orders of society, and that, from horror or contempt for the abuses of what has been called poetic diction, it is really unnecessary to say anything—the truth and common sense of the thing being so obvious, and, we apprehend, so generally acknowledged, that nothing but a pitiful affectation of singularity could have raised a controversy on the subject. There is, no doubt, a simple and familiar language, common to almost all ranks, and intelligible through many ages, which is the best fitted for the direct expression of strong sense and deep passion, and which, consequently, is the language of the best poetry as well as of the best prose. But it is not the exclusive language of poetry. There is another language peculiar to this manner of writing, which has been called poetic diction,—those flowers of speech, which, whether natural or artificial, fresh or faded, are strewed over the plainer ground which poetry has in common with prose: a paste of rich and honeyed words, like the candied coat of the auricula; a glittering tissue of quaint conceits and sparkling metaphors, crusting over the rough stalk of homely thoughts. Such is the style of almost all our modern poets; such is the style of Pope and Gray; such, too, very often, is that of Shakespeare and Milton; and, notwithstanding Mr. Coleridge’s decision to the contrary, of Spenser’s Faery Queen. Now this style is the reverse of one made up of slang phrases; for, as they are words associated only with mean and vulgar ideas, poetic diction is such as is connected only with the most pleasing and elegant associations; and both differ essentially from the middle or natural style, which is a mere transparent medium of the thoughts, neither degrading nor setting them off by any adventitious qualities of its own, but leaving them to make their own impression, by the force of truth and nature. Upon the whole, therefore, we should think this 156ornamented and coloured style, most proper to descriptive or fanciful poetry, where the writer has to lend a borrowed, and, in some sort, meretricious lustre to outward objects, which he can best do by enshrining them in a language that, by custom and long prescription, reflects the image of a poetical mind,—as we think the common or natural style is the truly dramatic style, that in which he can best give the impassioned, unborrowed, unaffected thoughts of others. The pleasure derived from poetic diction is the same as that derived from classical diction. It is in like manner made up of words dipped in ‘the dew of Castalie,’—tinged with colours borrowed from the rainbow,—‘sky-tinctured,’ warmed with the glow of genius, purified by the breath of time,—that soften into distance, and expand into magnitude, whatever is seen through their medium,—that varnish over the trite and common-place, and lend a gorgeous robe to the forms of fancy, but are only an incumbrance and a disguise in conveying the true touches of nature, the intense strokes of passion. The beauty of poetic diction is, in short, borrowed and artificial. It is a glittering veil spread over the forms of things and the feelings of the heart; and is best laid aside, when we wish to show either the one or the other in their naked beauty or deformity. As the dialogues in Othello and Lear furnish the most striking instances of plain, point-blank speaking, or of the real language of nature and passion, so the Choruses in Samson Agonistes abound in the fullest and finest adaptations of classic and poetic phrases to express distant and elevated notions, born of fancy, religion and learning.

Mr. Coleridge bewilders himself sadly in endeavouring to determine in what the essence of poetry consists;—Milton, we think, has told it in a single line—

——‘Thoughts that voluntary move

Harmonious numbers.’

Poetry is the music of language, expressing the music of the mind. Whenever any object takes such a hold on the mind as to make us dwell upon it, and brood over it, melting the heart in love, or kindling it to a sentiment of admiration;—whenever a movement of imagination or passion is impressed on the mind, by which it seeks to prolong and repeat the emotion, to bring all other objects into accord with it, and to give the same movement of harmony, sustained and continuous, to the sounds that express it,—this is poetry. The musical in sound is the sustained and continuous; the musical in thought and feeling is the sustained and continuous also. Whenever articulation passes naturally into intonation, this is the beginning of poetry. There is no natural harmony in the ordinary combinations 157of significant sounds: the language of prose is not the language of music, or of passion: and it is to supply this inherent defect in the mechanism of language—to make the sound an echo to the sense, when the sense becomes a sort of echo to itself—to mingle the tide of verse, ‘the golden cadences of poesy,’ with the tide of feeling, flowing, and murmuring as it flows—or to take the imagination off its feet, and spread its wings where it may indulge its own impulses, without being stopped or perplexed by the ordinary abruptnesses, or discordant flats and sharps of prose—that poetry was invented.

As Mr. C. has suppressed his Disquisition on the Imagination as unintelligible, we do not think it fair to make any remarks on the 200 pages of prefatory matter, which were printed, it seems, in the present work, before a candid friend apprised him of this little objection to the appearance of the Disquisition itself. We may venture, however, on one observation, of a very plain and practical nature, which is forced upon us by the whole tenor of the extraordinary history before us.—Reason and imagination are both excellent things; but perhaps their provinces ought to be kept more distinct than they have lately been. ‘Poets have such seething brains,’ that they are disposed to meddle with everything, and mar all. Mr. C., with great talents, has, by an ambition to be everything, become nothing. His metaphysics have been a dead weight on the wings of his imagination—while his imagination has run away with his reason and common sense. He might, we seriously think, have been a very considerable poet—instead of which he has chosen to be a bad philosopher and a worse politician. There is something, we suspect, in these studies that does not easily amalgamate. We would not, with Plato, absolutely banish poets from the commonwealth; but we really think they should meddle as little with its practical administration as may be. They live in an ideal world of their own; and it would be, perhaps, as well if they were confined to it. Their flights and fancies are delightful to themselves and to every body else; but they make strange work with matter of fact; and, if they were allowed to act in public affairs, would soon turn the world upside down. They indulge only their own flattering dreams or superstitious prejudices, and make idols or bugbears of what they please, caring as little for ‘history or particular facts,’ as for general reasoning. They are dangerous leaders and treacherous followers. Their inordinate vanity runs them into all sorts of extravagances; and their habitual effeminacy gets them out of them at any price. Always pampering their own appetite for excitement, and wishing to astonish others, their whole aim is to produce a dramatic effect, one way or other—to shock or delight their 158observers; and they are as perfectly indifferent to the consequences of what they write, as if the world were merely a stage for them to play their fantastic tricks on.—As romantic in their servility as in their independence, and equally importunate candidates for fame or infamy, they require only to be distinguished, and are not scrupulous as to the means of distinction. Jacobins or Antijacobins—outrageous advocates for anarchy and licentiousness, or flaming apostles of persecution—always violent and vulgar in their opinions, they oscillate, with a giddy and sickening motion, from one absurdity to another, and expiate the follies of their youth by the heartless vices of their advancing age. None so ready as they to carry every paradox to its most revolting and nonsensical excess—none so sure to caricature, in their own persons, every feature of an audacious and insane philosophy:—In their days of innovation, indeed, the philosophers crept at their heels like hounds, while they darted on their distant quarry like hawks; stooping always to the lowest game; eagerly snuffing up the most tainted and rankest scents; feeding their vanity with the notion of the strength of their digestion of poisons, and most ostentatiously avowing whatever would most effectually startle the prejudices of others. Preposterously seeking for the stimulus of novelty in truth, and the eclat of theatrical exhibition in pure reason, it is no wonder that these persons at last became disgusted with their own pursuits, and that, in consequence of the violence of the change, the most inveterate prejudices and uncharitable sentiments have rushed in to fill up the vacuum produced by the previous annihilation of common sense, wisdom, and humanity.

This is the true history of our reformed Antijacobin poets; the life of one of whom is here recorded. The cant of Morality, like the cant of Methodism, comes in most naturally to close the scene: and as the regenerated sinner keeps alive his old raptures and new-acquired horrors, by anticipating endless ecstasies or endless tortures in another world; so, our disappointed demagogue keeps up that ‘pleasurable poetic fervour’ which has been the cordial and the bane of his existence, by indulging his maudlin egotism and his mawkish spleen in fulsome eulogies of his own virtues, and nauseous abuse of his contemporaries^[10]—in making excuses for doing nothing himself, and assigning bad motives for what others have done.—Till he can do something better, we would rather hear no more of him.

159

LETTERS OF HORACE WALPOLE

Vol. xxxi.] [December 1818.

Horace Walpole was by no means a venerable or lofty character:—But he has here left us another volume of gay and graceful letters, which, though they indicate no peculiar originality of mind, or depth of thought, and are continually at variance with good taste and right feeling, still give a lively and amusing view of the time in which he lived. He was indeed a garrulous old man nearly all his days; and, luckily for his gossiping propensities, he was on familiar terms with the gay world, and set down as a man of genius by the Princess Amelia, George Selwyn, Mr. Chute, and all persons of the like talents and importance. His descriptions of court dresses, court revels, and court beauties, are in the highest style of perfection,—sprightly, fantastic and elegant: And the zeal with which he hunts after an old portrait or a piece of broken glass, is ten times more entertaining than if it were lavished on a worthier object. He is indeed the very prince of Gossips,—and it is impossible to question his supremacy, when he floats us along in a stream of bright talk, or shoots with us the rapids of polite conversation. He delights in the small squabbles of great politicians and the puns of George Selwyn,—enjoys to madness the strife of loo with half a dozen bitter old women of quality,—revels in a world of chests, cabinets, commodes, tables, boxes, turrets, stands, old printing, and old china,—and indeed lets us loose at once amongst all the frippery and folly of the last two centuries, with an ease and a courtesy equally amazing and delightful. His mind, as well as his house, was piled up with Dresden china, and illuminated through painted glass; and we look upon his heart to have been little better than a case full of enamels, painted eggs, ambers, lapis-lazuli, cameos, vases and rock-crystals. This may in some degree account for his odd and quaint manner of thinking, and his utter poverty of feeling:—He could not get a plain thought out of that cabinet of curiosities, his mind and he had no room for feeling,—no place to plant it in, or leisure to cultivate it. He was at all times the slave of elegant trifles; and could no more screw himself up into a decided and solid personage, than he could divest himself of petty jealousies and miniature animosities. In one word, every thing about him was in little; and the smaller the object, and the less its importance, the higher did his estimation and his praises of it ascend. He piled up trifles to a colossal height—and made a pyramid of nothings ‘most marvellous to see.’

His political character was a heap of confusion: but the key to it 160is easy enough to find. He united an insufferable deal of aristocratical pretension with Whig professions,—and, under an assumed carelessness and liberality, he nourished a petty anxiety about court movements and a degree of rancour towards those who profited by them, which we should only look for in the most acknowledged sycophants of Government. He held out austere and barren principles, in short, to the admiration of the world,—but indemnified himself in practice by the indulgence of all the opposite ones. He wore his horse-hair shirt as an outer garment; and glimpses might always be caught of a silken garment within. He was truly ‘of outward show elaborate; of inward less exact.’ But, setting his political character—or rather the want of it—and some few private failings, and a good many other questionable peculiarities, aside,—we find Walpole an amusing companion, and should like to have such a chronicler of small matters every fifty or sixty years;—or it might be better, perhaps, if, like the aloe, they should blossom but once in a century. With what spirit does he speak of the gay and noble visitors at Strawberry Hill! How finely does he group, in his letters, the high-born and celebrated beauties of the court, with whom it was his fortune and his fancy to associate!

‘Strawberry Hill is grown a perfect Paphos; it is the land of beauties. On Wednesday, the Dutchesses of Hamilton and Richmond, and Lady Ailesbury, dined there; the two latter staid all night. There never was so pretty a sight as to see them all sitting in the shell. A thousand years hence, when I begin to grow old, if that can ever be, I shall talk of that event, and tell young people how much handsomer the women of my time were than they will be. Then I shall say, “Women alter now: I remember Lady Ailesbury looking handsomer than her daughter the pretty Dutchess of Richmond, as they were sitting in the shell on my terrace, with the Dutchess of Richmond, one of the famous Gunnings,” &c. &c. Yesterday, t’other famous Gunning dined there. She has made a friendship with my charming niece, to disguise her jealousy of the new Countess’s beauty: there were they two, their Lords, Lord Buckingham, and Charlotte. You will think that I did not choose men for my parties so well as women. I don’t include Lord Waldegrave in this bad election.’

All the rest is in the same style: and lords and ladies are shuffled about the whole work as freely as court cards in a party at Loo. Horace Walpole, to be sure, is always Pam: but this only makes the interest greater, and the garrulity more splendid. He is equally sprightly and facetious, whether he describes a King’s death and funeral, or a quirk of George Selwyn; and is nearly as amusing when 161he recounts the follies and the fashions of the day, as when he affects to be patriotic, or solemnizes into the sentimental. His style is not a bit less airy when he deals with ‘the horrid story of Lord Ferrers’s murdering his steward,’ than when it informs us that ‘Miss Chudleigh has called for the council books of the subscription concert, and has struck off the name of Mrs. Naylor.’ He is equally amusing whether he records the death of the brave Balmerino, or informs us that ‘old Dunch is dead.’

The letters of eminent men make, to our taste, very choice and curious reading; and, except when their publication becomes a breach of honour or decorum, we are always rejoiced to meet with them in print. We should except, perhaps, the letters of celebrated warriors; which, for the most part, should only be published in the Gazette. But, setting these heroes aside, whose wits, Pope has informed us, ‘are kept in ponderous vases,’ letters are certainly the honestest records of great minds, that we can become acquainted with; and we like them the more, for letting us into the follies and treacheries of high life, the secrets of the gay and the learned world, and the mysteries of authorship. We are ushered, as it were, behind the scenes of life; and see gay ladies and learned men, the wise, the witty, and the ambitious, in all the nakedness, or undress at least, of their spirits. A poet, in his private letters, seldom thinks it necessary to keep up the farce of feeling; but casts off the trickery of sentiment, and glides into the unaffected wit, or sobers quietly into the honest man. By his published works, we know that an author becomes a ‘Sir John with all Europe;’ and it can only be by his letters that we discover him to be ‘Jack with his brothers and sisters, and John with his familiars.’ This it is that makes the private letters of a literary person so generally entertaining. He is glad to escape from the austerity of composition, and the orthodoxy of thought; and feels a relief in easy speculations or ludicrous expressions. The finest, perhaps, in our language, are eminently of this description—we mean those of Gray to his friends or literary associates. His poetry is too scholastic and elaborate, and is too visibly the result of laborious and anxious study. But, in his letters, he at once becomes an easy, and graceful, and feeling writer. The composition of familiar letters just suited his indolence, his taste, and his humour. His remarks on poetry are nearly as good as poetry itself;—his observations on life are full of sagacity and fine understanding;—and his descriptions of natural scenery, or Gothic antiquities, are worth their weight in gold. Pope’s letters, though extremely elegant, are failures as letters. He wrote them to the world, not to his friends; and they have therefore very much the air of universal secrets. Swift has recorded his own 162sour mind in many a bitter epistle; and his correspondence remains a stern and brief chronicle of the time in which he lived. Cowper hath unwittingly beguiled us of many a long hour, by his letters to Lady Hesketh; and in them we see the fluctuations of his melancholy nature more plainly, than in all the biographical dissertations of his affectionate editor.——But we must not make catalogues,—nor indulge longer in this eulogy on letter-writing. We take a particular interest, we confess, in what is thus spoken aside, as it were, and without a consciousness of being overheard;—and think there is a spirit and freedom in the tone of works written for the post, which is scarcely ever to be found in those written for the press. We are much more edified by one letter of Cowper, than we should be by a week’s confinement and hard labour in the metaphysical Bridewell of Mr. Coleridge; and a single letter from the pen of Gray, is worth all the pedlar-reasoning of Mr. Wordsworth’s Eternal Recluse, from the hour he first squats himself down in the sun to the end of his preaching. In the first we have the light unstudied pleasantries of a wit, and a man of feeling;—in the last we are talked to death by an arrogant old proser, and buried in a heap of the most perilous stuff and the most dusty philosophy.

But to come back to the work before us.—Walpole evidently formed his style upon that of Gray, with whom he travelled; and, with his own fund of pleasantry and sarcasm, we know of no other writer whom he could so successfully have studied. There are some odd passages on Gray, scattered up and down the present volume, which speak more for the poet than for the justice or friendship of Walpole. In one letter he says,

‘The first volume of Spencer is published with prints designed by Kent;—but the most execrable performance you ever beheld. The graving not worse than the drawing; awkward knights, scrambling Unas, hills tumbling down themselves, no variety of prospect, and three or four perpetual spruce firs.—Our charming Mr. Bentley is doing Mr. Gray as much more honour as he deserves than Spencer!’ This is indeed a lordly criticism. We really never saw so much bad taste condensed into so small a portion of prose. But he next shows us what ladies of the court think of men of letters, and how lords defend them.

‘My Lady Ailesbury has been much diverted, and so will you too. Gray is in their neighbourhood. My Lady Carlisle says he is extremely like me in his manner. They went a party to dine on a cold loaf, and passed the day. Lady A. protests he never opened his lips but once, and then only said, “Yes, my Lady, I believe so.”

‘I agree with you most absolutely in your opinion about Gray; he 163is the worst company in the world. From a melancholy turn, from living reclusely, and from a little too much dignity, he never converses easily. All his words are measured and chosen, and formed into sentences. His writings are admirable. He himself is not agreeable.’

But it is not only to his particular friends that he is thus amiably candid. Two other great names are dealt with in the same spirit in the following short sentence.

‘Dr. Young has published a new book, on purpose, he says himself, to have an opportunity of telling a story that he has known these forty years. Mr. Addison sent for the young Lord Warwick, as he was dying, to show him in what peace a Christian could die. Unluckily he died of brandy. Nothing makes a Christian die in peace like being a maudlin! But don’t say this in Gath, where you are.’

It is worthy of remark, indeed, that Walpole never speaks with respect of any man of genius or talent, and, least of all, of those master spirits who ‘have got the start of this majestic world.’ He envied all great minds; and shrunk from encountering them, lest his own should suffer by the comparison. He contrived indeed to quarrel with all his better-spirited friends. Even the gentleman to whom these epistles were addressed, a correspondent of three score years’ standing, fell at last under his displeasure, and was dismissed his friendship. He turned out the domestics of the heart as easily as those of the house; with little or no notice, and with threats of giving them a bad character as a return for their past services. He wished to have genius to wait upon him; but was always surprised that it would not submit to be a servant of all work. Poor Bentley, of whom we hear praises ‘high fantastical’ in the early letters, meets with but scurvy treatment the moment he gets out of fashion with his half-patron and half-friend. He is all spirit, goodness and genius, till it falls to his turn to be disliked; and then the altered patron sneers at his domestic misfortunes, depreciates his talents, and even chuckles at the failure of a play which the artist’s necessities required should be successful. The following is the ill-natured passage to which we allude.

‘No, I shall never cease being a dupe, till I have been undeceived round by every thing that calls itself a virtue. I came to town yesterday, through clouds of dust, to see The Wishes, and went actually feeling for Mr. Bentley, and full of the emotions he must be suffering. What do you think, in a house crowded, was the first thing I saw? Mr. and Madame Bentley perched up in the front boxes, and acting audience at his own play! No, all the impudence 164of false patriotism never came up to it. Did one ever hear of an author that had courage to see his own first night in public? I don’t believe Fielding or Foote himself ever did; and this was the modest, bashful Mr. Bentley, that died at the thought of being known for an author even by his own acquaintance! In the stage-box was Lady Bute, Lord Halifax, and Lord Melcombe. I must say, the two last entertained the house as much as the play. Your King was prompter, and called out to the actors every minute to speak louder. The other went backwards and forwards behind the scenes, fetched the actors into the box, and was busier than Harlequin. The curious prologue was not spoken—the whole very ill acted. It turned out just what I remembered it: the good parts extremely good; the rest very flat and vulgar, &c.’

A poor painter of the name of Müntz is worse off even than Bentley; and is abused in a very ungenerous way for want of gratitude, and unmerciful extortion. There is a sad want of feeling and dignity in all this; but the key to it is, that Walpole was a miser. He loved the arts after a fashion; but his avarice pinched his affections. He would have had ‘that which he esteemed the ornament of life,’ but that he ‘lived a coward in his own esteem.’ The following haggling passage in one of his letters would disgrace a petty merchant in Duke’s Place, in a bargain for the reversion of an old pair of trowsers.

‘I am disposed to prefer the younger picture of Madame Grammont by Lely; but I stumbled at the price; twelve guineas for a copy in enamel is very dear. Mrs. Vesey tells me his originals cost sixteen, and are not so good as his copies. I will certainly have none of his originals. His, what is his name? I would fain resist this copy; I would more fain excuse myself for having it. I say to myself it would be rude not to have it, now Lady Kingsland and Mr. Montagu have had so much trouble. Well—I think I must have it, as my Lady Wishfort says, why does not the fellow take me? Do try if he will take ten;—remember it is the younger picture.’

Thus did he coquet with his own avarice. Of poor Mason, another of his dear friends, he speaks thus spitefully—

‘Mr. Mason has published another drama, called Caractacus. There are some incantations poetical enough, and odes so Greek as to have very little meaning. But the whole is laboured, uninteresting, and no more resembling the manners of Britons than of Japanese. It is introduced by a piping elegy; for Mason, in imitation of Gray, will cry and roar all night, without the least provocation.’

Mason might have endured the paltriness of this remark, if he could 165have seen the following pertinent remark on the Cymbeline of Shakespeare.

‘You want news. I must make it if I send it. To change the dulness of the scene, I went to the play, where I had not been this winter. They are so crowded, that though I went before six, I got no better place than a fifth row, where I heard very ill, and was pent for five hours without a soul near me that I knew. It was Cymbeline; and appeared to me as long as if every body in it went really to Italy in every act, and back again. With a few pretty passages and a scene or two, it is so absurd and tiresome, that I am persuaded Garrick****’

This precious piece of criticism is cut short; whether from the sagacity of the editor or the prudence of the publishers, we cannot say. But it is much to be lamented. For it must have been very edifying to have seen Shakespeare thus pleasantly put down with a dash of the Honourable Mr. Walpole’s pen—as if he had never written any thing better than the Mysterious Mother.

A conversation is here recorded between Hogarth and Walpole, which seems to us very curious and characteristic; though we cannot help smiling a little at the conclusion, where our author humanely refrains from erasing the line of praise which he had ‘consecrated’ to Hogarth;—as if the painter would infallibly have been damned into oblivion by that portentous erasure. But he is of the stuff that cannot die. With many defects, he was a person of great and original powers—a true and a terrific historian of the human heart: and his works will be remembered and read, as long as men and women retain their old habits, passions and vices. The following is the conversation of which we have spoken.

‘Hogarth.—I am told you are going to entertain the town with something in our way. Walpole. Not very soon, Mr. Hogarth.—H. I wish you would let me have it to correct; I should be very sorry to have you expose yourself to censure; we painters must know more of those things than other people. W. Do you think nobody understands painting but painters? H. Oh! so far from it, there’s Reynolds who certainly has genius; why but t’other day he offered a hundred pounds for a picture that I would not hang in my cellars; and indeed to say truth, I have generally found that persons, who had studied painting least, were the best judges of it; but what I particularly wished to say to you was about Sir James Thornhill (you know he married Sir James’s daughter); I would not have you say any thing against him: There was a book published some time ago, abusing him, and it gave great offence. He was the first that attempted history in England; and I assure you, some Germans have 166said that he was a very great painter. W. My work will go no lower than the year one thousand seven hundred, and I really have not considered whether Sir J. Thornhill will come into my plan or not: If he does, I fear you and I shall not agree upon his merits. H. I wish you would let me correct it; besides I am writing something of the same kind myself—I should be sorry we should clash. W. I believe it is not much known what my work is; very few persons have seen it. H. Why it is a critical history of painting is it not? W. No, it is an antiquarian history of it in England. I bought Mr. Vertue’s MSS. and I believe the work will not give much offence; besides if it does I cannot help it: when I publish any thing I give it to the world to think as they please. H. Oh! if it is an antiquarian work we shall not clash; mine is a critical work; I don’t know whether I shall ever publish it. It is rather an apology for painters. I think it is owing to the good sense of the English that they have not painted better. W. My dear Mr. Hogarth, I must take my leave of you; you now grow too wild—and I left him. If I had staid, there remained nothing but for him to bite me. I give you my honour this conversation is literal and, perhaps as long as you have known Englishmen and painters you never met with any thing so distracted. I had consecrated a line to his genius (I mean for wit) in my preface; I shall not erase it; but I hope no one will ask me if he is not mad.’

We do not think he was mad:—But the self-idolatry of fanciful persons often exhibits similar symptoms. A man of limited genius, accustomed to contemplate his own conceptions, has long settled his ideas as to every thing, and every other person existing in the world. He thinks nothing truly bright that does not reflect his own image back upon himself;—nothing truly beautiful, that is not made so by the lustre of his own feelings. He lives in a sort of chaste singleness; and holds every approach of a stronger power as dangerous to his solitary purity. He thinks nothing so important as his own thoughts—nothing so low, that his own fancy cannot elevate into greatness. He sees only ‘himself and the universe;’ and will ‘admit no discourse to his beauty.’ He is himself—alone! If such a man had had a voice in the management of the flood, he would have suffered no creeping thing to enter the ark but himself; and would have floated about the waters for forty days in lonely magnificence.

Passages of the kind, we have hitherto instanced, are very plentiful in all parts of the work; and we are glad they are so numerous,—because they will set Walpole’s higher pretensions at rest with posterity. Time is a disinterested personage, and does his work on dull or rash men fairly and effectually. He knows nothing of 167criticism but its austerity and its sarcasm. He cannot feel poetry; and has, therefore, no right to settle its laws, or imitate its language. His taste in painting was affected and dogmatical. His conduct to men of genius was a piece of insolence, which Posterity is bound to resent! The true heirs of fame are not to be disturbed in the enjoyment of their property, by every insolent pretender who steps in and affects a claim upon it. The world is called on ‘to defend the right.’

To come, however, to the better side of our subject.—Walpole is, as we have said, an inimitable gossip,—a most vivacious garrulous historian of fair-haired women, and curious blue china. His garrulity, moreover, hath a genius of its own—and a transparent tea-cup lets in the light of inspiration upon it, and makes it shine with colours nigh divine. An inlaid commode is, with him, the mind’s easy chair. We shall select a few passages from the letters before us, which, for pleasantry, ease and alertness, are by far the gayest morceau of description we have read of late. We may begin with a curious anecdote of Fielding, which is almost as interesting as any thing in the book. Thus it is—

‘Take sentiments out of their pantoufles, and reduce them to the infirmities of mortality, what a falling off there is! I could not help laughing in myself t’other day, as I went through Holborn in a very hot day, at the dignity of human nature. All those foul old-clothes women panting without handkerchiefs, and mopping themselves all the way down within their loose jumps. Rigby gave me as strong a picture of nature. He and Peter Bathurst, t’other night, carried a servant of the latter’s, who had attempted to shoot him, before Fielding; who, to all his other vocations, has, by the grace of Mr. Lyttleton, added that of Middlesex Justice. He sent them word that he was at supper; that they must come next morning. They did not understand that freedom, and ran up, where they found him banqueting with a blind man, a w——, and three Irishmen, on some cold mutton and a bone of ham, both in one dish, and the dirtiest cloth. He never stirred, nor asked them to sit. Rigby, who had seen him so often come to beg a guinea of Sir. C. Williams, and Bathurst, at whose father’s he had lived for victuals, understood that dignity as little, and pulled themselves chairs,—on which he civilized.’

It is very certain that the writings of men are coloured by their indolence, their amusements, and their occupations; and this little peep into Fielding’s private hours, lets us at once into his course of studies, and is an admirable illustration of his Tom Jones, Jonathan Wild, and other novels. We are taken into the artist’s workshop, and shown the models from which he works; or rather, we break in 168upon him at a time when he is copying from the life. It is a very idle piece of morality, to lament over Fielding for this low indulgence of his appetite for character. If he had been found quietly at his tea, he would never have left behind him the name he has done. There is nothing of a tea inspiration in any of his novels. They are assuredly the finest things of the kind in the language; and we are Englishmen enough to consider them the best in any language. They are indubitably the most English of all the works of Englishmen.

The descriptions of Lord Ferrers’s fatal murder, and of Balmerino’s death, are given with considerable spirit—(our author, indeed, is extremely piquant in matters of life and death); and we are puzzled which to select for our readers. They are both strongly illustrative of the times in which Walpole and the heroes of them lived; but we cannot afford room for them both; and we choose the letter on Lord Ferrers,—not because it is better written, or that the subject is more interesting, but because the book before us is open at that part, and because we would not idly meddle with so heroic a fall as that of the Lord Balmerino.

‘The extraordinary history of Lord Ferrers is closed: He was executed yesterday. Madness, that in other countries is a disorder, is here a systematic character: It does not hinder people from forming a plan of conduct, and from even dying agreeably to it. You remember how the last Ratcliffe died with the utmost propriety; so did this horrid lunatic, coolly and sensibly. His own and his wife’s relations had asserted that he would tremble at last. No such thing; he shamed heroes. He bore the solemnity of a pompous and tedious procession of above two hours, from the Tower to Tyburn, with as much tranquillity as if he was only going to his own burial, not to his own execution. He even talked of indifferent subjects in the passage; and if the sheriff and the chaplain had not thought that they had parts to act too, and had not consequently engaged him in most particular conversation, he did not seem to think it necessary to talk on the occasion. He went in his wedding clothes; marking the only remaining impression on his mind. The ceremony he was in a hurry to have over. He was stopped at the gallows by a vast crowd; but got out of his coach as soon as he could, and was but seven minutes on the scaffold; which was hung with black, and prepared by the undertaker of his family at their expense. There was a new contrivance for sinking the stage under him, which did not play well; and he suffered a little by the delay, but was dead in four minutes. The mob was decent, and admired him, and almost pitied him; so they would Lord George, whose execution they are so angry at missing. I suppose every highwayman will now preserve the blue 169handkerchief he has about his neck when he is married, that he may die like a lord. With all his madness, he was not mad enough to be struck with his aunt Huntingdon’s sermons. The Methodists have nothing to brag of his conversion; though Whitfield prayed for him, and preached about him. Even Tyburn has been above their reach. I have not heard that Lady Fanny dabbled with his soul; but I believe she is prudent enough to confine her missionary zeal to subjects where the body may be her perquisite.’

The following is the account of Walpole’s visit to Newsted Abbey,—the seat of the Byrons.

‘As I returned, I saw Newsted and Althorpe; I like both. The former is the very abbey. The great east window of the church remains, and connects with the house; the hall entire, the refectory entire, the cloister untouch’d, with the ancient cistern of the convent, and their arms on; It is a private chapel, quite perfect. The park, which is still charming, has not been so much unprofaned: The present lord has lost large sums, and paid part in old oaks; five thousand pounds of which have been cut near the house. In recompense, he has built two baby forts, to pay his country in castles for damage done to the navy; and planted a handful of Scotch firs, that look like ploughboys dress’d in old family liveries for a public day. In the hall is a very good collection of pictures, all animals; the refectory, now the great drawing room, is full of Byrons; the vaulted roof remaining, but the windows have new dresses making for them by a Venetian tailor.’

This is a careless, but happy description, of one of the noblest mansions in England; and it will now be read with a far deeper interest than when it was written. Walpole saw the seat of the Byrons, old, majestic, and venerable;—but he saw nothing of that magic beauty which Fame sheds over the habitations of Genius, and which now mantles every turret of Newsted Abbey. He saw it when Decay was doing its work on the cloister, the refectory, and the chapel, and all its honours seemed mouldering into oblivion. He could not know that a voice was soon to go forth from those antique cloisters, that should be heard through all future ages, and cry, ‘Sleep no more, to all the house.’ Whatever may be its future fate, Newsted Abbey must henceforth be a memorable abode. Time may shed its wild flowers on the walls, and let the fox in upon the courtyard and the chambers. It may even pass into the hands of unlettered pride or plebian opulence.—But it has been the mansion of a mighty poet. Its name is associated to glories that cannot perish—and will go down to posterity in one of the proudest pages of our annals.

Our author is not often pathetic: But there are some touches of 170this sort in the account of his visit to Houghton—though the first part is flippant enough.

‘The surprise the picture gave me is again renewed. Accustomed for many years to see nothing but wretched daubs and varnished copies at auctions, I look at these as enchantment. My own description of them seems poor; but, shall I tell you truly, the majesty of Italian ideas almost sinks before the warm nature of Flemish colouring. Alas! don’t I grow old? My young imagination was fired with Guido’s ideas; must they be plump and prominent as Abishag to warm me now? Does great youth feel with poetic limbs, as well as see with poetic eyes? In one respect I am very young; I cannot satiate myself with looking: an incident contributed to make me feel this more strongly. A party arrived, just as I did, to see the house; a man, and three women in riding dresses, and they rode post through the apartments. I could not hurry before them fast enough; they were not so long in seeing for the first time, as I could have been in one room, to examine what I knew by heart. I remember formerly being often diverted with this kind of seers; they come—ask what such a room is called—in which Sir Robert lay—write it down—admire a lobster or a cabbage in a market piece—dispute whether the last room was green or purple—and then hurry to the inn for fear the fish should be over-dressed. How different my sensations! Not a picture here but recalls a history; not one but I remember in Downing-street or Chelsea, where queens and crowds admired them,—though seeing them as little as these travellers!’

There is some appearance of heart, too, in his account of Lady Waldegrave’s sufferings on the death of her husband. She was a beautiful woman; and Walpole seems to have been really kind to her.

‘I had not risen from table, when I received an express from Lady Betty Waldegrave, to tell me that a sudden change had happened; that they had given him James’s powders, but that they feared it was too late; and that he probably would be dead before I could come to my niece, for whose sake she begged I would return immediately. I was indeed too late! Too late for every thing.—Late as it was given, the powder vomited him even in the agonies. Had I had power to direct, he should never have quitted James:—But these are vain regrets!—Vain to recollect how particularly kind he, who was kind to everybody, was to me! I found Lady Waldegrave at my brother’s. She weeps without ceasing; and talks of his virtues and goodness to her in a manner that distracts one. My brother bears this mortification with more courage than I could have expected from his warm passions: but nothing struck me more than to see my rough savage Swiss, Louis, in tears as he opened my 171chaise.—I have a bitter scene to come. To-morrow morning I carry poor Lady Waldegrave to Strawberry. Her fall is great, from that adoration and attention that he paid her,—from that splendour of fortune, so much of which dies with him,—and from that consideration which rebounded to her from the great deference which the world had for his character. Visions, perhaps. Yet who could expect that they would have passed away even before that fleeting thing, her beauty!’

This lady seems to have been afflicted nearly beyond the hope of consolation. Nevertheless, she married again. It is not a bad sign, we believe, when a widow sets in with a good wet grief: she has the better chance of a fine day. Philosophers assert, indeed, that it is possible for a woman to cry a sorrow clean out:—and we must confess, we have now and then heard of such things.

We must draw to a close now with our quotations—though we wish we had room for more. For the author is exceedingly amusing in his attempt at tracing his descent from Chaucer;—in his remarks on old and young kings,—in his practical and prospective speculations on gout in the feet and stomach,—and in his picture of himself, ‘with sweet peas stuck in his hair!’ We should have liked, too, to extract a bon mot or two of George Selwyn, whose love of puns and executions was equally insatiable; but they stick too fast in the looser texture of his historian, to be disengaged with any moderate labour. The following little passage is very pleasingly written.

‘For what are we taking Belleisle?—I rejoiced at the little loss we had on landing: For the glory, I leave it to the Common Council. I am very willing to leave London to them too, and do pass half the week at Strawberry, where my two passions, lilacs and nightingales, are in full bloom. I spent Sunday as if it were Apollo’s birth-day; Gray and Mason were with me, and we listened to the nightingales till one o’clock in the morning. Gray has translated two noble incantations from the Lord knows who, a Danish Gray, who lived the Lord knows when. They are to be enchased in a history of English Bards, which Mason and he are writing, but of which the former has not written a word yet, and of which the latter, if he rides Pegasus at his usual foot pace, will finish the first page two years hence!’

We cannot understand the Editor’s drift in leaving so many names unprinted. The respect for the living has been carried, we think, to a most awful extent: for names are continually left blank, which would visit their sins, if at all, upon the third or fourth generation. In many instances, too, the allusions are as plain as if the names had been written at full length. At p. 185, for example, we perceive a delicate attention of this sort to the family of Northumberland,—though 172few readers can be so respectfully uninformed as to be at all perplexed by the suppression. Chevy Chase has not left the Douglas and the Percy in such comfortable security. The mystical passage is as follows.

‘Lady R—— P—— pushed her on the birth-night against a bench. The Dutchess of Grafton asked if it was true that Lady R—— kicked her? “Kick me, Madam! when did you ever hear of a P——y that took a kick?” I can tell you another anecdote of that house, that will not divert you less. Lord March making them a visit this summer at Alnwic Castle, my Lord received him at the gate and said, “I believe, my Lord, this is the first time that ever a Douglas and a P——y met here in friendship.” Think of this from a Smithson to a true Douglas.’

The beauty of the thing too, is, that Smithson (which alone could give offence) is printed with all the letters—while Percy is delicately left in initials and finals.

There are some verses in the book, of which, out of regard to the author’s memory, we shall say nothing. They are very apparently ‘by a person of quality.’ Pope, we think, has written something like them under that signature—which rather takes from their originality.——But we now take our final leave of this lively volume, with our usual protest against the enormous size into which this collection has been distended. Book-sellers now-a-days only study how to construct large paper houses for their little families of letterpress,—and never think of the taxation to which they thus subject their readers. These Letters might have been comfortably accommodated in a comely little octavo, and sold at a reasonable price: Instead of which, they are put forth in a good stiff quarto,—and are, to use old Marall’s phrase, ‘very chargeable.’ We hope soon to see them in a more accessible shape.

LIFE OF SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS

Vol. xxxiv.] [August 1820.

This, with regard to its main object, must certainly be regarded as a superfluous publication. Forty years after the death of Sir Joshua, Mr. Farington has found himself called upon to put forth a thin octavo volume, to revive the recollection of the dispute between their late President and the Academy, and to correct an error into which Mr. Malone had fallen, in supposing that Sir Joshua was not entirely to blame in that business. This is a remarkable instance of the tenaciousness of corporate bodies with respect to the immaculate 173purity of their conduct. It was at first suggested that printed notes might be sufficient, with references to the pages of Mr. Malone’s account: but it was finally judged best to give it as a connected narrative—that the vindication of the Academy might slip in only as a parenthesis or an episode. So we have a full account of Sir Joshua’s birth and parentage, god-fathers and god-mothers, with as many repetitions beside as were necessary to give a colouring to Mr. Farington’s ultimate object. The manner in which the plot of the publication is insinuated, is curious and characteristic: But our business at present is with certain more general matters, on which we have some observations to offer.

‘In the present instance,’ says Mr. F., ‘we see how a character, formed by early habits of consideration, self-government, and persevering industry, acquired the highest fame; and made his path through life a course of unruffled moral enjoyment. Sir Joshua Reynolds, when young, wrote rules of conduct for himself. One of his maxims was, “that the great principle of being happy in this world, is, not to mind or be affected with small things.” To this rule he strictly adhered; and the constant habit of controlling his mind contributed greatly to that evenness of temper which enabled him to live pleasantly with persons of all descriptions. Placability of temper may be said to have been his characteristic. The happiness of possessing such a disposition was acknowledged by his friend Dr. Johnson, who said, “Reynolds was the most invulnerable man he had ever known.”

‘The life of this distinguished artist exhibits a useful lesson to all those who may devote themselves to the same pursuit. He was not of the class of such as have been held up, or who have esteemed themselves, to be heaven-born geniuses. He appeared to think little of such claims. It will be seen, in the account of his progress to the high situation he attained in his profession, that at no period was there in him any such fancied inspiration; on the contrary, every youthful reader of the Memoirs of Sir Joshua Reynolds may feel assured, that his ultimate success will be in proportion to the resolution with which he follows his example.’

This, we believe, is the current morality and philosophy of the present day; and therefore it is of more consequence to observe, that it appears to us to be a mere tissue of sophistry and folly. And first, as to happiness depending on ‘not being affected with small things,’ it seems plain enough, that a continued flow of pleasurable sensations cannot depend every moment on great objects. Children are supposed to have a fair share of enjoyment; and yet this arises chiefly from their being delighted with trifles—‘pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.’ The reason why we so seldom carry on the 174happy vivacity of early youth into maturer age is, that we form to ourselves a higher standard of enjoyment than we can realize; and that our passions gradually fasten on certain favourite objects, which, in proportion to their magnitude, are of rare occurrence, and, for the most part, out of our reach. The example, too, which suggested these general remarks, actually exposes their fallacy. Sir Joshua did not owe his happiness to his contempt of little things, but to his success in great ones—and it was by that actual success, far more than by the meritorious industry and exertion which contributed to it, that he was enabled to disregard little vexations. Was Richardson, for example, who, it is observed afterwards, ‘had merit in his profession, but not of a high order, though he thought so well on the subject of art, and had practised it so long,’ to feel an equal moral enjoyment in the want of equal success? Was the idea of that excellence, which he had so long laboured in vain to realize, to console him for the loss of that ‘highest fame,’ which is here represented as the invariable concomitant of persevering industry? Or was he to disregard his failure as a trifle? Was the consciousness that he had done his best, to stand him in stead of that ‘unruffled moral enjoyment’ which Sir Joshua owed in no small degree to the coronet-coaches that besieged his doors, to the great names that sat at his table, to the beauty that crowded his painting-room, and reflected its loveliness back from the lucid mirror of his canvas? These things do indeed put a man above minding little inconveniences, and ‘greatly contribute to that evenness of temper which enables him to live pleasantly with persons of all descriptions.’ But was Hudson, Sir Joshua’s master, who had grown old and rich in the cultivation of his art, and who found himself suddenly outdone and eclipsed by his pupil, to derive much unruffled enjoyment from this petty circumstance, or to comfort himself with one of those maxims which young Reynolds had written out for his conduct in life? When Sir Joshua himself lost the use of one of his eyes, in the decline of his life, he became peevish, and did not long survive the practice of his favourite art. Suppose the same loss to have happened to him in the meridian of his fame, we fear that all his consciousness of merit, and all his efforts of industry, would have been insufficient to have supplied that unruffled felicity which we are here taught to refer exclusively to these high sources.

The truth is, that those specious maxims, though they may seem at first sight to minister to content, and to encourage to meritorious exertion, lead in fact to a wrong estimate of human life, to unreasonable anticipations of success, and to bitter repinings and regrets at what in any reverse of fortune we think the injustice of society and 175the caprice of nature. We have a very remarkable instance of this process of mental sophistication, or the setting up a theory against experience, and then wondering that human nature does not answer to our theory, in what our author says on this very subject of Hudson, and his more fortunate scholar afterwards. P. 46. ‘It might be thought that the talents of Reynolds, to which no degree of ignorance or imbecility in the art could be insensible, added to his extraordinary reputation, would have extinguished every feeling of Jealousy or Rivalship in the mind of his master Hudson; but the malady was so deeply seated as to defy the usual remedies applied by time and reflection. Hudson, when at the head of his art, admired and praised by all, had seen a youth rise up and annihilate both his Income and his Fame; and he never could divest his mind of the feelings of mortification caused by the loss he had thus sustained.’ This Mr. F. actually considers as something quite extraordinary and unreasonable; and which might have been easily prevented by a diligent study of Sir Joshua’s admirable aphorisms, against being affected by small things. Such is our Academician’s ethical simplicity, and enviable ignorance of the ways of the world!

One would think that the name of Hudson, which occurs frequently in these pages, might have taught our learned author some little distrust of that other favourite maxim, that Genius is the effect of education, encouragement, and practice. It is the basis, however, of his whole moral and intellectual system; and is thus distinctly announced and enforced in a very elaborate passage.

‘With respect to his (Sir Joshua’s) early indications of talent for the art he afterwards professed, it would be idle to dwell upon them as manifesting any thing more than is common among boys of his age. As an amusement he probably preferred drawing to any other to which he was tempted. In the specimens which have been preserved, there is no sign of premature ingenuity; his history is, in this respect, like what might be written of very many other artists, perhaps of artists in general. His attempts were applauded by kind and sanguine friends; and this encouraged him to persevere till it became a fixed desire in him to make further proficiency, and continually to request that it might be his profession. It is said, that his purpose was determined by reading Richardson’s Treatise on Painting. Possibly it might have been so; his thoughts having been previously occupied with the subject. Dr. Johnson, in his Life of Cowley, writes as follows—“In the windows of his mother’s apartment lay Spenser’s Faery Queen, in which he very early took delight to read, till by feeling the charms of verse, he became, as he relates, irrecoverably a poet. Such are the accidents which, sometimes 176remembered, and perhaps sometimes forgotten, produce that peculiar designation of mind, and propensity for some certain science or employment, which is commonly called Genius. The true genius is a man of large general powers accidentally determined to some particular direction. Sir Joshua Reynolds, the great painter of the present age, had the first fondness for his art excited by the perusal of Richardson’s Treatise.” In this definition of genius, Reynolds fully concurred with Dr. Johnson; and he was himself an instance in proof of its truth. He had a sound natural capacity, and, by observation and long-continued labour, always discriminating with judgment, he obtained universal applause, and established his claim to be ranked amongst those to whom the highest praise is due; for his productions exhibited perfect originality. No artist ever consulted the works of eminent predecessors more than Sir Joshua Reynolds. He drew from every possible source something which might improve his practice; and he resolved the whole of what he saw in nature, and found in art, into a union, which made his pictures a singular display of grace, truth, beauty and richness.’

From the time that Mr. Locke exploded innate ideas in the commencement of the last century, there began to be a confused apprehension in some speculative heads, that there could be no innate faculties either; and our half metaphysicians have been floundering about in this notion ever since: as if, because there are no innate ideas, that is, no actual impressions existing in the mind without objects, there could be no peculiar capacity to receive them from objects; or as if there might not be as great a difference in the capacity itself as in the outward objects to be impressed upon it. We might as well deny, at once, that there are organs or faculties to receive impressions, because there are no innate ideas, as deny that there is an inherent difference in the organs or faculties to receive impressions of any particular kind. If the capacity exists (which it must do), there may, nay we should say there must, be a difference in it, in different persons, and with respect to different things. To allege that there is such a difference, no more implies the doctrine of innate ideas, than to say that the brain of a man is more fitted to discern external objects than a block of marble, imports that there are innate ideas in the brain, or in the block of marble. The impression, it is true, does not exist in the sealing-wax till the seal has been applied to it: but there was the previous capacity to receive the impression; and there may be, and most probably is, a greater degree of fitness in one piece of sealing-wax than in another. That the original capacity, the aptitude for certain impressions or pursuits, should be necessarily the same in different instances, with the 177diversity that we see in men’s organs, faculties, and acquirements of various kinds, is a supposition not only gratuitous, but absurd. There is the capacity of animals, the capacity of idiots, and of half idiots and half madmen of various descriptions: there is capacity, in short, of all sorts and degrees, from an oyster to a Newton: Yet we are gravely told, that wherever there is a power of sensation, the genius must be the same, and would, with proper cultivation, produce the same effects. ‘No,’ say the French materialists; ‘but in minds commonly well organized (communement bien organisés), the results will, in the same given circumstances, be the same.’ That is, in the same circumstances, and with the same average capacity, there will be the same average degree of genius or imbecility—which is just an identical proposition.