CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE EDINBURGH REVIEW (continued 7)

‘Now this now that, she tasteth tenderly,’

glitters, flutters, buzzes, spawns, dies,—and is forgotten! But the very variety and superficial polish show the extent and height to which knowledge has been accumulated, and the general interest taken in letters.

To dig to the bottom of a subject through so many generations of authors, is now impossible: the concrete mass is too voluminous and vast to be contained in any single head; and therefore we must have essences and samples as substitutes for it. We have collected a superabundance of raw materials: the grand desideratum now is, to fashion and render them portable. Knowledge is no longer confined to the few: the object therefore is, to make it accessible and attractive to the many. The Monachism of literature is at an end; the cells of learning are thrown open, and let in the light of universal day. We can no longer be churls of knowledge, ascetics in pretension. We must yield to the spirit of change (whether for the better or worse); and ‘to beguile the time, look like the time.’ A modern author may (without much imputation of his wisdom) declare for a short life and a merry one. He may be a little gay, thoughtless, 211and dissipated. Literary immortality is now let on short leases, and he must be contented to succeed by rotation. A scholar of the olden time had resources, had consolations to support him under many privations and disadvantages. A light (that light which penetrates the most clouded skies) cheered him in his lonely cell, in the most obscure retirement: and, with the eye of faith, he could see the meanness of his garb exchanged for the wings of the Shining Ones, and the wedding-garment of the Spouse. Again, he lived only in the contemplation of old books and old events; and the remote and future became habitually present to his imagination, like the past. He was removed from low, petty vanity, by the nature of his studies, and could wait patiently for his reward till after death. We exist in the bustle of the world, and cannot escape from the notice of our contemporaries. We must please to live, and therefore should live to please. We must look to the public for support. Instead of solemn testimonies from the learned, we require the smiles of the fair and the polite. If princes scowl upon us, the broad shining face of the people may turn to us with a favourable aspect. Is not this life (too) sweet? Would we change it for the former if we could? But the great point is, that we cannot! Therefore, let Reviews flourish—let Magazines increase and multiply—let the Daily and Weekly Newspapers live for ever! We are optimists in literature, and hold, with certain limitations, that, in this respect, whatever is, is right!

It has been urged as one fatal objection against periodical criticism, that it is too often made the engine of party-spirit and personal invective. This is an abuse of it greatly to be lamented; but in fact, it only shows the extent and importance of this branch of literature, so that it has become the organ of every thing else, however alien to it. The current of political and individual obloquy has run into this channel, because it has absorbed every topic. The bias to miscellaneous discussion and criticism is so great, that it is necessary to insert politics in a sort of sandwich of literature, in order to make them at all palatable to the ordinary taste. The war of political pamphlets, of virulent pasquinades, has ceased, and the ghosts of Junius and Cato, of Gracchus and Cincinnatus, no longer ‘squeak and gibber’ in our modern streets, or torment the air with a hubbub of hoarse noises. A Whig or Tory tirade on a political question, the abuse of a public character, now stands side by side in a fashionable Review, with a disquisition on ancient coins, or is introduced right in the middle of an analysis of the principles of taste. This is a violation, no doubt, of the rules of decorum and order, and might well be dispensed with: but the stock of malice and prejudice in the world is much the same, though it has found a more classical and 212agreeable vehicle to vent itself. Mere politics, mere personal altercation, will not go down without an infusion of the Belles-Lettres and the Fine Arts. This makes decidedly either for the refinement or the frivolity of our taste. It is found necessary to poison or to sour the public mind, by going to the well-head of polite literature and periodical criticism,—which shows plainly how many drink at that fountain, and will drink at no other. As a farther example of this rage for conveying information in an easy and portable form, we believe that booksellers will often refuse to purchase in a volume, what they will give a handsome price for, if divided piecemeal, and fitted for occasional insertion in a newspaper or magazine; so that the only authors who, as a class, are not starving, are periodical essayists, as almost the only writers who can keep their reputation above water are anonymous critics. But we have enlarged sufficiently on the general question, and shall now proceed to a more particular account of the state of the Periodical Press. We consider this Article, however, as an exception to our general rules of criticizing, and protest against its being turned into a precedent; for if our several contemporaries were to criticize one author as a constant habit, there would be no end of the repeated reflections and continually lessening perspective of cavils and objections, which would resemble nothing in nature but the Caffée des Milles Colonnes!

The staple literature of the Periodical Press may, we presume, be fairly divided into Newspapers, Magazines, and Reviews; and of each of these, if we have courage to go through with it, we shall say a word or two in their order.

The St. James’s Chronicle is, we have understood, the oldest existing paper in London. We are not quite sure whether it was in this or in another three-times-a-week paper (the Englishman^[13]) that we first met with some extracts from Mr. Burke’s Letter to a Noble Lord in the year 1796, and on the instant became converts to his familiar, inimitable, powerful prose style. The richness of Burke showed, indeed, more magnificent, contrasted with the meagreness of the ordinary style of the paper into which his invective was thrown. Let any one, indeed, who may be disposed to disparage modern 213intellect and modern letters, look over a file of old newspapers (only thirty or forty years back), or into those that, by prescription, keep up the old-fashioned style in accommodation to the habitual dulness of their readers, and compare the poverty, the meanness, the want of style and matter in their original paragraphs, with the amplitude, the strength, the point and terseness which characterize the leading journals of the day, and he will perhaps qualify the harshness of his censure. We have not a Burke, indeed—we have not even a Junius; but we have a host of writers, working for their bread on the spur of the occasion, and whose names are not known, formed upon the model of the best writers who have gone before them, and reflecting many of their graces.

Let any one (for instance) compare the St. James’s Chronicle, which is on the model of the old school, with the Morning Chronicle, which is, or was at least, at the head of the new. This paper we have been long used to think the best, both for amusement and instruction, that issued from the daily press. It is full, but not crowded; and we have breathing-spaces and openings left to pause upon each subject. We have plenty and variety. The reader of a morning paper ought not to be crammed to satiety. He ought to rise from the perusal light and refreshed. Attention is paid to every topic, but none is overdone. There is a liberality and decorum. Every class of readers is accommodated with its favourite articles, served up with taste, and without sparing for the sharpest sauces.^[14] A copy of verses is supplied by one of the popular poets of the day; a prose essay appears in another page, which, had it been written two hundred years ago, might still have been read with admiration; a correction of a disputed reading, in a classical author, is contributed by a learned correspondent. The politician may look profound over a grave dissertation on a point of constitutional history; a lady may smile at a rebus or a charade. Here, Pitt and Fox, Burke and Sheridan, maintained their nightly combats over again; here Porson criticized, and Jekyll punned. An appearance of conscious dignity 214is kept up, even in the Advertisements, where a principle of proportion and separate grouping is observed; the announcement of a new work is kept distinct from the hiring of a servant of all work, or the sailing of a steam-yacht.

The late Mr. Perry, who raised the Morning Chronicle into its present consequence, held the office of Editor for nearly forty years; and he held firm to his party and his principles all that time,—a long term for political honesty and consistency to last! He was a man of strong natural sense, some acquired knowledge, a quick tact; prudent, plausible, and with great heartiness and warmth of feeling. This last quality was perhaps of more use to him than any other, in the sphere in which he moved. His cordial voice and sanguine mode of address made friends, whom his sincerity and gratitude insured. An overflow of animal spirits, sooner than any thing else, floats a man into the tide of success. Nothing cuts off sympathy so much as the obvious suppression of the kindly impulses of our nature. He who takes another slightly by the hand, will not stick to him long, nor in difficulties. Others perceive this, and anticipate the defection, or the hostile blow. Among the ways and means of success in life, if good sense is the first, good nature is the second. If we wish others to be attached to us, we must not seem averse or indifferent to them. Perry was more vain than proud. This made him fond of the society of lords, and them of his. His shining countenance reflected the honour done him, and the alacrity of his address prevented any sense of awkwardness or inequality of pretensions. He was a little of a coxcomb, and we do not think he was a bit the worse for it. A man who does not think well of himself, generally thinks ill of others; nor do they fail to return the compliment. Towards the last, he, to be sure, received visitors in his library at home, something in the style of the Marquis Marialva in Gil Blas. He affected the scholar. On occasion of the death of Porson, he observed that ‘Epithalamia were thrown into his coffin;’ of which there was an awkward correction next day,—‘For Epithalamia read Epicedia!’ The worst of it was, that a certain consciousness of merit, with a little overweening pretension, sometimes interfered with the conduct of the paper. Mr. Perry was not like a contemporary editor, who never writes a sentence himself, and assigns, as a reason for it, that ‘he has too many interests to manage as it is, without the addition of his own literary vanity.’ The Editor of the Morning Chronicle wrote up his own paper; and he had an ambition to have it thought, that every good thing in it, unless it came from a lord, or an acknowledged wit, was his own. If he paid for the article itself, he thought he paid for the credit of it also. This sometimes brought him into 215awkward situations. He wished to be head and chief of his own paper, and would not have any thing behind the editor’s desk, greater than the desk itself. He was frequently remiss himself, and was not sanguine that others should make up the deficiency. He possessed a most tenacious memory, and often, in the hottest periods of Parliamentary warfare, carried off half a Debate on his own shoulders. The very first time he was intrusted with the task of reporting speeches in the House of Commons, a singular lapse of memory occurred to him. Soon after he had taken his seat in the Gallery, some accident put him out, and he remained the whole night stupified and disconcerted. When the House broke up, he returned to the office of the paper for which he was engaged, in despair, and professing total inability to give a single word of it. But he was prevailed upon to sit down at the writing-desk. The sluices of memory, which were not empty, but choked up, began to open, and they poured on, till he had nearly filled the paper with a verbatim account of the speech of a Lord Nugent, when his employer, finding his mistake, told him this would never do, but he must begin over again, and merely give a general and historical account of what had passed. Perry snapped his fingers at this release from his terrors; and it has been observed, that the historical mode of giving a Debate was his delight ever afterwards. From the time of Woodfall, the Morning Chronicle was distinguished by its superior excellence in reporting the proceedings of Parliament. Woodfall himself often filled the whole paper without any assistance. This, besides the arduousness of the undertaking, necessarily occasioned delay. At present, several Reporters take the different speeches in succession—(each remaining an hour at a time)—go immediately, and transcribe their notes for the press; and, by this means, all the early part of a debate is actually printed before the last speaker has risen upon his legs. The public read the next day at breakfast-time (perhaps), what would make a hundred octavo pages, every word of which has been spoken, written out, and printed within the last twelve or fourteen hours!

The Times Newspaper is, we suppose, entitled to the character it gives itself, of being the ‘Leading Journal of Europe,’ and is perhaps the greatest engine of temporary opinion in the world. Still it is not to our taste—either in matter or manner. It is elaborate, but heavy; full, but not readable: it is stuffed up with official documents, with matter-of-fact details. It seems intended to be deposited in the office of the Keeper of the Records, and might be imagined to be composed as well as printed with a steam-engine. It is pompous, dogmatical, and full of pretensions, but neither light, various, nor agreeable. It sells more, and contains more, than any other paper; and when you 216have said this, you have said all. It presents a most formidable front to the inexperienced reader. It makes a toil of a pleasure. It is said to be calculated for persons in business, and yet it is the business of a whole morning to get through it. Bating voluminous details of what had better be omitted, the same things are better done in the Chronicle. To say nothing of poetry (which may be thought too frivolous and attenuated for the atmosphere of the city), the prose is inferior. No equally sterling articles can be referred to in it, either for argument or wit. More, in short, is effected in the Morning Chronicle, without the formality and without the effort. The Times is not a classical paper. It is a commercial paper, a paper of business, and it is conducted on principles of trade and business. It floats with the tide: it sails with the stream. It has no other principle, as we take it. It is not ministerial; it is not patriotic; but it is civic. It is the lungs of the British metropolis; the mouthpiece, oracle, and echo of the Stock Exchange; the representative of the mercantile interest. One would think so much gravity of style might be accompanied with more steadiness and weight of opinion. But the Times conforms to the changes of the time. It bears down upon a question, like a first-rate man of war, with streamers flying and all hands on deck; but if the first broadside does not answer, turns short upon it, like a triremed galley, firing off a few paltry squibs to cover its retreat. It takes up no falling cause; fights no up-hill battle; advocates no great principle; holds out a helping hand to no oppressed or obscure individual. It is ‘ever strong upon the stronger side.’ Its style is magniloquent; its spirit is not magnanimous. It is valiant, swaggering, insolent, with a hundred thousand readers at its heels; but the instant the rascal rout turn round with the ‘whiff and wind’ of some fell circumstance, the Times, the renegade, inconstant Times, turns with them! Let the mob shout, let the city roar, and the voice of the Times is heard above them all, with outrageous deafening clamour; but let the vulgar hubbub cease, and no whisper, no echo of it is ever after heard of in the Times. Like Bully Bottom in the play, it then ‘aggravates its voice so, as if it were a singing dove, an it were any nightingale.’ Its coarse ribaldry is turned to a harmless jest; its swelling rhodomontade sinks to a vapid common-place; and the editor amuses himself in the interval, before another great explosion, by collecting and publishing from time to time, Affidavits of the numbers of his paper sold in the last stormy period of the press.

The Times rose into notice through its diligence and promptitude in furnishing Continental intelligence, at a time when foreign news was the most interesting commodity in the market; but at present it 217engrosses every other department. It grew obscene and furious during the revolutionary war; and the nicknames which Mr. Walter bestowed on the French Ruler were the counters with which he made his fortune. When the game of war and madness was over, and the proprietor wished to pocket his dear-bought gains quietly, he happened to have a writer in his employ who wanted to roar on, as if any thing more was to be got by his continued war-whoop, and who scandalized the whole body of disinterested Jews, contractors, and stock-jobbers, by the din and smithery with which, in the piping time of peace, he was for rivetting on the chains of foreign nations. It was found, or thought at least, that this could not go on. The tide of gold no longer flowed up the river, and the tide of Billingsgate and blood could no longer flow down it, with any pretence to decency, morality, or religion. There is a cant of patriotism in the city: there is a cant of humanity among hackneyed politicians. The writer of the LEADING ARTICLE, it is true, was a fanatic; but the proprietor of the LEADING JOURNAL was neither a martyr nor confessor. The principles gave way to the policy of the paper; and this was the origin of the New Times.

This new Morning paper is one which every Tory ought to encourage. If the friend of the people cannot away with it, the friend of power ought not to be without it. Nay, it may be of use to the liberal or the wavering; for it goes all lengths, boggles at no consequences, and unmasks the features of despotism fearlessly and shamelessly, without remorse and without pity. The Editor deals in no half measures, in no half principles; but is a thorough-paced stickler for the modernized doctrines of passive obedience and non-resistance. Dr. Sacheverel, in his day, could not go beyond him. He is no flincher, no trimmer; he ‘champions Legitimacy to the outrance.’ There is something in this spirit, that if it exposes the possessor to hatred, exempts him from contempt. The present Editor of the New, and late Editor of the Old Times, whatever we may think of his opinions, must be acknowledged to be staunch, determined, and consistent in maintaining them. He is a violent partisan, blind to the blots in his own cause; and, by this means, he often opens the eyes of others to them. He has no evasion, no disguises. Let him take up a wrong argument (which he does on principle) and no one can beat him in pushing it to the reductio ad absurdum: let him engage in a bad cause (which he does by instinct) and no consideration of prudence or compassion will make him turn back. He is a logician, and will not bate one ace of his argument. He goes the utmost length of the spirit, as well as the principles, of his party. If we like the spirit of despotism, we see it exemplified 218in his views and sentiments: if we like the principles, we find them in full perfection, and without any cowardly drawback in his reasonings. He is the true organ of the Ultras, at home or abroad. It is the creed, we believe, of all legitimate princes, that the world was made for them; and this sentiment is stamped, fixed, seared in inverted but indelible characters, on the mind of the Editor of the New Times, who, we believe, would march to a stake, in testimony of the opinion that he and all mankind ought to be held as slaves, in fee and perpetuity, by half a dozen lawful rulers of the species. He lays it down, for instance, in so many words, that ‘Louis XVIII. has the same undoubted right (in kind and in degree) to the throne of France, that Mr. Coke has to his estate of Holkham in Norfolk:’ and from this declaration he never swerves, not even in thought. Other writers may argue upon the assumption of this principle, or now and then, in a moment of unexpected triumph, avow it; but he alone has the glory and the shame of making it the acknowledged, undisguised basis of all his reasoning. He is fascinated, in short, with the abstract image of royalty; he has swallowed love-powders from despotism; he is drunk with the spirit of servility; mad with the hatred of liberty; flagrant, obscene in the exposure of the shameful parts of his cause; and his devotion to power amounts to a prostration of all his faculties. It is strange, as well as lamentable, to see this misguided enthusiasm, this preposterous pertinacity in wilful degradation. Yet it is not without its use. Its honesty warns us of the consequences we have to dread: as its consistency insures us some compensation in some part or other of the system. There is no pure evil, but hypocrisy. Every principle (almost) if consistently followed up, leads to some good, by some reaction on itself. It is only by tergiversation, by tricking, by being false to all opinion, and picking out the bad of every cause to suit it to our own interest, that we get a vile compost of intolerable and opposite abuses. Thus, we should say that superstition, while it was real, with all its evils, had its redeeming points, in the faith and zeal of those who were actuated by it, into whatever excesses they might be hurried: but we object entirely to modern fanaticism, which is the patchwork product of a perverted intellect, with all the absurdity and all the mischief, without one particle of sincerity, to justify it. Despotism even has its advantages; but we see no good in modern despotism, which has lost its reverence, and retains only the odiousness of power. The State Doctor of the New Times is, however, a perfect Preux Chevalier, compared with some of his hireling contemporaries: another Peter the Hermit, to preach an everlasting crusade against Jacobins and Levellers, and to rekindle another Holy War in favour of Divine Right. 219There is a dramatic interest in the fury of his exclamations, which induces us to make some allowance for the barbarism of his creed. He is less mischievous than when he wrote in the Old Times, which trimmed between power and popularity, and oiled the wheels of Despotism with the cant of Liberty. He does not now fawn on public opinion, but sets it at defiance, both in theory and practice. He does not mix up the grossness of faction with the refinements of sophistry. He does not uphold the principles, and insult the persons, of the aristocracy. No one was more bitter against the late queen, or more able or strenuous in the cause of her enemies; but he maintained a certain respect for her rank and birth. He did not think that every species of outrage and indecency, heaped on the daughter of a prince, the consort of a king, was the most delicate compliment that could be paid to royalty; but conceived, that when we forget what is due to place and title, we make a gap in ceremony and outward decorum, through which all such persons may be assailed with impunity. Perhaps this starched, pedantic preference of principles to persons, may not, after all, be the surest road to court favour; but we respect any one who is ever liable to a frown from a patron, or to be left in a minority by his own party. There is nothing truly contemptible, but that which is always tacking and veering before the breath of power.

This naturally leads us to the Courier; which is a paper of shifts and expedients, of bare assertions, and thoughtless impudence. It denies facts on the word of a minister, and dogmatizes by authority. ‘The force of dulness can no farther go:’—but its pertness keeps pace with its dulness. It sets up a lively pretension to safe common-places and stale jests; and has an alternate gaiety and gravity of manner:—The matter is nothing. Compared with the solemn quackery of the Old or New Times, the ingenious editor is the Merry-Andrew of the political show. The Courier is intended for country readers, the clergy and gentry, who do not like to be disturbed with a reason for any thing, but with whom the self-complacent shallowness of the editor passes for a self-evident proof that every thing is as it should be. It is a paper that those who run may read. It asks no thought: it creates no uneasiness. In it the last quarter’s assessed taxes are always made good: the harvest is abundant; trade reviving; the Constitution unimpaired; the minister immaculate, and the Monarch the finest gentleman in his dominions. The writer has no idea beyond a certain set of cant phrases, which he repeats by rote, and never puzzles any one by the smallest glimpse of meaning in what he says. This lacquey to the Treasury, in short, puts one in mind of those impudent valets at the doors of great houses—sleek, 220saucy, empty, and vulgar—who give short answers, and laugh into the faces of those who come with complaints and grievances to their masters—think their employers great men, and themselves clever fellows—eat, drink, sleep, and let the world slide!

The Sun is a paper that appears daily, but never shines. The editor, who is an agreeable man, has a sinecure of it; and the public trouble their heads just as little about it as he does.

The Traveller is not a new, but a newly-conducted evening paper; which, if it has not much wit or brilliancy, is distinguished by sound judgment, careful information, and constitutional principles.

We really cannot presume to scan the transcendent merits of the Morning Post and Fashionable World—and, in short, the other daily papers must excuse us for saying nothing about them.

Of the Weekly Journalists, Cobbett stands first in power and popularity. Certainly he has earned the latter: would that he abused the former less! We once tried to cast this Antæus to the ground; but the earth-born rose again, and still staggers on, blind or one-eyed, to his remorseless, restless purpose,—sometimes running upon posts and pitfalls—sometimes shaking a country to its centre. It is best to say little about him, and keep out of his way; for he crushes, by his ponderous weight, whomsoever he falls upon; and, what is worse, drags to cureless ruin whatever cause he lays his hands upon to support.

The Examiner stands next to Cobbett in talent; and is much before him in moderation and steadiness of principle. It has also a much greater variety both of tact and subject. Indeed, an agreeable rambling scope and freedom of discussion is so much in the author’s way, that the reader is at a loss under what department of the paper to look for any particular topic. A literary criticism, perhaps, insinuates itself under the head of the Political Examiner; and the theatrical critic, or lover of the Fine Arts, is stultified by a tirade against the Bourbons. If the dishes are there, it does not much signify in what order they are placed. With the exception of a little egotism and twaddle, and flippancy and dogmatism about religion or morals, and mawkishness about firesides and furious Buonapartism, and a vein of sickly sonnet-writing, we suspect the Examiner must be allowed (whether we look to the design or execution of the general run of articles in it) to be the ablest and most respectable of the publications that issue from the weekly press.

The News is also an excellent paper—interspersed with historical and classical knowledge, written in a good taste, and with an excellent spirit. Its circulation is next, we believe, to that of the Observer, which has twice as many murders, assaults, robberies, fires, accidents, 221offences, as any other paper, and sells proportionably. Shadows affright the town as well as substances, and ill news fly fast. We apprehend these are the chief of the weekly journals. There are others that have become notorious for qualities that ought to have consigned them long ago to the hands of the common hangman; and some that, by their tameness and indecision, have been struggling into existence ever since their commencement. There is ability, but want of direction, in several of the last.

As to the Weekly Literary Journals, Gazettes, &c. they are a truly insignificant race—a sort of flimsy announcements of favoured publications—insects in letters, that are swallowed up in the larger blaze of full-orbed criticism, and where

‘Coming Reviews cast their shadows before!’

We cannot condescend to enumerate them. Before we quit this part of our subject, we must add, that Scotland boasts but one original newspaper, the Scotsman, and that newspaper but one subject—Political Economy.—The Editor, however, may be said to be king of it!

Of the Magazines, which are a sort of cater-cousins to ourselves, we would wish to speak with tenderness and respect. There is the Gentleman’s Magazine, at one extremity of the series, and Mr. Blackwood’s at the other—and between these there is the European, which is all abroad,—and the Lady’s, which is all at home,—and the London, and the Monthly, and the New Monthly—nay, hold; for if all their names were to be written down, one Article or one Number would hardly contain them—so many of them are there, and such antipathy do they hold to each other! For the Gentleman’s Magazine we profess an affection. We like the name, we like the title of the Editor, (Mr. Sylvanus Urban—what a rustic civility is there in it!)—we like the frontispiece of St. John’s Gate—a well-preserved piece of useless antiquity, an emblem of the work—we like the table of contents, which promises no more than it performs. There we are sure of finding the last lingering remains of a former age, with the embryo production of the new—some nine days wonder, some forlorn Hic jacet—all that is forgotten, or soon to be so—an alligator stuffed, a mermaid, an Egyptian mummy—South-sea inventions, or the last improvement on the spinning-jenny—an epitaph in Pancras Church-yard, the head of Memnon, Lord Byron’s Farewell, a Charade by a Young Lady, and Dr. Johnson’s dispute with Osborn the bookseller! Oh! happy mixture of indolence and study, of order and disorder! Who, with the Gentleman’s Magazine held carelessly in his hand, has not passed minutes, hours, days, in 222lackadaisical triumph over ennui! Who has not taken it up on parlour window-seats? Who has not ran it slightly through in reading-rooms? If it has its faults, they are those of an agreeable old age; and we could almost wish some ill to those who can say any harm of it.

The Monthly Magazine was originally an improvement on the Gentleman’s, and the model on which succeeding ones have been formed. It was a literary Miscellany, variously and ably supported—a sort of repository for the leading topics of conversation of the day; but it has of late degenerated into a register of patents, and an account of the proprietor’s philosophy of the universe, in answer to Sir Isaac Newton! Other publications have succeeded to it, and prevailed. Which of these is the best, the London or the New Monthly? We are not the Œdipus to solve this riddle; and indeed it might be difficult, for we believe many of the writers are the same in each. But both contain articles, we will be bold to say, in the form of Essays, Theatrical Criticism, Jeux-d’esprit, which may be considered as the flower and cream of periodical literature. To those who judge of books in the lump, by the cubic contents, the binding, or the letters on the back, and who think that all that is conveyed between blue or yellow or orange-tawny covers, must be vain and light as the leaves that flutter round it, we would remark, that many of these fugitive, unowned productions, have been collected, and met with no unfavourable reception, in solid octavo or compact duodecimo. Are there not the quaint and grave subtleties of Elia, the extreme paradoxes of the author of Table Talk, the Confessions of an Opium-eater, the copious tales of Traditional Literature, all from one Magazine? We believe, the agreeable lucubrations of Mr. Geoffrey Crayon also first ventured to meet the public eye in an obscure publication of the same sort—

‘With a blush,

Modest as morning, when she coldly eyes

The youthful Phœbus!’

To say truth, some such ordeal seems almost necessary as a passport to literary reputation. The public like to taste works in the sample, before they swallow them whole. If in the two leading Magazines just alluded to, we do not meet with any great fund of anecdote, with much dramatic display of character, with the same number of successful experiments in the world of letters as at an earlier period of our history, yet the reader may perhaps think the want of these in a great measure compensated by a better sustained tone of general reflection, of mild sentiment, and liberal taste; which we hold, in spite of some 223strong exceptions, to be the true characteristics of the age. The fault of the London Magazine is, that it wants a sufficient unity of direction and purpose. There is no particular bias or governing spirit,—which neutralizes the interest. The articles seem thrown into the letter-box, and to come up like blanks or prizes in the lottery—all is in a confused, unconcocted state, like the materials of a rich plum-pudding before it has been well boiled. On the contrary, there may be said to be too much tampering with the management of the New Monthly, till the taste and spirit evaporate. A thing, by being overdone, stands a chance of being insipid—the fastidious may end in languor—the agreeable may cloy by repetition. The Editor, we are afraid, pets it too much,—and it is accordingly more remarkable for delicacy than robustness of constitution, and, by being faultless, loses some of its effect.

Over-refinement, however, cannot be charged as the failing of most of our periodical publications. Some are full of polemical orthodoxy—some of methodistical deliration—some inculcate servility, and others preach up sedition—some creep along in a series of dull truisms and stale moralities—while others, more ‘lively, audible, and full of vent,’ subsist on the great staple of falsehood and personality, and enjoy all the advantages that result from an entire contempt for the restraints of decency, consistency, or candour. There is no pretence, indeed, or concealment of the principles on which such works are conducted: and the reader feels almost as if he were admitted to look in on a club of thorough-going hack authors, in their moments of freedom and exaltation. There is plenty of slang-wit going, and some shrewd remark. The pipes and tobacco are laid on the table, with a set-out of oysters and whisky, and bludgeons and sword-sticks in the corner! A profane parody is recited, or a libel on an absent member—and songs are sung in mockery of their former friends and employers. From foul words they get to blows and broken heads; till, drunk with ribaldry, and stunned with noise, they proceed to throw open the windows and abuse the passengers in the street, for their want of religion, morals, and decorum! This is a modern and an enormous abuse, and requires to be corrected.

The illiberality of the Periodical Press is ‘the sin that most easily besets it.’ We have already accounted for this from the rank and importance it has assumed, which have made it a necessary engine in the hands of party. The abuse, however, has grown to a height that renders it desirable that it should be crushed, if it cannot be corrected; for it threatens to overlay, not only criticism and letters, but to root out all common honesty and common sense from works of the greatest excellence, upon large classes of society. All character, 224all decency, the plainest matters of fact, or deductions of reason, are made the sport of a nickname, an inuendo, or a bold and direct falsehood. The continuance of this nuisance rests not with the writers, but with the public; it is they that pamper it into the monster it is; and, in order to put an end to the traffic, the best way is to let them see a little what sort of thing it is which they encourage. Both of the extreme parties in the State, the Ultra-Whigs as well as the Ultra-Royalists, have occasionally trespassed on the borders of this enormity: But it is only the worst part of the Ministerial Press that has had the temptation, the hardihood, or the cowardice to make literature the mere tool and creature of party-spirit; and, in the sacredness of the cause in which it was embarked, to disregard entirely the profligacy of the means. It was pious and loyal to substitute abuse for argument, and private scandal for general argument. He who calumniated his neighbour was a friend to his country. If you could not reply to your opponent’s objections, you might caricature his person; if you were foiled by his wit or learning, you might recover your advantage by stabbing his character. The cry of ‘No Popery,’ or ‘the Constitution is in danger,’ was an answer to all cavils or scruples. Who would hesitate about the weapons he used to repel an attack on all that was dear and valuable in civil institutions? He who drew off the public attention from a popular statement, by alluding to a slip in the private history of an individual, did well; he who embodied a flying rumour as an undoubted fact, for the same laudable end, did better; and he who invented a palpable falsehood, did best of all. He discovered most invention, most zeal, and most boldness; and received the highest reward for the sacrifice of his time, character, and principle. If the jest took, it was gravely supported; if it was found out, it was well intended: To belie a Whig, a Jacobin, a Republican, or a Dissenter, was doing God and the king good service; at any rate, whether true or false, detected or not, the imputation left a stain behind it, and would be ever after coupled with the name of the individual, so as to disable him, and deter others from doing farther mischief. Knowledge, writing, the press was found to be the great engine that governed public opinion; and the scheme therefore was, to make it recoil upon itself, and act in a retrograde direction to its natural one. Prejudice and power had a provocation to this extreme and desperate mode of defence, in their instinctive jealousy of any opposition to their sentiments or will. They felt that reason was against them—and therefore it was necessary that they should be against reason,—they felt, too, that they could extend impunity to their agents and accomplices, whom they could easily screen from reprisals. Conscious that they were no match for 225modern philosophers and reformers in abstract reasoning, they paid off their dread of their talents and principles by a proportionable contempt for their persons, for which no epithets could be too mean or hateful. These were therefore poured out in profusion by their satellites. The nicknames, the cant phrases, too, were all in favour of existing institutions and opinions, and were easily devised in a contest where victory, not truth, was the object. The warfare was therefore turned into this channel from the first; and what passion dictated, a cunning and mercenary policy has continued. The Anti-Jacobin was one of the first that gave the alarm, that set up the war-whoop of reckless slander and vulgar abuse. Here is a specimen.

‘Mr. Coleridge having been dishonoured at Cambridge for preaching Deism, has, since that time, left his native country; commenced citizen of the world; left his poor children fatherless, and his wife destitute. Ex hoc disce omnes—his friend Southey and others.’

This is the way in which a man of the most exemplary habits and strict morals was included in the same sentence of reprobation with one of greater genius, though perhaps of more irregular conduct; while the imputations in both cases were impudent falsehoods—probably known to be so, or else founded on some idle report, eagerly caught up and maliciously exaggerated. What has been the effect? Why, that these very persons have, in the end, joined that very pack of hunting-tigers that strove to harass them to death, and now halloo longest and loudest in the chase of blood. Nor was the result, after all, so unnatural as it might at first appear. They saw that there was but one royal road to reputation. The new Temple of Fame was built as an outwork to the rotten boroughs, and the warders were busy on the top of it, pouring down scalding lead and horrible filth on all those who approached, and demanded entrance, without well-attested political credentials. ‘The manna’ of court favour ‘was falling’; and our pilgrims to the land of promise, slowly, reluctantly, but perhaps wisely, got out of the way of it. Who, indeed, was likely to stand, for any length of time, ‘the pelting of this pitiless storm’—the precipitation of nicknames from such a height, the thundering down of huge volumes of dirt and rubbish, the ugly blows at character, the flickering jests on personal defects—with the complacent smiles of the great, and the angry shouts of the mob, to say nothing of the Attorney-General’s informations, filed ex officio, and the well-paid depositions of spies and informers? It was a hard battle to fight. The enemy were well entrenched on the heights of place and power, and skulked behind their ramparts—those whom they assailed were exposed, and on the pavé. It was the 226forlorn hope of genius and independence struggling for fame and bread; and it is no wonder that many of the candidates turned tail, and fled from such fearful odds.

The beauty of it is, that there is generally no reparation or means of redress. From the nature of the imputations, it is frequently impossible distinctly to refute them, or to gain a hearing to the refutation. But if the calumniators are detected and exposed, they plead authority and the King’s privilege! They assume a natural superiority over you, as if, being of a different party, you were of an inferior species, and justly liable to be tortured, worried, and hunted to death, like any other vermin. They have a right to say what they please of you, to invent or propagate any falsehood or misrepresentation that suits their turn. The greater falsehood, the more merit; the more barefaced the imposture, the more pious the fraud. You are a Whig, a reformer—does not that of itself imply all other crimes and misdemeanours? That being once granted, they have a clear right to heap every other outrage, every other indignity, upon you as a matter of course; and you cannot complain of that which is no more than a commutation of punishment. You are an enthusiast in the cause of liberty: does it not follow that you must be a bad poet? You are against Ministers; is it to be supposed that you can write a line of prose without repeated offences against sense and grammar? If it be once admitted that you are an opposition writer of some weight and celebrity, it follows, of course, that the government scribbler should get a carte blanche to fill up your character and pretensions, life, parentage, and education. Your mind and morals are, in justice, deodands to the Crown, and should be handed over to the court critic to be dissected without mercy, like the body of a condemned malefactor. The disproportion between the fact and the allegation only points the moral the more strongly against you; for the odiousness of your conduct, in differing with men in office and their sycophants, is such, that no colours can be black enough to paint it; and if you are not really guilty of all the petty vices and absurdities imputed to you, it is plain that you ought to be so, to answer to their theory, and as a fiction in loyalty, for the credit of church and state. You are a bad subject, they pretend: that you are a bad writer and bad man, is a self-evident consequence that will be at once admitted by all the respectable and well-disposed part of the community. You are entitled, in short, neither to justice nor mercy: and he who volunteers to deprive you of a livelihood or your good name by any means, however atrocious or dastardly, is entitled to the thanks of his own country.

One of their most common expedients is, to strew their victim 227over and over with epithets of abuse, and to trust to the habitual association between words and things for the effect of their application. There was an instance of this, some little time ago, in a well-known paper, with which we shall exemplify our doctrine. It was in reference to the assault made on Sir Hudson Lowe by young Las Casas.

‘A French lad, of the name of Las Casas, the son of one of Buonaparte’s Counts, waylaid Sir Hudson Lowe in the street on Tuesday, and struck him, because Sir Hudson did his duty properly, as an English Governor, at St. Helena, and as keeper of the miscreant of whom he had the charge. The Chronicle put forth yesterday a letter without an address, said to be from the boy himself, signed Baron ——, something. In this he confesses the assault, which, in default of other witnesses, will substantiate the fact, and consign him, as soon as the thief-takers can catch him, no doubt to the pleasing recreation of the tread-mill for a given time.’

We pass over the terms ‘miscreant,’—‘fellow,’ &c.; but there is a refinement, in one part of this paragraph, worth notice. It is said, as if casually, that the ‘thief-takers were after him.’ What! had he been accused of picking pockets, of shop-lifting, or petty larceny? No; but though the fact was known to be quite different, the feeling, it was thought, would be the same. His offence would be transferred, by the operation of this choice expression, to the class of misdemeanors which thief-takers are employed to look after; and thus young Las Casas, for resenting the unworthy treatment of his father and old master, has an indirect imputation fastened on him, by which he is confounded in the imagination with felons and housebreakers, and other persons for whom the ‘tread-mill’ is a suitable punishment! Such is the force of words—the power of prejudice—and the means of poisoning public opinion.

Take another illustration in a native instance. A man of classical taste and attainments appears to be editor of an Opposition Journal. He publishes (it is the fault of his stars) an elegant and pathetic poem. The first announcement of the work, in a Ministerial publication, sets out with a statement, that the author has lately been relieved from Newgate—which gives a felon-like air to the production, and makes it necessary for the fashionable reader to perform a sort of quarantine against it, as if it had the gaol-infection. It is declared by another critic, in the same pay, to be unreadable from its insipidity, and afterwards, by the same critic, to be highly pernicious and inflammatory—a slight contradiction, but no matter! This, and fifty other inconsistencies, would all go down, provided they were equally malignant and unblushing. The writer may 228contradict himself as often as he pleases: if he only speaks against the work, his criticism is sound and orthodox. Nor is it only obnoxious writers on politics themselves, but all their friends and acquaintance, or those whom they casually notice, that come under this sweeping anathema. It is proper to make a clear stage. The friends of Cæsar must not be suspected of an amicable intercourse with patriotic and incendiary writers. A young poet comes forward: an early and favourable notice appears of some boyish verses of his in the Examiner, independently of all political opinion. That alone decides his fate; and from that moment he is set upon, pulled in pieces, and hunted into his grave by the whole venal crew in full cry after him. It was crime enough that he dared to accept praise from so disreputable a quarter. He should have thrown back his bounty in the face of the donor, and come with his manuscript in his hand, to have poetical justice dealt out to him by the unbiassed author of the Baviad and Mæviad! His tenderness and beauties would then have been exalted with faint praise, instead of being mangled and torn to pieces with ruthless, unfeeling rage; his faults would have been gently hinted at, and attributed to youth and inexperience; and his profession, instead of being made the subject of loud ribald jests by vile buffoons, would have been introduced to enhance the merit of his poetry. But a different fate awaited poor Keats! His fine fancy and powerful invention were too obvious to be treated with mere neglect; and as he had not been ushered into the world with the court-stamp upon him, he was to be crushed as a warning to genius how it keeps company with honesty, and as a sure means of inoculating the ingenuous spirit and talent of the country with timely and systematic servility! We sometimes think that writers are alarmed at the praises that even we bestow upon them, lest it should preclude them from the approbation of the authorized sources of fame!

This system thus pursued is intended to amount, and in fact does amount, to a prohibition to authors to write, and to the public to read any works that have not the Government mark upon them. The professed object is to gag the one, and hoodwink the others, and to persuade the world that all talent, taste, elegance, science, liberality and virtue, are confined to a few hack-writers and their employers. One would think the public would resent this gross attempt to impose on their understandings, and encroach on their liberty of private judgment. When a gentleman is reading a new work, of which he is beginning to form a favourable opinion, is it to be borne that he should have it snatched out of his hands, and tossed into the dirt by a retainer of the literary police? Can he be supposed to pick it up 229afterwards, either to read himself, or to lend it to a friend, sullied and disfigured as it is? But the truth we fear is, that the public, besides their participation in the same prejudices, are timid, indolent, and easily influenced by a little swaggering and an air of authority. They like to amuse their leisure with reading a new work; and if they have more leisure, have no objection to fill it up with listening to an abuse of the writer. If they approve of candour and equity in the abstract, they do not disapprove of a little scandal and tittle-tattle by the by. They take in a disgusting publication, because it is ‘amusing and clever’—that is, full of incredible assertions which make them stare, and of opprobrious epithets applied to high characters, which, by their smartness and incongruity, operate as a lively stimulus to their ordinary state of ennui. This happens on the Sunday morning; and the rest of the week passes in unravelling the imposture, and expressing a very edifying mixture of wonder and indignation at it. Such a paper was detected, not long ago, in the fabrication of a low falsehood against a most respectable gentleman, who was said to have proposed a dinner and rump and dozen, in triumph over the death of Lord Castlereagh. This was said to have taken place in a public room, so that the exposure of the falsehood was immediate and complete. Not long before, it put a leading question to a popular member for the city, as if some ill-conduct of his had caused his father’s death: it was shown that this gentleman’s father had died before he was born! Is it to be supposed that the writer knew the facts? We should rather think not. He probably neither knew nor cared any thing about them. It was his vocation to hazard the dark insinuation, and to trust to chance and the malice of mankind for its success. The blow was well meant, though it failed. But was it not a blow to the paper itself? Alas, no; it still blunders on; and the public gape after it, half in fear half in indignation. It slanders a virtuous lady; it insults the misfortunes of a Noble House; it rakes up the infirmities of the dead; it taints (for whatever it touches it contaminates) the unborn. No matter. They or their family had sinned in being Whigs—and there are still men in England, it would appear, who think that this is the way by which differences of opinion should be revenged or prevented.

It used to be the boast of English gentlemen, that their political contentions were conducted in a spirit, not merely of perfect fairness, but of mutual courtesy and urbanity; and that, even among the lower orders, quarrels were governed by a law of honour and chivalry, which proscribed all base advantages, and united all the spectators against him by whom a foul blow was given or attempted. We trust that this spirit is not yet extinguished among us; and that it will 230speedily assert itself, by trampling under foot that base system of mean and malignant defamation, by which our Periodical Press has recently been polluted and disgraced. We would avoid naming works that desire nothing so much as notoriety; but it is but too well known, that the work of intimidation and deceit, of cruel personality and audacious fabrication, has been carried on, for several years, in various periodical publications, daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly,—that it has been urged with unrelenting eagerness in the metropolis, in spite of the public discountenance of the leaders of the party which it disgraces by its pretended support; and then propagated into various parts of the country, for purposes of local annoyance. It is equally well known and understood too, that this savage system of bullying and assassination is no longer pursued from the impulse of angry passions or furious prejudices, but on a cold-blooded mercenary calculation of the profits which idle curiosity, and the vulgar appetite for slander, may enable its authors to derive from it. Where this is to stop, we do not presume to conjecture,—unless the excess leads to the remedy, and the distempered appetite of the public be surfeited, and so die. This is by no means an unlikely, and, we hope, may be a speedy consummation. In the mean time, the extent and extravagance of the abuse has already had the effect, not only of making individual attacks less painful or alarming, but even, in many cases, of pointing out to the judicious the proper objects of their gratitude and respect. For ourselves, at least, we do not hesitate to acknowledge, that, when we find an author savagely and perseveringly attacked by this gang of literary retainers, we immediately feel assured, not only that he is a good writer, but an honest man; and if a statesman is once selected as the butt of outrageous abuse in the same quarter, we consider it as a satisfactory proof that he has lately rendered some signal service to his country, or aimed a deadly blow at corruption.

We have put ourselves out of breath with this long lecture on the great opprobrium of our periodical literature,—and dare not now go on to the ticklish chapter of Reviews. We do not, however, by any means renounce the design; and hope one day to be enabled to resume it, and to astonish our readers with a full and ingenuous account of our own merits and demerits, and those of our rivals.

231

LANDOR’S IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS

Vol. xl.] [March 1824.

This work is as remarkable an instance as we have lately met with of the strength and weakness of the human intellect. It displays considerable originality, learning, acuteness, terseness of style, and force of invective—but it is spoiled and rendered abortive throughout by an utter want of temper, of self-knowledge, and decorum. Mr. Landor’s mind is far from barren in feeling or in resources; but over the natural, and (what might be) the useful growth of these, there every where springs up a luxuriant crop of caprice, dogmatism, extravagance, intolerance, quaintness, and most ludicrous arrogance,—like the red and blue flowers in corn, that, however they may dazzle the passenger’s eye, choke up the harvest, and mock the hopes of the husbandman. We are not ignorant of the school to which our author belongs; and could name other writers who, in the course of a laborious life, and in productions numerous and multiform—some recent and suited to the times, some long and luckily forgotten,—in odes, inscriptions, madrigals, epics,—in essays, histories and reviews,—have run into as many absurdities, and as many extremes: But never did we see, bound up in the same volume, close-packed, and pointed with all the significance of style, the same number of contradictions, staring one another in the face, and quarrelling for the precedence. Mr. Landor’s book is a perfect ‘institute and digest’ of inconsistency: it is made up of mere antipathies in nature and in reasoning. It is a chef-d’œuvre of self-opinion and self-will, strangling whatever is otherwise sound and excellent in principle, defacing whatever is beautiful in style and matter.

If it be true (as has been said) that

‘Great wits to madness nearly are allied,’

we know few writers that have higher or more unequivocal pretensions in this way than the author of the ‘Imaginary Conversations.’ Would it be believed, that, trampling manfully on all history and tradition, he speaks of Tiberius as a man of sentiment, who retired to Capri merely to indulge a tender melancholy on the death of a beloved wife: and will have it that Nero was a most humane, amiable, and deservedly popular character—not arguing the points as doubtful or susceptible of question, but assuming them, en passant, as most absolute and peremptory conclusions—as if whatever was contrary to common sense and common feeling carried conviction on the face of it? In the same page he assures us, with the same oracular tranquillity, 232that the conflagration of Rome, and the great fire of London, were both wise and voluntary measures, arising from the necessity of purifying the cities after sickness, and leaving no narrow streets in their centres! and on turning the leaf, it is revealed to us, that ‘there is nothing in Rome, or in the world, equal to—the circus in Bath!’ He spells the words foreign and sovereign, ‘foren’ and ‘sovran,’ and would go to the stake, or send others there, to prove the genuineness of these orthographies, which he adopts on the authority of Milton; and yet he abuses Buonaparte for being the ape of Antiquity, and talking about Miltiades. He cries up Mr. Locke as ‘the most elegant of English prose writers,’ for no other reason (as we apprehend) than that he has often been considered as the least so; and compares Dr. Johnson’s style to ‘that article of dress which the French have lately made peace with’ (a pair of pantaloons), ‘divided into two parts, equal in length, breadth, and substance, with a protuberance before and behind.’ He pronounces sentence upon the lost works of two ancient writers, Democritus and Menander, that the former would be worth all the philosophical remains of antiquity, and the latter not be worth having,—precisely because he can know nothing about the matter; the will to decide superseding the necessity of any positive ground of opinion, and the spirit of contradiction standing him in lieu of all other conviction. Boileau, according to our critic, had not a particle of sense, wit, or taste: Pope, to be sure, was of a different opinion—and we take it to be just possible that Boileau would have thought himself indemnified by the homage of the one for the scorn of the other! He speaks of Pitt as a poor creature, who did not see an inch before him, and of Fox as a charlatan; and says modestly in reference to some history he is writing, that he trusts ‘Posterity will not confound him with the Coxes and the Foxes of the age.’ It would be rather too much in his own manner perhaps to say, that no one who could write this sentence, will ever write a history—but we hazard the conjecture notwithstanding—and leave it to time to decide. He announces that Alfieri was the greatest man in Europe, though his greatness has not yet been generally acknowledged. This, however, is exactly the reason that Mr. Landor vouches for it, because whether he was so or not, rests solely on his ipse dixit. It is a fine thing to be one of the oracles of Fame! With equal modesty and candour he declares literary men to be as much superior to lords and kings as these last are to the meanest of their vassals. In a dialogue between Prince Maurocordato and General Colocotroni, he wishes the Greeks to substitute the bow for the use of fire-arms; and to this experimental crotchet, we suspect, he would sacrifice the Greek cause,—or any 233other. He has a hit at Lord Byron, and another at Mr. Thomas Moore, and a compliment to Lady Morgan. It is hard to say which he hates most—the English Government or the French people—Buonaparte or the Bourbons. He considers Buonaparte as a miracle, only because no man with so little talent ever gained such an ascendancy; and certainly with the qualifications our author allows him, he must have dealt with the Devil to do what he did; and, as if determined to conciliate no party and have all the world against him, he takes care to inform the reader at the same time, that in the most remarkable English victory in the last fifty years, ‘the prudence and skill of the commander (Wellington) were altogether wanting.’ He brings it as a proof of Buonaparte’s stupidity, that ‘he knew nothing of judicial astrology, which hath certain laws assigned to it, and fancied he could unite it with atheism, as easily as the iron crown with the lilies.’ He tells us, that ‘he did his utmost in pursuing this tyrant to death, recommending and insisting on nothing less:’ but that now he is dead, ‘he is sorry for it.’ So hot, indeed, is he on this scent, that he is for bringing Louis XIV. to life, in order to have him ‘carted to condign punishment in the Place de Grêve, or at Tyburn.’ We cannot understand this coincidence in the proposed fate of two persons so different; nor how Mr. Landor should call ‘the battle of Waterloo the most glorious to the victors since that of Leuctra,’ while he recommends a resort to tyrannicide, and points out its objects, to get rid of the legitimate consequences of that battle; nor why he should strike ‘his marble table with his palm,’ or call his country names—‘degenerate Albion,’—‘recreant slave,’ &c. &c. for not aiding ‘in the cause of freedom in Greece,’ when she has his thanks and praise for putting down the principle, at one blow, all over the world! Kings and nations, however, do not change like whiffling politicians. The one are governed by their prejudices, the other by their interests;—Mr. Landor and his friends by the opinion of the moment, by a fit of the spleen, by the first object that stirs their vanity or their resentment.

The work before us is an edifying example of the spirit of Literary Jacobinism,—flying at all game, running a-muck at all opinions, and at continual cross-purposes with its own. To avoid misconstruction, however, we should add, that we mean by this term, that despotism of the mind, which only emancipates itself from authority and prejudice, to grow impatient of every thing like an appearance of opposition, and to domineer over and dictate its sudden, crude, violent, and varying opinions, to the rest of the world. This spirit admits neither of equal nor superior, follower nor precursor: ‘it travels in a road so narrow where but one goes abreast.’ It claims a monopoly 234of sense, wit, and wisdom. To agree with it is an impertinence: to differ from it a crime. It tramples on old prejudices: it is jealous of new pretensions. It seizes with avidity on all that is startling or obnoxious in opinions, and when they are countenanced by any one else, discards them as no longer fit for its use. Thus persons of this temper affect atheism by way of distinction; and if they can succeed in bringing it into fashion, become orthodox again, in order not to be with the vulgar. Their creed is at the mercy of every one who assents to, or who contradicts it. All their ambition, all their endeavour is, to seem wiser than the whole world besides. If they are forced to adopt a common-place, they exaggerate it into a paradox, by their manner of stating it. So, in the ‘Imaginary Conversations,’ we learn, that ‘for every honest Italian, there are,’ not ten, or a hundred, but ‘a hundred thousand honest Englishmen.’ They hate whatever falls short of, whatever goes beyond, their favourite theories. In the one case they hurry on before to get the start of you; in the other, they suddenly turn back, to hinder you, and defeat themselves. It is not the love of truth, or of mankind, that urges them on—but the love of distinction; and they run into every extreme, and every folly, in order to indulge their overweening self-complacency and affected singularity.

An inordinate, restless, incorrigible self-love, is the key to all their actions and opinions, extravagancies, and meannesses, servility and arrogance. Whatever sooths and pampers this they applaud; whatever wounds or interferes with it they utterly and vindictively abhor. If an author is read and admired, they decry him; and if he is obscure or forgotten, or unintelligible, they extol him to the skies. But if they should succeed in bringing him into notice, and fixing him in the firmament of fame, they soon find out that there are spots in the sun, and draw the cloud of envy over his merits. A general is with them a hero, if he is unsuccessful or a traitor; if he is a conqueror in the cause of liberty, or a martyr to it, he is a poltroon. Whatever is doubtful, remote, visionary in philosophy, or wild and dangerous in politics, they fasten upon eagerly, ‘recommending and insisting on nothing less;’—reduce the one to demonstration, the other to practice, and they turn their backs upon their own most darling schemes, and leave them in the lurch immediately. With them everything is in posse, nothing in esse. The reason is, that they would have others take all their opinions implicitly from their infallibility: if a thing has grounds or evidence of its own to rest upon, so that they are no longer called in like prophets, to vouch for its truth, this is a sufficient excuse for them to discard it, and to look out for new terræ incognitæ to exercise their quackery and second-sight upon. 235So they cry up a protegé of their own, that nobody has ever heard of, as a prodigious genius, while he does nothing to justify the character they give of him, and exists only through the breath of their nostrils;—let him come forward in his own person, encouraged by their applause, and convince the world that he has something in him, and they immediately set to work to prove that he has borrowed all his ideas from them,—and is besides a person of bad moral character! They are of the church-militant; they pull down, but they will not build up, nor let any one else do it. They devote themselves to a cause, to a principle while it is in doubt or struggling for existence;—let it succeed, and they become jealous of it, and revile and hate the man by whom it has risen, or by whom it stands, like a triumphal arch over the ruins of barbaric thrones! For any one to do more for a cause than they have done, to be more talked of than they are, is a piece of presumption not hastily to be forgiven.

We consider the spirit which we have here attempted to analyze, as maintained in a state of higher concentration in this work than in any other we have for some time seen. Some of Mr. Southey’s lucubrations contain pretty good samples of it; but in him it is ‘dashed and brewed’ with other elements. He has been to court, is one of a firm, and mixes something of the cant of methodism with his effusions. But Mr. Landor keeps a private still of his own, where the unrectified spirit remains in its original vigour and purity,—cold indeed, and without the frothy effervescence of its first running, but unabated in activity, strength and virulence. We have pointed out what we regard as the ‘damning sin’ of this work; and having thus entered our protest, and guarded the reader against its mischievous tendency, we hold ourselves at liberty to extract what amusement or instruction we can from it. We are far from wishing to represent our author as ‘to every good word and work reprobate.’ On the contrary, we think he is naturally prone to what is right, but diverted from it by the infirmity we speak of. He has often much strength of thought, and vigour and variety of style; and we should be mortified, indeed, and deserving of mortification, if the petty provocation he has attempted to give us, could deter us from doing him that justice. He is excellent, whenever excellence is compatible with singularity. It is the fault of the school to which he belongs, not that they are blind to truth, or indifferent to good—but truth to be welcome must be a rare discovery of their own; they only woo her as a youthful bride; and are too soon satiated with the possession of what they desire, out of fickleness, or as the gloss of novelty wears off—or sue out a divorce from jealousy, and a dread of rivals in the favour of their former mistress!

236This was the reason, whatever might be the pretext, why the same set of persons raised such an outcry against Buonaparte, and alone insisted on his assassination. They had no great objection to what he was doing—but they could not bear to think that he had done more than they had ever dreamt of. While they were building castles in the air, he gave law to Europe. He carved out with the sword, what they had only traced with the pen. ‘Never,’ says Mr. Landor, ‘had been such good laws so well administered over a considerable portion of Europe. The services he rendered to society were great, manifold, and extensive.’ But these services were hateful in their eyes—because he aggrandized himself in performing them. The power he wielded, the situation he occupied, excited their envy, much more than the stand he made against the common enemy, their gratitude. They were ready enough at all times to pull down kings, but they hated him worse who trampled, by his own might, on their necks—as more rivals to themselves, as running in the same race, and going farther in it. Any service, in short, any triumph is odious in their eyes, be it over whom, or in favour of what it will. Their great idol now is Washington; but this is because he acted upon comparatively a narrow theatre, and belongs to a people whose greatness is rather prospective than present; and also, because there is something in his mechanical habits and cold formality that appeases their irritable spleen.

The Dialogues are thirty-six in number, and on a great variety of curious and interesting topics. The style of the period is sometimes well imitated, without being mimicked; and a good deal of character, and sometimes of humour, is thrown into the tone of the different speakers. We give the following, between Roger Ascham and Lady Jane Gray, as one of the most pleasing, and as a relief to the severity and harshness of our introductory speculation.

‘Ascham. Thou art going, my dear young lady, into a most awful state: thou art passing into matrimony and great wealth. God hath willed it so: submitt^[15] in thankfulness. Thy affections are rightly placed and well distributed. Love is a secondary passion in those who love most, a primary in those who love least. He who is inspired by it in a great degree, is inspired by honour in a greater: it never reaches its plenitude of growth and perfection, but in the most exalted minds.... Alas! alas!

‘Jane. What aileth my virtuous Ascham? what is amiss? why do I tremble?

‘Ascham. I see perils on perils which thou dost not see, although 237thou art wiser than thy poor old master. And it is not because Love hath blinded thee, for that surpasseth his supposed omnipotence, but it is because thy tender heart having always leaned affectionately upon good, hath felt and known nothing of evil. I once persuaded thee to reflect much; let me now persuade thee to avoid the habitude of reflection, to lay aside books, and to gaze carefully and steadfastly on what is under and before thee.

‘Jane. I have well bethought me of all my duties: O how extensive they are! what a goodly and fair inheritance! But tell me, wouldst thou command me never more to read Cicero and Epictetus and Polybius? the others I do resign unto thee: they are good for the arbour and for the gravel walk: but leave unto me, I beseech thee, my friend and father, leave unto me, for my fire-side and for my pillow, truth, eloquence, courage, constancy.

‘Ascham. Read them on thy marriage-bed, on thy childbed, on thy death-bed! Thou spotless, undrooping lily, they have fenced thee right well! These are the men for men: these are to fashion the bright and blessed creatures, O Jane, whom God one day shall smile upon in thy chaste bosom.... Mind thou thy husband.

‘Jane. I sincerely love the youth who hath espoused me; I love him with the fondest, the most solicitous affection. I pray to the Almighty for his goodness and happiness, and do forget, at times, unworthy supplicant! the prayers I should have offered for myself. O never fear that I will disparage my kind religious teacher, by disobedience to my husband in the most trying duties.

‘Ascham. Gentle is he, gentle and virtuous; but time will harden him: time must harden even thee, sweet Jane! Do thou, complacently and indirectly, lead him from ambition.

‘Jane. He is contented with me and with home.

‘Ascham. Ah, Jane, Jane! men of high estate grow tired of contentedness.

‘Jane. He told me he never liked books unless I read them to him. I will read them to him every evening: I will open new worlds to him, richer than those discovered by the Spaniard: I will conduct him to treasures.... O what treasures!... On which he may sleep in innocence and peace.

‘Ascham. Rather do thou walk with him, ride with him, play with him, be his faery, his page, his every thing that love and poetry have invented; but watch him well, sport with his fancies; turn them about like the ringlets round his cheeks; and if ever he meditate on power, go, toss up thy baby to his brow, and bring back his thoughts into his heart by the music of thy discourse. Teach him to live unto God and unto thee: and he will discover that women, like 238the plants in woods, derive their softness and tenderness from the shade.’ II. 54.

We must say we think this Dialogue is written con amore. It is imbued with the very spirit of some of those old writers, where ‘all is conscience and tender heart.’ Mr. Landor’s over-anxious mind reposes on the innocence of youth and beauty, on the simplicity of his subject, on the reverence due and willingly paid, because silently exacted, to age and antiquity! Even the quaintness, the abruptness, the wanderings and the puerility, are delightful, and happily characteristic. While we are in good humour with our author, we will extract another conversation of the same period, and distinguished by the same vein of felicitous imitation, in the sentiment of which we also go along with him heart and hand,—that between Elizabeth and Burleigh, on the trite subject of Spenser’s pension.

‘Elizabeth. I advise thee again, Churlish Cecil, how that our Edmund Spenser, whom thou calledst most uncourteously a whining whelp, hath good and solid reason for his complaint. God’s blood! shall the lady that tieth my garter and shuffleth the smock over my head, or the lord that steddieth my chair’s back while I eat, or the other that looketh to my buck-hounds lest they be mangy, be holden by me in higher esteem and estate than he who hath placed me among the bravest of past times, and will as safely and surely set me down among the loveliest in the future?

‘Cecil. Your highness must remember he carouseth fully for such deserts.... A hundred pounds a year of unclipt monies, and a butt of canary wine.^[16]

‘Elizabeth. The monies are not enow to sustain a pair of grooms and a pair of palfreys, and more wine hath been drunken in my presence at a feast. The monies are given to such men, that they may not incline nor be obligated to any vile or lowly occupation; and the canary, that they may entertain such promising Wits as court their company and converse; and that in such manner there may be 239alway in our land a succession of these heirs of Fame. He hath written, not indeed with his wonted fancifulness, nor in learned and majestical language, but in homely and rustic wise, some verses which have moved me; and haply the more so, inasmuch as they demonstrate to me that his genius hath been dampened by his adversities. Read them.

‘Cecil. How much is lost when neither heart nor eye

Rose-winged Desire or fabling Hope deceives;

When boyhood with quick throb hath ceased to spy

The dubious apple in the yellow leaves;

‘When, springing from the turf where youth reposed,

We find but deserts in the far-sought shore;

When the huge book of Faery-land lies closed,

And those strong brazen clasps will yield no more.

‘Elizabeth. The said Edmund hath also furnished unto the weaver at Arras, John Blaquieres, on my account, a description for some of his cunningest wenches to work at, supplied by mine own self, indeed as far as the subject-matter goes, but set forth by him with figures and fancies, and daintily enough bedecked. I could have wished he had thereunto joined a fair comparison between Dian ... no matter ... he might perhaps have fared the better for it ... but poet’s wits, God help them! when did they ever sit close about them? Read the poesy, not over-rich, and concluding very awkwardly and meanly.

‘Cecil. Where forms the lotus, with its level leaves

And solid blossoms, many floating isles,

What heavenly radiance swift-descending cleaves

The darksome wave! unwonted beauty smiles

‘On its pure bosom, on each bright-eyed flower,

On every nymph, and twenty sate around....

Lo! ’twas Diana ... from the sultry hour

Hither she fled, nor fear’d she sight nor sound.

‘Unhappy youth, whom thirst and quiver-reeds

Drew to these haunts, whom awe forbade to fly,

Three faithful dogs before him rais’d their heads,

And watched and wonder’d at that fixed eye.

‘Forth sprang his favorite ... with her arrow-hand

Too late the Goddess hid what hand may hide,

Of every nymph and every reed complain’d,

And dashed upon the bank the waters wide.

240‘On the prone head and sandal’d feet they flew—

Lo! slender hoofs and branching horns appear!

The last marred voice not even the favorite knew,

But bayed and fastened on the upbraiding deer.

‘Far be, chaste Goddess, far from me and mine,

The stream that tempts thee in the summer noon!

Alas, that ‘vengeance dwells with charms divine....

‘Elizabeth. Psha! give me the paper: I forwarned thee how it ended ... pitifully, pitifully.

‘Cecil. I cannot think otherwise than that the undertaker of the aforecited poesy hath choused your Highness; for I have seen painted, I know not where, the identically same Dian, with full as many nymphs, as he calls them, and more dogs. So small a matter as a page of poesy shall never stir my choler, nor twitch my purse-string.

‘Elizabeth. I have read in Plinius and Mela of a runlet near Dodona, which kindled by approximation an unlighted torch, and extinguished a lighted one. Now, Cecil, I desire no such a jetty to be celebrated as the decoration of my court: in simpler words, which your gravity may more easily understand, I would not, from the fountain of Honour, give lustre to the dull and ignorant, deadening and leaving in ‘cold obstruction’ the lamp of literature and genius. I ardently wish my reign to be remembered: if my actions were different from what they are, I should as ardently wish it to be forgotten. Those are the worst of suicides, who voluntarily and prepensely stab or suffocate their fame, when God has commanded them to stand up on high for an ensample. We call him parricide who destroys the author of his existence: tell me, what shall we call him who casts forth to the dogs and birds of prey, its most faithful propagator and most firm support? The parent gives us few days and sorrowful; the poet many and glorious: the one (supposing him discreet and kindly) best reproves our faults; the other best remunerates our virtues. A page of poesy is a little matter—be it so—but of a truth I do tell thee, Cecil, it shall master full many a bold heart that the Spaniard cannot trouble—it shall win to it full many a proud and flighty one, that even chivalry and manly comeliness cannot touch. I may shake titles and dignities by the dozen from my breakfast-board—but I may not save those upon whose heads I shake them from rottenness and oblivion. This year they and their sovran dwell together, next year they and their beagle. Both have names, but names perishable. The keeper of my privy seal is an earl—what then? The keeper of my poultry-yard is a Cæsar. In 241honest truth, a name given to a man is no better than a skin given to him: what is not natively his own, falls off and comes to nothing. I desire in future to hear no contempt of penmen, unless a depraved use of the pen shall have so cramped them, as to incapacitate them for the sword and for the council-chamber. If Alexander was the Great, what was Aristoteles who made him so? who taught him every art and science he knew, except three, those of drinking, of blaspheming, and of murdering his bosom-friends. Come along: I will bring thee back again nearer home. Thou mightest toss and tumble in thy bed many nights, and never eke out the substance of a stanza; but Edmund, if perchance I should call upon him for his counsel, would give me as wholesome and prudent as any of you. We should indemnify such men for the injustice we do unto them in not calling them about us, and for the mortification they must suffer at seeing their inferiors set before them. Edmund is grave and gentle,—he complains of Fortune, not of Elizabeth,—of courts, not of Cecil. I am resolved, so help me God, he shall have no further cause for his repining. Go, convey unto him these twelve silver-spoons, with the apostols on them, gloriously gilded; and deliver into his hand these twelve large golden pieces, sufficing for the yearly maintenance of another horse and groom;—besides which, set open before him with due reverence this bible, wherein he may read the mercies of God towards those who waited in patience for his blessing; and this pair of cremisin silken hosen, which thou knowest I have worne only thirteen months, taking heed that the heelpiece be put into good and sufficient restauration at my sole charges, by the Italian woman at Charing-Cross.’ I. 91.

We think that this is very pleasant and brave ‘fooling,’ and that our author has hit off the familiar pedantic tone of the Maiden Queen well. The sentiment with which Elizabeth seems in the foregoing Dialogue, to regard the Muses as among her Maids of Honour, and the patronage she is ready to extend to poets as the most agreeable and permanent class of court-chroniclers, must be considered as characteristic of the person and the age, and not attributed to the author. His literary fierté is quite in the tone of the present age, nor can he be suspected of representing poets as destined to nothing higher than to be danglers upon the great. He has put his opinion on this subject beyond a doubt. In a very different style, he makes Salomon, the Florentine Jew, thus address Alfieri, the tragic poet.

‘Be contented, Signor Conte, with the glory of our first great dramatist, and neglect altogether any inferior one. Why vex and torment yourself about the French? They buzz and are troublesome while they are swarming; but the master will soon hive them. Is 242the whole nation worth the worst of your tragedies? All the present race of them, all the creatures in the world which excite your indignation, will lie in the grave, while young and old are clapping their hands or beating their bosoms at your Bruto Primo. Consider, to make one step further, that kings and emperours should, in your estimation, be but as grasshoppers and beetles,—let them consume a few blades of your clover, without molesting them, without bringing them to crawl on you and claw you. The difference between them and men of genius is almost as great, as between men of genius and those higher Intelligences who act in immediate subordination to the Almighty. Yes, I assert it, without flattery and without fear, the Angels are not higher above mortals, than you are above the proudest that trample on them.’

We think Mr. Landor’s friend, the poet-laureate, cannot do better than turn this passage into hexameter verse, and present it as his next Birth-day Ode. The author’s dislike of the French has here inspired him with a contempt for emperors and kings, and with an admiration for men of genius. He sets out with a fit of the spleen, rises to the sublime, and ends in the mock-heroic. We do not soar so high. Without pretending to settle the precedence between poets and any higher order of Intelligences, we certainly think they have something better to do than to varnish over state-puppets, and hold them up to the gaze of posterity. Yet this menial use of their talents seems to have been the highest which even persons like Elizabeth formerly contemplated in their patronage of them. If Spenser had merely distinguished himself by his flattering and fanciful portraits of his royal mistress, we should think no more of him now than of ‘the lady that tied on her garter.’ He has entitled himself to our gratitude, by introducing us into the presence of his mistress, Fancy, the true Faery Queen, ‘the fairest princess under sky;’ and showing us the purple lights of Love and Beauty reflected in his tremulous page, like evening skies in pure and still waters. What is it that the poets of elder times have indeed done for us, besides paying awkward compliments and writing fulsome dedications to their patrons? They spread out a brighter heaven above our heads, a softer and a greener earth beneath our feet. They do in truth ‘paint the lily,’ they ‘throw a perfume on the violet, and add another hue unto the rainbow.’ From them the murmuring stream borrows its thoughtful music; they steep the mountain’s head in azure, and the nodding grove waves in visionary grandeur in their page. Solitude becomes more solitary, silence eloquent, joy extatic; they lend wings to Hope, and put a heart into all things. Poetry hangs its lamp on high, shedding sweet influence; and not an object in nature is seen, 243unaccompanied by the sound of ‘famous poets’ verse.’ They add another spring to man’s life, breathe the balm of immortality into the soul, and by their aid, a dream and a glory is ever around us. Queen Elizabeth ordered Shakespear to continue Falstaff. He has indeed been continued; for he has come down to us, and is living to this day! Otway would have thought it a great thing to have had Venice Preserved patronised, and a box taken by a dutchess on the night of its first appearance. But is this ‘the spur that the clear spirit doth raise?’ Is it for this that we envy him, or that so many would have wished like him to live, even though doomed as the consequence, like him to die? No, but for the sake of those thousand hearts that have melted with Belvidera’s sorrows, for those tears that have streamed from bright eyes, and that young and old have shed so many thousand times over her fate! This is the spur to Fame, this is the boast of letters, that they are the medium through which whatever we feel and think (that we take most pride and interest in) is imparted and lives in the brain, and throbs in the bosoms of a countless multitude. We breathe the thoughts of others as they breathe ours, like common air, in spite of the distance of place, and the lapse of time. Mind converses everywhere with mind, and we drink of knowledge as of a river. We ourselves (Mr. Landor will excuse the egotism of the transition) once took shelter from a shower of rain in a ruined hovel in the Highlands, where we found an old shepherd apparently regardless of the storm and of his flock, reading a number of the Edinburgh Review! Need we own that this little incident inspired us with a feeling of almost poetical vanity? From that time the blue and yellow covers seemed to take a tinge from the humid arch, that spanned the solitude before us, and our thoughts were commingled with the elements!

The Conversation between Oliver Cromwell and Walter Noble on the beheading of Charles I., displays a good deal of the blunt knavery of old Nol, and a mixture of honour and honesty in the old Roundhead. We here also find some touches that illustrate Mr. Landor’s political views. Thus Cromwell is made to say, ‘I abominate and detest kingship;’—to which Noble answers—‘I abominate and detest hangmanship; but in certain stages of society, both are necessary. Let them go together, we want neither now.’ The same dramatic appreciation of the intellect of the speakers, and of the literary tone of the age, appears in the Eighth Conversation, between King James I. and Isaac Casaubon; and in many of the others, whether relating to ancient or modern times. The verisimilitude does not arise from a studied use of peculiar phrases, or an exaggeration of peculiar opinions, but the writer seems to be well versed in the productions and 244characters of the individuals he brings upon the stage, and the adaptation takes place unconsciously and without any apparent effort. A remarkable instance of this occurs in the dialogue between Ann Boleyn and Henry VIII., into which the rough, boisterous, voluptuous, cruel and yet gamesome character of that monarch, whose gross and pampered selfishness has but one parallel in the British annals, is transfused with all the truth and spirit of history—or of the Author of Waverley! In the Fourth Dialogue ‘between Professor Porson and Mr. Southey,’ we meet with an assertion which we think Mr. Landor would hardly have hazarded in the lifetime of the former, and to which we cannot assent, even to show our candour. ‘Take up,’ says the Laureate, ‘a poem of Wordsworth’s, and read it; I would rather say, read them all; and knowing that a mind like yours must grasp closely what comes within it, I will then appeal to you whether any poet of our country, since Shakespear, has exerted a greater variety of powers, with less strain and less ostentation.’ Some persons (we do not know whether the poet himself is of the number) have, we understand, compared Mr. Wordsworth to Milton; but we did not expect ever to see a resemblance suggested between him and Shakespeare. If ever two men were the antipodes of each other, they are so; and even this we think is paying compliment enough to Mr. Wordsworth. We are also of opinion, in the very teeth of the dictum of the brother bard, that let his other merits be what they may, no English writer of any genius has shown less variety of powers, with more effort and more significance of pretension. Mr. Southey, in the Imaginary Conversation, goes on to lay before the Professor ‘an unpublished and incomplete poem’ of the same author, the Laodamia, and recites it, but only in imagination; after which some ingenious verbal criticisms are made on one or two particular passages. This poem has since been published; and we have no hesitation in saying, that it is a poem the greater part of which might be read aloud in Elysium, and that the spirits of departed heroes and sages might gather round and listen to it! It is sweet and solemn; and, though there is some poorness in the diction, and some indistinctness in the images, it breathes of purity and tenderness, in very genuine and lofty measures. We have great pleasure in saying this—but we must be permitted to add, that we are firmly persuaded Mr. Wordsworth would never have written this classical and manly composition, but for those remarks on his former style, for which we have the misfortune to fall under the lash of Mr. Landor’s pen.