LITERATURE OF THE ATHENS.
_Pol._ What do you read, my lord?
_Ham._ Words, words, words!
_Pol._ What is the matter, my lord?
_Ham._ Between who?
_Pol._ I mean the matter that you read, my lord.
_Ham._ Slanders, Sir.
SHAKSPEARE.
IF there be nothing by which the Athens really profits so much as her
law, there is nothing of which she is so ready, or so willing to boast,
as her literature. That is, as it were, her Benjamin--her youngest-born
child--the darling of her dotage, so to speak; and it is loved and
lauded in proportion to the lateness of its appearance.
In the whole literature of Scotland there is, indeed, a wonderful
hiatus,--an interruption, for which it would be impossible to account,
if one were not to look at her political and religious history.
Previous to the Reformation, the bards of Scotland sung as sweetly,
and her monks were as full and fabulous in their chronicles as those
of any other part of the world; and that dawn of intellect--that
day-spring of the mind, shone as warmly and as well upon the bleak
hills of Caledonia, as upon the green pastures of more fertile lands.
The classical elegance, and the keen and searching satire of Buchannan,
the stern and stubborn eloquence of Knox, and the polished but manly
sentences of Melville, will bear a comparison with any thing that
appeared contemporaneously in other countries: but after them, there
comes a dreary and desolate blank; and while other nations are rapidly
running the career of knowledge, adding book to book, and illustrious
name to illustrious name, Scotland appears not in the catalogue, except
in a manner which is even more melancholy than if she appeared not at
all. How is this to be accounted for? In theory it would be impossible:
with the facts before one, it becomes the easiest thing in the world.
No sooner had the morning of the Reformation shone upon Scotland, than
her horizon was obscured by the clouds of civil war; and scarcely
were her men prepared for taking up the pen for the information and
amusement of their fellows, when they were obliged to draw the sword
for their defence; and that energy which in happier times would have
trimmed the lamp of science, and tuned the harp of song, was obliged
to struggle night and day, if so be that it could preserve but a spark
of liberty, or even keep the life. That despotism and debauchery, which
Mary the Regent and Mary the Queen attempted, through their French
connexions, and by means of their French mercenaries, to introduce
into Scotland, was of itself sufficient to render the intellectual
improvement of the country stationary for an age; and though the
resistance with which it met tended not only to preserve but to
strengthen the free spirit of the people, it forbade the cultivation of
the arts of peace. The conduct of James, all shuffling and pedantic as
it was, did not, while he remained in Scotland, tend to make matters
improve; and upon his removal to England, Scotland may be said to
have been given up to that delegated despotism of influence, which,
under various forms and names, has continued to afflict her to the
present day, and must so continue till an uniformity of civil and
political law be established over the whole island. From the beginning
of the troubles under Charles, to the Revolution in 1688, the state
of Scotland was such as to leave literature entirely out of the
question. The great body of the people--at least of that part of them
who otherwise might have studied, or rewarded the study of literature,
were not only driven from all places congenial for literary purposes,
but even from the fastnesses of the mountains, and the caves of the
rocks; and though a Scotchman was occasionally returning from foreign
parts to let his countrymen know what the rest of the world were doing,
terror and oppression were too general for promoting any imitation.
At that time, too, one half the extent of Scotland was in a state of
the most abject ignorance: the feudal law, in the Highlands, was in
full exercise; and when all the chiefs could not read, it was not to
be expected that there would be much taste for literature among their
vassals. Thus, it was not till the termination of the second rebellion
in favour of the Stuarts, in 1745, that the people of Scotland
generally began to have a literary taste. A sure foundation for such a
taste had, indeed, been previously laid, in the provision that within
every parish in Scotland there should not only be a school, but a
school so regulated as that the poorest, as well as the most opulent,
might reap the benefit of it; but up to this period, and indeed for
some time after, the literature of those schools was confined to the
catechisms of the church and the reading of the Bible; and if any
literary work found its way into a Scotch farm-house or cottage, if
large, it was a treatise on mystic or polemical divinity, and if small,
it was a legendary ballad, or a sermon by some pious divine, whose
style was not the most classical, or his language the most easily
understood.
It is not, indeed, fifty years since there was any thing like a regular
bookseller, or a printing-press employed for literary purposes, in
the Athens. Before that time, there were persons who sold Bibles, and
catechisms, and ballads, and penny almanacks, in divers nooks about
Libberton Wynd and the Lucken Booths; and there were printers who,
when a process before the Court of Session became too voluminous, or
when the parties could not afford to pay for as many written copies as
were necessary, put the eloquence of the advocates, and the wisdom of
the judges, into types. An occasional parson, too, would become so far
enamoured of his own powers of holding forth, as to have a sermon, or
homily, upon some question of the catechism, or point of the confession
of faith, printed and published; but previous to the year 1780, it was
very rare indeed to find an Athenian bibliopole speculating in any
literary work, the price of which was to be more than sixpence; and as
for paying a man for literary labour, the Athenians would as soon have
thought of paying a Lapland witch for procuring foul weather.
With regard to the literature of the Athens, it is worthy of remark
that the time of George the Third corresponded with that of Anne in
England; and that when the style of writing south of the Tweed was
changing to another, if not to a better model, the wits of the Athens
were imitating the Tatlers and Spectators.
The era of the French revolution was a remarkable one in the
literature, if not particularly of the Athens, at least of the rest of
Scotland; and the reading of the pamphlets of that time, which probably
the people would have been as well without, led to the establishment of
subscription libraries throughout the country, and made those readers,
and in some measure critics, in general literature, whose whole course
of study had previously been theological. But until very recently, the
periodical literature of the Athens was hardly deserving the name. The
Athenian newspapers were always dull and spiritless, and while the
politics of the Athens remain what they are, there is no chance that
they shall become better. In the provincial parts of Scotland, I met
with several journals written with great taste, spirit, and liberality;
but in the Athens, there is only one worth naming,--the “Scotsman;” and
that, whether through fear of the party or from what other cause, I
know not, I found not to be such as I would have expected. I found it a
sensible production, certainly, and as much superior to the others as
can well be imagined; but it is by no means what would be expected from
people pretending to so much intellect, and freedom, as the party by
whom it was supported.
If the “Scotsman” had appeared in London, it would not have produced
almost any sensation. It would have been allowed to take its place
far down in the list of weekly journals; but in the Athens, I was
told that it excited no small degree of alarm among the official men.
Just about that time, a blow had been given to that bank influence by
which they had been in the habit of crushing every opponent to their
measures, whom they could not get indicted and brought to trial; and
this, together with the strong and general feeling against them that
was at that time spread over the country, and the appearance of a free
journal, even at the very seat of their power, which dared not merely
to dispute their principles, but even to expose their practice, was
enough to alarm those who were not accustomed to any opposition, and
whose hands were understood to be not over and above clean. When the
early numbers of the “Scotsman” were distributed over the city, spies
were appointed to dog the messengers, and take a note of those at whose
houses copies were delivered; and it was generally believed that the
lists were transcribed for the edification both of the crown lawyers
and of the Athenian magistrates.
But the greatest and most extraordinary step that ever was taken in
the periodical literature of the Athens, or indeed of any country, was
the appearance of the Edinburgh Review,--a work, the boldness, spirit,
and originality of which were at the time altogether unprecedented,
and which never yet have been, and probably never will be, equalled.
The Edinburgh Review was happy both in the time and the manner of its
appearance. Periodical literature had been quite stagnant in the Athens
from the time of the Loungers and Mirrors; and they had become too
trifling for the awakened and agitated spirit of the age. In London
there were some reviews, but the best of them were in the hands of
religious sectaries, who puzzled themselves and plagued their readers
with questions which nobody could solve, and nobody would have taken
the trouble to solve, even if they could. The whole of them were either
tame or timid; and folks continued to buy them rather with a view of
keeping their sets unbroken till chance should introduce amendment,
than from any desire to read them. The war which had just terminated
had been expensive, and excepting those for whom offices had been
obtained, there was nobody with whom it had ever been popular; and
the war that was beginning, or begun, had not much to recommend it.
There was, indeed, much to say against the conduct of the Continental
courts, and even against that of the English administration; people
were well prepared and anxious to hear it; and there was no publication
of the day of sufficient interest in any way to divide or divert the
attention. The Review came like thunder; and to give it the more
effect, it came like thunder when the air is still, and when men are
listening.
Great, however, as was the talent displayed in the Review, and wide and
wonderful as was the sensation which it produced upon its very first
appearance, the Athens had little merit in it, except the mere name.
The publisher, though he subsequently rose as high in that trade as
any English publisher of the time, was then but a young man, not much
known, and not much recognised or esteemed by the Athenians; the editor
was also a young man, recently returned from England; and the most
spirited contributors to the very early numbers, had by no means had
their minds formed upon the Athenian model. The effect which the Review
produced was also not perhaps so great in the Athens as in London;
and it was only when it had taken its place in the literary world,
and the acknowledgment of it was an honour, that the Athenians began
to identify it with themselves, and at no time was the identification
general,--nor could the whole talent of the Athens, even when in its
best days, have supported the Review for a single year.
Besides, though the real ability of the Edinburgh Review was great,
the vast popularity which it so speedily obtained, and the brilliant
course which it ran, were unquestionably more owing to the novelty of
its plan, and the fact of its advocating those political principles
which were agreeable to the majority of people at the time, than to its
merits.
One cause of the rise of the Edinburgh Review, and perhaps also one
cause of its comparative fall, is the uniformity with which it has
all along followed the Whig party. Before that party got into office,
and when, in consequence of their boldness and lofty pretensions as
oppositionists, the opinions of the Edinburgh Review,--at least, its
political opinions,--which were all along the ones upon which the
greater part of its celebrity rested,--were by many received as the
infallible oracles of truth; and when the trial which the country had
had of that party shook them a little in public estimation, though
the Review received a shock along with them, it still retained a
considerable portion of its influence. But, as the opinions of men
became a little more liberal, and the frequency of disappointment
made them more and more suspicious of all parties, some Jesuitical
articles in the Review, on the subjects of representation and reform,
shook the confidence of the people in it; while, much about the same
time, or, at least, not long afterwards, the failure of its prophecies
with regard to the ultimate success of Buonaparte, laid it open to
the attacks of the Tories. For the first of these suspicions, there
appeared to be but too much foundation; and though the latter was more
Jesuitical than just, still it was the interest of the parties to press
it to extremity. When the Edinburgh Review predicted the ultimate
triumph of Napoleon, it did not, of course, anticipate, that he would,
with the example of Charles XII. before him, undertake so hazardous
an enterprise as a winter campaign into the interior of Russia; but
the Review did not enter a caveat against such an excursion; and,
therefore, it was held as prophesying in the face of this as well as of
all the other chances.
I have noticed those circumstances with a view of showing, not only
that the absolute literary merits of the Edinburgh Review were not the
sole cause of its popularity, but that even though they had, the merit
does not in whole, or even in the greater part, belong to the Athens.
The Athens never could, of her own will, ability, and patronage,
support a single literary man; and it could not well be expected that
she could, for any length of time, support a literary work.
The first of these positions may be established by a reference to the
history of the whole literary men of the Athens, as well as to the
state which they are in at the present time; and the second, besides
being a necessary and legitimate deduction from the first, may be
confirmed by an appeal to the facts.
Allan Ramsay was the first Athenian writer, after the hiatus of which
I have spoken; and Allan addressed himself as much to the taste
and foibles of the Athens as it was possible for one of so limited
education and limited powers to do. Allan made a comfortable living;
but he did not make that as a poet; he did it, first, as a hairdresser,
and then as a bookseller, and as the keeper of a circulating library,
which, being the first of the kind in the Athens, proved a most
fortunate speculation. The works of Colin Maclaurin, and some of the
other illustrious men, of which the Athens never was worthy, were put
into circulation as much in the way of charity to their families,
as from any love for those sciences and arts of which they were the
ornaments.
Robert Ferguson was pre-eminently the poet of the Athens. Born within
her walls, he devoted his muse to the chanting of her praises; and how
did she reward her tuneful son? Why, she blamed him because he wrote
verses rather than law papers; she liked his songs, and she sung them;
but she would give him no reward for his labour; and poor Ferguson,
neglected, heart-broken, and starved, ended his days in a mad-house;
and his ungrateful step-dame, the Athens,--that city, which, if one
would be silly enough to believe her, is the model, the encourager,
and the rewarder, of all taste, would not do for him, what England,
even in her worst and most worthless times, did for the poets whom
she starved,--she would not give him a monument,--no, not so much as
an unhewn stone, to let it be known that one grave in the Canon-gate
church-yard contained holier dust than that of a baron bailie.
Even when the immortal Burns came, to shame a selfish,
undiscriminating, and ungrateful land, the Athens made not the
slightest attempt to wash out the foul stain which she had given
herself in the case of Ferguson. Burns put her in mind of that stain,
not only by the erection of the little tomb-stone over his unfortunate
brother; but in a monument more durable,--a poem, which, had there
been any soul within the cold ribs of the Athens, would have harrowed
it with remorse, that might have been a stimulus to repentance. But
the Athens took it all with that sang-froid which is the concomitant
and the characteristic of reckless and self-sufficient dulness; and
no where in the whole history of literature, is there an instance of
neglect more mean, and ingratitude more disgraceful, than that of the
Athens, for Robert Burns. She lured him, by fair promises, within her
siren and seductive walls. Day after day, and week after week, she
dipt him deeper in that dissipation, of which she knows better how to
set the example than any city between Kent and Caithness. She showed
him about, from tavern to tavern, from one evening party to another,
and through every one of her hundred scenes and sinks of vice; and
this precious work she continued, till the prospects which he had left
behind were blasted, and his own powers and habits spoiled; and the
moment she had done this, she had the baseness, not only to drive him
helpless back upon the world, but to slander his name for practices
which none but herself had taught him.
In a word, when I look at the literary men, whom evil stars have
confined to the Athens, or, in any way made to look to her for
patronage, I find a few who have succeeded, because it has not been in
her power to injure them; and all upon whom she has had power, lost and
ruined. Even Jeffrey, if he had not had his fees to bear him out, and
if his journal had not been patronised in London, might have written
his Review in vain; ay, and Scott, who perhaps persevered longer in
writing in obscurity than any other author of the present times,
would long ere now have been mute or a maniac, had he not possessed
some property, held a public office, and been a fierce and forward
party-man. Among them all, there has never been an author in the Athens
who has lived even decently by literature alone,--as little is there,
at this moment, within the whole of her compass, a single person above
starvation, who has not some other occupation or emolument, than that
of a literary man.
The Edinburgh Review, the only periodical work of any consequence in
the Athens which professes to be liberal, and which rests its character
upon its merits, and affords a revenue to any body, does not support
one literary man in the city, nor is there one Athenian contributor to
it, of whom literature is the only or even the chief means of support.
Even the editor, well as it is alleged he is paid for his labour, finds
the wrangling of the bar a more lucrative employment, addicts himself
more and more to it, and more and more withdraws himself from the
Review; while the place of those Athenian writers of the higher class
who have died away, without being followed by successors worthy of
them in their avowed professions, are not replaced in the journal by
Athenian writers at all, but by mere hacks of London, who have been so
long upon the town that nobody sets much store by their lucubrations.
The oldest literary journal in the Athens,--the one which was once
named after the whole of Scotland, and which is now named peculiarly
after the Athens, is perhaps the one which should be taken as the
proper test of her literary powers.
Professing to be of no party in politics, but to set forth the
literature of the day in an independent and gentleman-like style,
and having the stamp of hoary eld, and the connexion of the foremost
bookseller of the Athens to recommend and push it into notice, one
would suppose that the Edinburgh Magazine would be elegant in its
structure, and extensive in its circulation. But it is neither the one
nor the other. When I was in the Athens, the reputed editor was one of
those miserable and pretending quacks who can write nothing, and whose
taste and opinion are not worth a single straw,--a fellow, who would
indeed pretend to an intimacy with the illustrious men both of England
and of Scotland, but who never, by any chance, could have been in
company with one of them; and who had been appointed to this miserable
editorship, because nobody who could write a single page, or give a
sensible opinion upon a single book or subject, could be found, that
would have any thing to do with it.
The great success of the Edinburgh Review tempted the cupidity of
other booksellers; and, as there was no possibility of contending with
it in the same class of writing, or on the same side of politics, a
journal of a novel description, not only in the Athens, but in the
world generally, was begun. The celebrity of the Review, and the
superiority of the Whig advocates, had given a Whig bias, at least as
far as speech was concerned, to all the young lawyers of any spirit
and pretensions. To so great a degree had this been carried, that even
the sons of the most super-ultra devotees to the existing system spoke
against sinecures, and hinted that there were such things as the rights
of the people. Great alarm was the consequence; because the holders of
office found that they would be spoiled of their honours and emoluments
through the liberality of their own children. The fear was, no doubt,
groundless; for had they taken themselves as a test of patriotism,
they would have found that office and emolument are not things of such
feeble power. But they were alarmed, and cast about to devise means
for reclaiming the wandering boys back to the good old and profitable
path. There was a sort of simultaneous movement on the part of the boys
themselves. They had taken up the Whig song, just because it was the
popular one at the time; and they had looked for a share of that public
approbation and renown, which had for a considerable time been bestowed
upon the more illustrious of the Whigs. But they were disappointed:
either they had made an undue estimate of their own powers, or the
demands already established upon this approbation and renown were as
great as it could bear. Considering the quarter whence these unnatural
infants of place came, they were probably suspected,--at any rate,
they were left for a few years, dancing attendance at the heels of the
Whigs, in a neglect more contemptuous and complete than was wise in the
one party, or fair toward the other.
This happened just about the time when there was a sort of movement
against the Whigs on the part of the Tories, and a sort of movement
from them on the part of the people. An appetite was, in short,
created, which called for food different from the sapless husk of the
Edinburgh Magazine, and the hard and political fare of the Review.
Various causes conspired to give body to this appetite; and Blackwood’s
Magazine was the thing produced. Still the party would not have had
courage actually to start that Magazine; for there was a sort of
belief afloat, that anybody, who would venture to publish in the Athens
that which was not Whig, would fail, and anybody who would attack the
Whigs would be mauled for his pains. The Magazine was started by very
plain and unpretending--at any rate, unwarlike Athenian men of letters.
They had a misunderstanding with Blackwood; he got rid of them, and the
Athens began to taste the racy productions of the Tory press. Even this
cannot be reckoned an Athenian production; for England and Ireland had
to be ransacked ere contributors could found, and even yet, Blackwood,
with the aid of his brother the bailie, is editor.
When a sufficient number of those who, as was supposed, would not be
kept back either by moral or by literary scruples, had been collected
together, the campaign was commenced. At first, they seemed to have
only two objects in view,--the vilification of all persons who were
supposed to be either directly or indirectly connected with the Whigs,
more especially with the Edinburgh Review; and a disposition to boast
of their own debauchery, immorality, and want of principle, in order to
disarm any one who might attack them upon that ground.
Slander, especially if it be levelled against persons whom the vulgar
account it boldness to attack, and couched in careless and indifferent
terms, is always sure to please somebody; and, from what I saw and
heard, there are no people to whom it is more agreeable than to certain
parties in the Athens. Accordingly, those opinions which, for half an
age, the people of the Athens had been taught to receive, without so
much as questioning their soundness, were turned into burlesque and
ribaldry; and those persons to whom they had been accustomed to look
up with respect and veneration, were ridiculed and abused. As those
opinions and those persons were alike obnoxious to the ruling faction
in the Athens--though that faction had never ventured to express its
dislike--they received the new style of writing with no common degree
of delight and gratitude. Themselves and their cause had been so
long and so severely cudgelled and exposed, that they had given up
all hopes of having any thing said in their favour. Therefore, they
regarded the productions of those, who took up that line of conduct
merely because it was the only one in which they had even a chance of
success, as hearty and devoted champions; and the writers, finding that
they met with more patronage, and patronage which promised to lead
to more advantageous results than they had calculated, became more
and more decidedly partisans, and waxed more bold and barefaced in
their attacks. A coarse and clumsy imitation of the biblical style,
which would have passed unnoticed, but for its local applications,
and its gross personality, gave very general offence, and for that
reason procured them a notoriety which otherwise they would probably
never have obtained; and some cruel insinuations against a venerable
personage whom the whole country had looked up to as a model, both of
a man and of a philosopher, were believed to give him so much pain,
when the decay of nature had all but put an end to a long career of
usefulness and celebrity, that they fancied no one was too low or too
high for feeling their attacks.
It must be allowed that both novelty and talent were displayed in those
productions,--at least in some of them. The style and manner were
altogether new: a sort of virgin-soil, as it were, had been turned up
for culture; and though by far the greater portion of its produce was
weeds, and weeds too of the rankest description, yet they had all the
vigour and greenness of a first crop. Periodical writing had for a
long time consisted of abstract disquisitions, or tales which had no
decided locality, or connexion with individual and existing character;
and whatever may have been the practices of the writers, they kept up
a regular show of sobriety and morality in their writings. But the
writers of Blackwood’s Journal not only seasoned their productions
with unsparing personality, but affected to be adepts in debauchery,
and pretended to keep no secrets from their readers, even in the most
unseemly of their carousals. Having manufactured ideal names and
characters for themselves, they treated these in the most unceremonious
manner; and this, in some measure, took off the edge of that
indignation which otherwise would have been felt at their treatment
of real characters. More than any thing, they succeeded; and success
is generally received as the test not only of ability, but of a good
cause, in literature as well as in war. If Blackwood’s Magazine had
never got into considerable circulation, the writers in it would have
been regarded as miserable and malicious rebels from the honest cause
of literature; but as they were in so far successful, they obtained in
some degree the renown of heroes.
Among those writers there were, unquestionably, some of talents far
superior to what may be supposed the average of those who contribute
to ordinary magazines; and though these for a time took part in the
ribald practices of the publication, and were pleased for a season with
that eclât which such practices are supposed to afford; yet still, new
in what might be considered as the most blamable perversions of their
talents, there were gleams of a better spirit, and promises that they
could not always follow the same course. That some of the best of them
have already done so, is apparent from the altered spirit of the later
numbers, in which there is an attempt at the same external appearance,
but a visible paucity in spirit; and the probability is that, ere long,
Blackwood’s Magazine, which has always had a considerable portion of
its articles from London, will gradually derive its supplies more and
more from that quarter, or dwindle to the same inanity as its monthly
brother of the Athens.
Indeed, the whole tenor of Blackwood is of a description which cannot
be permanent. It offers no principle upon which the mind of an
unprejudiced and independent man can dwell at the time, and as little
to which any body can refer afterwards for the purpose of obtaining
information. Personality, if bold, daring,--or, to use one of its
own terms, _blackguard_ enough, is sure to make a noise at the time;
but its interest is short in proportion to its intensity. For the
philosophic discussion of any one subject, for the establishing of any
one principle in science, in morals, or in politics, or for any one
addition to the stock of human information, it is in vain to look back
at the book; and though people talk about it (and they talk less and
less about every successive number,) at the period of its appearance,
it may be supposed to pass of necessity into the same speedy oblivion
as the animosities or whims by which it was produced; and that future
men will have no more desire to know how written slander was managed in
the days of Blackwood, than they have at present to know in what terms
the ladies of Billingsgate rated each other when the Tower of London
was a seat of royalty.
Some may indeed suppose, that as this species of writing is not
kept back by any inflexibility of principle from bending round all
the sinuosities, and accommodating itself to all the crooked paths
of corruption, it will continue to find enough of support from the
official men of the Athens, and their coadjutors and underlings
throughout Scotland; this, however, is by no means the case. Those
persons have no love for literature of any description: their deeds
are such as will not bear any kind of light, and the whole of their
hopes are centred in the one circumstance of the public’s being kept
in ignorance of what they are doing. Like criminals under trial, their
only chance is in an attempt to shake the credibility of the witnesses
against them; and if they attempt a direct defence of themselves, it
is sure to render their offences more palpable, and their condemnation
more certain. So long as public opinion remains, and the whole
appearances of the times give promise that it will continue to gather
strength rather than to decay--it is a tribunal to which none but those
who have a wish to stand well with the public will be disposed to
appeal; and therefore, how much soever the official men of the Athens
may have been gratified by the attempts which the writers in Blackwood
have made to traduce their political opponents, and turn them into
ridicule, there is nothing at which they would be so much alarmed, or
indeed have so much cause to be alarmed, as an attempt at their own
justification, even in the same pages. As long as such writers as those
in Blackwood confine themselves to personal attacks in the offensive
way, so long will they not be dreaded or disliked by that party of
which they endeavour to hold themselves out as the champions; but the
moment that they depart from this offensive mode of personal warfare,
and take a single position upon the real ground in dispute, from that
moment the whole of their batteries, whether they will or not, must
be turned against those whom they affect to defend. Thus, though they
may have been useful in effecting a momentary distraction of public
attention, they neither have, nor can they overturn a single principle
of those against whom their ribaldry is directed, nor establish one for
those whom they call their friends.
There is another thing against their permanence. Men, whether official
or not, are never fond of having that brought prominently forward in
which themselves do not excel. Now if one were to pitch upon the very
weakest point--the blank as it were in the official men of Scotland,
and of the Athens, that upon which one would pitch would be literature.
The civic part of them, from their education, their associates, and
the whole tenour of their lives, can neither love a book, nor, indeed,
know any thing about it; and if the opposition and liberal men of
the Athens, who after all are by very much the majority, are utterly
unable or unwilling to support even one literary man, it is not to be
supposed that the other party who are fewer in number, and ever fearful
of exposure, can have more ability or more disposition. No doubt, such
of the writers for Blackwood as know the extreme barrenness of the
ruling men in the Athens, in all matters of taste and information, and
the more fond and forcible predilection which they have for dining in
taverns and carousing in ale-houses, and who have marked that those
ears which are deaf as their kindred clay to every voice of elegance or
of criticism, are open as their mouths for a dinner, or their hands for
a bribe, when grossness usurps the place of taste, and ribaldry comes
in the stead of science,--no doubt those writers have risked a hope in
supplying husks for the Athenian swine; but though the deeds have been
immoral, the remembrance of them will not be immortal; and though there
may always be a few that, seeking their chief pleasure, and finding
their only renown in their own debauchery, are pleased to see deeds
worthless as their own,
“Register’d to fame eternal,
In deathless pages of diurnal;”
Yet even this would not have succeeded with the public generally, at
any period, and it perhaps could have had less chance at no period than
it has at present, when the rapid spread of intercourse and information
is, in spite of all official and other efforts to the contrary,
diffusing a more rational taste even down to the very humblest classes
of society. Men in office, however inferior and second-rate that office
may be, and however mean may be their own tastes, and grovelling their
own habits, will not--dare not, continue long to pride themselves in,
or even privately to encourage, that from which the peasantry turn
away in disgust; and, ere many additional years have been added to
the Kalendar, it will be found that those superior spirits who lent
themselves to this work for a time, in the hope that it would serve
them as a stepping-stone for getting into office, will become ashamed
of it in consequence of having obtained their objects, or disgusted,
because that which they must have felt as a degradation, has to them,
also, proved a deception.
But, whatever of good or of evil, of liveliness or of licentiousness,
of the misapplication of talent, or the miserable labour of that which
is no talent at all, may be found in the school of writing, of which
Blackwood’s Magazine hitherto forms the chief specimen, the Athens
assuredly has neither the merit nor the demerit of originating that
school; and if all support, except what the Athens could give it, were
to be withdrawn, the remainder of its existence would not exceed one
month.
Having heard a great deal about the intellectuality of the Athens, and
its superiority in genius, in taste, and in literature, above every
other city in the world, I made a point of examining, with all the
care and candour that I could exercise. I began too, with a strong,
yes, a very strong prejudice in its favour; for it had been rung
again and again in my ears, that, compared with what was to be found
here, the whole world beside was an empire of dulness. But my fond,
and as it proved to be my foolish prejudice, became less and less,
at every step; and, whether I would or not, I was compelled to see,
that the greater part of the name which somehow or other the Athens
has gotten, has been gotten through the unceasing brazen-frontedness
of her own self-idolatry. In various parts of the Athens, I found men
_pirouetting_ in small evolutions of what they call philosophy. One,
for instance, worshipping the wings of a butterfly; and another drawing
lines and circles upon a human skull, and measuring the talents and
propensities of the unknown owner very gravely with a pair of compasses
and scale; a third, taking up the visions of Robert Owen of New Lanark,
was bewildering himself in an attempt so to arrange the human race,
as that the square of the oblique diagonal of conduct should be equal
to the two squares of the base of nature, and the perpendicular of
education; a fourth was proving by coal and limestone, that the globe
had been boiled; and a fifth, by porphyry and basalt, that it had been
roasted. One learned professor, the very apex of the triangle of the
Athenian science,--who, in his time, has tested hell, as it were--has,
in the ardour of his inquiries after and into things hot and cold,
alternately deputed his
----------------“delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of the thick-ribb’d ice,”--
was reported to me, (for I did not _then_ see him,) not exactly
“To be imprisoned in the viewless wind,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world,”
but to have made one of the most singular experiments upon the said
winds themselves, that ever entered into a philosophic head. This
learned personage, whom the Athenian magistrates had at one time
refused to expel from the city “_cum avisamento eorum ministrorum_,”
upon the alleged ground of his being a conjuror, had made long and
laborious experiments in all sorts of heating and cooling, physical and
metaphysical. When other matters and fires were nearly exhausted with
him, it struck him that it would excite mortal wonder, and win immortal
renown, if he could bring atmospheric air to a red heat. He foresaw,
that if he should succeed in this experiment, it would be farewell to
both gas and steam; and there would be no need of dangerous boilers,
castiron pipes, smoking chimneys, and all the other casualties of the
new power and the new light. If this degree of temperature could be
communicated to the atmosphere, the fondest dreams of mankind would be
realized,--the midnight air might be rendered more glorious than the
sun; winter might be driven within the polar circle; the precinct of
the Holyrood might be made fragrant with spices, and fat with olives;
and the vine might clothe the now naked crags, green with never-fading
leaves, and purple with perennial grapes. That which promised so many
and so delightful advantages was worth trying, and so the philosophic
personage is reported to have gone about his experiment in this wise:--
He procured a bagpipe; and having dissected away the chanter, the
drones, and the bellows,--making the stumps secure with ligatures, he
carried the inflated bag to a neighbouring barn, and set two brawny
peasants a-threshing it with their flails, while he stood by, wishing
and wondering as to the result. What that result was, I was unable to
learn, and indeed I made not much inquiry respecting it,--and I mention
it only as one of the many instances in which I heard the Athenians
boast of their philosophy.
But if they have no literary men, as such, of whom they can boast, they
have about as little title to put on airs about their literary taste.
In that, as well as in all other matters, they are idolaters; and it
may be truly said of them, as was said of the people of the elder
Athens, that the most conspicuous of their altars is “to the Unknown
God.” So long as Jeffrey was deemed infallible, they ventured no
opinion upon any point, until they knew how he had delivered himself.
When, for instance, he had, as he thought, blasted the laurels of Byron
in the bud, the cry that ran through the Athens was, “What a silly
fool to attempt to write poetry? But the Review has done his business.
_He_ will write no more at any rate.” When the retribution of the
“Scotch Reviewers” was hurled back, the worshippers of the Athens were
astonished, but they said nothing. The fact is, that they neither have
opinions of their own in such matters, nor have they leisure to form
them.
The observations which I had occasion to make respecting the dramatic
taste of the Athenians are equally applicable to their taste, not only
in literature, but in every thing else. In youth their education is
too superficial, and when they grow up, the drudgery of the law, to
which so many of them are doomed, and which influences the habits of
the whole, together with that dissipation in which they indulge as
habitually and more deeply than any people with whom I am acquainted,
give a turn to their minds which is the very opposite of literary.
These causes will be more fully developed in the following chapter;
but there is one fact which is very remarkable, which the Athenians
themselves may as well be left to explain. Of the men who, from time
to time, have become illustrious in the Athens for their scientific or
literary attainments, hardly one has been born, and very few have been
educated, within her walls. They have almost uniformly been provincial
Scotchmen, and not a few of them have been students at the provincial
universities. So that while the Athens has not much to boast of in the
literary way, the little of which she can boast is not wholly her own.
Perhaps this is another of the desolations of the widowed metropolis.