CHAPTER I

Transcriber's Note

Variations in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been retained

except in obvious cases of typographical errors. Italics are shown

thus _italic_ and bold thus =bold=

The letter o written with a macron (straight line) above is marked

[=o].

DE QUINCEY'S COLLECTED WRITINGS

VOL. II

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND LITERARY REMINISCENCES

THE

COLLECTED WRITINGS

OF

THOMAS

DE QUINCEY

BY

DAVID MASSON

EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

VOL. II

LONDON

A. & C. BLACK, SOHO SQUARE

1896

[Illustration: Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

From a picture by Peter Vandyke in the National Portrait Gallery]

CONTENTS OF VOL. II

PAGE

EDITOR'S PREFACE 1

AUTOBIOGRAPHY CONTINUED FROM 1803 TO 1808--

CHAP.

I. OXFORD 9

II. GERMAN STUDIES AND KANT IN PARTICULAR 81

LITERARY AND LAKE REMINISCENCES--

CHAP.

I. A MANCHESTER SWEDENBORGIAN AND A LIVERPOOL

LITERARY COTERIE 113

II. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 138

III. THE LAKE POETS: WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 229

IV. THE LAKE POETS: WILLIAM WORDSWORTH AND

ROBERT SOUTHEY 303

V. THE LAKE POETS: SOUTHEY, WORDSWORTH, AND

COLERIDGE 335

VI. THE SARACEN'S HEAD 348

VII. WESTMORELAND AND THE DALESMEN: SOCIETY OF

THE LAKES 360

VIII. SOCIETY OF THE LAKES: CHARLES LLOYD 381

IX. SOCIETY OF THE LAKES: MISS ELIZABETH SMITH,

THE SYMPSONS, AND THE K---- FAMILY 403

X. SOCIETY OF THE LAKES: PROFESSOR WILSON: DEATH

OF LITTLE KATE WORDSWORTH 432

XI. RAMBLES FROM THE LAKES: MRS. SIDDONS AND

HANNAH MORE 446

EDITOR'S PREFACE

The matter of this volume breaks itself into two main divisions, as

follows:--

I.--AUTOBIOGRAPHY CONTINUED FROM 1803 TO 1808

Although De Quincey's Autobiography, so far as it was revised by

himself in 1853 for the Edinburgh Collective Edition of his writings,

stopped at 1803, when he went to Oxford, he left a continuation of that

Autobiography, accessible to those that might be curious about it, in

two old papers of his in _Tait's Edinburgh Magazine_. One of these,

bearing the continued general title "Sketches of Life and Manners from

the Autobiography of an English Opium-Eater," but with the sub-title

"Oxford," had appeared, in three successive parts, in the numbers of

the magazine for February, June, and August 1835; the other, forming

but a single article, had appeared in the number for June 1836, with

the simple title, "Autobiography of an English Opium-Eater continued,"

but without any sub-title, or any indication of its nature except what

might be conveyed by the head-lines,--"The German Language," "The

German Philosophic Literature," and "The Philosophy of Kant,"--at the

tops of the right-hand pages. As the two papers together carry on the

Autobiography from 1803 to 1808, they are reproduced in this volume

from the columns of the magazine as two chapters of De Quincey's

Autobiography additional to the Revised Autobiography contained in

the preceding volume. The first, and much the larger, is sufficiently

described by the title "Oxford," used as a sub-title for it in _Tait's

Magazine_. It is a careful and very readable account of the system

of Oxford life and education during the five years of De Quincey's

connexion with the University, with glimpses of himself, though not

so numerous or continuous as might be wished, as he moved obscurely

through the academic medium. The other chapter will take most readers

aback. Beginning in a popular vein, and even humorously, it turns

itself, through two-thirds of its extent, into a dissertation on Kant's

philosophy which is one of the toughest things that De Quincey ever

wrote. It is probably on this account that the American Collective

Edition of De Quincey, while gladly reprinting his Oxford paper, omits

this one altogether. That, however, is scarcely allowable. Nor is

it allowable to yield to the natural temptation which would suggest

the omission of the paper in the place where De Quincey put it, and

the reservation of it for some other place in the collection of his

writings where it might be in the company of other demons as abstruse

as itself. It belongs vitally to the autobiographic series, and to

that part of the autobiographic series which deals with De Quincey's

Oxford life from 1803 to 1808. It is as if De Quincey had said to his

readers--as, in fact, he does virtually say in the paper--"It was

during those five years that I betook myself to German studies, and

especially to studies in German Philosophy; they had an immense effect

upon me at the time, and a permanent influence afterwards; and, if

you would understand my subsequent life and mind, you must, at the

risk of a headache yourselves, listen at this point to a description

of the exact nature and symptoms of the headache they caused _me_." To

indicate as precisely as possible this autobiographic purport of the

paper, I have ventured, in the absence of any title to it by De Quincey

himself, to entitle it "German Studies and Kant in particular." It will

be of much interest to some readers; and others can skip it if they

choose.

II.--LITERARY AND LAKE REMINISCENCES.

Concurrently with the series of the expressly autobiographic papers

in _Tait's Magazine_, there had appeared in the same magazine another

series of papers by De Quincey, also autobiographic in a general sense,

but in a more indirect fashion.

Having known a number of remarkable persons in the course of his life,

some of them of great literary celebrity, it had occurred to him that a

series of sketches of these, from his own recollections and impressions

of them, partly in their relations to himself, but not exclusively

so, would be welcome, and might at all events be made instructively

De Quincey-like. He had begun with Coleridge, and had contributed

four papers of Reminiscences of Coleridge to the numbers of _Tait's

Magazine_ for September, October, and November 1834, and January 1835.

These, though necessarily autobiographic to a pretty large extent,

had been interjected into the series of his expressly autobiographic

articles in the magazine. Then, that expressly autobiographic series

having been finished in 1836 in the above-mentioned papers on his

Oxford life and his first German studies, he had ranged back, in an

article in the magazine for February 1837, for a recollection of

certain literary notabilities of Manchester and Liverpool whom he had

known or seen in his schoolboy days. After that, zig-zagging in his

memory for suitable additions, he had brought in,--sometimes under

cover of the standing general magazine title of "Sketches of Life

and Manners from the Autobiography of an English Opium-Eater," but

sometimes under independent titles,--accounts of other acquaintances of

his, either famous to all the world already, or about whom the world

might be inquisitive. Of these our concern in the present volume, for

chronological reasons, is with Wordsworth and his fellow-celebrities

of the Lake district, whether those that were resident there when De

Quincey first visited it in Coleridge's company in 1807, or those that

were resident there from 1809 onwards, when De Quincey had become a

Lakist too, and was domiciled permanently, as it seemed, close to

Wordsworth at Grasmere. To Wordsworth himself,--always De Quincey's

man of men, or at least poet of poets, of his generation,--there were

devoted three articles in _Tait's Magazine_ for January, February, and

April 1839, entitled "Lake Reminiscences: No. I. William Wordsworth,

No. II. William Wordsworth, No. III. William Wordsworth." These were

followed in July of the same year by a No. IV, entitled "William

Wordsworth and Robert Southey," and in August by a No. V, in which

Coleridge came back for some notice, and which was therefore entitled

"Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge." For the minor celebrities of

the Lakes, after these three _dii majorum gentium_, and for sketches

of Lake scenery and society generally, there was a relapse into the

older magazine title "Sketches of Life and Manners" etc.; and the seven

additional articles required for these straggled through the numbers of

_Tait's Magazine_ from September 1839 to August 1840.

Save that one of the articles so inventoried goes back beyond the Lake

period of De Quincey's life altogether, and that the main set of the

Coleridge articles treats Coleridge generally and apart from his Lakist

connexion, one might designate them collectively by that title of LAKE

REMINISCENCES which De Quincey did use for some of them. As it is,

however, the title LITERARY AND LAKE REMINISCENCES seems, on the whole,

the fittest.

One question remains. Whence are we to take the text of these LITERARY

AND LAKE REMINISCENCES left by De Quincey? For the largest number of

the included articles there is no option. They were not reprinted by

De Quincey in the Collective Edition of 1853-60, though he must have

contemplated reprinting them some time; and the text of them must

therefore be taken from the pages of _Tait's Magazine_, in which

they originally appeared. But for a portion of the Reminiscences, and

a very important portion, there is an option. De Quincey did reprint

in his Collective Edition the whole of his special set of Coleridge

Recollections, with the exception of the last article of the four,

throwing all the reprinted articles into one block, after somewhat

careful revision; and he reprinted also in the same way the whole set

of the special articles on Wordsworth, without any omission. These

main Coleridge and Wordsworth papers are therefore reproduced in our

present volume from De Quincey's own revised text of them,--with the

restoration, however, in the case of the Coleridge chapter, of that

fourth of the magazine articles on Coleridge which De Quincey omitted.

The omission was unnecessary; and, as the American Collective Edition

contains the omitted article, the present edition is entitled to the

same benefit. What, however, about the two minor papers of the Lake

Reminiscences which appeared as Nos. IV and V in _Tait's Magazine_

for July and August 1839, under the titles of "William Wordsworth

and Robert Southey," and "Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge,"

respectively? These also De Quincey reprinted in his Collective

Edition, after a fashion; but it was after a fashion which greatly

impaired their interest. He threw them, or rather parts of them, into

one, under the single title "Robert Southey," omitting a great deal of

what was liveliest and best in the original articles. This may have

been caused merely by his hurry at the time, in consequence of the

pressure of the printers for copy in any form; but possibly it had

another cause. De Quincey's Reminiscences of Coleridge, Wordsworth, and

Southey, on their first appearance in _Tait's Magazine_ between 1834

and 1840, had provoked a good deal of resentment among those concerned.

Coleridge was then dead; but Wordsworth and Dorothy Wordsworth were

still living; as was also Southey. Little wonder that the surviving

relatives of Coleridge felt aggrieved by the extreme frankness of some

of De Quincey's personal recollections of the dead sage, or that the

Wordsworth and Southey families were annoyed and offended on similar

grounds. Wordsworth, with his massive serenity, seems, indeed, to have

tossed the matter aside easily enough; but not so Southey. Carlyle

tells us that, when he first met Southey in London, Southey was full

of the subject of De Quincey's delinquencies in publishing so many

anecdotes of a confidential kind respecting Wordsworth, Coleridge,

and himself, and spoke on the subject in terms which Carlyle, who had

read the articles, thought needlessly angry and vehement. Something

of all this may have been in De Quincey's mind when, in reproducing

his Lake Reminiscences in 1853 for his Collective Edition, he came

to the two _Tait_ articles in which Southey had principally figured.

Hence, perhaps, though Southey had died in 1843, De Quincey's large

excisions from those articles, and his consolidation of them into one

paper, pleasant enough in the main, but comparatively insipid. It was

an editorial mistake on De Quincey's part, and must not bind us now.

The articles in their original livelier and more extensive magazine

form being irrevocable at any rate, and forming part and parcel of the

American Collective Edition, we have acted accordingly. We revert in

the present edition to the text of _Tait's Magazine_ for the particular

articles in question, and print them as they stood there, with their

separate titles.

* * * * *

Respecting the present volume as a whole, it will now be understood

that, while a portion of its contents consists of matter derived from

De Quincey's revised edition of 1853-60, considerably the larger

proportion consists of recovered magazine articles that have been

practically inaccessible hitherto to British readers. So composed, the

volume is certainly one of the richest specimens that could be offered

of De Quincey's general characteristics. There are ups and downs in it,

portions inferior to others in literary merit, and occasional lapses

into what may seem spiteful or in bad taste. All in all, however, it

illustrates most variously and most amusingly the shrewdness of De

Quincey's observations of men and things, the range and readiness

of his erudition, the subtlety and originality of his speculative

intellect, his faculty of poetic imagination, his power of mournful

pathos on the one hand and the most whimsical humour on the other, and

the marvellous versatility and flexibility of his style.

D. M.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

(_continued_)

FROM 1803 TO 1808

CHAPTER I

OXFORD

I[1]

[1] From _Tait's Magazine_ for February 1835.--M.

It was in winter, and in the wintry weather of the year 1803, that I

first entered Oxford with a view to its vast means of education, or

rather with a view to its vast advantages for study. A ludicrous story

is told of a young candidate for clerical orders--that, being asked by

the bishop's chaplain if he had ever "been to Oxford," as a colloquial

expression for having had an academic education, he replied, "No:

but he had twice been to Abingdon": Abingdon being only seven miles

distant. In the same sense I might say that once before I had been

at Oxford: but _that_ was as a transient visitor with Lord W----,[2]

when we were both children. Now, on the contrary, I approached these

venerable towers in the character of a student, and with the purpose

of a long connexion; personally interested in the constitution of the

University, and obscurely anticipating that in this city, or at least

during the period of my nominal attachment to this academic body, the

remoter parts of my future life would unfold before me. All hearts were

at this time occupied with the public interests of the country. The

"sorrow of the time" was ripening to a second harvest. Napoleon had

commenced his Vandal, or rather Hunnish war with Britain, in the spring

of this year, about eight months before; and profound public interest

it was, into which the very coldest hearts entered, that a little

divided with me the else monopolizing awe attached to the solemn act of

launching myself upon the world. That expression may seem too strong

as applied to one who had already been for many months a houseless

wanderer in Wales, and a solitary roamer in the streets of London.

But in those situations, it must be remembered, I was an unknown,

unacknowledged vagrant; and without money I could hardly run much risk,

except of breaking my neck. The perils, the pains, the pleasures, or

the obligations, of the world, scarcely exist in a proper sense for him

who has no funds. Perfect weakness is often secure: it is by imperfect

power, turned against its master, that men are snared and decoyed. Here

in Oxford I should be called upon to commence a sort of establishment

upon the splendid English scale; here I should share in many duties

and responsibilities, and should become henceforth an object of notice

to a large society. Now first becoming separately and individually

answerable for my conduct, and no longer absorbed into the general unit

of a family, I felt myself, for the first time, burthened with the

anxieties of a man, and a member of the world.

[2] _I.e._ Lord Westport. Sec vol. i. pp. 161-2 _et seq._--M.

Oxford, ancient Mother! hoary with ancestral honours, time-honoured,

and, haply, it may be, time-shattered power--I owe thee nothing! Of thy

vast riches I took not a shilling, though living amongst multitudes who

owed to thee their daily bread. Not the less I owe thee justice; for

that is a universal debt. And at this moment, when I see thee called

to thy audit by unjust and malicious accusers--men with the hearts of

inquisitors and the purposes of robbers--I feel towards thee something

of filial reverence and duty. However, I mean not to speak as an

advocate, but as a conscientious witness in the simplicity of truth;

feeling neither hope nor fear of a personal nature, without fee, and

without favour.

I have been assured from many quarters that the great body of the

public are quite in the dark about the whole manner of living in

our English Universities; and that a considerable portion of that

public, misled by the totally different constitution of Universities

in Scotland, Ireland, and generally on the Continent, as well as by

the different arrangements of collegiate life in those institutions,

are in a state worse than ignorant (that is, more unfavourable to

the truth)--starting, in fact, from prejudices, and absolute errors

of fact, which operate most uncharitably upon their construction

of those insulated statements, which are continually put forward

by designing men. Hence, I can well believe that it will be an

acceptable service, at this particular moment [1835], when the very

constitution of the two English Universities is under the unfriendly

revision of Parliament, when some roving commission may be annually

looked for, under a contingency which I will not utter in words (for

I reverence the doctrine of _[Greek: euphêmismos]_), far worse than

Cromwellian, that is, merely personal, and to winnow the existing

corporation from disaffection to the state--a Henry the Eighth

commission of sequestration, and levelled at the very integrity of

the institution--under such prospects, I can well believe that a true

account of Oxford _as it is_ (which will be valid also for Cambridge)

must be welcome both to friend and foe. And instead of giving this

account didactically, or according to a logical classification of the

various items in the survey, I will give it historically, or according

to the order in which the most important facts of the case opened

themselves before myself, under the accidents of my own personal

inquiry. No situation could be better adapted than my own for eliciting

information; for, whereas most young men come to the University under

circumstances of absolute determination as to the choice of their

particular college, and have, therefore, no cause for search or

inquiry, I, on the contrary, came thither in solitary self-dependence,

and in the loosest state of indetermination.

Every single point of my future position and connection, to what

college I would attach myself, and in which of the two orders open

to my admission I would enrol myself, was left absolutely to my own

election. My coming at all, in this year, arose out of an accident of

conversation. In the latter half of 1803, I was living with my mother

at the Priory of St. J----, a beautiful place which she had in part

planned, and built, but chiefly repaired out of a very ancient Gothic

monastery; when my uncle, a military man, on a visit to England, after

twenty-five years' absence in India, suddenly remarked, that in my case

he should feel it shameful to be "tied to my mother's apron-string,"

for was I not eighteen years old? I answered that certainly I was: but

what could I do? My guardians had the power to control my expenditure

until I should be twenty-one; and they, it was certain, would never

aid my purpose of going to Oxford, having quarrelled with me on

that very point. My uncle, a man of restless activity, spoke to my

mother immediately, I presume, for within one hour I was summoned to

her presence. Among other questions, she put this to me, which is

importantly connected with my future experience at Oxford, and my

coming account of it:--"Your guardians," she prefaced, "still continue

to me your school allowance of £100. To this, for the present, when

your sisters cost me such heavy deductions from my own income, I

cannot undertake to make any addition--that is, you are not to count

upon any. But, of course, you will be free to spend your entire Oxford

vacations, and as much time besides as the rules of your college will

dispense with your attendance, at my house, wherever that may be. On

this understanding, are you willing to undertake an Oxford life, upon

so small an allowance as £100 per annum?" My answer was by a cheerful

and prompt assent. For I felt satisfied, and said as much to my mother,

that, although this might sound, and might really prove, on a common

system of expenditure, ludicrously below the demands of the place,

yet in Oxford, no less than in other cities, it must be possible for

a young man of firm mind to live on a hundred pounds annually, if he

pleased to do so, and to live respectably. I guessed even then how the

matter stood; and so in my own experience I found it. If a young man

were known to be of trivial pursuits, with slight habits of study, and

"strong book-mindedness," naturally enough his college peers who should

happen to be idlers would question his right to court solitude. They

would demand a sight of his warrant of exemption from ordinary usages;

and, finding none, they would see a plain argument of his poverty.

And, doubtless, when this happens to be the sole characteristic point

about a man, and is balanced by no form of personal respectability, it

does so far lead to contempt as to make a man's situation mortifying

and painful; but not more so, I affirm, in Oxford than anywhere else.

Mere defect of power, _as_ such, and where circumstances force it into

violent relief, cannot well be other than a degrading feature in any

man's position. Now, in other cities, the man of £100 a-year never can

be forced into such an invidious insulation--he finds many to keep

him in countenance; but in Oxford he is a sort of monster--he stands

alone in the only class with which he can be compared. So that the

pressure upon Oxford predispositions to contempt is far stronger than

elsewhere; and, consequently, there would be more allowance due, if the

actual contempt were also stronger--which I deny. But, no doubt, in

every climate, and under all meridians, it must be humiliating to be

distinguished by pure defect. Now and for ever, to be weak is in some

sense to be miserable; and simple poverty, without other qualification

or adjunct, is merely defect of power. But, on the other hand, in

Oxford, at least, as much as in any other place I ever knew, talents

and severe habits of study are their own justification. And upon the

strongest possible warrant, viz., my own experience in a college then

recently emerging from habits of riotous dissipation, I can affirm that

a man who pleads known habits of study as his reason for secluding

himself, and for declining the ordinary amusements and wine parties,

will meet with neither molestation nor contempt.[3]

[3] This paragraph is omitted in the American reprint of the

_Tait_ paper, probably because it repeats information given

already. See the chapter entitled "The Priory, Chester," in Vol.

I, and especially the concluding pages of that chapter. As,

however, the paragraph contains some new particulars, and explains

what follows, I have retained it, the rather because it ought to

be the rule not to tamper with De Quincey's text on any such

occasion.--M.

For my part, though neither giving nor accepting invitations for

the first two years of my residence, never but once had I reason to

complain of a sneer, or indeed any allusion whatever to habits which

might be understood to express poverty. Perhaps even then I had no

reason to complain, for my own conduct in that instance was unwise; and

the allusion, though a personality, and so far ill-bred, might be meant

in real kindness. The case was this: I neglected my dress in one point

habitually; that is, I wore clothes until they were threadbare--partly

in the belief that my gown would conceal their main defects, but much

more from carelessness and indisposition to spend upon a tailor what

I had destined for a bookseller. At length, an official person, of

some weight in the college, sent me a message on the subject through

a friend. It was couched in these terms: That, let a man possess what

talents or accomplishments he might, it was not possible for him to

maintain his proper station in the public respect, amongst so many

servants and people servile to external impressions, without some

regard to the elegance of his dress. A reproof so courteously prefaced

I could not take offence at; and at that time I resolved to spend some

cost upon decorating my person. But always it happened that some book,

or set of books,--that passion being absolutely endless, and inexorable

as the grave,--stepped between me and my intentions; until one day,

upon arranging my toilet hastily before dinner, I suddenly made the

discovery that I had no waistcoat (or _vest_, as it is now called,

through conceit or provincialism) which was not torn or otherwise

dilapidated; whereupon, buttoning up my coat to the throat, and drawing

my gown as close about me as possible, I went into the public "hall"

(so is called in Oxford the public eating-room) with no misgiving.

However, I was detected; for a grave man, with a superlatively grave

countenance, who happened on that day to sit next me, but whom I did

not personally know, addressing his friend sitting opposite, begged to

know if he had seen the last Gazette, because he understood that it

contained an Order in Council laying an interdict upon the future use

of waistcoats. His friend replied, with the same perfect gravity, that

it was a great satisfaction to his mind that his Majesty's Government

should have issued so sensible an order; which he trusted would be

soon followed up by an interdict on breeches, they being still more

disagreeable to pay for. This said, without the movement on either side

of a single muscle, the two gentlemen passed to other subjects; and

I inferred, upon the whole, that, having detected my manoeuvre, they

wished to put me on my guard in the only way open to them. At any rate,

this was the sole personality, or equivocal allusion of any sort,

which ever met my ear during the years that I asserted my right to be

as poor as chose. And, certainly, my censors were right, whatever were

the temper in which they spoke, kind or unkind; for a little extra

care in the use of clothes will always, under almost any extremity of

poverty, pay for so much extra cost as is essential to neatness and

decorum, if not even to elegance. They were right, and I was wrong, in

a point which cannot be neglected with impunity.

But, to enter upon my own history, and my sketch of Oxford life.--Late

on a winter's night, in the latter half of December, 1803, when a

snow-storm, and a heavy one, was already gathering in the air, a lazy

Birmingham coach, moving at four and a half miles an hour, brought me

through the long northern suburb of Oxford, to a shabby coach-inn,

situated in the Corn Market. Business was out of the question at that

hour. But the next day I assembled all the acquaintances I had in

the University, or had to my own knowledge; and to them, in council

assembled, propounded my first question: What college would they,

in their superior state of information, recommend to my choice?

This question leads to the first great characteristic of Oxford, as

distinguished from most other Universities. Before me at this moment

lie several newspapers, reporting, at length, the installation in

office (as Chancellor) of the Duke of Wellington. The original Oxford

report, having occasion to mention the particular college from which

the official procession moved, had said, no doubt, that the gates

of University, the halls of University, &c., were at such a point

of time thrown open. But most of the provincial editors, not at all

comprehending that the reference was to an individual college, known by

the name of University College, one of twenty-five such establishments

in Oxford, had regularly corrected it into "gates of _the_ University,"

&c. Here is the first misconception of all strangers. And this feature

of Oxford it is which has drawn such exclamations of astonishment from

foreigners. Lipsius, for example, protested with fervour, on first

seeing this vast establishment of Oxford, that one college of this

University was greater in its power and splendour, that it glorified

and illustrated the honours of literature more conspicuously by the

pomps with which it invested the ministers and machinery of education,

than any entire University of the Continent.

What is a University almost everywhere else? It announces little more,

as respects the academic buildings, than that here is to be found the

place of rendezvous--the exchange, as it were, or, under a different

figure, the _palæstra_ of the various parties connected with the

prosecution of liberal studies. This is their "House of Call," their

general place of muster and parade. Here it is that the professors

and the students converge, with the certainty of meeting each other.

Here, in short, are the lecture-rooms in all the faculties. Well: thus

far we see an arrangement of convenience--that is, of convenience for

one of the parties, namely, the professors. To them it spares the

disagreeable circumstances connected with a private reception of their

students at their own rooms. But to the students it is a pure matter

of indifference. In all this there is certainly no service done to the

cause of good learning which merits a state sanction, or the aid of

national funds. Next, however, comes an academic library, sometimes a

good one; and here commences a real use in giving a national station

to such institutions, because their durable and monumental existence,

liable to no flux or decay from individual caprice, or accidents of

life, and their authentic station, as expressions of the national

grandeur, point them out to the bequests of patriotic citizens. They

fall also under the benefit of another principle--the conservative

feeling of amateurship. Several great collections have been bequeathed

to the British Museum, for instance--not chiefly _as_ a national

institution, and under feelings of nationality, but because, being

such, it was also permanent; and thus the painful labours of collecting

were guaranteed from perishing. Independently of all this, I, for

my part, willingly behold the surplus of national funds dedicated

to the consecration, as it were, of learning, by raising temples to

its honour, even where they answer no purpose of direct use. Next

after the service of religion, I would have the service of learning

externally embellished, recommended to the affections of men, and

hallowed by the votive sculptures, as I may say, of that affection,

gathering in amount from age to age. _Magnificabo apostolatum meum_

is a language almost as becoming to the missionaries and ministers of

knowledge, as to the ambassadors of religion. It is fit that by pompous

architectural monuments a voice may for ever be sounding audibly in

human ears of homage to these powers, and that even alien feelings may

be compelled into secret submission to their influence. Therefore,

amongst the number of those who value such things upon the scale of

direct proximate utility rank not me: that _arithmetica officina_ is

in my ears abominable. But still I affirm that, in our analysis of an

ordinary university, or "college," as it is provincially called, we

have not yet arrived at any element of service rendered to knowledge or

education, large enough to call for very extensive national aid. Honour

has thus far been rendered to the good cause by a public attestation,

and that is well: but no direct promotion has been given to that cause,

no impulse communicated to its progress, such that it can be held out

as a result commensurate to the name and pretensions of a University.

As yet there is nothing accomplished which is beyond the strength of

any little commercial town. And, as to the library in particular,

besides that in all essential departments it might be bought, to order,

by one day's common subscription of Liverpool or Glasgow merchants,

students very rarely indeed have admission to its free use.

What other functions remain to a University? For those which I have

mentioned of furnishing a point of rendezvous to the great body of

professors and students, and a point of concentration to the different

establishments of implements and machinery for elaborate researches

(as, for instance, of books and MSS., in the first place; secondly, of

maps, charts, and globes; and, thirdly, perhaps of the costly apparatus

required for such studies as sideral astronomy, galvanic chemistry

or physiology, &c.); all these are uses which cannot be regarded in

a higher light than as conveniences merely incidental and collateral

to the main views of the founders. There are, then, two much loftier

and more commanding ends met by the idea and constitution of such

institutions, and which first rise to a rank of dignity sufficient to

occupy the views of a legislator, or to warrant a national interest.

These ends are involved: 1st, in the practice of conferring _degrees_,

that is, formal attestations and guarantees of competence to give

advice, instruction, or aid, in the three great branches of liberal

knowledge applicable to human life; 2d, in that appropriation of fixed

funds to fixed professorships, by means of which the uninterrupted

succession of public and authorised teachers is sustained in all the

higher branches of knowledge, from generation to generation, and from

century to century. By the latter result it is secured that the great

well-heads of liberal knowledge and of severe science shall never

grow dry. By the former it is secured that this unfailing fountain

shall be continually applied to the production and to the _tasting_ of

fresh labours in endless succession for the public service, and thus,

in effect, that the great national fountain shall not be a stagnant

reservoir, but, by an endless _derivation_ (to speak in a Roman

metaphor), applied to a system of national irrigation. These are the

two great functions and qualifications of a collegiate incorporation:

one providing to each separate generation its own separate rights of

heirship to all the knowledge accumulated by its predecessors, and

converting a mere casual life-annuity into an estate of inheritance--a

mere fleeting [Greek: agônisma] into a [Greek: ktêma es aei]; the other

securing for this eternal dowry as wide a distribution as possible: the

one function regarding the dimension of _length_ in the endless series

of ages through which it propagates its gifts; the other regarding

the dimension of _breadth_ in the large application throughout any

one generation of these gifts to the public service. Here are grand

functions, high purposes; but neither one nor the other demands any

edifices of stone and marble; neither one nor the other presupposes any

edifice at all built with human hands. A collegiate incorporation, the

church militant of knowledge, in its everlasting struggle with darkness

and error, is, in this respect, like the Church of Christ--that is, it

is always and essentially invisible to the fleshly eye. The pillars

of this church are human champions; its weapons are great truths so

shaped as to meet the shifting forms of error; its armouries are

piled and marshalled in human memories; its cohesion lies in human

zeal, in discipline, in childlike docility; and all its triumphs,

its pomps, and glories, must for ever depend upon talent, upon the

energies of the will, and upon the harmonious co-operation of its

several divisions. Thus far, I say, there is no call made out for _any_

intervention of the architect.

Let me apply all this to Oxford. Among the four functions commonly

recognised by the founders of Universities are--1st, to find a set of

halls or places of meeting; 2d, to find the implements and accessaries

of study; 3d, to secure the succession of teachers and learners; 4th,

to secure the profitable application of their attainments to the

public service. Of these four, the two highest need no buildings; and

the other two, which are mere collateral functions of convenience,

need only a small one. Wherefore, then, and to what end, are the

vast systems of building, the palaces and towers of Oxford? These

are either altogether superfluous, mere badges of ostentation and

luxurious wealth, or they point to some fifth function not so much

as contemplated by other Universities, and, at present, absolutely

and chimerically beyond their means of attainment. Formerly we used

to hear attacks upon the Oxford discipline as fitted to the true

_intellectual_ purposes of a modern education. Those attacks, weak

and most uninstructed in facts, false as to all that they challenged,

and puerile as to what implicitly they propounded for homage, are

silent. But, of late, the battery has been pointed against the Oxford

discipline in its _moral_ aspects, as fitted for the government and

restraint of young men, or even as at all contemplating any such

control. The Beverleys would have us suppose, not only that the great

body of the students are a licentious crew, acknowledging no discipline

or restraints, but that the grave elders of the University, and those

who wield the nominal authority of the place, passively resign the

very shows of power, and connive at general excesses, even when they

do not absolutely authorize them in their personal examples. Now, when

such representations are made, to what standard of a just discipline

is it that these writers would be understood as appealing? Is it to

some ideal, or to some existing and known reality? Would they have

England suppose that they are here comparing the actual Oxford with

some possible hypothetic or imaginable Oxford,--with some ideal case,

that is to say, about which great discussions would arise as to its

feasibility,--or that they are comparing it with some known standard

of discipline actually realized and sustained for generations, in

Leipsic, suppose, or Edinburgh, or Leyden, or Salamanca? This is the

question of questions, to which we may demand an answer; and, according

to that answer, observe the dilemma into which these furciferous

knaves must drop. If they are comparing Oxford simply with some ideal

and better Oxford, in some ideal and better world, in that case all

they have said--waiving its falsehoods of fact--is no more than a

flourish of rhetoric, and the whole discussion may be referred to

the shadowy combats of scholastic declamation-mongers--those mock

gladiators, and _umbratiles doctores_. But if, on the other hand, they

pretend to take their station upon the known basis of some existing

institution,--if they will pretend that, in this impeachment of

Oxford, they are proceeding upon a silent comparison with Edinburgh,

Glasgow, Jena, Leipsic, Padua, &c.,--then are they self-exposed, as

men not only without truth, but without shame. For now comes in, as

a sudden revelation, and as a sort of _deus ex machina_, for the

vindication of the truth, the simple answer to that question proposed

above, Wherefore, and to what end, are the vast edifices of Oxford? A

University, as Universities are in general, needs not, I have shown, to

be a visible body--a building raised with hands. Wherefore, then, is

the _visible_ Oxford? To what _fifth_ end, refining upon the ordinary

ends of such institutions, is the far-stretching system of Oxford

_hospitia_, or monastic hotels, directed by their founders, or applied

by their present possessors? Hearken, reader, to the answer:--

These vast piles are applied to an end absolutely indispensable to any

even tolerable system of discipline, and yet absolutely unattainable

upon any commensurate scale in any other University of Europe. They are

applied to the personal settlement and domestication of the students

within the gates and walls of that college to whose discipline they are

amenable. Everywhere else the young men live _where_ they please and

_as_ they please; necessarily distributed amongst the towns-people;

in any case, therefore, liable to no control or supervision whatever;

and, in those cases where the University forms but a small part of

a vast capital city, as it does in Paris, Edinburgh, Madrid, Vienna,

Berlin, and Petersburg, liable to every mode of positive temptation

and distraction which besiege human life in high-viced and luxurious

communities. Here, therefore, it is a mockery to talk of discipline;

of a nonentity there can be no qualities; and we need not ask for the

description of the discipline in situations where discipline there can

be none. One slight anomaly I have heard of as varying _pro tanto_

the uniform features of this picture. In Glasgow I have heard of an

arrangement by which young academicians are placed in the family of a

professor. Here, as members of a private household, and that household

under the presiding eye of a conscientious, paternal, and judicious

scholar, doubtless they would enjoy as absolute a shelter from peril

and worldly contagion as parents could wish; but not _more_ absolute,

I affirm, than belongs, unavoidably, to the monastic seclusion of an

Oxford college--the gates of which open to no egress after nine o'clock

at night, nor after eleven to any ingress which is not regularly

reported to a proper officer of the establishment. The two forms of

restraint are, as respects the effectual amount of control, equal; and

were they equally diffused, Glasgow and Oxford would, in this point,

stand upon the same level of discipline. But it happens that the

Glasgow case was a personal accident; personal, both as regarded him

who volunteered the exercise of this control, and those who volunteered

to appropriate its benefits; whereas the Oxford case belongs to the

very system, is coextensive with the body of undergraduates, and,

from the very arrangement of Oxford life, is liable to no decay or

intermission.

Here, then, the reader apprehends the first great characteristic

distinction of Oxford--that distinction which extorted the rapturous

admiration of Lipsius as an exponent of enormous wealth, but which I

now mention as applying, with ruinous effect, to the late calumnies

upon Oxford, as an inseparable exponent of her meritorious discipline.

She, most truly and severely an "Alma Mater," gathers all the juvenile

part of her flock within her own fold, and beneath her own vigilant

supervision. In Cambridge there is, so far, a laxer administration of

this rule, that, when any college overflows undergraduates are allowed

to lodge at large in the town. But in Oxford this increase of peril and

discretionary power is thrown by preference upon the senior graduates,

who are seldom below the age of twenty-two or twenty-three; and the

college accommodations are reserved, in almost their whole extent, for

the most youthful part of the society. This extent is prodigious. Even

in my time, upwards of two thousand persons were lodged within the

colleges; none having fewer than two rooms, very many having three, and

men of rank, or luxurious habits, having often large suites of rooms.

But that was a time of war, which Oxford experience has shown to have

operated most disproportionably as a drain upon the numbers disposable

for liberal studies; and the total capacity of the University was far

from being exhausted. There are now, I believe, between five and six

thousand names upon the Oxford books; and more than four thousand,

I understand, of constant residents. So that Oxford is well able to

lodge, and on a very sumptuous scale, a small army of men; which

expression of her great splendour I now mention (as I repeat) purely

as applying to the question of her machinery for enforcing discipline.

This part of her machinery, it will be seen, is unique, and absolutely

peculiar to herself. Other Universities, boasting no such enormous

wealth, cannot be expected to act upon her system of seclusion.

Certainly, I make it no reproach to other Universities, that, not

possessing the means of sequestering their young men from worldly

communion, they must abide by the evils of a laxer discipline. It is

their misfortune, and not their criminal neglect, which consents to

so dismal a relaxation of academic habits. But let them not urge this

misfortune in excuse at one time, and at another virtually disavow it.

Never let _them_ take up a stone to throw at Oxford, upon this element

of a wise education; since in them, through that original vice in their

constitution, the defect of all means for secluding and insulating

their society, discipline is abolished by anticipation--being, in fact,

an impossible thing; for the walls of the college are subservient to no

purpose of life, but only to a purpose of convenience; they converge

the students for the hour or two of what is called lecture; which over,

each undergraduate again becomes _sui juris_, is again absorbed into

the crowds of the world, resorts to whatsoever haunts he chooses, and

finally closes his day at ---- if, in any sense, at home--at a home

which is not merely removed from the supervision and control, but

altogether from the bare knowledge, of his academic superiors. How

far this discipline is well administered in other points at Oxford,

will appear from the rest of my account. But, thus far, at least, it

must be conceded, that Oxford, by and through this one unexampled

distinction--her vast disposable fund of accommodations for junior

members within her own private cloisters--possesses an advantage which

she could not forfeit, if she would, towards an effectual knowledge

of each man's daily habits, and a control over him which is all but

absolute.

This knowledge and this control is much assisted and concentrated by

the division of the University into separate colleges. Here comes

another feature of the Oxford system. Elsewhere the University is a

single college; and this college is the University. But in Oxford the

University expresses, as it were, the army, and the colleges express

the several brigades, or regiments.

To resume, therefore, my own thread of personal narration. On the

next morning after my arrival in Oxford, I assembled a small council

of friends to assist me in determining at which of the various

separate societies I should enter, and whether as a "commoner," or

as a "gentleman commoner." Under the first question was couched the

following latitude of choice: I give the names of the colleges, and

the numerical account of their numbers, as it stood in January 1832;

for this will express, as well as the list of that day (which I do not

accurately know), the _proportions_ of importance amongst them.

Mem.

1. University College 207

2. Balliol " 257

3. Merton " 124

4. Exeter " 299

5. Oriel " 293

6. Queen's " 351

7. New " 157

8. Lincoln " 141

9. All Souls' " 98

10. Magdalene " 165

11. Brasenose " 418

12. Corpus Christi " 127

13. Christ Church " 949

14. Trinity " 259

15. St. John's " 218

16. Jesus " 167

17. Wadham " 217

18. Pembroke " 189

19. Worcester " 231

Then, besides these colleges, five _Halls_, as they are technically

called (the term _Hall_ implying chiefly that they are societies not

endowed, or not endowed with fellowships as the colleges are), namely:

Mem.

1. St. Mary Hall 83

2. Magdalen " 178

3. New Inn " 10

4. St. Alban " 41

5. St. Edmund " 96

Such being the names, and general proportions on the scale of local

importance, attached to the different communities, next comes the very

natural question, What are the chief determining motives for guiding

the selection amongst them? These I shall state. First of all, a man

not otherwise interested in the several advantages of the colleges

has, however, in all probability, some choice between a small society

and a large one; and thus far a mere ocular inspection of the list

will serve to fix his preference. For my part, supposing other things

equal, I greatly preferred the most populous college, as being that

in which any single member, who might have reasons for standing aloof

from the general habits of expense, of intervisiting, &c., would have

the best chance of escaping a jealous notice. However, amongst those

"other things" which I presumed equal, one held a high place in my

estimation, which a little inquiry showed to be very far from equal.

All the colleges have chapels, but all have not organs; nor, amongst

those which have, is the same large use made of the organ. Some

preserve the full cathedral service; others do not. Christ Church,

meantime, fulfilled _all_ conditions: for the chapel here happens

to be the cathedral of the diocese; the service, therefore, is full

and ceremonial; the college, also, is far the most splendid, both in

numbers, rank, wealth, and influence. Hither I resolved to go; and

immediately I prepared to call on the head.

The "head," as he is called generically, of an Oxford college (his

_specific_ appellation varies almost with every college--principal,

provost, master, rector, warden, etc.), is a greater man than the

uninitiated suppose. His situation is generally felt as conferring a

degree of rank not much less than episcopal; and, in fact, the head

of Brasenose at that time, who happened to be the Bishop of Bangor,

was not held to rank much above his brothers in office. Such being the

rank of heads generally, _à fortiori_, that of Christ Church was to be

had in reverence; and this I knew. He is always, _ex officio_, dean

of the diocese; and, in his quality of college head, he only, of all

deans that ever were heard of, is uniformly considered a greater man

than his own diocesan. But it happened that the present dean had even

higher titles to consideration. Dr. Cyril Jackson had been tutor to the

Prince of Wales (George IV); he had repeatedly refused a bishopric;

and _that_, perhaps, is entitled to place a man one degree above him

who has accepted one. He was also supposed to have made a bishop, and

afterwards, at least, it is certain that he made his own brother a

bishop. All things weighed, Dr. Cyril Jackson seemed so very great a

personage that I now felt the value of my long intercourse with great

dons in giving me confidence to face a lion of this magnitude.

Those who know Oxford are aware of the peculiar feelings which have

gathered about the name and pretensions of Christ Church; feelings of

superiority and leadership in the members of that college, and often

enough of defiance and jealousy on the part of other colleges. Hence

it happens that you rarely find yourself in a shop, or other place

of public resort, with a Christ-Church man, but he takes occasion,

if young and frivolous, to talk loudly of the Dean, as an indirect

expression of his own connection with this splendid college; the title

of _Dean_ being exclusively attached to the headship of Christ Church.

The Dean, as maybe supposed, partakes in this superior dignity of his

"House"; he is officially brought into connection with all orders

of the British aristocracy--often with royal personages; and with

the younger branches of the aristocracy his office places him in a

relation of authority and guardianship--exercised, however, through

inferior ministry, and seldom by direct personal interference. The

reader must understand that, with rare exceptions, all the princes

and nobles of Great Britain who choose to benefit by an academic

education resort either to Christ Church College in Oxford, or to

Trinity College in Cambridge: these are the alternatives. Naturally

enough, my young friends were somewhat startled at my determination to

call upon so great a man; a letter, they fancied, would be a better

mode of application. I, however, who did not adopt the doctrine that

no man is a hero to his valet, was of opinion that very few men indeed

are heroes to themselves. The cloud of external pomp, which invests

them to the eyes of the _attoniti_, cannot exist to their own; they do

not, like Kehama entering the eight gates of Padalon at once, meet and

contemplate their own grandeurs; but, more or less, are conscious of

acting a part. I did not, therefore, feel the tremor which was expected

of a novice, on being ushered into so solemn a presence.

II[4]

[4] From _Tait's Magazine_ for June 1835.

The Dean was sitting in a spacious library or study, elegantly,

if not luxuriously, furnished. Footmen, stationed as repeaters,

as if at some fashionable rout, gave a momentary importance to my

unimportant self, by the thundering tone of their annunciations. All

the machinery of aristocratic life seemed indeed to intrench this

great Don's approaches; and I was really surprised that so very great

a man should condescend to rise on my entrance. But I soon found that,

if the Dean's station and relation to the higher orders had made

him lofty, those same relations had given a peculiar suavity to his

manners. Here, indeed, as on other occasions, I noticed the essential

misconception, as to the demeanour of men of rank, which prevails

amongst those who have no personal access to their presence. In the

fabulous pictures of novels (such novels as once abounded), and in

newspaper reports of conversations, real or pretended, between the King

and inferior persons, we often find the writer expressing _his_ sense

of aristocratic assumption, by making the King address people without

their titles. The Duke of Wellington, for instance, or Lord Liverpool,

figures usually, in such scenes, as "Wellington," or "Arthur," and as

"Liverpool." Now, as to the private talk of George IV in such cases, I

do not pretend to depose; but, speaking generally, I may say that the

practice of the highest classes takes the very opposite course. Nowhere

is a man so sure of his titles or official distinctions as amongst

_them_; for it is upon giving to every man the very extreme punctilio

of his known or supposed claims that they rely for the due observance

of their own. Neglecting no form of courtesy suited to the case, they

seek, in this way, to remind men unceasingly of what they expect; and

the result is what I represent--that people in the highest stations,

and such as bring them continually into contact with inferiors, are,

of all people, the least addicted to insolence or defect of courtesy.

Uniform suavity of manner is indeed rarely found _except_ in men of

high rank. Doubtless this may arise upon a motive of self-interest,

jealous of giving the least opening or invitation to the retorts of

ill-temper or low breeding. But, whatever be its origin, such I believe

to be the fact. In a very long conversation of a general nature upon

the course of my studies, and the present direction of my reading,

Dr. Cyril Jackson treated me just as he would have done his equal in

station and in age. Coming, at length, to the particular purpose of my

visit at this time to himself, he assumed a little more of his official

stateliness. He condescended to say that it would have given him

pleasure to reckon me amongst his flock; "But, sir," he said, in a tone

of some sharpness, "your guardians have acted improperly. It was their

duty to have given me at least one year's notice of their intention to

place you at Christ Church. At present I have not a dog-kennel in my

college untenanted." Upon this, I observed that nothing remained for me

to do but to apologize for having occupied so much of his time; that,

for myself, I now first heard of this preliminary application; and

that, as to my guardians, I was bound to acquit them of all oversight

in this instance, they being no parties to my present scheme. The

Dean expressed his astonishment at this statement. I, on my part,

was just then making my parting bows, and had reached the door, when

a gesture of the Dean's, courteously waving me back to the sofa I had

quitted, invited me to resume my explanations; and I had a conviction

at the moment that the interview would have terminated in the Dean's

suspending his standing rule in my favour. But, just at that moment,

the thundering heralds of the Dean's hall announced some man of high

rank: the sovereign of Christ Church seemed distressed for a moment;

but then, recollecting himself, bowed in a way to indicate that I was

dismissed. And thus it happened that I did not become a member of

Christ Church.[5]

[5] Among the students in Christ Church at this time was Charles

Kirkpatrick Sharpe, afterwards so well known as a fellow-resident

with De Quincey in Edinburgh. He was De Quincey's senior by four

years, and had entered Christ Church in 1798. Among his

acquaintances and fellow-students were Lord Gower, afterwards Duke

of Sutherland, Lord Newtown, Elijah Impey (son of the famous

Indian judge of that name), and others of high name and rank. In

the _Memoirs and Correspondence of Kirkpatrick Sharpe_ (published

1888) there are descriptions of the society of the college, with

sketches of Dean Cyril Jackson, &c., from Sharpe's cynical

pen.--M.

A few days passed in thoughtless indecision. At the end of that time,

a trivial difficulty arose to settle my determination. I had brought

about fifty guineas to Oxford; but the expenses of an Oxford inn, with

almost daily entertainments to young friends, had made such inroads

upon this sum, that, after allowing for the contingencies incident to

a college initiation, enough would not remain to meet the usual demand

for what is called "caution money." This is a small sum, properly

enough demanded of every student, when matriculated, as a pledge for

meeting any loss from unsettled arrears, such as his sudden death or

his unannounced departure might else continually be inflicting upon

his college. By releasing the college, therefore, from all necessity

for degrading vigilance or persecution, this demand does, in effect,

operate beneficially to the feelings of all parties. In most colleges

it amounts to twenty-five pounds: in one only it was considerably less.

And this trifling consideration it was, concurring with a reputation

_at that time_ for relaxed discipline, which finally determined me

in preferring W---- College[6] to all others. This college had the

capital disadvantage, in my eyes, that its chapel possessed no organ,

and no musical service. But any other choice would have driven me to

an instant call for more money--a measure which, as too flagrantly

in contradiction to the whole terms on which I had volunteered to

undertake an Oxford life, I could not find nerves to face.

[6] It was Worcester College; and we shall use the full name,

instead of the blank W., in the sequel.--M.

At Worcester College, therefore, I entered: and here arises the proper

occasion for stating the true costs of an Oxford education. First

comes the question of _lodging_. This item varies, as may be supposed;

but my own case will place on record the two extremes of cost in one

particular college, nowadays differing, I believe, from the general

standard. The first rooms assigned me, being small and ill-lighted,

as part of an old Gothic building, were charged at four guineas a

year. These I soon exchanged for others a little better, and for them

I paid six guineas. Finally, by privilege of seniority, I obtained a

handsome set of well-proportioned rooms, in a modern section of the

college, charged at ten guineas a year. This set was composed of three

rooms; namely, an airy bed-room, a study, and a spacious room for

receiving visitors. This range of accommodation is pretty general in

Oxford, and, upon the whole, may be taken perhaps as representing the

average amount of luxury in this respect, and at the average amount

of cost. The furniture and the fittings up of these rooms cost me

about twenty-five guineas; for the Oxford rule is, that if you take

the rooms (which is at your own option), in that case, you _third_ the

furniture and the embellishments--that is, you succeed to the total

cost diminished by one third. You pay, therefore, two guineas out of

each three to your _immediate_ predecessor. But, as he also may have

succeeded to the furniture upon the same terms, whenever there happens

to have been a rapid succession of occupants, the original cost to

a remote predecessor is sometimes brought down, by this process of

diminution, to a mere fraction of the true value; and yet no individual

occupant can complain of any heavy loss. Whilst upon this subject, I

may observe that, in the seventeenth century, in Milton's time, for

example (about 1624), and for more than sixty years after that era, the

practice of _chumship_ prevailed: every set of chambers was possessed

by two co-occupants; they had generally the same bed-room, and a common

study; and they were called _chums_. This practice, once all but

universal, is now entirely extinct; and the extinction serves to mark

the advance of the country, not so much in luxury as in refinement.

The next item which I shall notice is that which in college bills is

expressed by the word _Tutorage_. This is the same in all colleges,

I believe: viz., ten guineas per annum. And this head suggests an

explanation which is most important to the reputation of Oxford, and

fitted to clear up a very extensive delusion. Some years ago, a most

elaborate statement was circulated of the number and costly endowment

of the Oxford Professorships. Some thirty or more there were, it

was alleged, and five or six only which were not held as absolute

sinecures. Now, this is a charge which I am not here meaning to

discuss. Whether defensible or not, I do not now inquire. It is the

practical interpretation and construction of this charge which I here

wish to rectify. In most Universities, except those of England, the

Professors are the body on whom devolves the whole duty and burthen of

teaching; they compose the sole fountains of instruction; and if these

fountains fail, the fair inference is, that the one great purpose of

the institution is defeated. But this inference, valid for all other

places, is not so for Oxford and Cambridge. And here, again, the

difference arises out of the peculiar distribution of these bodies

into separate and independent colleges. Each college takes upon itself

the regular instruction of its separate inmates--of these and of no

others; and for this office it appoints, after careful selection,

trial, and probation, the best qualified amongst those of its senior

members who choose to undertake a trust of such heavy responsibility.

These officers are called Tutors; and they are connected by duties

and by accountability, not with the University at all, but with their

own private colleges. The Professors, on the other hand, are _public_

functionaries, not connected (as respects the exercise of their

duties) with any college whatsoever--not even with their own--but

altogether and exclusively with the whole University. Besides the

public tutors appointed in each college, on the scale of one to each

dozen or score of students, there are also tutors strictly private,

who attend any students in search of special and extraordinary aid,

on terms settled privately by themselves. Of these persons, or their

existence, the college takes no cognisance; but between the two classes

of tutors, the most studious young men--those who would be most likely

to avail themselves of the lectures read by the professors--have their

whole time pretty severely occupied: and the inference from all this

is, not only that the course of Oxford education would suffer little if

no Professors at all existed, but also that, if the existing Professors

were _ex abundanti_ to volunteer the most exemplary spirit of exertion,

however much this spectacle of conscientious dealing might edify the

University, it would contribute but little to the promotion of academic

purposes. The establishment of Professors is, in fact, a thing of

ornament and pomp. Elsewhere, they are the working servants; but, in

Oxford, the ministers corresponding to them bear another name,--they

are called _Tutors_. These are the working agents in the Oxford system;

and the Professors, with salaries in many cases merely nominal,

are persons sequestered, and properly sequestered, to the solitary

cultivation and advancement of knowledge which a different order of men

is appointed to communicate.

Here let us pause for one moment, to notice another peculiarity in

the Oxford system, upon the tendency of which I shall confidently

make my appeal to the good sense of all unprejudiced readers. I have

said that the _Tutors_ of Oxford correspond to the _Professors_ of

other Universities. But this correspondence, which is absolute and

unquestionable as regards the point then at issue,--viz., where we

are to look for that limb of the establishment on which rests the

main teaching agency,--is liable to considerable qualification,

when we examine the mode of their teaching. In both cases, this is

conveyed by what is termed "lecturing";--but what is the meaning

of a lecture in Oxford and elsewhere? Elsewhere, it means a solemn

dissertation, read, or sometimes histrionically declaimed, by the

Professor. In Oxford, it means an exercise performed orally by the

students, occasionally assisted by the tutor, and subject, in its

whole course, to his corrections, and what may be called his scholia,

or collateral suggestions and improvements. Now, differ as men may as

to other features of the Oxford, compared with the hostile system,

here I conceive that there is no room for doubt or demur. An Oxford

lecture imposes a real _bona fide_ task upon the student; it will not

suffer him to fall asleep, either literally or in the energies of his

understanding; it is a real drill, under the excitement, perhaps, of

personal competition, and under the review of a superior scholar. But,

in Germany, under the declamations of the Professor, the young men are

often literally sleeping; nor is it easy to see how the attention can

be kept from wandering, on this plan, which subjects the auditor to

no risk of sudden question or personal appeal. As to the prizes given

for essays, etc., by the Professors, these have the effect of drawing

forth latent talent, but they can yield no criterion of the attention

paid to the Professor; not to say that the competition for these prizes

is a matter of choice. Sometimes it is true that examinations take

place; but the Oxford lecture is a daily examination; and, waiving

_that_, what chance is there (I would ask) for searching examinations,

for examinations conducted with the requisite _auctoritas_ (or weight

of influence derived from personal qualities), if--which may Heaven

prevent!--the German tenure of Professorships were substituted for

our British one: that is, if for independent and liberal teachers

were substituted poor mercenary haberdashers of knowledge--cap in

hand to opulent students--servile to their caprices--and, at one

blow, degrading the science they profess, the teacher, and the pupil?

Yet I hear that such advice was given to a Royal Commission, sent to

investigate one or more of the Scottish Universities. In the German

Universities, every Professor holds his situation, not on his good

behaviour, but on the capricious pleasure of the young men who resort

to his market. He opens a shop, in fact: others, without limit,

generally men of no credit or known respectability, are allowed to

open rival shops; and the result is, sometimes, that the whole kennel

of scoundrel Professors ruin one another; each standing with his

mouth open, to leap at any bone thrown amongst them from the table of

the "Burschen"; all hating, fighting, calumniating each other, until

the land is sick of its base knowledge-mongers, and would vomit the

loathsome crew, were any natural channel open to their instincts of

abhorrence. The most important of the Scottish Professorships--those

which are fundamentally morticed to the moral institutions of the

land--are upon the footing of Oxford tutorships, as regards emoluments;

that is, they are not suffered to keep up a precarious mendicant

existence, upon the alms of the students, or upon their fickle

admirations. It is made imperative upon a candidate for admission into

the ministry of the Scottish Kirk, that he shall show a certificate of

attendance through a given number of seasons at given lectures.

The next item in the quarterly (or, technically, the _term_) bills of

Oxford is for servants. This, in my college, and, I believe, in all

others, amounted, nominally, to two guineas a year. That sum, however,

was paid to a principal servant, whom, perhaps, you seldom or never

saw; the actual attendance upon yourself being performed by one of

his deputies; and to this deputy--who is, in effect, a _factotum_,

combining in his single person all the functions of chamber-maid,

valet, waiter at meals, and porter or errand-boy--by the custom of the

place and your own sense of propriety, you cannot but give something

or other in the shape of perquisites. I was told, on entering, that

half a guinea a quarter was the customary allowance,--the same sum, in

fact, as was levied by the college for his principal; but I gave mine a

guinea a quarter, thinking that little enough for the many services he

performed; and others, who were richer than myself, I dare say, often

gave much more. Yet, sometimes, it struck me, from the gratitude which

his looks testified, on my punctual payment of this guinea,--for it

was the only bill with regard to which I troubled myself to practise

any severe punctuality,--that perhaps some thoughtless young man

might give him less, or might even forget to give anything; and, at

all events, I have reason to believe that half that sum would have

contented him. These minutiæ I record purposely; my immediate object

being to give a rigorous statement of the real expenses incident to

an English university education, partly as a guide to the calculations

of parents, and partly as an answer to the somewhat libellous

exaggerations which are current on this subject, in times like these,

when even the truth itself, and received in a spirit of candour the

most indulgent, may be all too little to defend these venerable seats

of learning from the ruin which seems brooding over them. Yet, no!

Abominable is the language of despair even in a desperate situation.

And, therefore, Oxford, ancient mother! and thou, Cambridge, twin-light

of England! be vigilant and erect, for the enemy stands at all your

gates! Two centuries almost have passed since the boar was within

your vineyards, laying waste and desolating your heritage. Yet that

storm was not final, nor that eclipse total. May this also prove but

a trial and a shadow of affliction! which affliction, may it prove to

you, mighty incorporations, what, sometimes, it is to us, poor, frail

_homunculi_--a process of purification, a solemn and oracular warning!

And, when that cloud is overpast, then, rise, ancient powers, wiser and

better--ready, like the [Greek: lampadêphoroi] of old, to enter upon

a second _stadium_, and to transmit the sacred torch through a second

period of twice[7] five hundred years. So prays a loyal _alumnus_,

whose presumption, if any be, in taking upon himself a monitory tone,

is privileged by zeal and filial anxiety.

[7] Oxford may confessedly claim a duration of that extent; and

the pretensions of Cambridge, in that respect, if less aspiring,

are, however, as I believe, less accurately determined.

To return, however, into the track from which I have digressed. The

reader will understand that any student is at liberty to have private

servants of his own, as many and of what denomination he pleases.

This point, as many others of a merely personal bearing, when they

happen to stand in no relation to public discipline, neither the

University nor the particular college of the student feels summoned

or even authorized to deal with. Neither, in fact, does any other

University in Europe; and why, then, notice the case? Simply thus: if

the Oxford discipline, in this particular chapter, has nothing special

or peculiar about it, yet the case to which it applies _has_, and

is almost exclusively found in our Universities. On the Continent

it happens most rarely that a student has any funds disposable for

luxuries so eminently such as grooms or footmen; but at Oxford and

Cambridge the case occurs often enough to attract notice from the

least vigilant eye. And thus we find set down to the credit account of

other Universities the non-existence of luxury in this or other modes,

whilst, meantime, it is well known to the fair inquirer that each or

all are indulgences not at all or so much as in idea proscribed by

the sumptuary edicts of those Universities, but, simply, by the lower

scale of their general revenues. And this lower scale, it will be

said--how do you account for that? I answer, not so much by the general

inferiority of Continental Europe to Great Britain in _diffusive_

wealth (though that argument goes for something, it being notorious

that, whilst immoderate wealth, concentrated in a small number of

hands, exists in various continental states upon a larger scale than

with us, moderately large estates, on the other hand, are, with them,

as one to two hundred, or even two hundred and fifty, in comparison

with ours), but chiefly upon this fact, which is too much overlooked,

that the foreign Universities are not peopled from the wealthiest

classes, which are the classes either already noble, or wishing to

become such. And why is that? Purely from the vicious constitution of

society on the Continent, where all the fountains of honour lie in

the military profession or in the diplomatic. We English, haters and

revilers of ourselves beyond all precedent, disparagers of our own

eminent advantages beyond all sufferance of honour or good sense, and

daily playing into the hands of foreign enemies, who hate us out of

mere envy or shame, have amongst us some hundreds of writers who will

die or suffer martyrdom upon this proposition--that aristocracy, and

the spirit and prejudices of aristocracy, are more operative (more

effectually and more extensively operative) amongst ourselves than in

any other known society of men. Now, I, who believe all errors to arise

in some narrow, partial, or angular view of truth, am seldom disposed

to meet any sincere affirmation by a blank, unmodified denial. Knowing,

therefore, that some acute observers do really believe this doctrine as

to the aristocratic forces, and the way in which they mould English

society, I cannot but suppose that some symptoms do really exist of

such a phenomenon; and the only remark I shall here make on the case

is this, that, very often, where any force or influence reposes upon

deep realities, and upon undisturbed foundations, _there_ will be the

least heard of loquacious and noisy expressions of its power; which

expressions arise most, not where the current is most violent, but

where (being possibly the weakest) it is most fretted with resistance.

In England, the very reason why the aristocratic feeling makes

itself so sensibly felt and so distinctly an object of notice to the

censorious observer is, because it maintains a troubled existence

amongst counter and adverse influences, so many and so potent. This

might be illustrated abundantly. But, as respects the particular

question before me, it will be sufficient to say this: With us the

profession and exercise of knowledge, as a means of livelihood, is

honourable; on the Continent it is not so. The knowledge, for instance,

which is embodied in the three learned professions, does, with us, lead

to distinction and civil importance; no man can pretend to deny this;

nor, by consequence, that the Professors personally take rank with the

highest order of gentlemen. Are they not, I demand, everywhere with us

on the same footing, in point of rank and consideration, as those who

bear the king's commission in the army and navy? Can this be affirmed

of the Continent, either generally, or, indeed, partially? I say,

_no_. Let us take Germany as an illustration. Many towns (for anything

I know, all) present us with a regular bisection of the resident

_notables_, or wealthier class, into two distinct (often hostile)

coteries: one being composed of those who are "_noble_"; the other,

of families equally well educated and accomplished, but _not_, in the

continental sense, "noble." The meaning and value of the word is so

entirely misapprehended by the best English writers,--being, in fact,

derived from our own way of applying it,--that it becomes important to

ascertain its true value. A "nobility" which is numerous enough to fill

a separate ball-room in every sixth-rate town, it needs no argument to

show, cannot be a nobility in any English sense. In fact, an _edelmann_

or nobleman, in the German sense, is strictly what we mean by a _born

gentleman_; with this one only difference, that, whereas, with us, the

rank which denominates a man such passes off by shades so insensible,

and almost infinite, into the ranks below, that it becomes impossible

to assign it any strict demarkation or lines of separation, on the

contrary, the Continental noble points to certain fixed barriers, in

the shape of privileges, which divide him, _per saltum_, from those who

are below his own order. But, were it not for this one legal benefit

of accurate circumscription and slight favour, the Continental noble,

whether Baron of Germany, Count of France, or Prince of Sicily and

of Russia, is simply on a level with the common landed _esquire_ of

Britain, and _not_ on a level in very numerous cases. Such being the

case, how paramount must be the spirit of aristocracy in Continental

society! Our _haute noblesse_--our genuine nobility, who are such

in the general feeling of their compatriots--will do _that_ which

the phantom of nobility of the Continent will not: the spurious

nobles of Germany will not mix, on equal terms, with their untitled

fellow-citizens living in the same city and in the same style as

themselves; they will not meet them in the same ball or concert-room.

Our great territorial nobility, though sometimes forming exclusive

circles (but not, however, upon any principle of high birth), do

so daily. They mix as equal partakers in the same amusements of

races, balls, musical assemblies, with the baronets (or _élite_ of

the gentry); with the landed esquires (or middle gentry); with the

superior order of tradesmen (who, in Germany, are absolute ciphers, for

political weight, or social consideration, but, with us, constitute

the lower and broader stratum of the _nobilitas_,[8] or gentry). The

obscure baronage of Germany, it is undeniable, insist upon having

"an atmosphere of their own"; whilst the Howards, the Stanleys, the

Talbots, of England, the Hamiltons, the Douglases, the Gordons, of

Scotland, are content to acknowledge a sympathy with the liberal part

of their untitled countrymen, in that point which most searchingly

tries the principle of aristocratic pride, viz., in their pleasures.

To have the same pursuits of business with another may be a result of

accident or position; to have the same pleasures, being a matter of

choice, argues a community of nature in the _moral_ sensibilities, in

that part of our constitution which differences one man from another in

the capacities of greatness and elevation.

[8] It may be necessary to inform some readers that the word

_noble_, by which so large a system of imposition and fraud, as to

the composition of foreign society, has long been practised upon

the credulity of the British, corresponds to our word

_gentlemanly_ (or, rather, to the vulgar word _genteel_, if that

word were ever used legally, or _extra gradum_), not merely upon

the argument of its _virtual_ and operative value in the general

estimate of men (that is, upon the argument that a count, baron,

&c., does not, _qua_ such, command any deeper feeling of respect

or homage than a British esquire), but also upon the fact, that,

originally, in all English registers, as, for instance, in the

Oxford matriculation registers, all the upper gentry (knights,

esquires, &c.) are technically designated by the word

_nobiles_.--_See Chamberlayne, &c._

As with their amusements, so with their graver employments; the same

mutual repulsion continues to divide the two orders through life.

The nobles either live in gloomy seclusion upon their private funds,

wherever the privilege of primogeniture has enabled them to do so;

or, having no funds at all (the case of ninety-nine in one hundred),

they go into the army; that profession, the profession of arms, being

regarded as the only one compatible with an _edelmann's_ pretensions.

Such was once the feeling in England; such is still the feeling on the

Continent. It is a prejudice naturally clinging to a semi-barbarous

(because growing out of a barbarous) state, and, in its degree,

clinging to every stage of imperfect civilization; and, were there no

other argument, this would be a sufficient one, that England, under

free institutions, has outrun the Continent, in real civilization, by a

century; a fact which is concealed by the forms of luxurious refinement

in a few exclusive classes, too often usurping the name and honours of

radical civilization.

From the super-appreciation of the military profession arises a

corresponding contempt of all other professions whatsoever _paid by

fellow-citizens_, and not by the King or the State. The clerical

profession is in the most abject degradation throughout Southern

Germany; and the reason why this forces itself less imperiously upon

the public notice is, that, in rural situations, from the absence of a

resident gentry (speaking generally), the pastor is brought into rare

collision with those who style themselves _noble_; whilst, in towns,

the clergy find people enough to countenance those who, being in the

same circumstances as to comfort and liberal education, are also

under the same ban of rejection from the "nobility," or born gentry.

The legal profession is equally degraded; even a barrister or advocate

holds a place in the public esteem little differing from that of an

Old Bailey attorney of the worst class. And this result is the less

liable to modification from personal qualities, inasmuch as there is no

great theatre (as with us) for individual display. Forensic eloquence

is unknown in Germany, as it is too generally on the Continent, from

the defect of all popular or open judicatures. A similar defect of

deliberative assemblies--such, at least, as represent any popular

influences and debate with open doors--intercepts the very possibility

of senatorial eloquence.[9] That of the pulpit only remains. But even

of this--whether it be from want of the excitement and contagious

emulation from the other fields of oratory, or from the peculiar genius

of Lutheranism--no models have yet arisen that could, for one moment,

sustain a comparison with those of England or France. The highest names

in this department would not, to a foreign ear, carry with them any

of that significance or promise which surrounds the names of Jeremy

Taylor or Barrow, Bossuet or Bourdaloue, to those even who have no

personal acquaintance with their works. This absence of all fields for

gathering public distinctions co-operates, in a very powerful way,

with the contempt of the born gentry, to degrade these professions;

and this double agency is, a third time, reinforced by those political

arrangements which deny every form of state honour or conspicuous

promotion to the very highest description of excellence, whether of

the bar, the pulpit, or the civic council. Not "the fluent Murray,"

or the accomplished Erskine, from the English bar--not Pericles or

Demosthenes, from the fierce democracies of Greece--not Paul preaching

at Athens--could snatch a wreath from public homage, nor a distinction

from the state, nor found an influence, nor leave behind them an

operative model, in Germany, as now constituted. Other walks of

emolument are still more despised. Alfieri, a Continental "noble," that

is, a born gentleman, speaks of bankers as we in England should of a

Jewish usurer, or tricking money-changer. The liberal trades, such as

those which minister to literature or the fine arts, which, with us,

confer the station of gentleman upon those who exercise them, are, in

the estimate of a Continental "noble," fitted to assign a certain rank

or place in the train and equipage of a gentleman, but not to entitle

their most eminent professors to sit down, except by sufferance, in

his presence. And, upon this point, let not the reader derive his

notions from the German books: the vast majority of German authors are

not "noble"; and, of those who are, nine tenths are liberal in this

respect, and speak the language of liberality, not by sympathy with

their own order, or as representing _their_ feelings, but in virtue of

democratic or revolutionary politics.

[9] The subject is amusingly illustrated by an anecdote of Goethe,

recorded by himself in his autobiography. Some physiognomist, or

phrenologist, had found out, in Goethe's structure of head, the

sure promise of a great orator. "Strange infatuation of nature!"

observes Goethe, on this assurance, "to endow me so richly and

liberally for that particular destination which only the

institutions of my country render impossible. Music for the deaf!

Eloquence without an audience!"

Such as the rank is, and the public estimation of the leading

professions, such is the natural condition of the Universities which

rear them. The "nobles" going generally into the army, or leading lives

of indolence, the majority by far of those who resort to Universities

do so as a means of future livelihood. Few seek an academic life in

Germany who have either money to throw away on superfluities and

external show, or who have such a rank to support as might stimulate

their pride to expenses beyond their means. Parsimony is, therefore, in

these places, the governing law; and pleasure, not less fervently wooed

than at Oxford or at Cambridge, putting off her robes of elegance and

ceremony, descends to grossness, and not seldom to abject brutality.

The sum of my argument is--that, because, in comparison of the army, no

other civil profession is, in itself, held of sufficient dignity, and

not less, perhaps, because, under governments essentially unpopular,

none of these professions has been so dignified artificially by the

state, or so attached to any ulterior promotion, either through the

state or in the state, as to meet the demands of aristocratic pride,

none of them is cultivated as a means of distinction, but originally

as a means of livelihood; that the Universities, as the nurseries of

these unhonoured professions, share naturally in _their_ degradation,

and that, from this double depreciation of the place and its final

objects, few or none resort thither who can be supposed to bring

any extra funds for supporting a system of luxury; that the general

temperance, or sobriety of demeanour, is far enough, however, from

keeping pace with the absence of costly show; and that, for this

absence even, we are to thank their poverty rather than their will.

It is to the great honour, in my opinion, of our own country, that

those often resort to her fountains who have no motive but that of

disinterested reverence for knowledge; seeking, as all men perceive,

neither emolument directly from University funds, nor knowledge as the

means of emolument. Doubtless, it is neither dishonourable, nor, on

a large scale, possible to be otherwise, that students should pursue

their academic career chiefly as ministerial to their capital object of

a future livelihood. But still I contend that it is for the interest

of science and good letters that a considerable body of volunteers

should gather about their banners without pay or hopes of preferment.

This takes place on a larger scale at Oxford and Cambridge than

elsewhere; and it is but a trivial concession in return, on the part

of the University, that she should allow, even if she had the right

to withhold, the privilege of living within her walls as they would

have lived at their fathers' seats; with one only reserve, applied to

all modes of expense that are, in themselves, immoral excesses, or

occasions of scandal, or of a nature to interfere too much with the

natural hours of study, or specially fitted to tempt others of narrower

means to ruinous emulation.

Upon these principles, as it seems to me, the discipline of the

University is founded. The keeping of hunters, for example, is

unstatutable. Yet, on the other hand, it is felt to be inevitable that

young men of high spirit, familiar with this amusement, will find

means to pursue it in defiance of all the powers, however exerted,

that can properly be lodged in the hands of academic officers. The

range of the proctor's jurisdiction is limited by positive law; and

what should hinder a young man, bent upon his pleasure, from fixing

the station of his hunter a few miles out of Oxford, and riding to

cover on a hack, unamenable to any censure? For, surely, in this age,

no man could propose so absurd a thing as a general interdiction of

riding. How, in fact, does the University proceed? She discountenances

the practice; and, if forced upon her notice, she visits it with

censure, and that sort of punishment which lies within her means. But

she takes no pains to search out a trespass, which, by the mere act

of seeking to evade public display in the streets of the University,

already tends to limit itself; and which, besides, from its costliness,

can never become a prominent nuisance. This I mention as illustrating

the spirit of her legislation; and, even in this case, the reader

must carry along with him the peculiar distinction which I have

pressed with regard to English Universities, in the existence of a

large volunteer order of students seeking only the liberalization,

and not the profits, of academic life. In arguing upon their case,

it is not the fair logic to say, These pursuits taint the decorum of

the studious character; it is not fair to calculate how much is lost

to the man of letters by such addiction to fox-hunting, but, on the

contrary, what is gained to the fox-hunter, who would, at any rate, be

such, by so considerable a homage paid to letters, and so inevitable

a commerce with men of learning. Anything whatsoever attained in this

direction is probably so much more than would have been attained under

a system of less toleration. _Lucro ponamus_, we say, of the very least

success in such a case. But, in speaking of toleration as applied to

acts or habits positively against the statutes, I limit my meaning

to those which, in their own nature, are morally indifferent, and

are discountenanced simply as indirectly injurious, or as peculiarly

open to excess. Because, on graver offences (as gambling, &c.), the

malicious impeachers of Oxford must well have known that no toleration

whatsoever is practised or thought of. Once brought under the eye of

the University in a clear case and on clear evidence, it would be

punished in the most exemplary way open to a limited authority; by

_rustication_, at least--that is, banishment for a certain number

of terms, and consequent loss of these terms--supposing the utmost

palliation of circumstances; and, in an aggravated case, or on a second

offence, most certainly by final expulsion. But it is no part of duty

to serve the cause even of good morals by impure means; and it is as

difficult beforehand to prevent the existence of vicious practices so

long as men have, and ought to have, the means of seclusion liable to

no violation, as it is afterwards difficult, without breach of honour,

to obtain proof of their existence. Gambling has been known to exist

in some dissenting institutions; and, in my opinion, with no blame to

the presiding authorities. As to Oxford in particular, no such habit

was generally prevalent in my time; it is not an English vice; nor did

I ever hear of any great losses sustained in this way. But, were it

otherwise, I must hold, that, considering the numbers, rank, and great

opulence, of the students, such a habit would impeach the spirit and

temper of the age rather than the vigilance or magisterial fidelity

of the Oxford authorities. They are limited, like other magistrates,

by honour and circumstances, in a thousand ways; and if a knot of

students will choose to meet for purposes of gaming, they must always

have it in their power to baffle every honourable or becoming attempt

at detecting them. But upon this subject I shall make two statements,

which may have some effect in moderating the uncharitable judgments

upon Oxford discipline. The first respects the age of those who are

the objects of this discipline; on which point a very grave error

prevails. In the last Parliament, not once, but many times over, Lord

Brougham and others assumed that the students of Oxford were chiefly

_boys_; and this, not idly or casually, but pointedly, and with a

view to an ulterior argument; for instance, by way of proving how

little they were entitled to judge of those thirty-nine articles to

which their assent was demanded. Now, this argued a very extraordinary

ignorance; and the origin of the error showed the levity in which their

legislation was conducted. These noble lords had drawn their ideas of

a University exclusively from Glasgow. Here, it is well known, and I

mention it neither for praise nor blame, that students are in the habit

of coming at the early age of fourteen. These may allowably be styled

_boys_. But, with regard to Oxford, eighteen is about the _earliest_

age at which young men begin their residence: twenty and upwards is,

therefore, the age of the majority; that is, twenty is the _minimum_

of age for the vast majority, as there must always be more men of

three years' standing than of two or of one. Apply this fact to the

question of discipline: young men beyond twenty, generally,--that

is to say, of the age which qualifies men for seats in the national

council,--can hardly, with decency, either be called or treated as

boys; and many things become impossible as applied to _them_, which

might be of easy imposition upon an assemblage _really_ childish. In

mere justice, therefore, when speculating upon this whole subject of

Oxford discipline, the reader must carry along with him, at every

step, the recollection of that signal difference as to age which I

have now stated between Oxonians and those students whom the hostile

party contemplate in their arguments.[10] Meantime, to show that,

even under every obstacle presented by this difference of age, the

Oxford authorities do, nevertheless, administer their discipline with

fidelity, with intrepidity, and with indifference as respects the high

and the low, I shall select from a crowd of similar recollections two

anecdotes, which are but trifles in themselves, and yet are not such to

him who recognizes them as expressions of a uniform system of dealing.

[10] Whilst I am writing, a debate of the present Parliament,

reported on Saturday, March 7, 1835, presents us with a

determinate repetition of the error which I have been exposing;

and, again, as in the last Parliament, this error is not _inert_,

but is used for a hostile (apparently a malicious) purpose; nay,

which is remarkable, it is the _sole_ basis upon which the

following argument reposes. Lord Radnor again assumes that the

students of Oxford are "boys"; he is again supported in this

misrepresentation by Lord Brougham; and again the

misrepresentation is applied to a purpose of assault upon the

English Universities, but especially upon Oxford. And the nature

of the assault does not allow any latitude in construing the word

_boys_, nor any room for evasion as respects the total charge,

except what goes the length of a total retraction. The charge is,

that, in a requisition made at the very threshold of academic

life, upon the understanding and the honour of the students, the

University burdens their consciences to an extent which, in after

life, when reflection has enlightened them to the meaning of their

engagements, proves either a snare to those who trifle with their

engagements, or an insupportable burden to those who do not. For

the inculpation of the party imposing such oaths, it is essential

that the party taking them should be in a childish condition of

the moral sense, and the sense of responsibility; whereas, amongst

the Oxonian _under_-graduates, I will venture to say that the

number is larger of those who rise above than of those who fall

below twenty; and, as to sixteen (assumed as the representative

age by Lord Radnor), in my time, I heard of only one student,

amongst, perhaps, sixteen hundred, who was so young. I grieve to

see that the learned prelate who replied to the assailants was so

much taken by surprise; the defence might have been made

triumphant. With regard to oaths incompatible with the spirit of

modern manners, and yet formally unrepealed--_that_ is a case of

neglect and indolent oversight. But the _gravamen_ of that

reproach does not press exclusively upon Oxford; all the ancient

institutions of Europe are tainted in the same way, more

especially the monastic orders of the Romish church.

A great Whig Lord (Earl C----) happened (it may be ten years ago) to

present himself one day at Trinity (the leading college of Cambridge),

for the purpose of introducing Lord F----ch, his son, as a future

member of that splendid society. Possibly it mortified his aristocratic

feelings to hear the head of the college, even whilst welcoming the

young nobleman in courteous terms, yet suggesting, with some solemnity,

that, before taking any final resolution in the matter, his lordship

would do well to consider whether he were fully prepared to submit

himself to college discipline; for that, otherwise, it became his

own duty frankly to declare that the college would not look upon his

accession to their society as any advantage. This language arose out

of some recent experience of refractory and turbulent conduct upon

the part of various young men of rank; but it is very possible that

the noble Earl, in his surprise at a salutation so uncourtly, might

regard it, in a Tory mouth, as having some lurking reference to his

own Whig politics. If so, he must have been still more surprised to

hear of another case, which would meet him before he left Cambridge,

and which involved some frank dealing as well as frank speaking, when

a privilege of exception might have been presumed, if Tory politics,

or services the most memorable, could ever create such a privilege.

The Duke of W---- had two sons at Oxford. The affair is now long past;

and it cannot injure either of them to say, that one of the brothers

trespassed against the college discipline, in some way which compelled

(or was thought to compel) the presiding authorities into a solemn

notice of his conduct. Expulsion appeared to be the appropriate penalty

of his offences: but, at this point, a just hesitation arose. Not in

any servile spirit, but under a proper feeling of consideration for

so eminent a public benefactor as this young nobleman's father. The

rulers paused--and at length signified to him that he was at liberty

to withdraw himself privately from the college, but also, and at the

same time, from the University. He did so, and his brother, conceiving

him to have been harshly treated, withdrew also; and both transferred

themselves to Cambridge. That could not be prevented: but there they

were received with marked reserve. One was _not_ received, I believe,

in a technical sense; and the other was received conditionally; and

such restrictions were imposed upon his future conduct as served most

amply, and in a case of great notoriety, to vindicate the claims of

discipline, and, in an extreme case, a case so eminently an extreme one

that none like it is ever likely to recur, to proclaim the footing upon

which the very highest rank is received at the English Universities.

Is that footing peculiar _to them_? I willingly believe that it is

not; and, with respect to Edinburgh and Glasgow, I am persuaded that

their weight of dignity is quite sufficient, and would be exerted to

secure the same subordination from men of rank, if circumstances should

ever bring as large a number of that class within their gates, and if

their discipline were equally applicable to the habits of students not

domiciled within their walls. But, as to the smaller institutions for

education within the pale of dissent, I feel warranted in asserting,

from the spirit of the anecdotes which have reached me, that they have

not the _auctoritas_ requisite for adequately maintaining their dignity.

So much for the aristocracy of our English Universities: their glory

is, and the happiest application of their vast influence, that they

have the power to be republican, as respects their internal condition.

Literature, by substituting a different standard of rank, tends to

republican equality; and, as one instance of this, properly belonging

to the chapter of _servants_, which originally led to this discussion,

it ought to be known that the class of "servitors," once a large

body in Oxford, have gradually become practically extinct under the

growing liberality of the age. They carried in their academic dress a

mark of their inferiority; they waited at dinner on those of higher

rank, and performed other menial services, humiliating to themselves,

and latterly felt as no less humiliating to the general name and

interests of learning. The better taste, or rather the relaxing

pressure of aristocratic prejudice, arising from the vast diffusion

of trade and the higher branches of mechanic art, have gradually

caused these functions of the order (even where the law would not

permit the extinction of the order) to become obsolete. In my time,

I was acquainted with two servitors: but one of them was rapidly

pushed forward into a higher station; and the other complained of no

degradation, beyond the grievous one of exposing himself to the notice

of young women in the streets with an untasselled cap; but this he

contrived to evade, by generally going abroad without his academic

dress. The _servitors_ of Oxford are the _sizars_ of Cambridge; and I

believe the same changes[11] have taken place in both.

[11] These changes have been accomplished, according to my

imperfect knowledge of the case, in two ways: first, by dispensing

with the services whenever that could be done; and, secondly, by a

wise discontinuance of the order itself in those colleges which

were left to their own choice in this matter.

One only account with the college remains to be noticed; but this is

the main one. It is expressed in the bills by the word _battels_,

derived from the old monkish word _patella_ (or batella), a plate;

and it comprehends whatsoever is furnished for dinner and for supper,

including malt liquor, but not wine, as well as the materials for

breakfast, or for any casual refreshment to country visitors, excepting

only groceries. These, together with coals and faggots, candles,

wine, fruit, and other more trifling _extras_, which are matters of

personal choice, form so many private accounts against your name, and

are usually furnished by tradesmen living near to the college, and

sending their servants daily to receive orders. Supper, as a meal

not universally taken, in many colleges is served privately in the

student's own room; though some colleges still retain the ancient

custom of a public supper. But dinner is, in all colleges, a public

meal, taken in the refectory or "hall" of the society; which, with the

chapel and library, compose the essential public _suite_ belonging to

every college alike. No absence is allowed, except to the sick, or to

those who have formally applied for permission to give a dinner-party.

A fine is imposed on all other cases of absence. Wine is not generally

allowed in the public hall, except to the "high table," that is,

the table at which the fellows and some other privileged persons are

entitled to dine. The head of the college rarely dines in public.

The other tables, and, after dinner, the high table, usually adjourn

to their wine, either upon invitations to private parties, or to

what are called the "common rooms" of the several orders--graduates

and undergraduates, &c. The dinners are always plain, and without

pretensions--those, I mean, in the public hall; indeed, nothing _can_

be plainer in most colleges--a simple choice between two or three sorts

of animal food, and the common vegetables. No fish, even as a regular

part of the fare; no soups, no game; nor, except on some very rare

festivity, did I ever see a variation from this plain fare at Oxford.

This, indeed, is proved sufficiently by the average amount of the

_battels_. Many men "battel" at the rate of a guinea a week: I did so

for years: that is, at the rate of three shillings a day for everything

connected with meals, excepting only tea, sugar, milk, and wine. It is

true that wealthier men, more expensive men, and more careless men,

often "battelled" much higher; but, if they persisted in this excess,

they incurred censures, more and more urgent, from the head of the

college.

Now, let us sum up; promising that the extreme duration of residence

in any college at Oxford amounts to something under thirty weeks. It

is possible to keep "short terms," as the phrase is, by a residence of

thirteen weeks, or ninety-one days; but, as this abridged residence is

not allowed, except in here and there a college, I shall assume--as

something beyond the strict _maximum_ of residence--thirty weeks as my

basis. The account will then stand thus:

1. Rooms £10 10 0

2. Tutorage 10 10 0

3. Servants (subject to the explanations made above),

say 5 5 0

4. Battels (allowing one shilling a day beyond what

I and others spent in much dearer times; that

is, allowing twenty-eight shillings weekly), for

thirty weeks 40 4 0

---------

£66 9 0

This will be a liberal calculation for the college bill. What remains?

1. Candles, which the reader will best calculate upon the standard

of his own general usage in this particular. 2. Coals, which are

remarkably dear at Oxford--dearer, perhaps, than anywhere else in

the island; say, three times as dear as at Edinburgh. 3. Groceries.

4. Wine. 5. Washing. This last article was, in my time, regulated by

the college, as there were certain privileged washerwomen, between

whom and the students it was but fair that some proper authority

should interfere to prevent extortion, in return for the monopoly

granted. Six guineas was the regulated sum; but this paid for

everything,--table-linen, &c., as well as for wearing apparel; and

it was understood to cover the whole twenty-eight or thirty weeks.

However, it was open to every man to make his own arrangements,

by insisting on a separate charge for each separate article. All

other expenses of a merely personal nature, such as postage, public

amusements, books, clothes, &c., as they have no special connection

with Oxford, but would, probably, be balanced by corresponding, if

not the very same, expenses in any other place or situation, I do not

calculate. What I have specified are the expenses which would accrue

to a student in consequence of leaving his father's house. The rest

would, in these days, be the same, perhaps, everywhere. How much, then,

shall we assume as the total charge on account of Oxford? Candles,

considering the quantity of long days amongst the thirty weeks, may

be had for one shilling and sixpence a week; for few students--unless

they have lived in India, after which a physical change occurs in the

sensibility of the nostrils--are finical enough to burn wax-lights.

This will amount to two pounds five shillings. Coals, say sixpence a

day; for three-pence a day will amply feed one grate in Edinburgh; and

there are many weeks in the thirty which will demand no fire at all.

Groceries and wine, which are all that remain, I cannot calculate. But

suppose we allow for the first a shilling a day, which will be exactly

ten guineas for thirty weeks; and for the second, nothing at all. Then

the extras, in addition to the college bills, will stand thus:

Washing for thirty weeks, at the privileged rate £6 6 0

Candles 2 5 0

Fire 5 5 0

Groceries 10 10 0

-----------

£24 6 0

The college bills, therefore, will be £66: 9s.; the extras, not

furnished by the college, will be about £24: 6s.,--making a total

amount of £90: 15s. And for this sum, annually, a man may defray

_every_ expense incident to an Oxford life, through a period of weeks

(viz., thirty) something more than he will be permitted to reside. It

is true, that, for the _first_ year, there will be, in addition to

this, his outfit: and for _every_ year there will be his journeys.

There will also be twenty-two weeks uncovered by this estimate; but for

these it is not my business to provide, who deal only with Oxford.

That this estimate is true, I know too feelingly. Would that it were

_not_! would that it were false! Were it so, I might the better justify

to myself that commerce with fraudulent Jews which led me so early

to commence the dilapidation of my small fortune. It _is_ true; and

true for a period (1804-8) far dearer than this. And to any man who

questions its accuracy I address this particular request--that he will

lay his hand upon the special item which he disputes. I anticipate that

he will answer thus: "I dispute none: it is not by positive things

that your estimate errs, but by negations. It is the absence of all

allowance for indispensable items that vitiates the calculation." Very

well: but to this, as to other things, we may apply the words of Dr.

Johnson--"Sir, the reason I drink no wine, is because I can practise

abstinence, but not temperance." Yes: in all things, abstinence is

easier than temperance; for a little enjoyment has invariably the

effect of awaking the sense of enjoyment, irritating it, and setting

it on edge. I, therefore, recollecting my own case, have allowed for

_no_ wine-parties. Let our friend, the abstraction we are speaking

of, give breakfast-parties, if he chooses to give any; and certainly

to give none at all, unless he were dedicated to study, would seem

very churlish. Nobody can be less a friend than myself to monkish and

ascetic seclusion, unless it were for twenty-three hours out of the

twenty-four.

But, however this be settled, let no mistake be made; nor let that be

charged against the system which is due to the habits of individuals.

Early in the last century, Dr. Newton, the head of a college in Oxford,

wrote a large book against the Oxford system, as ruinously expensive.

But then, as now, the real expense was due to no cause over which the

colleges could exercise any effectual control. It is due exclusively to

the habits of social intercourse amongst the young men; from which _he_

may abstain who chooses. But, for any academic authorities to interfere

by sumptuary laws with the private expenditure of grown men, many of

them, in a legal sense, _of age_, and all near it, must appear romantic

and extravagant, for this (or, indeed, any) stage of society. A tutor

being required, about 1810, to fix the amount of allowance for a young

man of small fortune, nearly related to myself, pronounced three

hundred and twenty pounds little enough. He had this allowance, and was

ruined in consequence of the credit which it procured for him, and the

society it connected him with. The majority have two hundred pounds a

year: but my estimate stands good, for all that.

Having stated, generally, the expenses of the Oxford system, I am

bound, in candour, to mention one variety in the mode of carrying

this system into effect, open to every man's adoption, which confers

certain privileges, but, at the same time (by what exact mode, I know

not), considerably increases the cost, and in that degree disturbs

my calculation. The great body of undergraduates, or students, are

divided into two classes--_Commoners_, and _Gentlemen Commoners_.

Perhaps nineteen out of twenty belong to the former class; and it is

for that class, as having been my own, that I have made my estimate.

The other class of _Gentlemen Commoners_ (who, at Cambridge, bear

the name of _Fellow Commoners_) wear a peculiar dress, and have some

privileges which naturally imply some corresponding increase of cost;

but why this increase should go to the extent of doubling the total

expense, as it is generally thought to do, or how it _can_ go to

that extent, I am unable to explain. The differences which attach

to the rank of "Gentlemen Commoners" are these: At his entrance he

pays double "caution money"; that is, whilst Commoners in general

pay about twenty-five guineas, he pays fifty; but this can occur

only once; and, besides, in strict point of right, this sum is only

a deposit, and is liable to be withdrawn on leaving the University,

though it is commonly enough finally presented to the college in the

shape of plate. The next difference is, that, by comparison with the

Commoner, he wears a much more costly dress. The Commoner's gown is

made of what is called _prince's stuff_, and, together with the cap,

costs about five guineas. But the Gentleman Commoner has two gowns--an

undress for the morning, and a full dress-gown for the evening; both

are made of silk, and the latter is very elaborately ornamented. The

cap also is more costly, being covered with velvet instead of cloth.

At Cambridge, again, the tassel is made of gold fringe or bullion,

which, in Oxford, is peculiar to the caps of noblemen; and there

are many other varieties in that University, where the dress for

"pensioners" (that is, the Oxford "Commoners") is specially varied in

almost every college; the object being, perhaps, to give a ready means

to the academic officers for ascertaining, at a glance, not merely the

general fact that such or such a delinquent is a gownsman (which is all

that can be ascertained at Oxford), but also the particular college

to which he belongs. Allowance being made for these two items of

"dress" and "caution-money," both of which apply only to the original

outfit, I know of no others in which the expenditure of a Gentleman

Commoner ought to exceed, or could with propriety exceed, that of a

Commoner. He has, indeed, a privilege as regards the choice of rooms;

he chooses first, and probably chooses those rooms which, being best,

are dearest; that is, they are on a level with the best; but usually

there are many sets almost equally good; and of these the majority

will be occupied by Commoners. So far, there is little opening for

a difference. More often, again, it will happen that a man of this

aristocratic class keeps a private servant; yet this happens also to

Commoners, and is, besides, no properly college expense. Tutorage is

charged double to a Gentleman Commoner--namely, twenty guineas a year:

this is done upon a fiction (as it sometimes turns out) of separate

attention, or aid given in a private way to his scholastic pursuits.

Finally, there arises naturally another and peculiar source of expense

to the "Gentleman Commoner," from a fact implied in his Cambridge

designation of "_Fellow_ Commoner," _commensalis_--viz., that he

associates at meals with the "fellows" and other authorities of the

college. Yet this again expresses rather the particular shape which

his expenditure assumes than any absolute increase in its amount. He

subscribes to a regular mess, and pays, therefore, whether present or

not; but so, in a partial sense, does the Commoner, by his forfeits

for "absent commons." He subscribes also to a regular fund for wine;

and, therefore, he does not enjoy that immunity from wine-drinking

which is open to the Commoner. Yet, again, as the Commoner does but

rarely avail himself of this immunity, as he drinks no less wine than

the Gentleman Commoner, and, generally speaking, wine not worse in

quality, it is difficult to see any ground for a regular assumption

of higher expenditure in the one class than the other. However, the

universal impression favours that assumption. All people believe that

the rank of Gentleman Commoner imposes an expensive burden, though

few people ever ask why. As a matter of fact, I believe it to be true

that Gentlemen Commoners spend more by a third, or a half, than any

equal number of Commoners, taken without selection. And the reason is

obvious: those who become Gentlemen Commoners are usually determined

to that course by the accident of having very large funds; they are

eldest sons, or only sons, or men already in possession of estates, or

else (which is as common a case as all the rest put together) they are

the heirs of newly-acquired wealth--sons of the _nouveaux riches_--a

class which often requires a generation or two to rub off the insolence

of a too conscious superiority. I have called them an "aristocratic"

class; but, in strictness, they are not such; they form a privileged

class, indeed, but their privileges are few and trifling, not to add

that these very privileges are connected with one or two burdens, more

than outweighing them in the estimate of many; and, upon the whole, the

chief distinction they enjoy is that of advertising themselves to the

public as men of great wealth, or great expectations, and, therefore,

as subjects peculiarly adapted to fraudulent attempts. Accordingly, it

is not found that the sons of the nobility are much inclined to enter

this order: these, if they happen to be the eldest sons of earls,

or of any peers above the rank of viscount, so as to enjoy a title

themselves by the courtesy of England, have special privileges in both

Universities as to length of residence, degrees, &c.; and their rank

is ascertained by a special dress. These privileges it is not usual to

forgo; though sometimes that happens, as, in my time, in the instance

of Lord George Grenville (now Lord Nugent); he neither entered at the

aristocratic college (Christ Church), nor wore the dress of a nobleman.

Generally, however, an elder son appears in his true character of

nobleman; but the younger sons rarely enter the class of Gentlemen

Commoners. They enter either as "Commoners," or under some of those

various designations ("_scholars_," "_demies_," "_students_," "_junior

fellows_") which imply that they stand upon the foundation of the

college to which they belong, and are aspirants for academic emoluments.

Upon the whole, I am disposed to regard this order of Gentlemen

Commoners as a standing temptation held out by authority to expensive

habits, and a very unbecoming proclamation of honour paid to the

aristocracy of wealth. And I know that many thoughtful men regard

it in the same light with myself, and regret deeply that any such

distribution of ranks should be authorized, as a stain upon the

simplicity and general manliness of the English academic laws. It is

an open profession of homage and indulgence to wealth, _as_ wealth--to

wealth disconnected from everything that might ally it to the ancestral

honours and heraldries of the land. It is also an invitation, or rather

a challenge, to profuse expenditure. Regularly, and by law, a Gentleman

Commoner is liable to little heavier burdens than a Commoner; but, to

meet the expectations of those around him, and to act up to the part

he has assumed, he must spend more, and he must be more careless in

controlling his expenditure, than a moderate and prudent Commoner. In

every light, therefore, I condemn the institution, and give it up to

the censures of the judicious. So much in candour I concede. But, to

show equal candour on the other side, it must be remembered that this

institution descends to us from ancient times, when wealth was not so

often divided from territorial or civic honours, conferring a real

precedency.

III[12]

[12] From _Tait's Magazine_ for August 1835

There was one reason why I sought solitude at that early age, and

sought it in a morbid excess, which must naturally have conferred

upon my character some degree of that interest which belongs to all

extremes. My eye had been couched into a secondary power of vision,

by misery, by solitude, by sympathy with life in all its modes, by

experience too early won, and by the sense of danger critically

escaped. Suppose the case of a man suspended by some colossal arm over

an unfathomed abyss,--suspended, but finally and slowly withdrawn,--it

is probable that he would not smile for years. That was my case: for

I have not mentioned in the "Opium Confessions" a thousandth part of

the sufferings I underwent in London and in Wales; partly because

the misery was too monotonous, and, in that respect, unfitted for

description; but still more because there is a mysterious sensibility

connected with real suffering, which recoils from circumstantial

rehearsal or delineation, as from violation offered to something

sacred, and which is, or should be, dedicated to privacy. Grief does

not parade its pangs, nor the anguish of despairing hunger willingly

count again its groans or its humiliations. Hence it was that Ledyard,

the traveller, speaking of his Russian experiences, used to say that

some of his miseries were such that he never _would_ reveal them.

Besides all which, I really was not at liberty to speak, without many

reserves, on this chapter of my life, at a period (1821) not twenty

years removed from the actual occurrences, unless I desired to court

the risk of crossing at every step the existing law of libel, so full

of snares and man-traps, to the careless equally with the conscientious

writer. This is a consideration which some of my critics have lost

sight of in a degree which surprises me. One, for example, puts it to

his readers whether any house such as I describe as the abode of my

money-lending friend could exist "_in_ Oxford-street"; and, at the

same time, he states, as circumstances drawn from my description, but,

in fact, pure coinages of his own, certain romantic impossibilities,

which, doubtless, could as little attach to a house in Oxford-street

as they could to a house in any other quarter of London. Meantime, I

had sufficiently indicated that, whatsoever street _was_ concerned in

that affair, Oxford-street was _not_: and it is remarkable enough, as

illustrating this amiable reviewer's veracity, that no one street in

London was absolutely excluded _but_ one, and that one, Oxford-street.

For I happened to mention that, on such a day (my birth-day), I had

turned aside _from_ Oxford-street to look at the house in question. I

will now add that this house was in Greek-street: so much it may be

safe to say. But every candid reader will see that both prudential

restraints, and also disinterested regard to the feelings of possibly

amiable descendants from a vicious man, would operate with any

thoughtful writer, in such a case, to impose reserve upon his pen.

Had my guardians, had my money-lending friend of Jewry, and others

concerned in my memoirs, been so many shadows, bodiless abstractions,

and without earthly connections, I might readily have given my own

names to my own creations, and have treated them as unceremoniously as

I pleased. Not so under the real circumstances of the case. My chief

guardian, for instance, though obstinate to a degree which risked the

happiness and the life of his ward, was an upright man otherwise; and

his children are entitled to value his memory. Again, my Greek-street

[Greek: trapezitês], the "_foenerator Alpheus_," who delighted to

reap where he had not sown, and too often (I fear) allowed himself in

practices which not impossibly have long since been found to qualify

him for distant climates and "Botanic" regions,--even he, though I

might truly describe him as a mere highwayman whenever he happened

to be aware that I had received a friendly loan, yet, like other

highwaymen of repute, and "gentle thieves," was not inexorable to the

petitions of his victim: he would sometimes toss back what was required

for some instant necessity of the road; and at _his_ breakfast-table

it was, after all, as elsewhere recorded, that I contrived to support

life; barely, indeed, and most slenderly, but still with the final

result of escaping absolute starvation. With that recollection before

me, I could not allow myself to probe his frailties too severely,

had it even been certainly safe to do so. But enough; the reader

will understand that a year spent either in the valleys of Wales,

or upon the streets of London, by a wanderer too often houseless

in both situations, might naturally have peopled the mind of one

constitutionally disposed to solemn contemplations with memorials of

human sorrow and strife too profound to pass away for years.

Thus, then, it was. Past experience of a very peculiar kind, the

agitations of many lives crowded into the compass of a year or two, in

combination with a peculiar structure of mind, offered one explanation

of the very remarkable and unsocial habits which I adopted at college;

but there was another not less powerful, and not less unusual. In

stating this, I shall seem, to some persons, covertly designing an

affront to Oxford. But that is far from my intention. It is noways

peculiar to Oxford, but will, doubtless, be found in every University

throughout the world, that the younger part of the members--the

undergraduates, I mean, generally, whose chief business must have

lain amongst the great writers of Greece and Rome--cannot have found

leisure to cultivate extensively their own domestic literature.

Not so much that time will have been wanting; but that the whole

energy of the mind, and the main course of the subsidiary studies

and researches, will naturally have been directed to those difficult

languages amongst which lie their daily tasks. I make it no subject

of complaint or scorn, therefore, but simply state it as a fact, that

few or none of the Oxford undergraduates, with whom parity of standing

threw me into collision at my first outset, knew anything at all of

English Literature. The _Spectator_ seemed to me the only English

book of a classical rank which they had read; and even this less for

its inimitable delicacy, humour, and refined pleasantry in dealing

with manners and characters, than for its insipid and meagre essays,

ethical or critical. This was no fault of theirs: they had been sent

to the book chiefly as a subject for Latin translations, or of other

exercises; and, in such a view, the vague generalities of superficial

morality were more useful and more manageable than sketches of manner

or character, steeped in national peculiarities. To translate the

terms of Whig politics into classical Latin would be as difficult as

it might be for a Whig himself to give a consistent account of those

politics from the year 1688. Natural, however, and excusable, as this

ignorance might be, to myself it was intolerable and incomprehensible.

Already, at fifteen, I had made myself familiar with the great English

poets. About sixteen, or not long after, my interest in the story

of Chatterton had carried me over the whole ground of the Rowley

controversy; and that controversy, by a necessary consequence, had so

familiarised me with the "Black Letter" that I had begun to find an

unaffected pleasure in the ancient English metrical romances; and in

Chaucer, though acquainted as yet only with part of his works, I had

perceived and had felt profoundly those divine qualities which, even

at this day, are so languidly acknowledged by his unjust countrymen.

With this knowledge, and this enthusiastic knowledge of the elder

poets--of those most remote from easy access--I could not well be a

stranger in other walks of our literature, more on a level with the

general taste, and nearer to modern diction, and, therefore, more

extensively multiplied by the press. Yet, after all--as one proof how

much more commanding is that part of a literature which speaks to the

elementary affections of men than that which is founded on the mutable

aspects of manners--it is a fact that, even in our elaborate system

of society, where an undue value is unavoidably given to the whole

science of social intercourse, and a continual irritation applied to

the sensibilities which point in that direction, still, under all these

advantages, Pope himself is less read, less quoted, less thought of,

than the elder and graver section of our literature. It is a great

calamity for an author such as Pope, that, generally speaking, it

requires so much experience of life to enjoy his peculiar felicities

as must argue an age likely to have impaired the general capacity for

enjoyment. For my part, I had myself a very slender acquaintance with

this chapter of our literature; and what little I had was generally,

at that period of my life, as with most men it continues to be to

the end of life, a reflex knowledge, acquired through those pleasant

miscellanies, half gossip, half criticism--such as Warton's _Essay on

Pope_, Boswell's _Johnson_, Mathias's _Pursuits of Literature_, and

many scores besides of the same indeterminate class: a class, however,

which do a real service to literature, by diffusing an indirect

knowledge of fine writers in their most effective passages, where

else, in a direct shape, it would often never extend.

In some parts, then, having even a profound knowledge of our

literature, in all parts having some, I felt it to be impossible that I

should familiarly associate with those who had none at all; not so much

as a mere historical knowledge of the literature in its capital names

and their chronological succession. Do I mention this in disparagement

of Oxford? By no means. Among the undergraduates of higher standing,

and occasionally, perhaps, of my own, I have since learned that many

might have been found eminently accomplished in this particular. But

seniors do not seek after juniors; they must be sought; and, with my

previous bias to solitude, a bias equally composed of impulses and

motives, I had no disposition to take trouble in seeking any man for

any purpose.

But, on this subject, a fact still remains to be told, of which I

am justly proud; and it will serve, beyond anything else that I can

say, to measure the degree of my intellectual development. On coming

to Oxford, I had taken up one position in advance of my age by full

thirty years: that appreciation of Wordsworth, which it has taken full

thirty years to establish amongst the public, I had already made, and

had made operative to my own intellectual culture, in the same year

when I clandestinely quitted school. Already, in 1802, I had addressed

a letter of fervent admiration to Mr. Wordsworth. I did not send it

until the spring of 1803; and, from misdirection, it did not come into

his hands for some months. But I had an answer from Mr. Wordsworth

before I was eighteen; and that my letter was thought to express the

homage of an enlightened admirer may be inferred from the fact that his

answer was long and full. On this anecdote I do not mean to dwell; but

I cannot allow the reader to overlook the circumstances of the case.

At this day [1835] it is true, no journal can be taken up which does

not habitually speak of Mr. Wordsworth as of _a_ great, if not _the_

great, poet of the age. Mr. Bulwer, living in the intensest pressure of

the world, and though recoiling continually from the judgments of the

world, yet never in any violent degree ascribes to Mr. Wordsworth (in

his _England and the English_, p. 308) "an influence of a more noble

and purely intellectual character than _any_ writer of our age or

nation has exercised." Such is the opinion held of this great poet in

1835; but what were those of 1805-15,--nay, of 1825? For twenty years

after the date of that letter to Mr. Wordsworth above referred to,

language was exhausted, ingenuity was put on the rack, in the search

after images and expressions vile enough, insolent enough, to convey

the unutterable contempt avowed for all that he had written by the

fashionable critics. One critic--who still, I believe, edits a rather

popular journal, and who belongs to that class, feeble, fluttering,

ingenious, who make it their highest ambition not to lead, but, with

a slave's adulation, to obey and to follow all the caprices of the

public mind--described Mr. Wordsworth as resembling, in the quality

of his mind, an old nurse babbling in her paralytic dotage to sucking

babies. If this insult was peculiarly felt by Mr. Wordsworth, it was on

a consideration of the unusual imbecility of him who offered it, and

not because in itself it was baser or more insolent than the language

held by the majority of journalists who then echoed the public voice.

_Blackwood's Magazine_ (1817) first accustomed the public ear to the

language of admiration coupled with the name of Wordsworth. This began

with Professor Wilson; and well I remember--nay, the proofs are still

easy to hunt up--that, for eight or ten years, this singularity of

opinion, having no countenance from other journals, was treated as a

whim, a paradox, a bold extravagance, of the _Blackwood_ critics. Mr.

Wordsworth's neighbours in Westmoreland, who had (generally speaking) a

profound contempt for him, used to rebut the testimony of _Blackwood_

by one constant reply--"Ay, _Blackwood_ praises Wordsworth, but who

else praises him?" In short, up to 1820, the name of Wordsworth was

trampled under foot; from 1820 to 1830, it was militant; from 1830 to

1835, it has been triumphant. In 1803, when I entered at Oxford, that

name was absolutely unknown; and the finger of scorn, pointed at it in

1802 by the first or second number of the _Edinburgh Review_, failed to

reach its mark from absolute defect of knowledge in the public mind.

Some fifty besides myself knew who was meant by "that poet who had

cautioned his friend against growing double," etc.; to all others it

was a profound secret.

These things must be known and understood properly to value the

prophetic eye and the intrepidity of two persons, like Professor Wilson

and myself, who, in 1802-3, attached themselves to a banner not yet

raised and planted; who outran, in fact, their contemporaries by one

entire generation, and did _that_ about 1802 which the rest of the

world are doing in chorus about 1832.

Professor Wilson's period at Oxford exactly coincided with my own; yet,

in that large world, we never met. I know, therefore, but little of his

policy in regard to such opinions or feelings as tended to dissociate

him from the mass of his coëvals. This only I know, that he lived as

it were in public, and must, therefore, I presume, have practised a

studied reserve as to his deepest admirations; and, perhaps, at that

day (1803-8) the occasions would be rare in which much dissimulation

would be needed. Until Lord Byron had begun to pilfer from Wordsworth

and to abuse him, allusions to Wordsworth were not frequent in

conversations; and it was chiefly on occasions of some question

arising about poetry in general, or about the poets of the day, that

it became difficult to dissemble. For my part, hating the necessity

for dissimulation as much as the dissimulation itself, I drew from

this peculiarity also of my own mind a fresh reinforcement of my other

motives for sequestering myself; and, for the first two years of my

residence in Oxford, I compute that I did not utter one hundred words.

I remember distinctly the first (which happened also to be the last)

conversation that I ever held with my tutor. It consisted of three

sentences, two of which fell to his share, one to mine. On a fine

morning, he met me in the Quadrangle, and, having then no guess of the

nature of my pretensions, he determined (I suppose) to probe them.

Accordingly, he asked me, "What I had been lately reading?" Now, the

fact was that I, at that time immersed in metaphysics, had really been

reading and studying very closely the _Parmenides_, of which obscure

work some Oxford man, early in the last century, published a separate

edition. Yet, so profound was the benignity of my nature that, in

those days, I could not bear to witness, far less to cause, the least

pain or mortification to any human being. I recoiled, indeed, from

the society of most men, but not with any feelings of dislike. On the

contrary, in order that I _might_ like all men, I wished to associate

with none. Now, then, to have mentioned the _Parmenides_ to one who,

fifty thousand to one, was a perfect stranger to its whole drift and

purpose, looked too _méchant_, too like a trick of malice, in an age

when such reading was so very unusual. I felt that it would be taken

for an express stratagem for stopping my tutor's mouth. All this

passing rapidly through my mind, I replied, without hesitation, that I

had been reading Paley. My tutor's rejoinder I have never forgotten:

"Ah! an excellent author; excellent for his matter; only you must be

on your guard as to his style; he is very vicious _there_." Such was

the colloquy; we bowed, parted, and never more (I apprehend) exchanged

one word. Now, trivial and trite as this comment on Paley may appear

to the reader, it struck me forcibly that more falsehood, or more

absolute falsehood, or more direct inversion of the truth, could

not, by any artifice or ingenuity, have been crowded into one short

sentence. Paley, as a philosopher, is a jest, the disgrace of the age;

and, as regards the two Universities, and the enormous responsibility

they undertake for the books which they sanction by their official

examinations for degrees, the name of Paley is their great opprobrium.

But, on the other hand, for style, Paley is a master. Homely, racy,

vernacular English, the rustic vigour of a style which intentionally

forgoes the graces of polish on the one hand, and of scholastic

precision on the other--that quality of merit has never been attained

in a degree so eminent. This first interchange of thought upon a

topic of literature did not tend to slacken my previous disposition

to retreat into solitude; a solitude, however, which at no time was

tainted with either the moroseness or the pride of a cynic.

Neither must the reader suppose that, even in that day, I belonged

to the party who disparage the classical writers, or the classical

training of the great English schools. The Greek drama I loved and

revered. But, to deal frankly, because it is a subject which I shall

hereafter bring before the public, I made great distinctions. I was

not that indiscriminate admirer of Greek and Roman literature which

those too generally are who admire it at all. This protesting spirit

against a false and blind idolatry was with me, at that time, a matter

of enthusiasm--almost of bigotry. I was a bigot against bigots. Let

us take the Greek oratory, for example:--What section of the Greek

literature is more fanatically exalted, and studiously in depreciation

of our own? Let us judge of the sincerity at the base of these hollow

affectations, by the downright facts and the producible records.

To admire, in any sense which can give weight and value to your

admiration, pre-supposes, I presume, some acquaintance with its object.

As the earliest title to an opinion, one way or other, of the Greek

eloquence, we ought to have studied some of its most distinguished

artists; or, say _one_, at least; and this one, we may be sure, will

be, as it ought to be, Demosthenes. Now, it is a fact, that all the

copies of Demosthenes sold within the last hundred years would not

meet the demand of one considerable town, were that orator a subject

of study amongst even classical scholars. I doubt whether, at this

day, there exist twenty men in Europe who can be said to have even

once read Demosthenes; and, therefore, it was that, when Mr. Mitford,

in his "History of Greece," took a new view of this orator's political

administration--a view which lowered his character for integrity--he

found an unresisting acceder to his doctrines in a public having no

previous opinion upon the subject, and, therefore, open to any casual

impression of malice or rash judgment. Had there been any acquaintance

with the large remains which we still possess of this famous orator,

no such wrong could have been done. I, from my childhood, had been a

reader, nay, a student, of Demosthenes; and simply for this reason,

that, having meditated profoundly on the true laws and philosophy

of diction, and of what is vaguely denominated style, and finding

nothing of any value in modern writers upon this subject, and not much

as regards the grounds and ultimate principles even in the ancient

rhetoricians, I have been reduced to collect my opinions from the great

artists and practitioners, rather than from the theorists; and, among

those artists, in the most plastic of languages, I hold Demosthenes to

have been the greatest.

The Greek is, beyond comparison, the most plastic of languages. It

was a material which bent to the purposes of him who used it beyond

the material of other languages; it was an instrument for a larger

compass of modulations; and it happens that the peculiar theme of

an orator imposes the very largest which is consistent with a prose

diction. One step further in passion, and the orator would become a

poet. An orator can exhaust the capacities of a language--an historian,

never. Moreover, the age of Demosthenes was, in my judgment, the age

of highest development for arts dependent upon social refinement.

That generation had fixed and ascertained the use of words; whereas

the previous generation of Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, &c., was a

transitional period: the language was still moving, and tending to

a meridian not yet attained; and the public eye had been directed

consciously upon language, as in and for itself an organ of

intellectual delight, for too short a time to have mastered the whole

art of managing its resources. All these were reasons for studying

Demosthenes, as the one great model and standard of Attic prose; and

studied him I _had_, more than any other prose writer whatever. _Pari

passu_, I had become sensible that others had _not_ studied him. One

monotonous song of applause I found raised on every side; something

about being "like a torrent, that carries everything before it." This

original image is all we get in the shape of criticism, and never any

attempt even at illustrating what is greatest in him, or characterising

what is most peculiar. The same persons who discovered that Lord

Brougham was the modern Bacon have also complimented him with the title

of the English Demosthenes. Upon this hint, Lord Brougham, in his

address to the Glasgow students, has deluged the great Athenian with

wordy admiration. There is an obvious prudence in lodging your praise

upon an object from which you count upon a rebound to yourself. But

here, as everywhere else, you look in vain for any marks or indications

of a personal and _direct_ acquaintance with the original orations.

The praise is built rather upon the popular idea of Demosthenes than

upon the real Demosthenes. And not only so, but even upon style itself,

and upon the art of composition _in abstracto_, Lord Brougham does not

seem to have formed any clear conceptions,--principles he has none.

Now, it is useless to judge of an artist until you have some principles

on the art. The two capital secrets in the art of prose composition

are these: 1st, The philosophy of transition and connection, or the

art by which one step in an evolution of thought is made to arise

out of another: all fluent and effective composition depends on the

_connections_;--2dly, The way in which sentences are made to modify

each other; for the most powerful effects in written eloquence arise

out of this reverberation, as it were, from each other in a rapid

succession of sentences; and, because some limitation is necessary

to the length and complexity of sentences, in order to make this

interdependency felt: hence it is that the Germans have no eloquence.

The construction of German prose tends to such immoderate length of

sentences that no effect of intermodification can ever be apparent.

Each sentence, stuffed with innumerable clauses of restriction, and

other parenthetical circumstances, becomes a separate section--an

independent whole. But, without insisting on Lord Brougham's

oversights, or errors of defect, I will digress a moment to one

positive caution of his, which will measure the value of his philosophy

on this subject. He lays it down for a rule of indefinite application

that the Saxon part of our English idiom is to be favoured at the

expense of that part which has so happily coalesced with the language

from the Latin or Greek. This fancy, often patronized by other writers,

and even acted upon, resembles that restraint which some metrical

writers have imposed upon themselves--of writing a long copy of verses

from which some particular letter, or from each line of which some

different letter, should be carefully excluded. What followed? Was the

reader sensible, in the practical effect upon his ear, of any beauty

attained? By no means; all the difference, sensibly perceived, lay in

the occasional constraints and affectations to which the writer had

been driven by his self-imposed necessities. The same chimera exists

in Germany; and so much further is it carried that one great puritan

in this heresy (Wolf) has published a vast dictionary, the rival of

Adelung's, for the purpose of expelling every word of foreign origin

and composition out of the language, by assigning some equivalent term

spun out from pure native Teutonic materials. _Bayonet_, for example,

is patriotically rejected, because a word may be readily compounded

tantamount to _musket-dirk_; and this sort of composition thrives

showily in the German, as a language running into composition with

a fusibility only surpassed by the Greek. But what good purpose is

attained by such caprices? In three sentences the sum of the philosophy

may be stated. It has been computed (see _Duclos_) that the Italian

opera has not above six hundred words in its whole vocabulary: so

narrow is the range of its emotions, and so little are these emotions

disposed to expand themselves into any variety of thinking. The same

remark applies to that class of simple, household, homely passion,

which belongs to the early ballad poetry. Their passion is of a quality

more venerable, it is true, and deeper than that of the opera, because

more permanent and coextensive with human life; but it is not much

wider in its sphere, nor more apt to coalesce with contemplative or

philosophic thinking. Pass from these narrow fields of the intellect,

where the relations of the objects are so few and simple, and the

whole prospect so bounded, to the immeasurable and sea-like arena

upon which Shakspeare careers--co-infinite with life itself--yes, and

with something more than life. Here is the other pole, the opposite

extreme. And what is the choice of diction? What is the _lexis_? Is

it Saxon exclusively, or is it Saxon by preference? So far from that,

the Latinity is intense--not, indeed, in his construction, but in his

choice of words; and so continually are these Latin words used with a

critical respect to their earliest (and, where _that_ happens to have

existed, to their unfigurative) meaning, that, upon this one argument I

would rely for upsetting the else impregnable thesis of Dr. Farmer as

to Shakspeare's learning. Nay, I will affirm that, out of this regard

to the Latin acceptation of Latin words, may be absolutely explained

the Shakspearian meaning of certain words which has hitherto baffled

all his critics. For instance, the word _modern_, of which Dr. Johnson

professes himself unable to explain the _rationale_ or principle

regulating its Shakspearian use, though he felt its value, it is to

be deduced thus: First of all, change the pronunciation a little, by

substituting for the short o, as we pronounce it in _modern_, the long

_o_, as heard in _modish_, and you will then, perhaps, perceive the

process of analogy by which it passed into the Shakspearian use. The

_matter_ or substance of a thing is, usually, so much more important

than its fashion or _manner_, that we have hence adopted, as one way

for expressing what is important as opposed to what is trivial, the

word _material_. Now, by parity of reason, we are entitled to invert

this order, and to express what is unimportant by some word indicating

the mere fashion or external manner of an object as opposed to its

substance. This is effected by the word _modal_ or _m[=o]dern_, as

the adjective from _modus_, a fashion or manner; and in that sense

Shakspeare employs the word. Thus, Cleopatra, undervaluing to Cæsar's

agent the bijouterie which she has kept back from inventory, and which

her treacherous steward had betrayed, describes them as mere trifles--

"Such gifts as we greet modern friends withal";

where all commentators have _felt_ that modern must from the position

mean slight and inconsiderable, though perplexed to say how it came

by such a meaning. A _modern_ friend is, in the Shakspearian sense,

with relation to a real and serviceable friend, that which the fashion

of a thing is by comparison with its substance. But a still better

illustration may be taken from a common line, quoted every day, and

ludicrously misinterpreted. In the famous picture of life--"All the

world's a stage"--the justice of the peace is described as

"Full of wise saws and modern instances";

which (_horrendum dictu!_) has been explained, and, I verily believe,

is generally understood to mean, _full of wise sayings and modern

illustrations_. The true meaning is--full of proverbial maxims of

conduct and of trivial arguments; that is, of petty distinctions, or

verbal disputes, such as never touch the point at issue. The word

_modern_ I have already deduced; the word _instances_ is equally Latin,

and equally used by Shakspeare in its Latin sense. It is originally

the word _instantia_, which, by the monkish and scholastic writers,

is uniformly used in the sense of an argument, and originally of an

argument urged in objection to some previous argument.[13]

[13] I cannot for a moment believe that the original and most

eloquent critic in _Blackwood_ is himself the dupe of an argument

which he has alleged against this passage, under too open a hatred

of Shakspeare, as though it involved a contradiction to common

sense, by representing _all_ human beings of such an age as

school-boys, all of such another age as soldiers, of such another

as magistrates, &c. Evidently the logic of the famous passage is

this,--that, whereas every age has its peculiar and appropriate

temper, that profession or employment is selected for the

exemplification which seems best fitted, in each case, to embody

the characteristic or predominating quality. Thus, because

impetuosity, self-esteem, and animal or irreflective courage, are

qualities most intense in youth, next it is considered in what

profession those qualities find their most unlimited range; and,

because that is obviously the military profession, therefore it is

that the soldier is selected as the representative of young men.

For the same reason, as best embodying the peculiar temper of

garrulous old age, the magistrate comes forward as supporting the

part of that age. Not that old men are not also soldiers; but that

the military profession, so far from strengthening, moderates and

tempers the characteristic temper of old age.

I affirm, therefore, that Lord Brougham's counsel to the Glasgow

students is not only bad counsel,--and bad counsel for the result, as

well as for the grounds, which are either capricious or nugatory,--but

also that, in the exact proportion in which the range of thought

expands, it is an impossible counsel, an impracticable counsel--a

counsel having for its purpose to embarrass and lay the mind in

fetters, where even its utmost freedom and its largest resources will

be found all too little for the growing necessities of the intellect.

"Long-tailed words in _osity_ and _ation_!" What does _that_ describe?

Exactly the Latin part of our language. Now, those very terminations

speak for themselves:--All high abstractions end in _ation_; that

is, they are Latin; and, just in proportion as the abstracting power

extends and widens, do the circles of thought widen, and the horizon or

boundary (contradicting its own Grecian name) melts into the infinite.

On this account it was that Coleridge (_Biographia Literaria_) remarks

on Wordsworth's philosophical poetry, that, in proportion as it goes

into the profound of passion and of thought, do the words increase

which are vulgarly called "_dictionary_ words." Now, these words,

these "dictionary" words, what are they? Simply words of Latin or

Greek origin: no other words, no Saxon words, are ever called by

illiterate persons dictionary words. And these dictionary words are

indispensable to a writer, not only in the proportion by which he

transcends other writers as to extent and as to subtlety of thinking,

but also as to elevation and sublimity. Milton was not an extensive

or discursive thinker, as Shakspeare was; for the motions of his mind

were slow, solemn, sequacious, like those of the planets; not agile

and assimilative; not attracting all things within its own sphere; not

multiform: repulsion was the law of his intellect--he moved in solitary

grandeur. Yet, merely from this quality of grandeur, unapproachable

grandeur, his intellect demanded a larger infusion of Latinity into his

diction. For the same reason (and without such aids he would have had

no proper element in which to move his wings) he enriched his diction

with Hellenisms and with Hebraisms[14]; but never, as could be easy to

show, without a full justification in the result. Two things may be

asserted of all his exotic idioms--1st, That they express what could

not have been expressed by any native idiom; 2d, That they harmonize

with the English language, and give a colouring of the antique, but not

any sense of strangeness, to the diction. Thus, in the double negative,

"Nor did they not perceive," &c., which is classed as a Hebraism--if

any man fancy that it expresses no more than the simple affirmative,

he shows that he does not understand its force; and, at the same time,

it is a form of thought so natural and universal that I have heard

English people, under corresponding circumstances, spontaneously

fall into it. In short, whether a man differ from others by greater

profundity or by greater sublimity, and whether he write as a poet

or as a philosopher, in any case, he feels, in due proportion to the

necessities of his intellect, an increasing dependence upon the Latin

section of the English language; and the true reason why Lord Brougham

failed to perceive this, or found the Saxon equal to his wants, is one

which I shall not scruple to assign, inasmuch as it does not reflect

personally on Lord Brougham, or, at least, on him exclusively, but

on the whole body to which he belongs. That thing which he and they

call by the pompous name of statesmanship, but which is, in fact,

_statescraft_--the art of political intrigue--deals (like the opera)

with ideas so few in number, and so little adapted to associate

themselves with other ideas, that, possibly, in the one case equally

as in the other, six hundred words are sufficient to meet all their

demands.

[14] The diction of Milton is a case absolutely unique in

literature: of many writers it has been said, but of him only

with truth, that he created a peculiar language. The value must be

tried by the result, not by inferences from _a priori_ principles;

such inferences might lead us to anticipate an unfortunate result;

whereas, in fact, the diction of Milton is such that no other

could have supported his majestic style of thinking. The final

result is a _transcendent_ answer to all adverse criticism; but

still it is to be lamented that no man properly qualified has

undertaken the examination of the Miltonic diction as a separate

problem. Listen to a popular author of this day (Mr. Bulwer). He,

speaking on this subject, asserts (_England and the English_, p.

329) that "_there is scarcely an English idiom which Milton has

not violated, or a foreign one which he has not borrowed_." Now,

in answer to this extravagant assertion, I will venture to say

that the two following are the sole cases of questionable idiom

throughout Milton:--1st, "Yet virgin of Proserpina from Jove";

and, in this case, the same thing might be urged in apology which

Aristotle urges in another argument, namely, that [Greek: anônumon

to pathos], the case is unprovided with _any_ suitable expression.

How would it be possible to convey in good English the

circumstances here indicated: viz. that Ceres was yet in those

days of maiden innocence, when she had borne no daughter to Jove?

2d, I will cite a case which, so far as I remember, has been

noticed by no commentator; and, probably, because they have failed

to understand it. The case occurs in the "Paradise Regained"; but

where I do not at this moment remember. "Will they _transact_ with

God?" [The only case of the use of the word _transact_ by Milton

registered in the Verbal Indexes is in _Par. Lost_, vi. 286, where

Satan says, "Easier to transact with me."--M.] This is the

passage; and a most flagrant instance it offers of pure Latinism.

_Transigere_, in the language of the civil law, means to make a

compromise; and the word _transact_ is here used in that sense--a

sense utterly unknown to the English language. This is the worst

case in Milton; and I do not know that it has been ever noticed.

Yet even here it may be doubted whether Milton is not defensible;

asking if they proposed to terminate their difference with God

after the fashion in use amongst courts of law, he points properly

enough to these worldly settlements by the technical term which

designated them. Thus might a divine say: Will he arrest the

judgments of God by a _demurrer_? Thus, again, Hamlet

apostrophises the lawyer's skull by the technical terms used in

actions for assault, &c. Besides, what proper term is there in

English for expressing a compromise? Edmund Burke, and other much

older authors, express the idea by the word _temperament_; but

that word, though a good one, was at one time considered an exotic

term--equally a Gallicism and a Latinism.

I have used my privilege of discursiveness to step aside from

Demosthenes to another subject, no otherwise connected with the

Attic orator than, first, by the common reference of both subjects

to rhetoric; but, secondly, by the accident of having been jointly

discussed by Lord Brougham in a paper which (though now forgotten)

obtained, at the moment, most undue celebrity. For it is one of the

infirmities of the public mind with us, that whatever is said or done

by a public man,--any opinion given by a member of Parliament, however

much out of his own proper jurisdiction and range of inquiry,--commands

an attention not conceded even to those who speak under the known

privilege of professional knowledge. Thus, Cowper was not discovered

to be a poet worthy of any general notice until Charles Fox, a most

slender critic, had vouchsafed to quote a few lines, and that not so

much with a view to the poetry as to its party application. But now,

returning to Demosthenes, I affirm that his case is the case of nearly

all the classical writers,--at least, of all the prose writers. It is,

I admit, an extreme one; that is, it is the general case in a more

intense degree. Raised almost to divine honours, never mentioned but

with affected rapture, the classics of Greece and Rome are seldom read,

most of them never; are they, indeed, the closet companions of any man?

Surely it is time that these follies were at an end; that our practice

were made to square a little better with our professions, and that our

pleasures were sincerely drawn from those sources in which we pretend

that they lie.

The Greek language, mastered in any eminent degree, is the very rarest

of all accomplishments, and precisely because it is unspeakably the

most difficult. Let not the reader dupe himself by popular cant. To

be an accomplished Grecian demands a very peculiar quality of talent;

and it is almost inevitable that one who is such should be vain of a

distinction which represents so much labour and difficulty overcome.

For myself, having, as a school-boy, attained to a very unusual mastery

over this language, and (though as yet little familiar with the

elaborate science of Greek metre) moving through all the obstacles and

resistances of a Greek book with the same celerity and ease as through

those of the French and Latin, I had, in vanquishing the difficulties

of the language, lost the main stimulus to its cultivation. Still, I

read Greek daily; but any slight vanity which I might connect with a

power so rarely attained, and which, under ordinary circumstances, so

readily transmutes itself into a disproportionate admiration of the

author, in me was absolutely swallowed up in the tremendous hold taken

of my entire sensibilities at this time by our own literature. With

what fury would I often exclaim: He who loveth not his brother whom he

hath seen, how shall he love God whom he hath not seen? You, Mr. A, L,

M, O, you who care not for Milton, and value not the dark sublimities

which rest ultimately (as we all feel) upon dread realities, how

can you seriously thrill in sympathy with the spurious and fanciful

sublimities of the classical poetry--with the nod of the Olympian

Jove, or the seven-league strides of Neptune? Flying Childers had the

most prodigious stride of any horse on record; and at Newmarket that

is justly held to be a great merit; but it is hardly a qualification

for a Pantheon. The parting of Hector and Andromache--that is tender,

doubtless; but how many passages of far deeper, far diviner tenderness,

are to be found in Chaucer! Yet in these cases we give our antagonist

the benefit of an appeal to what is really best and most effective in

the ancient literature. For, if we should go to Pindar, and some other

great names, what a revelation of hypocrisy as respects the _fade_

enthusiasts for the Greek poetry!

Still, in the Greek tragedy, however otherwise embittered against

ancient literature by the dismal affectations current in the scenical

poetry, at least I felt the presence of a great and original power.

It might be a power inferior, upon the whole, to that which presides

in the English tragedy; I believed that it was; but it was equal and

appealed equally to real and deep sensibilities in our nature. Yet,

also, I felt that the two powers at work in the two forms of the

drama were essentially different; and, without having read a line of

German at that time, or knowing of any such controversy, I began to

meditate on the elementary grounds of difference between the Pagan

and the Christian forms of poetry. The dispute has since been carried

on extensively in France, not less than in Germany, as between the

_classical_ and the _romantic_. But I will venture to assert that not

one step in advance has been made, up to this day. The shape into which

I threw the question it may be well to state; because I am persuaded

that out of that one idea, properly pursued, might be evolved the whole

separate characteristics of the Christian and the Antique. Why is it,

I asked, that the Christian idea of _sin_ is an idea utterly unknown

to the Pagan mind? The Greeks and Romans had a clear conception of a

moral ideal, as we have; but this they estimated by a reference to the

will; and they called it virtue, and the antithesis they called vice.

The _lacheté_ or relaxed energy of the will, by which it yielded to

the seductions of sensual pleasure, that was vice; and the braced-up

tone by which it resisted these seductions was virtue. But the idea

of holiness, and the antithetic idea of sin, as a violation of this

awful and unimaginable sanctity, was so utterly undeveloped in the

Pagan mind, that no word exists in classical Greek or classical Latin

which approaches either pole of this synthesis; neither the idea of

_holiness_, nor of its correlate, _sin_, could be so expressed in Latin

as at once to satisfy Cicero and a scientific Christian. Again (but

this was some years after), I found Schiller and Goethe applauding

the better taste of the ancients, in symbolizing the idea of death by

a beautiful youth, with a torch inverted, &c., as compared with the

Christian types of a skeleton and hourglasses, &c. And much surprised

I was to hear Mr. Coleridge approving of this German sentiment. Yet,

here again, I felt, the peculiar genius of Christianity was covertly

at work moving upon a different road, and under opposite ideas, to a

just result, in which the harsh and austere expression yet pointed to

a dark reality, whilst the beautiful Greek adumbration was, in fact,

a veil and a disguise. The corruptions and the other "dishonours" of

the grave, and whatsoever composes the sting of death in the Christian

view, is traced up to sin as its ultimate cause. Hence, besides the

expression of Christian humility, in thus nakedly exhibiting the wrecks

and ruins made by sin, there is also a latent profession indicated

of Christian hope. For the Christian contemplates steadfastly, though

with trembling awe, the lowest point of his descent; since, for him,

that point, the last of his fall, is also the first of his re-ascent,

and serves, besides, as an exponent of its infinity; the infinite

depth becoming, in the rebound, a measure of the infinite re-ascent.

Whereas, on the contrary, with the gloomy uncertainties of a Pagan

on the question of his final restoration, and also (which must not

be overlooked) with his utter perplexity as to the nature of his

restoration, if any were by accident in reserve, whether in a condition

tending downwards or upwards, it was the natural resource to consult

the general feeling of anxiety and distrust, by throwing a thick

curtain and a veil of beauty over the whole too painful subject. To

place the horrors in high relief could here have answered no purpose

but that of wanton cruelty; whereas, with the Christian hopes, the

very saddest memorials of the havocks made by death are antagonist

prefigurations of great victories in the rear.

These speculations, at that time, I pursued earnestly; and I then

believed myself, as I yet do, to have ascertained the two great and

opposite laws under which the Grecian and the English tragedy has each

separately developed itself. Whether wrong or right in that belief,

sure I am that those in Germany who have treated the case of Classical

and Romantic are not entitled to credit for any discovery at all. The

Schlegels, who were the hollowest of men, the windiest and wordiest (at

least, Frederick was so), pointed to the distinction; barely indicated

it; and that was already some service done, because a presumption

arose that the antique and the modern literatures, having clearly some

essential differences, might, perhaps, rest on foundations originally

distinct, and obey different laws. And hence it occurred that many

disputes, as about the unities, &c., might originate in a confusion

of these laws. This checks the presumption of the shallow criticism,

and points to deeper investigations. Beyond this, neither the German

nor the French disputers on the subject have talked to any profitable

purpose.

I have mentioned Paley as accidentally connected with my _début_ in

literary conversation; and I have taken occasion to say how much I

admired his style and its unstudied graces, how profoundly I despised

his philosophy. I shall here say a word or two more on that subject. As

respects his style, though secretly despising the opinion avowed by my

tutor (which was, however, a natural opinion for a stiff lover of the

artificial and the pompous), I would just as unwillingly be supposed

to adopt the extravagant opinions, in the other extreme, of Dr. Parr

and Mr. Coleridge. These two gentlemen, who privately hated Paley,

and, perhaps, traduced him, have hung like bees over one particular

paragraph in his Evidences, as though it were a flower transplanted

from Hymettus. Dr. Parr pronounced it the finest sentence in the

English language. It is a period (that is, a cluster of sentences)

moderately well, but not _too_ well, constructed, as the German

nurses are accustomed to say. Its felicity depends on a trick easily

imitated--on a balance happily placed (namely, "_in which the wisest

of mankind would rejoice to find an answer to their doubts and rest to

their inquiries_)." As a _bravura_, or _tour de force_, in the dazzling

fence of rhetoric, it is surpassed by many hundreds of passages which

might be produced from rhetoricians; or, to confine myself to Paley's

contemporaries, it is very far surpassed by a particular passage in

Burke's letter upon the Duke of Bedford's base attack upon him in

the House of Lords; which passage I shall elsewhere produce, because

I happen to know, on the authority of Burke's executors, that Burke

himself considered it the finest period which he had ever written.

At present, I will only make one remark, viz. that it is always

injudicious, in the highest degree, to cite for admiration that which

is not a _representative_ specimen of the author's manner. In reading

Lucian, I once stumbled on a passage of German pathos, and of German

effect. Would it have been wise, or would it have been intellectually

just, to quote this as the text of an eulogium on Lucian? What

false criticism it would have suggested to every reader! what false

anticipations! To quote a formal and periodic pile of sentences was to

give the feeling that Paley was what the regular rhetorical artists

designate as a periodic writer, when, in fact, no one conceivable

character of style more pointedly contradicted the true description of

his merits.

But, leaving the style of Paley, I must confess that I agree with Mr.

Bulwer (_England and the English_) in thinking it shocking and almost

damnatory to an English University, the great well-heads of creeds,

moral and evangelical, that authors such in respect of doctrine as

Paley and Locke should hold that high and influential station as

teachers, or rather oracles of truth, which has been conceded to them.

As to Locke, I, when a boy, had made a discovery of one blunder full

of laughter and of fun, which, had it been published and explained

in Locke's lifetime, would have tainted his whole philosophy with

suspicion. It relates to the Aristotelian doctrine of syllogism,

which Locke undertook to ridicule. Now, a flaw, a hideous flaw, in

the _soi-disant_ detecter of flaws, a ridicule in the exposer of the

ridiculous--_that_ is fatal; and I am surprised that Lee, who wrote a

folio against Locke in his lifetime, and other examiners, should have

failed in detecting this. I shall expose it elsewhere; and, perhaps,

one or two other exposures of the same kind will give an impetus to

the descent of this falling philosophy. With respect to Paley, and

the naked _prudentialism_ of his system, it is true that in a longish

note Paley disclaims that consequence. But to this we may reply, with

Cicero, _Non quæro quid neget Epicurus, sed quid congruenter neget_.

Meantime, waiving all this as too notorious, and too frequently

denounced, I wish to recur to this trite subject, by way of stating

an objection made to the Paleyan morality in my seventeenth year, and

which I have never since seen reason to withdraw. It is this:--I affirm

that the whole work, from first to last, proceeds upon that sort of

error which the logicians call _ignoratio elenchi_, that is, ignorance

of the very question concerned--of the point at issue. For, mark, in

the very vestibule of ethics, two questions arise--two different and

disconnected questions, A and B; and Paley has answered the wrong one.

Thinking that he was answering A, and meaning to answer A, he has,

in fact, answered B. One question arises thus: Justice is a virtue;

temperance is a virtue; and so forth. Now, what is the common principle

which ranks these several species under the same genus? What, in the

language of logicians, is the common differential principle which

determines these various aspects of moral obligation to a common

genus? Another question, and a more interesting question to men in

general, is this,--What is the motive to virtue? By what impulse, law,

or motive, am I impelled to be virtuous rather than vicious? Whence

is the motive derived which should impel me to one line of conduct in

preference to the other? This, which is a practical question, and,

therefore, more interesting than the other, which is a pure question

of speculation, was that which Paley believed himself to be answering.

And his answer was,--that utility, a perception of the resulting

benefit, was the true determining motive. Meantime, it was objected

that often the most obvious results from a virtuous action were far

otherwise than beneficial. Upon which, Paley, in the long note referred

to above, distinguished thus: that, whereas actions have many results,

some proximate, some remote, just as a stone thrown into the water

produces many concentric circles, be it known that he, Dr. Paley, in

what he says of utility, contemplates only the final result, the very

outermost circle; inasmuch as he acknowledges a possibility that the

first, second, third, including the penultimate circle, may all happen

to clash with utility; but then, says he, the outermost circle of all

will never fail to coincide with the absolute maximum of utility.

Hence, in the first place, it appears that you cannot apply this test

of utility in a practical sense; you cannot say, This is useful,

_ergo_, it is virtuous; but, in the inverse order, you must say, This

is virtuous, _ergo_, it is useful. You do not rely on its usefulness

to satisfy yourself of its being virtuous; but, on the contrary, you

rely on its virtuousness, previously ascertained, in order to satisfy

yourself of its usefulness. And thus the whole practical value of this

test disappears, though in that view it was first introduced; and a

vicious circle arises in the argument; as you must have ascertained

the virtuousness of an act, in order to apply the test of its being

virtuous. But, _secondly_, it now comes out that Paley was answering a

very different question from that which he supposed himself answering.

Not any practical question as to the motive or impelling force in

being virtuous, rather than vicious,--that is, to the _sanctions_

of virtue,--but a purely speculative question, as to the essence of

virtue, or the common _vinculum_ amongst the several modes or species

of virtue (justice, temperance, &c.)--this was the real question

which he was answering. I have often remarked that the largest and

most subtle source of error in philosophic speculations has been the

confounding of the two great principles so much insisted on by the

Leibnitzians, viz., the _ratio cognoscendi_ and the _ratio essendi_.

Paley believed himself to be assigning--it was his full purpose to

assign--the _ratio cognoscendi_; but, instead of that, unconsciously

and surreptitiously, he has actually assigned the _ratio essendi_, and,

after all, a false and imaginary _ratio essendi_.

APPENDED NOTE

As De Quincey's long and interesting Chapter on Oxford from 1803 to

1808 leaves the incidents of his own passage through the University

rather hazy, the following condensation of particulars on the subject

may not be unwelcome. They are partly from one of his own conversations

in 1821 with Richard Woodhouse (the notes of which conversations are

appended to Mr. Garnett's edition in 1885 of the _Confessions of

an English Opium-Eater_), partly from an article in the _Quarterly

Review_ for July 1861 containing information supplied by Dr. Cotton of

Worcester College, and partly from information collected by Mr. Page

for his _Life of De Quincey_:--Admitted into Worcester College on the

17th of December 1803, he did for the first two years of his residence

lead, as he tells us, a very solitary life, withdrawing himself from

wine-parties, and frequenting chiefly the society of a German named

Schwartzburg. Even then, however, he had the reputation with some in

the college of being, though of shy and quaint ways, a man of uncommon

genius and erudition; and, latterly, as this reputation spread in the

college, and some inevitable appearances of his in college declamations

and the like confirmed it, he became the object of more general

attention, and was urged to go up for honours in taking his degree. He

did attend the first examination for B.A. honours at Michaelmas in the

year 1808, with the result that Dr. Goodenough of Christ Church, who

was one of the examiners, is said to have told one of the Worcester

College dons, "You have sent us to-day the cleverest man I ever met

with; if his _vivâ voce_ examination to-morrow correspond with what he

has done in writing, he will carry everything before him." De Quincey's

own account to Mr. Woodhouse was that the examination was an oral one

and in Latin; which agrees more with the possibility of such a report

from Dr. Goodenough on the same day. De Quincey further adds that this

examination was on a Saturday, and that the remaining examination,

which was to follow on Monday, was to be in Greek. He had been looking

forward to this examination with much interest, his Greek readings

having been of wide range and in many directions out of the ordinary

academic track; and his interest had been increased by the regulation

that the answers to the questions were to be wholly or largely in the

Greek tongue itself. The fact that this rule had been altered at the

last moment had, however, disgusted him; and this, together with "his

contempt for his examiners" and the thought that the examination would

be of a kind that would leave his real resources untested, had such

an effect upon him that, "when the time came, he was _non inventus_."

Mr. Woodhouse's report from himself is that "on the Sunday morning

he left Oxford"; the Worcester College tradition, which is equally

precise as to the main fact that he "packed up his things and walked

away from Oxford," makes the flight occur in the night following the

first examination. Whatever other causes there may have been for the

break-down, the opium-eating habit must have been chiefly responsible.

That habit had been formed by De Quincey in 1804 in one of those

visits of his to London which, with visits to other places, are to be

understood as having varied the monotony of his Oxford residence. The

habit had grown upon him in his solitude in his college rooms; and part

of the college tradition respecting his break-down is that, having

taken a large dose of the drug to stimulate him sufficiently for the

first day's examination, he was wrecked by the reaction. He took no

University degree; and, though his name remained on the college books

to as late as 15th December 1810, his real connexion with Oxford ceased

in 1808.--D. M.

CHAPTER II

GERMAN STUDIES AND KANT IN PARTICULAR[15]

[15] From _Tait's Magazine_ for June 1836. See _ante_, Preface,

pp. 1, 2.--M.

Using a New Testament, of which (in the narrative parts at least)

any one word being given will suggest most of what is immediately

consecutive, you evade the most irksome of the penalties annexed to the

first breaking ground in a new language: you evade the necessity of

hunting up and down a dictionary. Your own memory, and the inevitable

suggestions of the context, furnish a dictionary _pro hac vice_. And

afterwards, upon advancing to other books, where you are obliged to

forgo such aids, and to swim without corks, you find yourself already

in possession of the particles for expressing addition, succession,

exception, inference--in short, of all the forms by which transition

or connexion is effected (_if_, _but_, _and_, _therefore_, _however_,

_notwithstanding_), together with all those adverbs for modifying

or restraining the extent of a subject or a predicate, which in all

languages alike compose the essential frame-work or _extra-linear_

machinery of human thought. The filling-up--the _matter_ (in a

scholastic sense)--may differ infinitely; but the _form_, the

periphery, the determining moulds into which this matter is fused--all

this is the same for ever: and so wonderfully limited in its extent is

this frame-work, so narrow and rapidly revolving is the clock-work of

connexions among human thoughts, that a dozen pages of almost any book

suffice to exhaust all the [Greek: epea pteroenta][16] which express

them. To have mastered these [Greek: epea pteroenta] is in effect to

have mastered seven-tenths, at the least, of any language; and the

benefit of using a New Testament, or the familiar parts of an Old

Testament, in this preliminary drill, is, that your own memory is thus

made to operate as a perpetual dictionary or nomenclator. I have heard

Mr. Southey say that, by carrying in his pocket a Dutch, Swedish, or

other Testament, on occasion of a long journey performed in "_muggy_"

weather, and in the inside of some venerable "old heavy"--such as used

to bestow their tediousness upon our respectable fathers some thirty

or forty years ago--he had more than once turned to so valuable an

account the doziness or the dulness of his fellow-travellers, that,

whereas he had "booked" himself at the coach-office utterly [Greek:

analphabêtos], unacquainted with the first rudiments of the given

language, he had made his parting bows to his coach brethren (secretly

returning thanks to them for their stupidity) in a condition for

grappling with any common book in that dialect. One of the polyglot Old

or New Testaments published by Bagster would be a perfect Encyclopædia,

or _Panorganon_, for such a scheme of coach discipline, upon dull roads

and in dull company. As respects the German language in particular, I

shall give one caution from my own experience to the self-instructor:

it is a caution which applies to the German language exclusively, or

to that more than to any other, because the embarrassment which it

is meant to meet grows out of a defect of taste characteristic of

the German mind. It is this: elsewhere, you would naturally, as a

beginner, resort to _prose_ authors, since the license and audacity of

poetic thinking, and the large freedom of a poetic treatment, cannot

fail to superadd difficulties of individual creation to the general

difficulties of a strange dialect. But this rule, good for every

other case, is _not_ good for the literature of Germany. Difficulties

there certainly are, and perhaps in more than the usual proportion,

from the German peculiarities of poetic treatment; but even these are

overbalanced in the result by the single advantage of being limited

in the extent by the metre, or (as it may happen) by the particular

stanza. To German poetry there is a known, fixed, calculable limit.

Infinity, absolute infinity, is impracticable in any German metre. Not

so with German prose. Style, in any sense, is an inconceivable idea

to a German intellect. Take the word in the limited sense of what the

Greeks called [Greek: Synthesis onomatôn]--_i.e._, the construction

of sentences--I affirm that a German (unless it were here and there a

Lessing) cannot admit such an idea. Books there are in German, and,

in other respects, very good books too, which consist of one or two

enormous sentences. A German sentence describes an arch between the

rising and the setting sun. Take Kant for illustration: he has actually

been complimented by the cloud-spinner, Frederick Schlegel, who is now

in Hades, as a most original artist in the matter of style. "Original"

Heaven knows he was! His idea of a sentence was as follows:--We have

all seen, or read of, an old family coach, and the process of packing

it for a journey to London some seventy or eighty years ago. Night and

day, for a week at least, sate the housekeeper, the lady's maid, the

butler, the gentleman's gentlemen, &c., packing the huge ark in all

its recesses, its "imperials," its "wells," its "Salisbury boots,"

its "sword-cases," its front pockets, side pockets, rear pockets, its

"hammer-cloth cellars" (which a lady explains to me as a corruption

from _hamper-cloth_, as originally a cloth for hiding a hamper, stored

with _viaticum_), until all the uses and needs of man, and of human

life, savage or civilized, were met with separate provision by the

infinite chaos. Pretty nearly upon the model of such an old family

coach packing did Kant institute and pursue the packing and stuffing of

one of his regular sentences. Everything that could ever be needed in

the way of explanation, illustration, restraint, inference, by-clause,

or indirect comment, was to be crammed, according to this German

philosopher's taste, into the front pockets, side pockets, or rear

pockets, of the one original sentence. Hence it is that a sentence will

last in reading whilst a man

"Might reap an acre of his neighbour's corn."

Nor is this any peculiarity of Kant's. It is common to the whole family

of prose-writers of Germany, unless when they happen to have studied

French models, who cultivate the opposite extreme. As a caution,

therefore, practically applied to this particular anomaly in German

prose-writing, I advise all beginners to choose between two classes

of composition--ballad poetry, or comedy--as their earliest school

of exercise: ballad poetry, because the form of the stanza (usually

a quatrain) prescribes a very narrow range to the sentences; comedy,

because the form of dialogue, and the imitation of daily life in its

ordinary tone of conversation, and the spirit of comedy, naturally

suggesting a brisk interchange of speech, all tend to short sentences.

These rules I soon drew from my own experience and observation. And

the one sole purpose towards which I either sought or wished for aid

respected the pronunciation; not so much for attaining a just one

(which I was satisfied could not be realized out of Germany, or, at

least, out of a daily intercourse with Germans) as for preventing

the formation, unawares, of a radically false one. The guttural and

palatine sounds of the _ch_, and some other German peculiarities,

cannot be acquired without constant practice. But the false Westphalian

or Jewish pronunciation of the vowels, diphthongs, &c., may easily

be forestalled, though the true delicacy of Meissen should happen to

be missed. Thus much guidance I purchased, with a very few guineas,

from my young Dresden tutor, who was most anxious for permission to

extend his assistance; but this I would not hear of: and, in the spirit

of fierce (perhaps foolish) independence, which governed most of my

actions at that time of life, I did all the rest for myself.

"It was a banner broad unfurl'd,

The picture of that western world."

These, or words like these, in which Wordsworth conveys the sudden

apocalypse, as by an apparition, to an ardent and sympathising

spirit, of the stupendous world of America, rising, at once, like an

exhalation, with all its shadowy forests, its endless savannas, and

its pomp of solitary waters--well and truly might I have applied to my

first launching upon that vast billowy ocean of the German literature.

As a past literature, as a literature of inheritance and tradition, the

German was nothing. Ancestral titles it had none; or none comparable to

those of England, Spain, or even Italy; and there, also, it resembled

America, as contrasted with the ancient world of Asia, Europe, and

North Africa.[17] But, if its inheritance were nothing, its prospects,

and the scale of its present development, were in the amplest style of

American grandeur. _Ten thousand_ new books, we are assured by Menzel,

an author of high reputation--a _literal myriad_--is considerably below

the number annually poured from all quarters of Germany into the vast

reservoir of Leipsic: spawn infinite, no doubt, of crazy dotage, of

dreaming imbecility, of wickedness, of frenzy, through every phasis of

Babylonian confusion; yet, also, teeming and heaving with life and the

instincts of truth--of truth hunting and chasing in the broad daylight,

or of truth groping in the chambers of darkness; sometimes seen as it

displays its cornucopia of tropical fruitage; sometimes heard dimly,

and in promise, working its way through diamond mines. Not the tropics,

not the ocean, not life itself, is such a type of variety, of infinite

forms, or of creative power, as the German literature in its recent

motions (say for the last twenty years), gathering, like the Danube, a

fresh volume of power at every stage of its advance. A banner it was,

indeed, to me of miraculous promise, and suddenly unfurled. It seemed,

in those days, an El Dorado as true and undeceiving as it was evidently

inexhaustible. And the central object in this interminable wilderness

of what then seemed imperishable bloom and verdure--the very tree of

knowledge in the midst of this Eden--was the new or transcendental

philosophy of Immanuel Kant.

[16] 2 [Greek: Epea pteroenta] literally _winged words_. To

explain the use and origin of this phrase to non-classical

readers, it must be understood that, originally, it was used by

Homer to express the few, rapid, and significant words which

conveyed some hasty order, counsel, or notice, suited to any

sudden occasion or emergency: _e.g._ "To him flying from the field

the hero addressed these winged words--'Stop, coward, or I will

transfix thee with my spear.'" But by Horne Tooke the phrase was

adopted on the title-page of his _Diversions of Purley_, as a

pleasant symbolic expression for all the non-significant

particles, the _articuli_ or joints of language, which in his

well-known theory are resolved into abbreviations or compendious

forms (and therefore rapid, flying, _winged_ forms), substituted

for significant forms of greater length. Thus, _if_ is a

non-significant particle, but it is an abbreviated form of an

imperative in the second person--substituted for gif, or give, or

grant the case--put the case that. All other particles are shewn

by Horne Tooke to be equally short-hand (or _winged_)

substitutions.

[17] It has been rather too much forgotten that Africa, from the

northern margin of Bilidulgerid and the Great Desert,

southwards--everywhere, in short, beyond Egypt, Cyrene, and the

modern Barbary States--belongs, as much as America, to the New

World, the world unknown to the ancients.

I have described the gorgeousness of my expectations in those early

days of my prelusive acquaintance with German literature. I have a

little lingered in painting that glad aurora of my first pilgrimage to

the fountains of the Rhine and of the Danube, in order adequately to

shadow out the gloom and blight which soon afterwards settled upon the

hopes of that golden dawn. In Kant, I had been taught to believe, were

the keys of a new and a creative philosophy. Either "_ejus ductu_," or

"_ejus auspiciis_"--that is, either directly under his guidance, or

indirectly under any influence remotely derived from his principles--I

looked confidingly to see the great vistas and avenues of truth laid

open to the philosophic inquirer. Alas! all was a dream. Six weeks'

study was sufficient to close my hopes in that quarter for ever. The

philosophy of Kant--so famous, so commanding in Germany from about

the period of the French Revolution--already, in 1805, I had found to

be a philosophy of destruction, and scarcely in any one chapter so

much as _tending_ to a philosophy of reconstruction. It destroys by

wholesale, and it substitutes nothing. Perhaps, in the whole history of

man, it is an unexampled case that such a scheme of speculation--which

offers nothing seducing to human aspirations, nothing splendid to the

human imagination, nothing even positive and affirmative to the human

understanding--should have been able to found an interest so broad and

deep among thirty-five millions of cultivated men. The English reader

who supposes this interest to have been confined to academic bowers,

or the halls of philosophic societies, is most inadequately alive to

the case. Sects, heresies, schisms, by hundreds, have arisen out of

this philosophy; many thousands of books have been written by way of

teaching it, discussing it, extending it, opposing it. And yet it is a

fact that all its doctrines are negative--teaching, in no case, what

we _are_, but simply what we are _not_, to believe--and that all its

truths are barren. Such being its unpopular character, I cannot but

imagine that the German people have received it with so much ardour

from profound incomprehension of its meaning, and utter blindness to

its drift: a solution which may seem extravagant, but is not so; for,

even amongst those who have expressly commented on this philosophy,

not one of the many hundreds whom I have myself read but has retracted

from every attempt to explain its dark places. In these dark places

lies, indeed, the secret of its attraction. Were light poured into

them, it would be seen that they are _culs-de-sac_, passages that

lead to nothing; but, so long as they continue dark, it is not known

whither they lead, how far, in what direction, and whether, in fact,

they may not issue into paths connected directly with the positive

and the infinite. Were it known that upon every path a barrier faces

you insurmountable to human steps--like the barriers which fence in

the Abyssinian valley of Rasselas--the popularity of this philosophy

would expire at once; for no popular interest can long be sustained

by speculations which, in every aspect, are known to be essentially

negative and essentially finite. Man's nature has something of infinity

within itself, which requires a corresponding infinity in its objects.

We are told, indeed, by Mr. Bulwer, that the Kantian system has ceased

to be of any authority in Germany--that it is defunct, in fact--and

that we have first begun to import it into England after its root

had withered, or begun to wither, in its native soil. But Mr. Bulwer

is mistaken. The philosophy has never withered in Germany. It cannot

even be said that its fortunes have retrograded: they have oscillated:

accidents of taste and ability in particular professors, or caprices of

fashion, have given a momentary fluctuation to this or that new form

of Kantianism--an ascendency, for a period, to various, and, in some

respects, conflicting modifications of the transcendental system; but

all alike have derived their power mediately from Kant. No weapons,

even if employed as hostile weapons, are now forged in any armoury but

that of Kant; and, to repeat a Roman figure which I used above, all

the modern polemic tactics of what is called metaphysics are trained

and made to move either _ejus ductu_ or _ejus auspiciis_. Not one of

the new systems affects to call back the Leibnitzian philosophy, the

Cartesian, or any other of earlier or later date, as adequate to the

purposes of the intellect in this day, or as capable of yielding

even a sufficient terminology. Let this last fact decide the question

of Kant's vitality. _Qui bene distinguit bene docet._ This is an old

adage. Now, he who imposes new names upon all the acts, the functions,

and the objects of the philosophic understanding must be presumed

to have distinguished most sharply, and to have ascertained with

most precision, their general relations--_so long as his terminology

continues to be adopted_. This test, applied to Kant, will show that

his spirit yet survives in Germany. Frederick Schlegel, it is true,

twenty years ago, in his lectures upon Literature, assures us that

even the disciples of the great philosopher have agreed to abandon his

philosophic nomenclature. But the German philosophic literature, since

that date, tells another tale. Mr. Bulwer is, therefore, wrong; and,

without going to Germany, looking only to France, he will see cause to

revise his sentence. Cousin--the philosophic Cousin, the only great

name in philosophy for modern France--familiar as he is with North

Germany, can hardly be presumed unacquainted with a fact so striking,

if it _were_ a fact, as the extinction of a system once so triumphantly

supreme as that of Kant; and yet Mr. Bulwer, admiring Cousin as he

does, cannot but have noticed his efforts to naturalize Kant in France.

Meantime, if it were even true that transcendentalism had lost its

hold of the public mind in Germany, _prima facie_, this would prove

little more than the fickleness of that public which must have been

wrong in one of the two cases--either when adopting the system, or when

rejecting it. Whatever there may be of truth and value in the system

will remain unimpeached by such caprices, whether of an individual or

of a great nation; and England would still be in the right to import

the philosophy, however late in the day, if it were true even (which I

doubt greatly) that she _is_ importing it.

Both truth and value there certainly _is_ in one part of the Kantian

philosophy; and that part is its foundation. I had intended, at this

point, to introduce an outline of the transcendental philosophy--not,

perhaps, as entering by logical claim of right into any biographical

sketch, but as a very allowable digression in the record of that man's

life to whom, in the way of hope and of profound disappointment,

it had been so memorable an object. For two or three years before I

mastered the language of Kant,[18] it had been a pole-star to my hopes,

and _in hypothesi_, agreeably to the uncertain plans of uncertain

knowledge, the luminous guide to my future life--as a life dedicated

and set apart to philosophy. Such it was some years _before_ I knew

it: for at least ten long years _after_ I came into a condition of

valuing its true pretensions and measuring its capacities, this same

philosophy shed the gloom of something like misanthropy upon my views

and estimates of human nature; for man was an abject animal if the

limitations which Kant assigned to the motions of his speculative

reason were as absolute and hopeless as, under _his_ scheme of the

understanding and _his_ genesis of its powers, too evidently they were.

I belonged to a reptile race, if the wings by which we had sometimes

_seemed_ to mount, and the buoyancy which had _seemed_ to support our

flight, were indeed the fantastic delusions which he represented them.

Such, and so deep and so abiding in its influence upon my life, having

been the influence of this German philosophy, according to all logic of

proportions, in selecting the objects of my notice, I might be excused

for setting before the reader, in its full array, the analysis of its

capital sections. However, in any memorial of a life which professes to

keep in view (though but as a secondary purpose) any regard to popular

taste, the logic of proportions must bend, after all, to the law of

the occasion--to the proprieties of time and place. For the present,

therefore, I shall restrict myself to the few sentences in which it

may be proper to gratify the curiosity of _some_ readers, the two or

three in a hundred, as to the peculiar distinctions of this philosophy.

Even to these two or three out of each hundred I shall not venture

to ascribe a larger curiosity than with respect to the most general

"whereabouts" of its position--from what point it starts, whence and

from what aspect it surveys the ground, and by what links from this

starting point it contrives to connect itself with the main objects of

philosophic inquiry.

[18] I might have mastered the philosophy of Kant without waiting

for the German language, in which all his capital works are

written; for there is a Latin version of the whole by Born, and a

most admirable digest of the cardinal work (admirable for its

fidelity and the skill by which that fidelity is attained) in the

same language by Rhiseldek, a Danish professor. But this fact,

such was the slight knowledge of all things connected with Kant in

England, I did not learn for some years.

Immanuel Kant was originally a dogmatist in the school of Leibnitz

and Wolf; that is, according to his trisection of all philosophy

into dogmatic, sceptical, and critical, he was, upon all questions

disposed to a strong _affirmative_ creed, without courting any

particular examination into the grounds of this creed, or into its

assailable points. From this slumber, as it is called by himself, he

was suddenly aroused by the Humian doctrine of cause and effect. This

celebrated essay on the nature of necessary connexion--so thoroughly

misapprehended at the date of its first publication to the world by

its _soi-disant_ opponents, Oswald, Beattie, &c., and so imperfectly

comprehended since then by various _soi-disant_ defenders--became in

effect the "occasional cause" (in the phrase of the logicians) of the

entire subsequent philosophic scheme of Kant; every section of which

arose upon the accidental opening made to analogical trains of thought

by this memorable effort of scepticism applied by Hume to one capital

phenomenon among the necessities of the human understanding. What is

the nature of Hume's scepticism as applied to this phenomenon? What is

the main thesis of his celebrated Essay on Cause and Effect? For few,

indeed, are they who really know anything about it. If a man really

understands it, a very few words will avail to explain the _nodus_.

Let us try. It is a necessity of the _human_ understanding (very

probably not a necessity of a higher order of intelligences) to connect

its experiences by means of the idea of _cause_ and its correlate,

_effect_: and, when Beattie, Oswald, Reid, &c., were exhausting

themselves in proofs of the indispensableness of this idea, they were

fighting with shadows; for no man had ever questioned the practical

necessity for such an idea to the coherency of human thinking. Not the

practical necessity, but the internal consistency of this notion, and

the original right to such a notion, was the point of inquisition. For,

attend, courteous reader, and three separate propositions will set

before your eyes the difficulty. _First Prop._, which, for the sake of

greater precision, permit me to throw into Latin:--_Non datur aliquid_

[A] _quo posito ponitur aliud_ [B] _a priori_; that is, in other words,

You cannot lay your hands upon that one object or phenomenon [A] in the

whole circle of natural existences, which, being assumed, will entitle

you to assume _a priori_, any other object whatsoever [B] as succeeding

it. You could not, I say, of any object or phenomenon whatever, assume

this succession _a priori_--that is, _previously to experience_.

_Second Prop._ But, if the succession of B to A be made known to you,

not _a priori_ (by the involution of B in the idea of A), but by

experience, then you cannot ascribe _necessity_ to the succession:

the connection between them is not necessary but contingent. For the

very widest experience--an experience which should stretch over all

ages, from the beginning to the end of time--can never establish a

_nexus_ having the least approximation to necessity; no more than a

rope of sand could gain the cohesion of adamant by repeating its links

through a billion of successions. _Prop. Third._ Hence (_i.e._ from

the two preceding propositions), it appears that no instance or case

of _nexus_ that ever can have been offered to the notice of any human

understanding has in it, or by possibility could have had, anything

of necessity. Had the _nexus_ been necessary, you would have seen

it beforehand; whereas, by Prop. 1, _Non datur aliquid, quo posito

ponitur aliud a priori_. This being so, now comes the startling fact,

that the notion of a _cause_ includes the notion of necessity. For,

if A (the cause) be connected with B (the effect) only in a casual

or accidental way, you do not feel warranted in calling it a cause.

If heat, applied to ice (A) were sometimes followed by a tendency to

liquefaction (B) and sometimes not, you would not consider A connected

with B as a cause, but only as some variable accompaniment of the true

and unknown cause, which might allowably be present or be absent.

This, then, is the startling and mysterious phenomenon of the human

understanding--that, in a certain notion, which is indispensable to the

coherency of our whole experience, indispensable to the establishing

any _nexus_ between the different parts and successions of our whole

train of notions, we include an accessary notion of necessity, which

yet has no justification or warrant, no assignable derivation from

any known or possible case of human experience. We have one idea at

least--viz. the idea of causation--which transcends our possible

experience by one important element, the element of _necessity_, that

never can have been derived from the only source of ideas recognised

by the philosophy of this day. A Lockian never can find his way out of

this dilemma. The experience (whether it be the experience of sensation

or the experience of reflection) which he adopts for his master-key

never will unlock this case; for the sum total of human experience,

collected from all ages, can avail only to tell us what _is_, but never

what _must be_. The idea of necessity is absolutely transcendent to

experience, _per se_, and must be derived from some other source. From

what source? Could Hume tell us? No: he, who had started the game so

acutely (for, with every allowance for the detection made in Thomas

Aquinas of the original suggestion, as recorded in the _Biographia

Literaria_ of Coleridge, we must still allow great merit of a secondary

kind to Hume for his modern revival and restatement of the doctrine),

this same acute philosopher broke down confessedly in his attempt to

hunt the game down. His solution is worthless.

Kant, however, having caught the original scent from Hume, was

more fortunate. He saw, at a glance, that here was a test applied

to the Lockian philosophy, which showed, at the very least,

its _insufficiency_. If it were good even for so much as it

explained--which Burke is disposed to receive as a sufficient warrant

for the favourable reception of a new hypothesis--at any rate, it now

appeared that there was something which it could _not_ explain. But,

next, Kant took a large step in advance _proprio marte_. Reflecting

upon the one idea adduced by Hume as transcending the ordinary source

of ideas, he began to ask himself whether it were likely that this idea

should stand alone? Were there not other ideas in the same predicament;

other ideas including the same element of necessity, and, therefore,

equally disowning the parentage assigned by Locke? Upon investigation,

he found that there were: he found that there were eleven others in

exactly the same circumstances. The entire twelve he denominated

categories; and the mode by which he ascertained their number--that

there were so many and no more--is of itself so remarkable as to

merit notice in the most superficial sketch. But, in fact, this one

explanation will put the reader in possession of Kant's system, so

far as he could understand it without an express and toilsome study.

With this explanation, therefore, of the famous categories, I shall

close my slight sketch of the system. Has the reader ever considered

the meaning of the term _Category_--a term so ancient and so venerable

from its connexion with the most domineering philosophy that has yet

appeared amongst men? The doctrine of the Categories (or, in its

Roman appellation, of the _Predicaments_) is one of the few wrecks

from the Peripatetic philosophy which still survives as a doctrine

taught by public authority in the most ancient academic institutions

of Europe.[19] It continues to form a section in the code of public

instruction; and perhaps under favour of a pure accident. For, though,

strictly speaking, a _metaphysical_ speculation, it has always been

prefixed as a sort of preface to the Organon (or _logical_ treatises)

of Aristotle, and has thus accidentally shared in the immortality

conceded to that most perfect of human works. Far enough were the

Categories from meriting such distinction. Kant was well aware of this:

he was aware that the Aristotelian Categories were a useless piece

of scholastic lumber: unsound in their first conception; and, though

illustrated through long centuries by the schoolmen, and by still

earlier Grecian philosophers, never in any one known instance turned

to a profitable account. Why, then, being aware that even in idea they

were false, besides being practically unsuitable, did Kant adopt or

borrow a name laden with this superfetation of reproach--all that is

false in theory superadded to all that is useless in practice? He did

so for a remarkable reason: he felt, according to his own explanation,

that Aristotle had been _groping_ (the German word expressive of his

blind procedure is _herumtappen_)--groping in the dark, but under a

semi-conscious instinct of truth. Here is a most remarkable case or

situation of the human intellect, happening alike to individuals

and to entire generations--in the situation of yearning or craving,

as it were, for a great idea as yet unknown, but dimly and uneasily

prefigured.

[19] De Quincey was so fastidious in the matter of grammatical

correctness that he would have been shocked to find that he had

let this sentence go forth in print.--M.

Sometimes the very brink, as it may be called, of such an idea is

approached; sometimes it is even imperfectly discovered; but with marks

in the very midst of its imperfections which serve as indications to a

person coming better armed for ascertaining the sub-conscious thought

which had governed their tentative motions. As it stands in Aristotle's

scheme, the idea of a category is a mere lifeless abstraction.

Rising through a succession of species to genera, and from these to

still higher genera, you arrive finally at a highest genus--a naked

abstraction, beyond which no farther regress is possible. This highest

genus, this _genus generalissimum_, is, in peripatetic language, a

category; and no purpose or use has ever been assigned to any one of

these categories, of which ten were enumerated at first, beyond that

of classification--_i.e._ a purpose of mere convenience. Even for as

trivial a purpose as this, it gave room for suspecting a failure,

when it was afterwards found that the original ten categories did

not exhaust the possibilities of the case; that other supplementary

categories (_post-proedicamenta_) became necessary. And, perhaps,

"more last words" might even yet be added, supplementary supplements,

and so forth, by a hair-splitting intellect. Failures as gross as

these, revisals still open to revision, and amendments calling for

amendments, were at once a broad confession that here there was no

falling in with any great law of nature. The paths of nature may

sometimes be arrived at in a tentative way; but they are broad and

determinate; and, when found, vindicate themselves. Still, in all this

erroneous subtilisation, and these abortive efforts, Kant perceived a

grasping at some real idea--fugitive indeed and coy, which had for the

present absolutely escaped; but he caught glimpses of it continually

in the rear; he felt its necessity to any account of the human

understanding that could be satisfactory to one who had meditated on

Locke's theory as probed and searched by Leibnitz. And in this uneasy

state--half sceptical, half creative, rejecting and substituting,

pulling down and building up--what was, in sum and finally, the course

which he took for bringing his trials and essays to a crisis? He

states this himself, somewhere in the Introduction to his _Critik der

reinen Vernunft_; and the passage is a memorable one. Fifteen years

at the least have passed since I read it; and, therefore, I cannot

pretend to produce the words; but the substance I shall give; and I

appeal to the candour of all his readers whether they have been able

to apprehend his meaning. I certainly did not for years. But, now

that I do, the passage places his procedure in a most striking and

edifying light. Astronomers, says Kant, had gone on for ages, assuming

that the earth was the central body of our system; and insuperable

were the difficulties which attended that assumption. At length, it

occurred to try what would result from inverting the assumption. Let

the earth, instead of offering a fixed centre for the revolving motions

of other heavenly bodies, be supposed itself to revolve about some

one of these, as the sun. That supposition was tried, and gradually

all the phenomena which, before, had been incoherent, anomalous,

or contradictory, began to express themselves as parts of a most

harmonious system. "Something," he goes on to say, "analogous to this

I have practised with regard to the subject of my inquiry--the human

understanding. All others had sought their central principle of the

intellectual phenomena out of the understanding, in something external

to the mind. I first turned my inquiries upon the mind itself. I first

applied my examination to the very analysis of the understanding." In

words not precisely these, but pretty nearly equivalent to them, does

Kant state, by contradistinction, the value and the nature of his own

procedure. He first, according to his own representation, thought of

applying his investigation to the mind itself. Here was a passage which

for years (I may say) continued to stagger and confound me. What! he,

Kant, in the latter end of the 18th century, about the year 1787--he

the first who had investigated the mind! This was not arrogance so

much as it was insanity. Had he said--I, first, upon just principles,

or with a fortunate result, investigated the human understanding, he

would have said no more than every fresh theorist is bound to suppose,

as his preliminary apology for claiming the attention of a busy world.

Indeed, if a writer, on any part of knowledge, does _not_ hold himself

superior to all his predecessors, we are entitled to say--Then, why do

you presume to trouble us? It may _look_ like modesty, but _is_, in

effect, downright effrontery, for you to think yourself no better than

other critics; you were at liberty to think so whilst no claimant of

public notice--as being so, it is most arrogant in you to be modest.

This would be the criticism applied justly to a man who, in Kant's

situation, as the author of a new system, should use a language of

unseasonable modesty or deprecation. To have spoken boldly of himself

was a duty; we could not tolerate his doing otherwise. But to speak of

himself in the exclusive terms I have described does certainly seem,

and for years did seem to myself, little short of insanity. Of this I

am sure,--that no student of Kant, having the passage before him, can

have known heretofore what consistent, what rational interpretation

to give it; and, in candour, he ought to own himself my debtor for

the light he will now receive. Yet, so easy is it to imagine, after a

meaning is once pointed out, and the station given from which it shows

itself _as_ the meaning--so easy, under these circumstances, is it

to imagine that one has, or that one could have, found it for one's

self--that I have little expectation of reaping much gratitude for

my explanation. I say this, not as of much importance one way or the

other in a single case of the kind, but because a general consideration

of this nature has sometimes operated to make me more indifferent or

careless as to the publication of commentaries on difficult systems

when I had found myself able to throw much light on the difficulties.

The very success with which I should have accomplished the task--the

perfect removal of the obstacles in the student's path--were the very

grounds of my assurance that the service would be little valued. For

I have found what it was occasionally, in conversation, to be too

luminous--to have explained, for instance, too clearly a dark place

in Ricardo. In such a case, I have known a man of the very greatest

powers mistake the intellectual effort he had put forth to apprehend my

elucidation, and to meet it half way, for his own unassisted conquest

over the difficulties; and, within an hour or two after, I have had,

perhaps, to stand, as an attack upon myself, arguments entirely and

recently furnished by myself. No case is more possible: even to

apprehend complex explanation, a man cannot be passive; he must exert

considerable energy of mind; and, in the fresh consciousness of this

energy, it is the most natural mistake in the world for him to feel

the argument which he has by considerable effort appropriated to be an

argument which he has originated. Kant is the most unhappy champion of

his own doctrines, the most infelicitous expounder of his own meaning,

that has ever existed. Neither has any other commentator succeeded in

throwing a moonlight radiance upon his philosophy. Yet certain I am

that, were I, or any man, to disperse all his darkness, exactly in

that proportion in which we did so--exactly in the proportion in which

we smoothed all hindrances--exactly in that proportion would it cease

to be known or felt that there had ever been any hindrances to be

smoothed. This, however, is digression, to which I have been tempted

by the interesting nature of the grievance. In a jesting way, this

grievance is obliquely noticed in the celebrated couplet--

"Had you seen but these roads before they were made,

You'd lift up your hands and bless Marshal Wade."

The pleasant bull here committed conceals a most melancholy truth,

and one of large extent. Innumerable are the services to truth, to

justice, or society, which never _can_ be adequately valued by those

who reap their benefits, simply because the transition from the early

and bad state to the final or improved state cannot be retraced or kept

alive before the eyes. The record perishes. The last point gained is

seen; but the starting point, the point _from_ which it was gained,

is forgotten. And the traveller never _can_ know the true amount of

his obligations to Marshal Wade, because, though seeing the roads

which the Marshal has created, he can only guess at those which he

superseded. Now, returning to this impenetrable passage of Kant, I will

briefly inform the reader that he may read it into sense by connecting

it with a part of Kant's system from which it is in his own delivery

entirely dislocated. Going forwards some thirty or forty pages, he

will find Kant's development of his own categories. And, by placing

in juxtaposition with that development this blind sentence, he will

find a reciprocal light arising. All philosophers, worthy of that

name, have found it necessary to allow of some great cardinal ideas

that transcended all the Lockian origination--ideas that were larger

in their compass than any possible notices of sense or any reflex

notices of the understanding; and those who have denied such ideas

will be found invariably to have supported their denial by a _vitium

subreptionis_, and to have deduced their pretended genealogies of

such ideas by means of a _petitio principii_--silently and stealthily

putting _into_ some step of their _leger-de-main_ process everything

that they would pretend to have extracted _from_ it. But, previously

to Kant, it is certain that all philosophers had left the origin of

these higher or transcendent ideas unexplained. Whence came they? In

the systems to which Locke replies they had been called _innate_ or

_connate._ These were the Cartesian systems. Cudworth, again, who

maintained certain "_immutable ideas_" of morality, had said nothing

about their origin; and Plato had supposed them to be reminiscences

from some higher mode of existence. Kant first attempted to assign them

an origin within the mind itself, though not in any Lockian fashion of

reflection upon sensible impressions. And this is doubtless what he

means by saying that he first had investigated the mind--that is, he

first for such a purpose.

Where, then, is it, in what act or function of the mind, that Kant

finds the matrix of these transcendent ideas? Simply in the logical

forms of the understanding. Every power exerts its agency under some

_laws_--that is, in the language of Kant, by certain _forms_. We

leap by certain laws--viz., of equilibrium, of muscular motion, of

gravitation. We dance by certain laws. So also we reason by certain

laws. These laws, or _formal_ principles, under a particular condition,

become the categories.

Here, then, is a short derivation, in a very few words, of those

ideas transcending sense which all philosophy, the earliest, has been

unable to dispense with, and yet none could account for. Thus, for

example, every act of reasoning must, in the first place, express

itself in distinct propositions; that is, in such as contain a subject

(or that concerning which you affirm or deny something), a predicate

(that which you affirm or deny), and a copula, which connects them.

These propositions must have what is technically called, in logic, a

certain _quantity_, or compass (viz., must be universal, particular,

or singular); and again they must have what is called _quality_ (that

is, must be affirmative, or negative, or infinite): and thus arises a

ground for certain corresponding ideas, which are Kant's categories of

quantity and quality.

But, to take an illustration more appropriately from the very idea

which first aroused Kant to the sense of a vast hiatus in the received

philosophies--the idea of _cause_, which had been thrown as an apple

of discord amongst the schools by Hume. How did Kant deduce this?

Simply thus: it is a doctrine of universal logic that there are three

varieties of syllogism--viz., 1st, Categoric, or directly declarative

[_A is B_]; 2d, Hypothetic, or conditionally declarative [_If C is D,

then A is B_]; 3d, Disjunctive, or declarative by means of a choice

which exhausts the possible cases [_A is either B, or C, or D; but not

C or D, ergo B_]. Now, the idea of _causation,_ or, in Kant's language,

the category of Cause and Effect, is deduced immediately, and most

naturally, as the reader will acknowledge on examination, from the 2d

or hypothetic form of syllogism, when the relation of dependency is

the same as in the idea of causation, and the _necessary_ connexion a

direct type of that which takes place between a cause and its effect.

Thus, then, without going one step further, the reader will find

grounds enough for reflection, and for reverence towards Kant,

in these two great results: 1st, That an order of ideas has been

established which all deep philosophy has demanded, even when it

could not make good its claim. This postulate is fulfilled. 2dly, The

postulate is fulfilled without mysticism or Platonic reveries. Ideas,

however indispensable to human needs, and even to the connexion of

our thoughts, which came to us from nobody knew whence must for ever

have been suspicious; and, as in the memorable instance cited from

Hume, must have been liable for ever to a question of validity. But,

deduced as they now are from a matrix within our own minds, they cannot

reasonably fear any assaults of scepticism.

Here I shall stop. A reader new to these inquiries may think all this

a trifle. But he who reflects a little will see that, even thus far,

and going no step beyond this point, the Kantian doctrine of the

Categories answers a standing question hanging aloft as a challenge

to human philosophy, fills up a _lacuna_ pointed out from the era of

Plato. It solves a problem which has startled and perplexed every age:

viz. this--that man is in possession, nay, in the hourly exercise, of

ideas larger than he can show any title to. And, in another way, the

reader may measure the extent of this doctrine, by reflecting that,

even so far as now stated, it is precisely coextensive with the famous

scheme of Locke. For what is the capital thesis of that scheme? Simply

this--that all necessity for supposing immediate impressions made

upon our understandings by God, or other supernatural, or antenatal,

or connatal, agencies, is idle and romantic; for that, upon examining

the furniture of our minds, nothing will be found there which cannot

adequately be explained out of our daily experience; and, until we find

something that cannot be solved by this explanation, it is childish

to go in quest of higher causes. Thus says Locke: and his whole work,

upon its first plan, is no more than a continual pleading of this

single thesis, pursuing it through all the plausible objections.

Being, therefore, as large in its extent as Locke, the reader must

not complain of the transcendental scheme as too narrow, even in that

limited section of it here brought under his notice.

For the purpose of repelling it, he must do one of two things: either

he must shew that these categories or transcendent notions are not

susceptible of the derivation and genesis here assigned to them--that

is, from the forms of the _logos_ or formal understanding; or, if

content to abide by that derivation, he must allege that there are

other categories besides those enumerated, and unprovided with any

similar parentage.

Thus much in reply to him who complains of the doctrine here stated

as, 1st, Too narrow, or, 2d, As insufficiently established. But, 3d,

in reply to him who wishes to see it further pursued or applied, I say

that the possible applications are perhaps infinite. With respect to

those made by Kant himself, they are chiefly contained in his main and

elementary work, the _Critik der reinen Vernunft_; and they are of a

nature to make any man melancholy. Indeed, let a man consider merely

this one notion of _causation_; let him reflect on its origin; let him

remember that, agreeably to this origin, it follows that we have no

right to view anything _in rerum naturâ_ as objectively, or in itself,

a cause; that, when, upon the fullest philosophic proof, we call A

the cause of B, we do in fact only subsume A under the notion of a

cause--we invest it with that function under that relation; that the

whole proceeding is merely with respect to a _human_ understanding, and

by way of indispensable _nexus_ to the several parts of our experience;

finally, that there is the greatest reason to doubt whether the idea

of _causation_ is at all applicable to any other world than this, or

any other than a human experience. Let a man meditate but a little on

this or other aspects of this transcendental philosophy, and he will

find the steadfast earth itself rocking as it were beneath his feet;

a world about him which is in some sense a world of deception; and a

world before him which seems to promise a world of confusion, or "_a

world not realised_." All this he might deduce for himself without

further aid from Kant. However, the particular purposes to which Kant

applies his philosophy, from the difficulties which beset them, are

unfitted for anything below a regular treatise. Suffice it to say here,

that, difficult as these speculations are from one or two embarrassing

doctrines on the Transcendental Consciousness, and depressing as they

are from their general tendency, they are yet painfully irritating to

the curiosity, and especially so from a sort of _experimentum crucis_

which they yield in the progress of their development on behalf of the

entire doctrine of Kant--a test which, up to this hour, has offered

defiance to any hostile hand. The test or defiance which I speak

of takes the shape of certain _antinomies_ (so they are termed),

severe adamantine arguments, affirmative and negative, on two or

three celebrated problems, with no appeal to any possible decision,

but one which involves the Kantian doctrines. A _quæstio vexata_ is

proposed--for instance, the _infinite divisibility of matter_; each

side of this question, _thesis_ and _antithesis_, is argued; the logic

is irresistible, the links are perfect, and for each side alternately

there is a verdict, thus terminating in the most triumphant _reductio

ad absurdum_,--viz. that A, at one and the same time and in the same

sense, is and is not B,--from which no escape is available but through

a Kantian solution. On any other philosophy, it is demonstrated that

this opprobrium of the human understanding, this scandal of logic,

cannot be removed. This celebrated chapter of _antinomies_ has been of

great service to the mere polemics of the transcendental philosophy:

it is a glove or gage of defiance, constantly lying on the ground,

challenging the rights of victory and supremacy so long as it is _not_

taken up by any antagonist, and bringing matters to a short decision

when it _is._

One section, and that the introductory section, of the transcendental

philosophy, I have purposely omitted, though in strictness not to be

insulated or dislocated from the faithful exposition even of that which

I have given. It is the doctrine of Space and Time. These profound

themes, so confounding to the human understanding, are treated by

Kant under two aspects--_1st_, as Anschauungen, or _Intuitions_--(so

the German word is usually translated for want of a better); _2dly_,

as forms, _a priori_, of all our other intuitions. Often have I

laughed internally at the characteristic exposure of Kant's style of

thinking--that he, a man of so much worldly sagacity, could think of

offering, and of the German scholastic habits, that any modern nation

could think of accepting such cabalistic phrases, such a true and very

"_Ignotium per Ignotius_," in part payment of an explanatory account

of Time and Space. Kant repeats these words--as a charm before which

all darkness flies; and he supposes continually the case of a man

denying his explanations or demanding proofs of them, never once the

sole imaginable case--viz., of all men demanding an explanation of

these explanations. Deny them! Combat them! How should a man deny, why

should he combat, what might, for anything to the contrary appearing,

contain a promissory note at two months after date for 100 guineas? No;

it will cost a little preliminary work before _such_ explanations will

much avail any scheme of philosophy, either for the _pro_ or the _con_.

And yet I do myself really profess to understand the dark words; and

a great service it would be to sound philosophy amongst us, if this

one word _anschauung_ were adequately unfolded and naturalized (as

naturalized it might be) in the English philosophic dictionary, by some

full Grecian equivalent. Strange that no man acquainted with German

philosophy should yet have been struck by the fact--or, being struck,

should not have felt it important to call public attention to the

fact,--of our inevitable feebleness in a branch of study for which as

yet we want the indispensable words. Our feebleness is at once argued

by this want, and partly caused. Meantime, as respects the Kantian way

of viewing space, by much the most important innovation which it makes

upon the old doctrines is--that it considers space as a _subjective_

not an _objective_ aliquid; that is, as having its whole available

foundation lying ultimately in ourselves, not in any external or alien

tenure. This one distinction, as applied to space, for ever secures

(what nothing else _can_ secure or explain) the cogency of geometrical

evidence. Whatever is true for any determinations of a space originally

included in ourselves, must be true for such determinations for ever,

since they cannot become objects of consciousness to us but in and

by that very mode of conceiving space, that very form of schematism

which originally presented us with these determinations of space, or

any whatever. In the uniformity of our own space-conceiving faculty we

have a pledge of the absolute and _necessary_ uniformity (or internal

agreement among themselves) of all future or possible determinations of

space; because they could no otherwise become to us conceivable forms

of space than by adapting themselves to the known conditions of our

conceiving faculty. Here we have the _necessity_ which is indispensable

to all geometrical demonstration: it is a necessity founded in our

human organ, which cannot admit or conceive a space, unless as

preconforming to these original forms or schematisms. Whereas, on

the contrary, if space were something _objective_, and consequently,

being a separate existence, independent of a human organ, then it is

altogether impossible to find any intelligible source of _obligation_

or cogency in the evidence--such as is indispensable to the very nature

of geometrical demonstration. Thus we will suppose that a regular

demonstration has gradually, from step to step downwards, through a

series of propositions--No. 8 resting upon 7, that upon 5, 5 upon 3--at

length reduced you to the elementary axiom that Two straight lines

cannot enclose a space. Now, if space be _subjective_ originally--that

is to say, founded (as respects us and our geometry) in ourselves--then

it is impossible that two such lines can enclose a space, because

the possibility of anything whatever relating to the determinations

of space is exactly co-extensive with (and exactly expressed by) our

power to conceive it. Being thus able to affirm its impossibility

universally, we can build a demonstration upon it. But, on the other

hypothesis, of space being _objective_, it is impossible to guess

whence we are to draw our proof of the alleged inaptitude in two

straight lines for enclosing a space. The most we could say is, that

hitherto no instance has been found of an enclosed space circumscribed

by two straight lines. It would not do to allege our human inability

to conceive, or in imagination to draw, such a circumscription. For,

besides that such a mode of argument is exactly the one supposed to

have been rejected, it is liable to this unanswerable objection, so

long as space is assumed to have an _objective_ existence, viz. that

the human inability to conceive such a possibility only argues (what

in fact is often found in other cases) that the _objective_ existence

of space--_i.e._ the existence of space in itself, and in its absolute

nature--is far larger than its subjective existence--_i.e._ than

its mode of existing _quoad_ some particular subject. A being more

limited than man might be so framed as to be unable to conceive curve

lines; but this subjective inaptitude for those determinations of

space would not affect the objective reality of curves, or even their

subjective reality for a higher intelligence. Thus, on the hypothesis

of an objective existence for space, we should be thrown upon an ocean

of possibilities, without a test for saying what was--what was not

possible. But, on the other hypothesis, having always in the last

resort what is _subjectively_ possible or impossible (_i.e._ what is

conceivable or not by us, what can or cannot be drawn or circumscribed

by a human imagination), we have the means of demonstration in our

power, by having the ultimate appeals in our power to a known uniform

test--viz. a known human faculty.

This is no trifling matter, and therefore no trifling advantage on the

side of Kant and his philosophy, to all who are acquainted with the

disagreeable controversies of late years among French geometricians of

the first rank, and sometimes among British ones, on the question of

mathematical evidence. Legendre and Professor Leslie took part in one

such a dispute; and the temper in which it was managed was worthy of

admiration, as contrasted with the angry controversies of elder days,

if, indeed, it did not err in an opposite spirit, by too elaborate and

too calculating a tone of reciprocal flattery. But, think as we may

of the discussion in this respect, most assuredly it was painful to

witness so infirm a philosophy applied to an interest so mighty. The

whole aerial superstructure--the heaven-aspiring pyramid of geometrical

synthesis--all tottered under the palsying logic of evidence, to which

these celebrated mathematicians appealed. And wherefore?--From the want

of any philosophic account of space, to which they might have made

a common appeal, and which might have so far discharged its debt to

truth as at least to reconcile its theory with the great outstanding

phenomena in the most absolute of sciences. Geometry is the _science_

of space: therefore, in any _philosophy_ of space, geometry is entitled

to be peculiarly considered, and used as a court of appeal. Geometry

has these two further claims to distinction--that, 1st, It is the most

perfect of the sciences, so far as it has gone; and, 2dly, That it

has gone the farthest. A philosophy of space which does not consider

and does not reconcile to its own doctrines the facts of geometry,

which, in the two points of beauty and of vast extent, is more like

a work of nature than of man, is, _prima facie_, of no value. A

philosophy of space _might_ be false which should harmonize with the

facts of geometry--it _must_ be false if it contradict them. Of Kant's

philosophy it is a capital praise that its very opening section--that

section which treats the question of space--not only quadrates with

the facts of geometry, but also, by the _subjective_ character which

it attributes to space, is the very first philosophic scheme which

explains and accounts for the cogency of geometrical evidence.

These are the two primary merits of the transcendental theory--_1st_,

Its harmony with mathematics, and the fact of having first, by its

doctrine of space, applied philosophy to the nature of geometrical

evidence; _2dly_, That it has filled up, by means of its doctrine

of categories, the great _hiatus_ in all schemes of the human

understanding from Plato downwards. All the rest, with a reserve

as to the part which concerns the _practical_ reason (or will), is

of more questionable value, and leads to manifold disputes. But I

contend that, had transcendentalism done no other service than that

of laying a foundation, sought but not found for ages, to the human

understanding--namely, by showing an intelligible genesis to certain

large and indispensable ideas--it would have claimed the gratitude

of all profound inquirers. To a reader still disposed to undervalue

Kant's service in this respect, I put one parting question--Wherefore

he values Locke? What has _he_ done, even if value is allowed in full

to his pretensions? Has the reader asked himself _that_? He gave a

_negative_ solution at the most. He told his reader that certain

disputed ideas were _not_ deduced thus and thus. Kant, on the other

hand, has given him at the least a _positive_ solution. He teaches him,

in the profoundest revelation, by a discovery in the most absolute

sense on record, and the most entirely a single act--without parts, or

contributions, or stages, or preparations from other quarters--that

these long disputed ideas could not be derived from the experience

assigned by Locke, inasmuch as they are themselves _previous conditions

under which any experience at all is possible_: he teaches him that

these ideas are not mystically originated, but are, in fact, but

another phasis of the functions or forms of his own understanding; and,

finally, he gives consistency, validity, and a charter of authority,

to certain modes of _nexus_ without which the sum total of human

experience would be a rope of sand.

In terminating this slight account of the Kantian philosophy, I may

mention that, in or about the year 1818-19, Lord Grenville, when

visiting the lakes of England, observed to Professor Wilson that, after

five years' study of this philosophy, he had not gathered from it one

clear idea. Wilberforce, about the same time, made the same confession

to another friend of my own.

It is not usual for men to meet with their capital disappointments

in early life, at least not in youth. For, as to disappointments in

love, which are doubtless the most bitter and incapable of comfort,

though otherwise likely to arise in youth, they are in this way made

impossible at a very early age, that no man can be in love to the

whole extent of his capacity until he is in full possession of all

his faculties, and with the sense of dignified maturity. A perfect

love, such as is necessary to the anguish of a perfect disappointment,

presumes also for its object not a mere girl, but woman, mature

both in person and character, and womanly dignity. This sort of

disappointment, in a degree which could carry its impression through

life, I cannot therefore suppose occurring earlier than at twenty-five

or twenty-seven. My disappointment--the profound shock with which I

was repelled from German philosophy, and which thenceforwards tinged

with cynical disgust towards man in certain aspects a temper which

originally I will presume to consider the most benign that can ever

have been created--occurred when I was yet in my twentieth year. In a

poem under the title of _Saul_, written many years ago by Mr. Sotheby,

and perhaps now forgotten, having never been popular, there occurs a

passage of some pathos, in which Saul is described as keeping amongst

the splendid equipments of a royal wardrobe that particular pastoral

habit which he had worn in his days of earliest manhood, whilst yet

humble and undistinguished by honour, but also yet innocent and

happy. There, also, with the same care, he preserved his shepherd's

crook, which, in hands of youthful vigour, had been connected with

remembrances of heroic prowess. These memorials, in after times of

trouble or perplexity, when the burthen of royalty, its cares, or its

feverish temptations, pointed his thoughts backwards, for a moment's

relief, to scenes of pastoral gaiety and peace, the heart-wearied

prince would sometimes draw from their repository, and in solitude

would apostrophise them separately, or commune with the bitter-sweet

remembrances which they recalled. In something of the same spirit--but

with a hatred to the German philosopher such as men are represented as

feeling towards the gloomy enchanter, Zamiel or whomsoever, by whose

hateful seductions they have been placed within a circle of malign

influences--did I at times revert to Kant: though for me his power had

been of the very opposite kind; not an enchanter's, but the power of

a disenchanter--and a disenchanter the most profound. As often as I

looked into his works, I exclaimed in my heart, with the widowed queen

of Carthage, using her words in an altered application--

"Quæsivit lucem--_ingemuitque repertâ_."

Had the transcendental philosophy corresponded to my expectations,

and had it left important openings for further pursuit, my purpose

then was to have retired, after a few years spent in Oxford, to the

woods of Lower Canada. I had even marked out the situation for a

cottage and a considerable library, about seventeen miles from Quebec.

I planned nothing so ambitious as a scheme of _Pantisocracy_. My

object was simply profound solitude, such as cannot now be had in any

part of Great Britain--with two accessary advantages, also peculiar

to countries situated in the circumstances and under the climate

of Canada: viz. the exalting presence in an under-consciousness of

forests endless and silent, the everlasting sense of living amongst

forms so ennobling and impressive, together with the pleasure attached

to natural agencies, such as frost, more powerfully manifested than

in English latitudes, and for a much longer period. I hope there is

nothing fanciful in all this. It is certain that in England, and in

all moderate climates, we are too slightly reminded of nature or the

forces of nature. Great heats, or great colds (and in Canada there are

both), or great hurricanes, as in the West Indian latitudes, recall us

continually to the sense of a powerful presence, investing our paths on

every side; whereas in England it is possible to forget that we live

amongst greater agencies than those of men and human institutions. Man,

in fact, "too much man," as Timon complained most reasonably in Athens,

was then, and is now, our greatest grievance in England. Man is a weed

everywhere too rank. A strange place must that be with us from which

the sight of a hundred men is not before us, or the sound of a thousand

about us.

Nevertheless, being in this hotbed of man inevitably for some years, no

sooner had I dismissed my German philosophy than I relaxed a little

that spirit of German abstraction which it had prompted; and, though

never mixing freely with society, I began to look a little abroad. It

may interest the reader, more than anything else which I can record of

this period, to recall what I saw within the ten first years of the

century that was at all noticeable or worthy of remembrance amongst the

literati, the philosophers, or the poets of the time. For, though I am

now in my academic period from 1804 to 1808, my knowledge of literary

men--or men distinguished in some way or other, either by their

opinions, their accomplishments, or their position and the accidents

of their lives--began from the first year of the century, or, more

accurately, from the year 1800; which, with some difficulty and demurs,

and with some arguments from the Laureate Pye, the world was at length

persuaded to consider the last year of the eighteenth century.[20]

[20] Those who look back to the newspapers of 1799 and 1800 will

see that considerable discussion went on at that time upon the

question whether the year 1800 was entitled to open the 19th

century or to close the 18th. Mr. Laureate Pye wrote a poem with a

long and argumentative preface on the point.

[21] From _Tait's Magazine_ for February 1837, where the title was

"A Literary Novitiate."--M.

LITERARY & LAKE REMINISCENCES

CHAPTER I

A MANCHESTER SWEDENBORGIAN AND A LIVERPOOL LITERARY COTERIE[21]

It was in the year 1801, whilst yet at school, that I made my first

literary acquaintance. This was with a gentleman now dead, and little,

at any time, known in the literary world; indeed, not at all; for his

authorship was confined to a department of religious literature as

obscure and as narrow in its influence as any that can be named--viz.

Swedenborgianism.

Already, on the bare mention of that word, a presumption arises

against any man, that, writing much (or writing at all) for a body of

doctrines so apparently crazy as those of Mr. Swedenborg, a man must

have bid adieu to all good sense and manliness of mind. Indeed, this

is so much of a settled case, that even to have written _against_ Mr.

Swedenborg would be generally viewed as a suspicious act, requiring

explanation, and not very easily admitting of it. _Mr._ Swedenborg I

call him, because I understand that his title to call himself "Baron"

is imaginary; or rather he never _did_ call himself by any title

of honour--that mistake having originated amongst his followers in

this country, who have chosen to designate him as the "Honourable"

and as the "Baron" Swedenborg, by way of translating, to the ear of

England, some one or other of those irrepresentable distinctions,

_Legations-Rath_, _Hofrath_, _&c._, which are tossed about with so

much profusion in the courts of continental Europe, on both sides the

Baltic. For myself, I cannot think myself qualified to speak of any

man's writings without a regular examination of some one or two among

those which his admirers regard as his best performances. Yet, as any

happened to fall in my way, I have looked into them; and the impression

left upon my mind was certainly not favourable to their author. They

laboured, to my feeling, with two opposite qualities of annoyance, but

which I believe not uncommonly found united in lunatics--excessive

dulness or matter-of-factness in the execution, with excessive

extravagance in the conceptions. The result, at least, was most

unhappy: for, of all writers, Swedenborg is the only one I ever heard

of who has contrived to strip even the shadowy world beyond the grave

of all its mystery and all its awe. From the very heaven of heavens,

he has rent away the veil; no need for seraphs to "tremble while they

gaze"; for the familiarity with which all objects are invested makes it

impossible that even poor mortals should find any reason to tremble.

Until I saw this book, I had not conceived it possible to carry an

atmosphere so earthy, and steaming with the vapours of earth, into

regions which, by early connexion in our infant thoughts with the

sanctities of death, have a hold upon the reverential affections such

as they rarely lose. In this view, I should conceive that Swedenborg,

if it were at all possible for him to become a popular author, would,

at the same time, become immensely mischievous. He would dereligionize

men beyond all other authors whatsoever.

Little could this character of Swedenborg's writings--this, indeed,

least of all--have been suspected from the temper, mind, or manners

of my new friend. He was the most spiritual-looking, the most saintly

in outward aspect, of all human beings whom I have known throughout

life. He was rather tall, pale, and thin; the most unfleshly, the most

of a sublimated spirit dwelling already more than half in some purer

world, that a poet could have imagined. He was already aged when I

first knew him, a clergyman of the Church of England; which may seem

strange in connexion with his Swedenborgianism; but he was, however,

so. He was rector of a large parish in a large town, the more active

duties of which parish were discharged by his curate; but much of

the duties within the church were still discharged by himself, and

with such exemplary zeal that his parishioners, afterwards celebrating

the fiftieth anniversary, or _golden_ jubilee of his appointment to

the living (the twenty-fifth anniversary is called in German the

silver--the fiftieth, the golden jubilee), went farther than is

usual in giving a public expression and a permanent shape to their

sentiments of love and veneration. I am surprised, on reflection,

that this venerable clergyman should have been unvexed by Episcopal

censures. He might, and I dare say would, keep back the grosser parts

of Swedenborg's views from a public display; but, in one point, it

would not be easy for a man so conscientious to make a compromise

between his ecclesiastical duty and his private belief; for I have

since found, though I did not then know it, that Swedenborg held a very

peculiar creed on the article of atonement. From the slight pamphlet

which let me into this secret I could not accurately collect the exact

distinctions of his creed; but it was very different from that of the

English Church.

However, my friend continued unvexed for a good deal more than fifty

years, enjoying that peace, external as well as internal, which,

by so eminent a title, belonged to a spirit so evangelically meek

and dovelike. I mention him chiefly for the sake of describing his

interesting house and household, so different from all which belong

to this troubled age, and his impressive style of living. The house

seemed almost monastic; and yet it stood in the centre of one of the

largest, busiest, noisiest towns in England; and the whole household

seemed to have stepped out of their places in some Vandyke, or even

some Titian, picture, from a forgotten century and another climate. On

knocking at the door, which of itself seemed an outrage to the spirit

of quietness which brooded over the place, you were received by an

ancient manservant in the sober livery which belonged traditionally

to Mr. ----'s[22] family; for he was of a gentleman's descent, and

had had the most finished education of a gentleman. This venerable old

butler put me in mind always, by his noiseless steps, of the Castle

of Indolence, where the porter or usher walked about in shoes that

were shod with felt, lest any rude echoes might be roused. An ancient

housekeeper was equally venerable, equally gentle in her deportment,

quiet in her movements, and inaudible in her tread. One or other of

these upper domestics,--for the others rarely crossed my path,--ushered

me always into some room expressing by its furniture, its pictures,

and its coloured windows, the solemn tranquillity which, for half a

century, had reigned in that mansion. Among the pictures were more

than one of St. John, the beloved apostle, by Italian masters. Neither

the features nor the expression were very wide of Mr. Clowes's own

countenance; and, had it been possible to forget the gross character

of Swedenborg's reveries, or to substitute for these fleshly dreams

the awful visions of the Apocalypse, one might have imagined easily

that the pure, saintly, and childlike evangelist had been once again

recalled to this earth, and that this most quiet of mansions was

some cell in the island of Patmos. Whence came the stained glass of

the windows I know not, and whether it were stained or painted. The

revolutions of that art are known from Horace Walpole's account; and,

nine years after this period, I found that, in Birmingham, where the

art of staining glass was chiefly practised, no trifling sum was

charged even for a vulgar lacing of no great breadth round a few

drawing-room windows, which one of my friends thought fit to introduce

as an embellishment. These windows, however, of my clerical friend were

really "_storied_ windows," having Scriptural histories represented

upon them. A crowning ornament to the library or principal room was a

sweet-toned organ, ancient, and elaborately carved in its wood-work, at

which my venerable friend readily sate down, and performed the music

of anthems as often as I asked him, sometimes accompanying it with

his voice, which was tremulous from old age, but neither originally

unmusical, nor (as might be perceived) untrained.

[22] As De Quincey has divulged the name of this clergyman in his

Autobiography (see vol. i. pp. 136-138), there is no need for

concealing it here. He was the Rev. John Clowes, Rector of St.

John's Church, Manchester, and we shall substitute the full name

for the blank in the sequel.--M.

Often, from the storms and uproars of this world, I have looked back

upon this most quiet and, I believe, most innocent abode (had I said

saintly I should hardly have erred), conneacting it in thought with

_Little Gidding_, the famous mansion (in Huntingdonshire, I believe)

of the Farrers, an interesting family in the reigns of James I.

and Charles I. Of the Farrers there is a long and circumstantial

biographical account, and of the conventual discipline maintained at

Little Gidding. For many years it was the rule at Gidding--and it was

the wish of the Farrers to have transmitted that practice through

succeeding centuries--that a musical or cathedral service should be

going on at every hour of night and day in the chapel of the mansion.

Let the traveller, at what hour he would, morning or evening, summer

or winter, and in what generation or century soever, happen to

knock at the gate of Little Gidding, it was the purpose of Nicholas

Farrer--a sublime purpose--that always he should hear the blare of

the organ, sending upwards its surging volumes of melody, God's

worship for ever proceeding, anthems of praise for ever ascending,

and _jubilates_ echoing without end or known beginning. One stream

of music, in fact, never intermitting, one vestal fire of devotional

praise and thanksgiving, was to connect the beginnings with the ends

of generations, and to link one century into another. Allowing for

the sterner asceticism of N. Farrer--partly arising out of the times,

partly out of personal character, and partly, perhaps, out of his

travels in Spain--my aged friend's arrangement of the day, and the

training of his household, might seem to have been modelled on the

plans of Mr. Farrer; whom, however, he might never have heard of.

There was also, in each house, the same union of religion with some

cultivation of the ornamental arts, or some expression of respect

for them. In each case, a monastic severity, that might, under other

circumstances, have terminated in the gloom of a La Trappe, had been

softened by English sociality, and by the habits of a gentleman's

education, into a devotional pomp, reconcilable with Protestant views.

When, however, remembering this last fact in Mr. Clowes's case (the

fact I mean of his liberal education), I have endeavoured to explain

the possibility of one so much adorned by all the accomplishments

of a high-bred gentleman, and one so truly pious, falling into the

grossness, almost the sensuality, which appears to besiege the visions

of Swedenborg, I fancy that the whole may be explained out of the same

cause which occasionally may be descried, through a distance of two

complete centuries, as weighing heavily upon the Farrers--viz. the dire

monotony of daily life, when visited by no irritations either of hope

or fear--no hopes from ambition, no fears from poverty.

Nearly (if not quite) sixty years did my venerable friend inhabit

that same parsonage house, without any incident more personally

interesting to himself than a cold or a sore throat. And I suppose

that he resorted to Swedenborg--reluctantly, perhaps, at the first--as

to a book of fairy tales connected with his professional studies. And

one thing I am bound to add in candour, which may have had its weight

with him, that more than once, on casually turning over a volume of

Swedenborg, I have certainly found most curious and felicitous passages

of comment--passages which extracted a brilliant meaning from numbers,

circumstances, or trivial accidents, apparently without significance

or object, and gave to things, without a place or a habitation in the

critic's regard, a value as hieroglyphics or cryptical ciphers, which

struck me as elaborately ingenious. This acknowledgment I make not so

much in praise of Swedenborg, whom I must still continue to think a

madman, as in excuse for Mr. Clowes. It may easily be supposed that a

person of Mr. Clowes's consideration and authority was not regarded

with indifference by the general body of the Swedenborgians. At his

motion it was, I believe, that a society was formed for procuring and

encouraging a translation into English of Swedenborg's entire works,

most of which are written in Latin. Several of these translations are

understood to have been executed personally by Mr. Clowes; and in

this obscure way, for anything I know, he may have been an extensive

author. But it shows the upright character of the man that never, in

one instance, did he seek to bias my opinions in this direction. Upon

every other subject, he trusted me confidentially--and, notwithstanding

my boyish years (15-16), as his equal. His regard for me, when thrown

by accident in his way, had arisen upon his notice of my fervent

simplicity, and my unusual thoughtfulness. Upon these merits, I had

gained the honourable distinction of a general invitation to his

house, without exception as to days and hours, when few others could

boast of any admission at all. The common ground on which we met was

literature--more especially the Greek and Roman literature; and much

he exerted himself, in a spirit of the purest courtesy, to meet my

animation upon these themes. But the interest on his part was too

evidently a secondary interest in _me_, for whom he talked, and not in

the subject: he spoke much from memory, as it were of things that he

had once felt, and little from immediate sympathy with the author; and

his animation was artificial, though his courtesy, which prompted the

effort, was the truest and most unaffected possible.

The connexion between us must have been interesting to an observer;

for, though I cannot say with Wordsworth, of old Daniel and his

grandson, that there were "ninety good years of fair and foul weather"

between us, there were, however, sixty, I imagine, at the least;

whilst as a bond of connexion there was nothing at all that I know

of beyond a common tendency to reverie, which is a bad link for a

_social_ connexion. The little ardour, meantime, with which he had,

for many years, participated in the interests of this world, or all

that it inherits, was now rapidly departing. Daily and consciously he

was loosening all ties which bound him to earlier recollections; and,

in particular, I remember--because the instance was connected with my

last farewell visit, as it proved--that for some time he was engaged

daily in renouncing with solemnity (though often enough in cheerful

words) book after book of classical literature in which he had once

taken particular delight. Several of these, after taking his final

glance at a few passages to which a pencil reference in the margin

pointed his eye, he delivered to me as memorials in time to come of

himself. The last of the books given to me under these circumstances

was a Greek "Odyssey," in Clarke's edition. "This," said he, "is nearly

the sole book remaining to me of my classical library--which, for some

years, I have been dispersing amongst my friends. Homer I retained to

the last, and the 'Odyssey,' by preference to the 'Iliad,' both in

compliance with my own taste, and because this very copy was my chosen

companion for evening amusement during my freshman's term at Trinity

College, Cambridge--whither I went early in the spring of 1743. Your

own favourite Grecian is Euripides; but still you must value--we must

all value--Homer. I, even as old as I am, could still read him with

delight; and, as long as any merely human composition ought to occupy

my time, I should have made an exception in behalf of this solitary

author. But I am a soldier of Christ; the enemy, the last enemy, cannot

be far off; _sarcinas colligere_ is, at my age, the watchword for every

faithful sentinel, hourly to keep watch and ward, to wait and to be

vigilant. This very day I have taken my farewell glance at Homer, for

I must no more be found seeking my pleasure amongst the works of man;

and, that I may not be tempted to break my resolution, I make over this

my last book to you."

Words to this effect, uttered with his usual solemnity, accompanied his

gift; and, at the same time, he added, without any separate comment,

a little pocket Virgil--the one edited by Alexander Cunningham, the

bitter antagonist of Bentley--with a few annotations placed at the end.

The act was in itself a solemn one; something like taking the veil for

a nun--a final abjuration of the world's giddy agitations. And yet to

him--already and for so long a time linked so feebly to anything that

could be called the world, and living in a seclusion so profound--it

was but as if an anchorite should retire from his outer to his inner

cell. Me, however, it impressed powerfully in after years; because

this act of self-dedication to the next world, and of parting from

the intellectual luxuries of this, was also, in fact, though neither

of us at the time knew it to be such, the scene of his final parting

with myself. Immediately after his solemn speech, on presenting me

with the "Odyssey," he sat down to the organ, sang a hymn or two, then

chanted part of the liturgy, and, finally, at my request, performed the

anthem so well known in the English Church service--the collect for the

seventh Sunday after Trinity--(_Lord of all power and might, &c._) It

was summer--about half after nine in the evening; the light of day was

still lingering, and just strong enough to illuminate the Crucifixion,

the Stoning of the Protomartyr, and other grand emblazonries of the

Christian faith, which adorned the rich windows of his library. Knowing

the early hours of his household, I now received his usual fervent

adieus--which, without the words, had the sound and effect of a

benediction--felt the warm pressure of his hand, saw dimly the outline

of his venerable figure, more dimly his saintly countenance, and

quitted that gracious presence, which, in this world, I was destined

no more to revisit. The night was one in the first half of July 1802;

in the second half of which, or very early in August, I quitted school

clandestinely, and consequently the neighbourhood of Mr. Clowes. Some

years after, I saw his death announced in all the public journals,

as having occurred at Leamington Spa, then in the springtime of its

medicinal reputation. Farewell, early friend! holiest of men whom it

has been my lot to meet! Yes, I repeat, thirty-five years are past

since then, and I have yet seen few men approaching to this venerable

clergyman in paternal benignity--none certainly in child-like purity,

apostolic holiness, or in perfect alienation of heart from the spirit

of this fleshly world.

I have delineated the habits and character of Mr. Clowes at some

length, chiefly because a connexion is rare and interesting between

parties so widely asunder in point of age--one a schoolboy, and the

other almost an octogenarian, to quote a stanza from one of the most

spiritual sketches of Wordsworth--

"We talked with open heart and tongue,

Affectionate and free--

A pair of friends, though I was young,

And Matthew seventy-three."

I have stated a second reason for this record, in the fact that Mr.

Clowes was the first of my friends who had any connexion with the

press. At one time I have reason to believe that this connexion was

pretty extensive, though not publicly avowed, and so far from being

lucrative that at first I believe it to have been expensive to him,

and whatever profits might afterwards arise were applied, as much

of his regular income, to the benefit of others.[23] Here, again,

it seems surprising that a spirit so beneficent and, in the amplest

sense, charitable, could coalesce in any views with Swedenborg, who,

in some senses, was not charitable. Swedenborg had been scandalized

by a notion which, it seems, he found prevalent amongst the poor

of the Continent--viz., that, if riches were a drag and a negative

force on the road to religious perfection, poverty must be positive

title _per se_ to the favour of Heaven. Grievously offended with this

error, he came almost to hate poverty as a presumptive indication of

this offensive heresy; scarcely would he allow it an indirect value,

as removing in many cases the occasions or incitements of evil. No:

being in itself neutral and indifferent, he argued that it had become

erroneously a ground of presumptuous hope; whilst the rich man, aware

of his danger, was, in some degree, armed against it by fear and

humility. And, in this course of arguing and of corresponding feeling,

Mr. Swedenborg had come to hate the very name of a poor candidate for

Heaven, as bitterly as a sharking attorney hates the applications of a

pauper client. Yet so entirely is it true that "to the pure, all things

are pure," and that perfect charity "thinketh no ill," but is gifted

with a power to transmute all things into its own resemblance--so

entirely is all this true, that this most spiritual, and, as it were,

disembodied of men, could find delight in the dreams of the very

"fleshliest incubus" that has intruded amongst heavenly objects;

and, secondly, this benignest of men found his own pure feelings not

outraged by one who threw a withering scowl over the far larger half of

his fellow-creatures.

[23] In a recent [1889] catalogue of a Manchester book-sale I find

this entry:--"Clowes (John, of Manchester, the Church of England

Swedenborgian). Sermons, Translations, etc., with a Life of him by

Theo. Crompton, principally published in Manchester from 1799 to

1850. 17 vols."--M.

* * * * *

Concurrently with this acquaintance, so impressive and so elevating

to me, from the unusual sanctity of Mr. Clowes's character, I formed

another with a well-known coterie, more avowedly, and in a more

general sense, literary, resident at Liverpool or its neighbourhood.

In my sixteenth year [1801] I had accompanied my mother and family

on a summer's excursion to Everton, a well-known village upon the

heights immediately above Liverpool; though by this time I believe

it has thrown out so many fibres of connexion as to have become a

mere quarter or suburban "process" (to speak by anatomical phrase)

of the great town below it. In those days, however, distant by one

third of a century from ours, Everton was still a distinct village

(for a mile of ascent is worth three of level ground in the way of

effectual separation); it was delightfully refreshed by marine breezes,

though raised above the sea so far that its thunders could be heard

only under favourable circumstances. There we had a cottage for some

months; and the nearest of our neighbours happened to be that Mr.

Clarke, the banker, to whom acknowledgments are made in the _Lorenzo

the Magnificent_, for aid in procuring MSS. and information from Italy.

This gentleman called on my mother, merely in the general view of

offering neighbourly attentions to a family of strangers. I, as the

eldest of my brothers, and already with strong literary propensities,

had received a general invitation to his house. Thither I went, indeed,

early and late; and there I met Mr. Roscoe, Dr. Currie (who had just at

that time published his Life and Edition of Burns), and Mr. Shepherd of

Gatacre, the author of some works on Italian literature (particularly

a Life of _Poggio Bracciolini_), and, since then, well known to all

England by his Reform politics.

There were other members of this society--some, like myself, visitors

merely to that neighbourhood; but those I have mentioned were the

chief. Here I had an early opportunity of observing the natural

character and tendencies of merely literary society--by which society

I mean all such as, having no strong distinctions in power of thinking

or in native force of character, are yet raised into circles of

pretension and mark by the fact of having written a book, or of

holding a notorious connexion with some department or other of the

periodical press. No society is so vapid and uninteresting in its

natural quality, none so cheerless and petrific in its influence upon

others. Ordinary people, in such company, are in general repressed from

uttering with cordiality the natural expression of their own minds or

temperaments, under a vague feeling of some peculiar homage due, or

at least customarily paid, to those lions: such people are no longer

at their ease, or masters of their own natural motions in their own

natural freedom; whilst indemnification of any sort is least of all to

be looked for from the literary dons who have diffused this unpleasant

atmosphere of constraint. They disable others, and yet do nothing

themselves to fill up the void they have created. One and all--unless

by accident people of unusual originality, power, and also nerve, so

as to be able without trepidation to face the expectations of men--the

literary class labour under two opposite disqualifications for a good

tone of conversation. From causes visibly explained, they are either

spoiled by the vices of reserve, and of over-consciousness directed

upon themselves--this is one extreme; or, where manliness of mind has

prevented this, beyond others of equal or inferior natural power, they

are apt to be desperately commonplace. The first defect is an accident

arising out of the rarity of literary pretensions, and would rapidly

subside as the proportion became larger of practising literati to the

mass of educated people. But the other is an adjunct scarcely separable

from the ordinary prosecution of a literary career, and growing in fact

out of literature _per se_, as literature is generally understood.

That same day, says Homer, which makes a man a slave robs him of

half his value. That same hour which first awakens a child to the

consciousness of being observed, and to the sense of admiration, strips

it of its freedom and unpremeditated graces of motion. Awkwardness at

the least--and too probably, as a consequence of _that_, affectation

and conceit--follow hard upon the consciousness of special notice or

admiration. The very attempt to disguise embarrassment too often issues

in a secondary and more marked embarrassment.

Another mode of reserve arises with some literary men, who believe

themselves to be in possession of novel ideas. Cordiality of

communication, or ardour of dispute, might betray them into a

revelation of those golden thoughts, sometimes into a necessity of

revealing them, since, without such aid, it might be impossible

to maintain theirs in the discussion. On this principle it was--a

principle of deliberate unsocial reserve--that Adam Smith is said to

have governed his conversation; he professed to put a bridle on his

words, lest by accident a pearl should drop out of his lips amongst the

vigilant bystanders. And in no case would he have allowed himself to

be engaged in a disputation, because both the passions of dispute and

the necessities of dispute are alike apt to throw men off their guard.

A most unamiable reason it certainly is, which places a man in one

constant attitude of self-protection against petty larceny. And yet,

humiliating as that may be to human nature, the furtive propensities

or instincts of petty larceny are diffused most extensively through

all ranks--directed, too, upon a sort of property far more tangible

and more ignoble, as respects the possible motives of the purloiner,

than any property in subjects purely intellectual. Rather more than ten

years ago, a literary man of the name of Alton published, some little

time before his own death, a very searching essay upon this chapter

of human integrity--arraying a large list of common cases (cases of

hats, gloves, umbrellas, books, newspapers, &c.) where the claim

of ownership, left to itself and unsupported by accidents of shame

and exposure, appeared to be weak indeed amongst classes of society

prescriptively "respectable." And yet, for a double reason, literary

larceny is even more to be feared; both because it is countenanced by

a less ignoble quality of temptation, and because it is far more easy

of achievement--so easy, indeed, that it may be practised without any

clear accompanying consciousness.

I have myself witnessed or been a party to a case of the following

kind:--A new truth--suppose for example, a new doctrine or a new

theory--was communicated to a very able man in the course of

conversation, not _didactically_, or directly _as_ a new truth,

but _polemically_,--communicated as an argument in the current of

a dispute. What followed? Necessarily it followed that a very able

man would not be purely _passive_ in receiving this new truth; that

he would _co-operate_ with the communicator in many ways--as by

raising objections, by half dissipating his own objections, and in a

variety of other co-agencies. In such cases, a very clever man does

in effect half-generate the new idea for himself, but then he does

this entirely under your leading; you stand ready at each point of

possible deviation, to warn him away from the wrong turn--from the turn

which leads nowhither or the turn which leads astray. Yet the final

result has been that the _catechumen_, under the full consciousness

of _self_-exertion, has so far confounded his just and true belief of

having contributed to the evolution of the doctrine, _quoad_ his own

apprehension of it, with the far different case of having evolved the

truth itself into light, as to go off with the firm impression that the

doctrine had been a product of his own.[24] There is therefore ground

enough for the jealousy of Adam Smith, since a robbery may be committed

unconsciously; though, by the way, it is not a peril peculiarly

applicable to himself, who has not so much succeeded in discovering new

truths as in establishing a logical connexion amongst old ones.

[24] For a similar passage, see _ante_, pp. 96, 97.--M.

On the other hand, it is not by reserve, whether of affectation or of

Smithian jealousy, that the majority of literary people offend--at

least not by the latter; for, so far from having much novelty to

protect against pirates, the most general effect of literary pursuits

is to tame down all points of originality to one standard of insipid

monotony. I shall not go into the reasons for this. I make my appeal

to the matter of fact. Try a Parisian populace, very many of whom are

highly cultivated by reading, against a body of illiterate rustics. Mr.

Scott of Aberdeen,[25] in his "Second Tour to Paris" (1815), tells us

that, on looking over the shoulder of poor stall women selling trifles

in the street, he usually found them reading Voltaire, Rousseau,

or even (as I think he adds) Montesquieu; but, notwithstanding the

polish which such reading both presumes as a previous condition and

produces as a natural effect, yet no people could be more lifeless in

their minds, or more barren of observing faculties, than they; and

so he describes them. Words! words! nothing but words! On the other

hand, listen to the conversation of a few scandalous village dames

collected at a tea-table. Vulgar as the spirit may be which possesses

them, and not seldom malicious, still how full of animation and of

keen perception it will generally be found, and of a learned spirit

of connoisseurship in human character, by comparison with the _fade_

generalities and barren recollections of mere literati!

[25] He was first editor of the _London Magazine_, and was killed

in an unfortunate duel in February 1821.--M.

All this was partially illustrated in the circle to which I was now

presented. Mr. Clarke was not an author, and he was by much the most

interesting person of the whole. He had travelled, and, particularly,

he had travelled in Italy--then an aristocratic distinction; had a

small, but interesting, picture gallery; and, at this time, amused

himself by studying Greek, for which purpose he and myself met at

sunrise every morning through the summer, and read Æschylus together.

These meetings, at which we sometimes had the company of any stranger

who might happen to be an amateur in Greek, were pleasant enough to

my schoolboy vanity--placing me in the position of teacher and guide

to men old enough to be my grandfathers. But the dinner parties, at

which the literati sometimes assembled in force, were far from being

equally amusing. Mr. Roscoe[26] was simple and manly in his demeanour;

but there was the feebleness of a mere _belle-lettrist_, a mere man of

_virtù_, in the style of his sentiments on most subjects. Yet he was

a politician, and took an ardent interest in politics, and wrote upon

politics--all which are facts usually presuming some vigour of mind.

And he wrote, moreover, on the popular side, and with a boldness which,

in that day, when such politics were absolutely disreputable, seemed

undeniably to argue great moral courage. But these were accidents

arising out of his connexion with the Whig party, or (to speak more

accurately) with the _Opposition_ party in Parliament; by whom he was

greatly caressed. Mr. Fox, the Duchess of Devonshire, Mr. Sheridan,

and all the _powers_ on that side of the question, showed him the

most marked attention in a great variety of forms; and this it was,

not any native propensity for such speculations, which drove him into

pamphleteering upon political questions. Mr. Fox (himself the very

feeblest of party writers) was probably sincere in his admiration of

Mr. Roscoe's pamphlets; and did seriously think him, as I know that he

described him in private letters, an antagonist well matched against

Burke; and _that_ he afterwards became in form. The rest of the world

wondered at his presumption, or at his gross miscalculation of his

own peculiar powers. An eminent person, in after years (about 1815),

speaking to me of Mr. Roscoe's political writings, especially those

which had connected his name with Burke, declared that he always felt

of him in that relation not so much as of a feeble man, but absolutely

as of a _Sporus_ (that was his very expression), or a man emasculated.

Right or wrong in his views, he showed the most painful defect of good

sense and prudence in confronting his own understanding, so plain and

homely, with the Machiavelian Briareus of a hundred arms--the Titan

whom he found in Burke; all the advantages of a living antagonist over

a dead one could not compensate odds so fearful in original power.

[26] William Roscoe (1753-1831), author of _Life of Lorenzo de'

Medici_, _Life and Pontificate of Leo X_, and other works, was a

native of Liverpool, and spent the main part of his life as a

banker in that town.--M.

It was a striking illustration of the impotence of mere literature

against natural power and mother wit that the only man who was

considered indispensable in these parties, for giving life and impulse

to their vivacity, was a tailor; and not, I was often assured, a

person deriving a designation from the craft of those whose labours

he supported as a capitalist, but one who drew his own honest daily

bread from his own honest needle, except when he laid it aside for the

benefit of drooping literati, who needed to be watered with his wit.

Wit, perhaps, in a proper sense, he had not--it was rather drollery,

and sometimes even buffoonery.

These, in the lamentable absence of the tailor, could be furnished of

an inferior quality by Mr. Shepherd,[27] who (as may be imagined from

this fact) had but little dignity in private life. I know not how far

he might alter in these respects; but certainly, at the time (1801-2),

he was decidedly, or could be, a buffoon, and seemed even ambitious

of the title, by courting notice for his grotesque manner and coarse

stories, more than was altogether compatible with the pretensions

of a scholar and a clergyman. I must have leave to think that such

a man could not have emerged from any great University, or from any

but a sectarian training. Indeed, about Poggio himself there were

circumstances which would have indisposed any regular clergyman of

the Church of England, or of the Scottish Kirk, to usher him into the

literature of his country. With what coarseness and low buffoonery

have I heard this Mr. Shepherd in those days run down the bishops then

upon the bench, but especially those of any public pretensions or

reputation, as Horsley and Porteus, and, in connexion with them, the

pious Mrs. Hannah More! Her he could not endure.

[27] The Rev. William Shepherd, author of a _Life of Poggio

Bracciolini_ (Liverpool, 1802) and _Paris in 1802 and 1814_

(London, 1814), and joint author of a work in two volumes called

_Systematic Education, or Elementary Instruction in the various

Departments of Literature and Science_ (London, 1815).--M.

Of this gentleman, having said something disparaging, I am bound to go

on and add, that I believe him to have been at least a truly upright

man--talking often wildly, but incapable of doing a conscious wrong to

any man, be his party what it might; and, in the midst of fun or even

buffoonery, a real, and, upon occasion, a stern patriot, Mr. Canning

and others he opposed to the teeth upon the Liverpool hustings, and

would take no bribe, as others did, from literary feelings of sympathy,

or (which is so hard for an amiable mind to resist) from personal

applications of courtesy and respect. Amusing it is to look back upon

any political work of Mr. Shepherd's, as upon his "Tour to France,"

published in 1815, and to know that the pale pink of his Radicalism was

then accounted deep, deep scarlet.

Nothing can better serve to expound the general force of intellect

amongst the Liverpool coterie than the quality of their poetry, and the

general standard which they set up in poetry. Not that even in their

errors, as regarded poetry, they were of a magnitude to establish any

standard or authority in their own persons. Imitable or seducing there

could be nothing in persons who wrote verses occasionally, and as a

[Greek: parergon] or by-labour, and were themselves the most timid of

imitators. But to me, who, in that year, 1801, already knew of a grand

renovation of poetic power--of a new birth in poetry, interesting

not so much to England as to the human mind--it was secretly amusing

to contrast the little artificial usages of their petty traditional

knack with the natural forms of a divine art--the difference being

pretty much as between an American lake, Ontario, or Superior, and

a carp pond or a tench preserve. Mr. Roscoe had just about this

time published a translation from the _Balia_ of Luigi Tansillo--a

series of dullish lines, with the moral purpose of persuading young

women to suckle their own children. The brilliant young Duchess of

Devonshire, some half century ago, had, for a frolic--a great lady's

caprice--set a precedent in this way; against which, however, in that

rank, medical men know that there is a good deal to be said; and in

ranks more extensive than those of the Duchess it must be something of

an Irish bull to suppose any _general_ neglect of this duty, since,

upon so large a scale, whence could come the vicarious nurses? There

is, therefore, no great sense in the fundamental idea of the poem,

because the abuse denounced cannot be large enough; but the prefatory

sonnet, addressed to the translator's wife, as one at whose maternal

breast "six sons successive" had hung in infancy--this is about the

one sole bold, natural thought, or natural expression of feeling, to

which Mr. Roscoe had committed himself in verse. Everywhere else,

the most timid and blind servility to the narrowest of conventional

usages, conventional ways of viewing things, conventional forms of

expression, marks the style. For example, Italy is always _Italia_,

Scotland _Scotia_, France _Gallia_; so inveterately had the mind, in

this school of feeling, been trained, alike in the highest things and

in the lowest, to a horror of throwing itself boldly upon the great

_realities_ of life: even names must be fictions for _their_ taste. Yet

what comparison between "_France_, an Ode," and "_Gallia_, an Ode"?

Dr. Currie was so much occupied with his professional duties that of

him I saw but little. His edition of Burns was just then published (I

think in that very month), and in everybody's hands. At that time,

he was considered not unjust to the memory of the man, and (however

constitutionally phlegmatic, or with little enthusiasm, at least in

external show) not much below the mark in his appreciation of the

poet.[28]

[28] Dr. James Currie, born 1756, a native of Dumfriesshire,

settled in Liverpool, in medical practice, in 1781. His edition of

Burns, with memoir and criticism, published in 1800, was for the

benefit of the widow and children of the poet, and realised £1400.

Currie died in 1805.--M.

So stood matters some twelve or fourteen years; after which period a

"craze" arose on the subject of Burns, which allowed no voice to be

heard but that of zealotry and violent partisanship. The first impulse

to this arose out of an oblique collision between Lord Jeffrey and

Mr. Wordsworth; the former having written a disparaging critique

upon Burns's pretensions--a little, perhaps, too much coloured by

the fastidiousness of long practice in the world, but, in the main,

speaking some plain truths on the quality of Burns's understanding, as

expressed in his epistolary compositions. Upon which, in his celebrated

letter to Mr. James Gray, the friend of Burns, himself a poet, and then

a master in the High School of Edinburgh, Mr. Wordsworth commented

with severity, proportioned rather to his personal resentments towards

Lord Jeffrey than to the quantity of wrong inflicted upon Burns.

Mr. Wordsworth's letter, in so far as it was a record of embittered

feeling, might have perished; but, as it happened to embody some

profound criticisms, applied to the art of biography, and especially

to the delicate task of following a man of original genius through his

personal infirmities or his constitutional aberrations--this fact,

and its relation to Burns and the author's name, have all combined to

embalm it.[29] Its momentary effect, in conjunction with Lord Jeffrey's

article, was to revive the interest (which for some time had languished

under the oppression of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron) in all that

related to Burns. Fresh Lives appeared in a continued succession,

until, upon the death of Lord Byron in 1824, Mr. Allan Cunningham, who

had personally known Burns, so far as a boy _could_ know a mature man,

gave a new impulse to the interest, by an impressive paper in which

he contrasted the circumstances of Burns's death with those of Lord

Byron's, and also the two funerals--both of which, one altogether,

and the other in part, Mr. Cunningham had personally witnessed. A

man of genius, like Mr. Cunningham, throws a new quality of interest

upon all which he touches; and, having since brought fresh research

and the illustrative power of the arts to bear upon the subject, and

all this having gone on concurrently with the great modern revolution

in literature--that is, the great extension of a _popular_ interest,

through the astonishing reductions of price--the result is, that Burns

has, at length, become a national, and, therefore, in a certain sense,

a privileged subject; which, in a perfect sense, he was _not_, until

the controversial management of his reputation had irritated the public

attention. Dr. Currie did not address the same alert condition of the

public feeling, nor, by many hundred degrees, so _diffused_ a condition

of any feeling which might imperfectly exist, as a man must consciously

address in these days, whether as the biographer or the critic of

Burns. The lower-toned enthusiasm of the public was not of a quality to

irritate any little enthusiasm which the worthy Doctor might have felt.

The public of that day felt with regard to Burns exactly as with regard

to Bloomfield--not that the quality of his poems was then the staple of

the interest, but the extraordinary fact that a ploughman or a lady's

shoemaker should have written any poems at all. The sole difference in

the two cases, as regarded by the public of that day, was that Burns's

case was terminated by a premature, and, for the public, a very sudden

death: this gave a personal interest to his case which was wanting in

the other; and a direct result of this was that his executors were able

to lay before the world a series of his letters recording his opinions

upon a considerable variety of authors, and his feelings under many

ordinary occasions of life.

[29] Wordsworth's publication was in 1816, under the title _A

Letter to a Friend of Robert Burns, occasioned by an intended

Republication of the Account of the Life of Burns by Dr. Currie_.

_By William Wordsworth._--M.

Dr. Currie, therefore, if phlegmatic, as he certainly was, must be

looked upon as upon a level with the public of his own day--a public

how different, different by how many centuries, from the world of

this present 1837! One thing I remember which powerfully illustrates

the difference. Burns, as we all know, with his peculiarly wild

and almost ferocious spirit of independence, came a generation too

soon. In this day, he would have been forced to do that, clamorously

called upon to do that, and would have found his pecuniary interest

in doing that, which in his own generation merely to attempt doing

loaded him with the reproach of Jacobinism. It must be remembered that

the society of Liverpool wits on whom my retrospect is now glancing

were all Whigs--all, indeed, fraternizers with French Republicanism.

Yet so it was that--not once, not twice, but daily almost, in the

numerous conversations naturally elicited by this Liverpool monument

to Burns's memory--I heard every one, clerk or layman, heartily

agreeing to tax Burns with ingratitude and with pride falsely directed,

because he sate uneasily or restively under the bridle-hand of his

noble self-called "_patrons_." Aristocracy, then, the essential

spirit of aristocracy--this I found was not less erect and clamorous

amongst partisan democrats--democrats who were such merely in a party

sense of supporting his Majesty's Opposition against his Majesty's

Servants--than it was or could be among the most bigoted of the

professed feudal aristocrats. For my part, at this moment, when all

the world was reading Currie's monument to the memory of Burns and the

support of his family, I felt and avowed my feeling most loudly--that

Burns was wronged, was deeply, memorably wronged. A £10 bank note,

by way of subscription for a few copies of an early edition of his

poems--this is the outside that I could ever see proof given of Burns

having received anything in the way of _patronage_; and doubtless

this would have been gladly returned, but from the dire necessity of

dissembling.

Lord Glencairn is the "patron" for whom Burns appears to have felt the

most sincere respect. Yet even he--did he give him more than a seat at

his dinner table? Lord Buchan again, whose liberalities are by this

time pretty well appreciated in Scotland, exhorts Burns, in a tone

of one preaching upon a primary duty of life, to exemplary gratitude

towards a person who had given him absolutely nothing at all. The man

has not yet lived to whose happiness it was more essential that he

should live unencumbered by the sense of obligation; and, on the other

hand, the man has not lived upon whose independence as professing

benefactors so many people practised, or who found so many others ready

to ratify and give value to their pretences.[30] Him, whom beyond most

men nature had created with the necessity of conscious independence,

all men besieged with the assurance that he was, must be, ought to

be dependent; nay, that it was his primary duty to be grateful for

his dependence. I have not looked into any edition of Burns, except

once for a quotation, since this year 1801--when I read the whole of

Currie's edition, and had opportunities of meeting the editor--and once

subsequently, upon occasion of a fifth or supplementary volume being

published. I know not, therefore, how this matter has been managed

by succeeding editors, such as Allan Cunningham, far more capable of

understanding Burns's situation, from the previous struggles of their

own honourable lives, and Burns's feelings, from something of congenial

power.

[30] Jacobinism--although the seminal principle of all political

evil in all ages alike of advanced civilization--is natural to the

heart of man, and, in a qualified sense, may be meritorious. A

good man, a high-minded man, in certain circumstances, _must_ be a

Jacobin in a certain sense. The aspect under which Burns's

Jacobinism appears is striking: there is a thought which an

observing reader will find often recurring, which expresses its

peculiar bitterness. It is this: the necessity which in old

countries exists for the labourer humbly to beg _permission_ that

he may labour. To eat in the sweat of a man's brow--that is bad;

and that is a curse, and pronounced such by God. But, when _that_

is all, the labourer is by comparison happy. The second curse

makes _that_ a jest: he must sue, he must sneak, he must fawn like

an Oriental slave, in order to win his fellow-man, in Burns's

indignant words, "to give him _leave_ to toil." That was the

scorpion thought that was for ever shooting its sting into Burns's

meditations, whether forward-looking or backward-looking; and,

that considered, there arises a world of allowance for that vulgar

bluster of independence which Lord Jeffrey, with so much apparent

reason charges upon his prose writings.

I, in this year, 1801, when in the company of Dr. Currie, did not

forget, and, with some pride I say that I stood alone in remembering,

the very remarkable position of Burns: not merely that, with his

genius, and with the intellectual pretensions generally of his family,

he should have been called to a life of early labour, and of labour

unhappily not prosperous, but also that he, by accident about the

proudest of human spirits, should have been by accident summoned,

beyond all others, to eternal recognitions of some mysterious gratitude

which he owed to some mysterious patrons little and great, whilst yet,

of all men, perhaps, he reaped the least obvious or known benefit from

any patronage that has ever been put on record. Most men, if they reap

little from patronage, are liberated from the claims of patronage,

or, if they are summoned to a galling dependency, have at least the

fruits of their dependency. But it was this man's unhappy fate--with an

early and previous irritability on this very point--to find himself

saddled, by his literary correspondents, with all that was odious in

dependency, whilst he had every hardship to face that is most painful

in unbefriended poverty.

On this view of the case, I talked, then, being a schoolboy, with and

against the first editor of Burns:--I did not, and I do not, profess

to admire the letters (that is, the prose), all or any, of Burns. I

felt that they were liable to the charges of Lord Jeffrey, and to

others beside; that they do not even express the natural vigour of

Burns's mind, but are at once vulgar, tawdry, coarse, and commonplace;

neither was I a person to affect any profound sympathy with the general

character and temperament of Burns, which has often been described

as "of the earth, earthy"--unspiritual--animal--beyond those of most

men equally intellectual. But still I comprehended his situation; I

had for ever ringing in my ears, during that summer of 1801, those

groans which ascended to heaven from his over-burthened heart--those

harrowing words, "_To give him leave to toil_," which record almost a

reproach to the ordinances of God--and I felt that upon him, amongst

all the children of labour, the primal curse had fallen heaviest and

sunk deepest. Feelings such as these I had the courage to express: a

personal compliment, or so, I might now and then hear; but all were

against me on the _matter_. Dr. Currie said--"Poor Burns! such notions

had been his ruin"; Mr. Shepherd continued to draw from the subject

some scoff or growl at Mr. Pitt and the Excise; the laughing tailor

told us a good story of some proud beggar; Mr. Clarke proposed that I

should write a Greek inscription for a cenotaph which he was to erect

in his garden to the memory of Burns;--and so passed away the solitary

protestation on behalf of Burns's jacobinism, together with the wine

and the roses, and the sea-breezes of that same Everton, in that same

summer of 1801. Mr. Roscoe is dead, and has found time since then to

be half forgotten; Dr. Currie, the physician, has been found "unable

to heal himself"; Mr. Shepherd of Gatacre is a name and a shadow; Mr.

Clarke is a shadow without a name; the tailor, who set the table in a

roar, is dust and ashes; and three men at the most remain of all who

in those convivial meetings held it right to look down upon Burns as

upon one whose spirit was rebellious overmuch against the institutions

of man, and jacobinical in a sense which "men of property" and master

manufacturers will never brook, albeit democrats by profession.[31]

[31] De Quincey's strictures in this paper of 1837 on the

Liverpool literary coterie of 1801 gave great offence in that

town. The Liverpool papers attacked him for it; and Dr. Shepherd

of Gatacre, apparently then the sole survivor of the coterie,

addressed a letter of remonstrance to the editor of _Tait's

Magazine_. It appeared in the number of the magazine for May 1837,

with some editorial comments. "The question of which I have to

treat," wrote Dr. Shepherd, "is a question of accuracy of

recollection; and I am constrained to remark that, as, from the

appellation by which, with an extraordinary kind of taste, Mr. De

Quincey chooses to designate himself in his literary character, he

seems to have been at one period of his life the slave of a

deleterious drug, which shakes the nerves, and, inflaming the

brain, impairs the memory, whilst _I_ have avoided that poison

even in its medical application, therefore _my_ recollection is

more likely to be correct that his." The letter proceeds to

vindicate Dr. Currie, Mr. Roscoe, and the writer himself, from the

charge of defective appreciation of the manly demeanour of Burns

in his relations with the Scottish aristocracy and lairds; after

which come some words of special self-defence of the writer in the

matters of his political consistency and his jests at Hannah More.

The letter altogether is destitute of effective point; and the

editor of _Tait_ was quite justified in standing by De Quincey.

This is done in every particular of the offending paper, with this

included sting: "It may tempt a smile from the few who are likely

to trouble themselves about this foolish affair to find that,

though solemnly assuming the office of advocate-general for the

other members of the extinct coterie, Dr. Shepherd, as well as the

newspaper writers, has entirely overlooked the vivacious tailor

celebrated by Mr. De Quincey, of whom we think none of his

literary friends have the least reason to be ashamed."----The main

matter of interest now in this little controversy of 1837 respects

De Quincey's own estimate of Burns. Although he had taken up the

cudgels for Burns in that particular in which he thought Dr.

Currie and the rest of the Liverpool coterie of 1801, professed

democrats though they were, had done Burns injustice,--viz. his

spirit of manly independence and superiority to considerations of

mere worldly rank,--it remains true that De Quincey's own estimate

of Burns all in all fell woefully beneath the proper mark. There

are evidences of this in the present paper, and there are other

evidences at different points of De Quincey's life. Wordsworth in

this respect differed immensely from his friend De Quincey, and

might have taught him better. In that letter of Wordsworth's which

is referred to by De Quincey (_ante_, p. 131) precisely because it

had deprecated the republication in 1816 of Dr. Currie's _Life of

Burns_ in 1800, how enthusiastic was the feeling for Burns and his

memory compared with anything that De Quincey seems ever to have

permitted himself! And, as long before as 1803, had not

Wordsworth, in his lines _At the Grave of Burns_, given expression

to the same feeling in more personal shape? Who can forget that

deathless stanza in which, remembering that Burns had died so

recently, and that, though they had never met, they had been near

neighbours by their places of habitation, the new poet of England

had confessed his own indebtedness to the example of the Scottish

ploughman bard?--

"I mourned with thousands, but as one

More deeply grieved; for He was gone

Whose light I hailed, when first it shone

And showed my youth

How verse may build a princely throne

On humble truth."

In connexion with the fact of De Quincey's defective appreciation of

Burns even so late as 1837, it is additionally significant that, though

he refers in the present paper, with modified approbation, to Jeffrey's

somewhat captious article on Burns in the _Edinburgh Review_ for

January 1809, he does not mention the compensation which had appeared,

with Jeffrey's own editorial sanction, in the shape of Carlyle's essay

on Burns in the same _Review_ for December 1828.--M.